Rushing to die, p.21
Rushing to Die, page 21
Ty barely gave me a chance to lift my fist in solidarity and shout “power to the people” when he hurried me through the waiting area and down the hall toward the sound of Callie’s voice shouting. I pulled away from his hand to go toward the holding cell and got a scowl in return. “We don’t have time, Blythe.”
I held up a finger. “One sec, I need to let her know that Sheila has evidence that’s going to set her free.”
“One minute,” he growled, and while I was thankful, I also wondered what his big hurry was.
Callie had her hands around bars, shaking them and yelling at the top of her lungs. Normally, this was not appropriate behavior for a young woman who should be exhibiting the highest qualities of Delta Beta womanhood. But considering she was in the clink, I was giving her a pass. “LET ME OUT!” she practically howled. “I RECANT MY CONFESSION!”
She trailed off when she saw me. “Margot!” she cried out in relief. “Finally! Did you hear?” she demanded of Ty, tight on my heels. “I’m recanting my confession.” Callie looked back at me. “That bitch Louella Jackson totally broke her promise to me! Aubrey told me what happened. Louella voted us out of rush, so why should I do anything to help her? Screw her.”
Again, given the circumstances, I was very much supportive of Callie’s word choice, despite my usual feelings to the contrary. I crossed my arms and gave Ty a “when you gonna let my sister out of jail” look. He held up both hands in surrender.
“Malouf is coming down to process her paperwork after he gets the evidence from the Tri Mu house.”
Callie immediately pounced on that. “Evidence? The Moos killed someone? I knew it!”
“No, the Moos have evidence that clears you,” Ty said; then he corrected himself with a quick shake of his head. “I mean the Tri Mus.”
I allowed myself a small, satisfied smile at his slip. Finally, he was getting the idea.
“Now we have to go.” Once again, he grabbed my elbow and pulled, just hard enough for me to know that he meant business.
“Margot? Where are you going?” Callie shouted at my back, as I was whisked away. “Where are you taking her?” I supposed that was directed at Ty, and I looked up to see if he’d respond in some way. It was a little thrilling, to tell you the truth. After being swept away for an impromptu brunch at Joey’s Diner, I could get used to Ty Hatfield’s being all manly and taking charge and special-ordering me coffee milk shakes.
If that wasn’t a sign that I was getting my groove back, then the little zing I was getting from Ty’s capable hand on my arm definitely was.
He led me to a back part of the station I’d never been to before and paused ever so slightly before slapping his palm against a door clearly marked “men’s locker.”
“Everyone decent?” he called out.
I flinched, pretty sure I didn’t want to walk in and surprise some half-dressed Sutton cops. Not all of them were as young and hot as Ty Hatfield.
Then a body came out from behind a locker, and I jumped and bit back a scream until I saw who it was.
“CASEY!” I squealed, leaping into my best friend’s arms for a ferocious hug. I hadn’t realized until I saw his Rock Hudson smile and Cary Grant twinkle how much I had missed him this week, dealing with all the usual rush drama with a couple of murder investigations besides. When he squeezed back, I knew he felt the same.
And in case you’re wondering if Casey was going to kiss me, since I am obviously the light of his life and he’s super good-looking and dedicated to Delta Beta to boot, the answer is, unfortunately, no. Casey likes to kiss the nonfemale half of the population. Lucky for them.
He let me go, then grimaced as he caught sight of my togs. “Oh, honey …” he moaned in dismay. “What have they done to you?”
Self-consciously, I pulled down my fleece and tried looking out of the bottom of my eye at any more possible streaks of dried cookie dough ice cream that might have appeared. “I had a moment of weakness,” I said. “Did you hear? They threw us out of rush!”
The Cary Grant twinkle in his eyes disappeared, replaced by a mean Richard Belzer frown from Law & Order. “They’re not going to get away with this,” he swore.
I loved that spirit, but I didn’t see what we could do about it, since pref night was in … Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ty check his watch. Then Casey checked his. “Okay, boys.” I took a step back so I could better assess their lies. “What’s going on? Why is Casey here? In a locker room?”
