Mean Sisters: A sassy, hilariously funny murder mystery. Lindsay Emory
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a bad person. I’m just trying to help. That’s my job. Helping people.’
Ty looked around the room. ‘This is her office?’
I had a bad feeling. ‘Filled with confidential sorority information,’ I said quickly.
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Any objection to me looking around?’
‘Objection,’ I said clearly. Big time objection.
‘I could get a warrant,’ he said.
‘You could, if there was something illegal going on.’ Don’t mess with the Law & Order mega fan. I knew all about warrants. Then I gasped when a thought occurred to me. ‘Is there something illegal going on?’
I saw when Ty Hatfield decided to sort-of trust me. ‘The medical examiner doesn’t think the death was natural.’
My mouth formed an ‘O.’ Because if it wasn’t natural, that meant it was … ‘Murder?’ I whispered.
‘They’re doing additional tests,’ Ty repeated, not acknowledging the ‘m’ word.
I sank back down in the chair. Here in Liza’s office, I was surrounded by her things. It seemed unreal that someone who had sat here just hours before me was now dead and that she may have been murdered. I shivered.
‘Nothing’s conclusive,’ Hatfield said.
‘It’s not possible,’ I said, sounding pretty confident that it was true.
‘Why?’ Ty’s eyes sharpened. For a small town cop, he was pretty intense.
‘I was there,’ I said quietly. ‘We all were. We would have seen something, heard something. Liza couldn’t have been murdered. Not in front of fifty witnesses.’
Ty lifted a shoulder. ‘One person’s witnesses are another person’s suspects.’
I was so caught up, remembering the moment of Liza’s passing that his words didn’t fully impact. But then they sank in.
‘Excuse me?’ I said that a lot around Ty Hatfield, it seemed. ‘Are you implying …’
‘Nothing’s conclusive.’
I couldn’t even wrap my brain around the idea, the accusation, the thought …
‘She was our sister!’ I finally said.
‘The medical examiner’s report shows no sign of natural death. No hemorrhage, no heart attack, no stroke.’
‘We have standards!’
‘The people I talked to last night all said that Liza was here, in the house, all day before the meeting. According to the sociology department, she had no classes on Mondays because she saved Mondays for chapter work. The security log from her parking garage shows she left her apartment Sunday night and never returned.’
‘We have morals,’ I hissed at the policeman, coldly rattling off facts like he knew what he was talking about.
‘The only people Liza McCarthy saw in her last day alive were all here, in this sorority house.’
It was too much. ‘You obviously don’t understand sororities, Officer Hatfield.’
‘It’s Lieutenant Hatfield,’ he said. ‘And I’m pretty sure I do.’
‘So are you arresting someone? Are you getting a search warrant?’ There was a hesitant look in his eye. He didn’t have as much as he thought he did.
I took a stab in the dark. ‘No one believes you. Is that it?’
‘The tests are inconclusive,’ he bit out. ‘And yeah, no one at the college or in town are going to call this murder until it’s slapping them in their face.’ He took a deep breath. ‘That’s why I need your help.’
Ah. A cat-eating-the-canary grin settled across my face. Someone needed my help. Now we were getting to it. ‘What exactly do you need, Lieutenant Hatfield?’
His jaw tightened before he threw an arm towards the desk. ‘Information. Liza’s records, notes, letters, phone calls.’
They were things he couldn’t get without a warrant. Especially if I was sitting in the Chapter Advisor’s seat.
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said slowly. ‘You’ve basically insinuated that Liza McCarthy was murdered by someone in this chapter, by one of her own sisters. And you want to review confidential sorority information to confirm your suspicions?’
Muscles twitched in his jaw and around his eye. ‘Yes.’ He cut me off before I could answer. ‘Don’t you want justice for your ‘sister’?’
That hit me harder than I thought it would. Of course I did. I wanted justice for all. That was in the Delta Beta creed. Or was that the pledge of allegiance? It didn’t matter. They were pretty much the same thing.
I looked around the office at the piles of papers and books. It looked like Liza had used the office for her doctoral studies and not just chapter business. I recognised some of the official Delta Beta handbooks and policy manuals. But there were scribbles on notepads, sociology tests and journals that I did not recognise. Sorting through Liza’s papers was going to be necessary, no matter any impending investigation. As her sister I had a duty to get her affairs in order, to protect the chapter and to ensure justice was done.
Ty must have seen the look on my face. ‘Let me guess. You’re objecting.’
I held up a hand. ‘I’ll make you a deal.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘A deal? You’re trying to make a deal … with the police?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Your arrogance is impressive.’
I drew back. I was pretty sure he meant something else. Like confidence. Or competence. Or fashion sense. Whatever. I went on. ‘Obviously, I can’t just let you go through sorority papers, willy-nilly.’
‘Obviously.’
‘I have to go through all this first.’ I waved my hand at the piles of paper around the room. ‘And I’ll let you know if I find anything … interesting.’
‘What’s the deal?’
I looked at him squarely in the face. ‘You do the same for me. I need to know the truth about Liza’s death as soon as you know it.’
‘You’re not the next of kin.’
He really didn’t understand. ‘I’m the next thing to it,’ I said sadly.
After Ty Hatfield left, I needed something positive to focus on. So I headed back to the chapter room where the pledges were having their weekly meeting. The Sutton Delta Beta chapter had had an exceptional rush this year. Not only was the pledge class larger than usual, but they were fantastically good looking. And I’m sure they were all made of a good moral cloth. But you can’t judge that just by looking at someone.
The women sat in a circle on the floor of the chapter room. Only initiated members could sit in chairs. That’s not hazing, that’s just Deb tradition. Each had a notebook and pen in hand. Cheyenne, the pledge trainer, sat at the top of the circle next to an easel with posters stacked on it.
Cheyenne pointed at a poster. ‘Leticia Baumgardner.’
A pledge busted out with the answer. ‘Who is the founder of Delta Beta?’
‘Correct.’ Cheyenne smiled at the girl and pointed back at the poster. ‘Walnut Valley College.’
‘What is the college where Delta Beta was founded?’