The two exchanged a mysterious look, and my stomach dropped strangely. There hadn’t been anything, nothing really, between me and Ty. So why were my palms getting sweaty at the thought of secret assignations between him and Casey in the Sutton PD shower room? It wasn’t my flannel pants, was it?
“Basically, Lieutenant Hatfield thinks I’m the shit,” Casey said. That didn’t help the sweaty, gurgly feelings.
Ty spoke immediately after that. “I called Casey in to help with an undercover operation.”
Casey clapped his hands and bounced, mouthing the words “the shit” and I had a pretty good idea that “undercover operation” wasn’t a euphemism for role-playing good cop/bad cop in the Sutton PD shower room.
“Undercover operation …” I echoed, looking Casey up and down. He was as nattily dressed as usual, tonight in a black-and-white hound’s-tooth coat, a yellow-and-black polka-dot tie with his mama’s Delta Beta pin serving as a tie tack.
He was dressed in our sorority’s official colors, so I could only come to one conclusion. “You’re going to pref night?”
Casey reached into his inner breast pocket and pulled out a pair of what I could only presume were the finest Witness spy-glasses that Casey’s Delta Beta credit card could buy. When he settled them on his face, the effect was astonishing. The man could really pull off any accessory. It wasn’t fair.
Ty gestured toward Casey. “Meet Mr. Peter Jones.”
Casey hissed at Ty. “I thought we agreed. I’m Pedro San Diego.”
“What kind of a name is that?” I crinkled my nose at Casey, who eyes lit with excitement.
“I got hooked on a telenovela in Texas. You’re going to love it. Think Law & Order with backstabbing mothers-in-law and really hot Latin guys.”
I wasn’t so sure about the backstabbing part, but Casey was kind of an expert when it came to hot Latin guys.
“Okay,” I rubbed my hands together. “I got it. How about … Lorenzo San Diego.”
“For Christ’s sake!” That was Ty.
“Oooh …” That was Casey. “I like it.”
“Does it matter what fake name he has?”
Casey and I both swung around on Ty, our mouths dropping open in disbelief. I didn’t even know what they had taught him in police academy, but a fake name was everything in undercover operations.
“Fine,” Ty said through gritted teeth. “Lorenzo.”
“What name am I going to use?” I asked, my mind burning with possibilities. Perhaps I could assume the identity of Carmen San Diego, Lorenzo’s mysterious and sexy globe-trotting twin sister.
Ty quirked an eyebrow at me, and Casey pressed a fist against his mouth the way he did when he had something really bad to tell me about a celebrity crush.
“What?”
“Oh, honey …”
Ty interrupted Casey. “You’re not in on this one.”
“That’s not fair!” I exclaimed. “I’m just as good as he is!”
“It’s hard for anyone to be as good as I am,” Casey said reassuringly, and really, I couldn’t argue with him on that. But I still didn’t want to be left out of whatever it was they were planning.
“I can do this,” I promised. “I won’t let you down,” I added when Ty didn’t immediately agree.
He shook his head. “You can’t pull this one off. You’re too old.”
Casey gasped in horror at that one, and I was about to react similarly when I remembered all the suspicious looks I had received at the ice-cream social. It was definitely time to find a decent dermatologist in Sutton.
“And everyone would recognize you,” Ty went on quickly.
Wait. People would recognize me? I peered at him and Casey. “What are you two planning, anyway?”
Chapter Thirty-seven
ONE OF THE reasons I loved Casey Kenner like a sister was his creativity. No matter the crisis, he always had a brilliant plan. So I was astonished to find out that this sting operation was the brain baby of one Lieutenant Ty Hatfield.
“Are you sure?” I queried Casey for the tenth time, watching carefully for one of his tells. When he lied, he smiled charmingly, as if those deep, big-screen-ready dimples would distract anyone from sniffing out the truth.
But he stayed absolutely serious when he answered me for the tenth time. “Yes, Margot. Obviously, I wouldn’t have chosen to do this.”
I palmed the still-warm laminated press badge that Ty had fabricated for one Lorenzo San Diego, reporter for UnoVision. Fundamentally, I objected to any intrusion into the sacred rites of pref night, but I had to agree with Ty that this was the best way to get Casey into the houses. Since the college already had told all the chapters to cooperate with Nick Holden, they were already primed to answer questions from an even handsomer if unknown Lorenzo San Diego.
“You really think this is going to work?”
“Sure it will.”
My head jerked up at his nonchalance. Now that was suspicious. I knew Casey Kenner better than I knew anyone. He was rarely this blasé about supersecret, undercover sting operations. When I met his eyes, I saw a shadow that belied his breezy tone. “What? Why are you worried?”
Casey frowned as deeply as his Botox would let him. “It’s about the chapter. It’s all I can think about. Even if we catch the killer, will it be enough to salvage the Debs’ good name?”
The thought sent me back to the Fireball and Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough zone. Casey’s fears weren’t unwarranted. Rush had been a disaster: The Delta Beta name had been dragged through the mud, then stomped on, then another pile of mud unloaded on top of it. A chapter couldn’t bounce back from a week like this easily.
I could see it all play out in my head. The next two semesters, Delta Beta would be operating at a deficit; incoming freshmen would hear all about “the murder house;” and the numbers of young women willing to attach themselves to a chapter of assumed thugs and criminals would dwindle down to nothing. Headquarters would close the house down, no longer willing to associate or fund the few losers that were left. And nearly one hundred years of Delta Beta sisterhood at Sutton would be erased.
I didn’t know what I could do to stop the inevitable slide, but I did know that two women had to be avenged. And my best friend Casey had to play a vital role.
“It will be okay,” I assured him, pulling up every ounce of bounce from my mostly depleted reserves. “You’re the best sorority public-relations guru in the galaxy. If anyone can rescue Delta Beta, it’s you.”
Casey got a little verklempt at that. “I won’t let you down.”
I gave him a hug, and Ty stepped in. “We’re on,” he said, his words tight and crisp as the khakis he wore. “Your first party is in thirty.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Mu Mu Mu.”
I groaned loudly.
“Is there a problem, ladies?” Ty deadpanned.
I ignored that and squeezed Casey’s hand. “You can do this.”
Casey tossed his hair off his forehead. “Damn right I can.”
TY DIDN’T WANT me undercover, and he didn’t want me in the police van, either. Things were said that could never be taken back, like “Damn it Blythe,” and “Do you ever listen to anyone with an ounce of sense?” But I pointed out all of the convincing arguments why I should be allowed to watch Casey’s live feed, like, “What are you going to do, arrest me?” And eventually, we came to the mutual conclusion that I was staying.
This was my best friend we were discussing, after all. The man who was going into the lion’s den to draw out a killer. Well, we hoped that’s what Casey would do. It turned out that Ty shared the same suspicions as me; that whoever had murdered Shannon Bender and Daria Cantrell was deeply invested in rush, either from the inside or out. Sorority recruitment was the only thing that linked the two murders besides the similar blows to the back of the head.
Ty’s theory was that, if Senor Lorenzo San Diego appeared during the final round of rush parties, the killer was sure to make a move and, hopefully, a mistake. We had the Delta Beta cameras and the Tri Mu drone on high alert, and police officers were hiding in cars all around sorority row, keeping a close eye on the affairs. Per Ty’s request, Sheila allowed Zoe to link the Tri Mu drone to the Deb surveillance system; Zoe was now monitoring the whole block with a police officer watching over her shoulder.
I used all my mental energy to focus on Casey’s safety and any clues that he could dig up regarding the murders. As long as I spent one hundred percent of my brain waves on solving a crime, I wasn’t thinking about the Deb chapter’s not getting ready for its preference ceremony lit by the glow of a hundred candles. All that fire-safety training gone to waste.
The Sutton Police Department surveillance van sat at the end of the street closest to the Delta Beta house. It was emptier on that end of the street since no beautiful rushees were following the sidewalk to our front porch, gracefully lit by probably ten thousand twinkle lights twirling around the porch columns. The van was quite small on the inside, not as roomy as Law & Order episodes would have you believe. Ty and I sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip on low stools facing the monitors that showed the view from Casey’s Witness glasses, listening for sounds from his small mic.
We had eyes and ears everywhere, but the problem, as I saw it was we didn’t know what we were looking for. According to Ty’s theory, our killer was probably between the ages of 18 and 108, was either a man or a woman, had visited sorority row a few times, and had something sharp that s/he killed potential rivals with. You know, the typical profile.
Ty and I both looked down at our watches. Showtime.
Silently, we counted down to the start of the first party. Seeing it through Casey’s eyes was pretty wild. I hadn’t been in line to enter a rush party since I was an eighteen-year-old brunette virgin. It was clear from the visuals that Casey was getting a lot of attention, but he was handling it with the confidence and charm of Ryan Seacrest.
The doors opened to the Tri Mu house, and their welcoming song was soft and gentle, something about friends and stars and blah-blah. Nothing could be as moving as the song that the Debs had planned to greet rushees with, about eternal friends like stars.
Casey followed the line into the Tri Mu house and instinctively, I clutched Ty’s arm, as if I were the one headed into the lion’s den. The Witness glasses were extraordinarily clear, and we saw everything as Casey purposely turned his head constantly, giving us a 180-degree view around the Tri Mu house. “Too bad he can’t turn around,” I murmured under my breath, then, because Casey and I have an undeniable psychic connection, Casey spun around slowly.
“He can hear you through my mic,” Ty whispered.
Oh.
“Oh?” Casey was saying to the woman talking to him. “I thought you said you liked my outfit. I was just showing you that my back looked even better than my front.”
I snickered. Even undercover, Casey was a hoot.
The girl assigned to answer Lorenzo San Diego’s questions was at a loss, and I felt sorry for her. Clearly, her chapter advisor had not prepared her well for public-relations duties. Casey took over the conversation like the PR pro he was.
“Tell me all about the pref-night ceremony,” he prompted her. “What will the typical rushee be experiencing tonight?” She looked relieved to be able to talk about something other than the giant, well-dressed, masculine elephant in the room.
“We’ve all worked so hard on it, to show girls the true meaning of sisterhood … It’s pretty special …” The girl blushed as she looked down at Lorenzo’s reporter notepad that Casey had insisted on, for “authenticity.”
“I like your decorations,” Casey said. “Are any of them particularly sharp? Maybe four or five inches long?”
“Um … no?”
“Are any of them electrical? Poisonous? Could someone strangle an enemy with these twinkle light strands … ?” Sweet Casey was trying to get intel for the police on possible murder weapons even when he could be violently attacked by a frustrated Moo any second. Judging by the expression on the woman’s face, Lorenzo San Diego’s questions were the type of hard-hitting journalism that would earn him an Emmy if he were a real journalist. I was so proud of Casey and his professional fake-reporting skills that were surely going to quickly ferret out the clue that would help us solve the case. Which was also a problem.
“This isn’t good,” I whispered to Ty. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Sending Casey into the Tri Mu house was pretty much the same thing as sending up a giant bat signal into the sky. “Here’s the guy that’s going to catch you. Better attack him first.”
“This was stupid.” Fear lit up my chest, making me feel all hot and squirmy. “What are you looking for, anyway?”
Maybe Casey heard that because he started to turn his head slowly again, giving us a clear rotation of the view while his rushee was leading him back toward the Moo chapter room for the preference-night ceremony. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but it didn’t quell my nerves, jangling through my system, fast and electric.
Then the Witness glasses jerked and fell. And everything went black.
“SHIT!” Ty punched the side of the van and lifted the small mic to this mouth. “Casey? Your glasses. Pick up your glasses. We’re not getting a feed here. Are they broken?”
“My glasses!” Casey’s voice was still clear as a bell, thank goodness, but the screen was still pitch-black.
“Oh no! Are they broken?”
