Rushing to Die (11 page)

 

Chapter Twenty

T
HE DOOR TO
room 308 of the Fountain Place Inn slammed behind me, every bit as ominous a sound as the clang of the holding-­cell door at the Sutton police station.

The last time I had been confined against my will was due to a small criminal misunderstanding. This time, it was over a Panhellenic rule. And I had company. Under rule 7.8, subsection D of the Sutton Panhellenic Recruitment Code, the Mafia had the power to eject misbehaving participants from the recruitment process. Now, I know many sisters around the country would rejoice at this rule, but really, me? Misbehaving? I was a chapter advisor. It was my job to set a shining example for my chapter. My behavior was really beyond reproach.

The Mafia, however, disagreed. Because Sheila and I had just been written up, we had to spend twenty-­four hours in solitary confinement, away from our chapters.

I was about to decline this punishment for these clearly trumped-­up charges, and shout a few quotes about “give me liberty or give me death” and “no taxation without representation,” until Patty Huntington informed us of the fine that the chapter would pay if I did. Let's just say, the Sutton chapter needed heat this winter, so I chose to bravely face imprisonment for my beliefs. Like Mandela.

My last contact with the outside world were quick calls to Callie and Ginnifer, urging them to be strong, stay the course, and recruit the heck out of our legacies. Then I had to take a deep breath, face my situation, and try to make the best of it. One day in a hotel room with Sheila DeGrasse. It could be worse. I could be at the Happy Times Motel down by the interstate.

The Fountain Place Inn was the nicest historic motel in Sutton, and Sheila DeGrasse (of course) had taken residence in the penthouse suite. The room was formally decorated in rose and powder-­blue floral chintz, the draperies a royal-­blue thick brocade. The suite boasted a small kitchenette and a seating area with a compact pullout couch and Queen-­Anne-­style chair. It smelled like Thierry Mugler's Angel, but I was almost positive that was Sheila's doing. Irony, thy name is heavy-­handed perfume names.

Sheila kicked off her platform heels and took them to the closet, where she froze, as if she wasn't sure what to do next. In that, we were the same. I had no idea what to do, either. The last three months of my life, I had been constantly on the go, my mind racing from one priority to the next, all of it building up to the legacy that I would leave after this week was over.

And now . . . I could do nothing. Maya had collected our phones and laptops until she came to retrieve us the next day. I didn't even have my rush binder with me, leaving it behind when I left the house that morning, frantic and late for an emergency meeting. How could I know that I wouldn't be returning to the bosom of my chapter to hang garlands of plastic flowers and fake palm trees for our Hawaiian-­themed day of rush?

Suddenly, my eyes filled with tears. It was the stress. Being out of control and frustrated would make anyone tear up.

At the sound of my sniffle, Sheila spun on her stockinged foot. “Don't you dare play the victim.”

Well, that shocked the cry right out of me.

“If you hadn't been such a fuckup, none of this would be happening.”

I would have been surprised at the profanity, but it was Sheila DeGrasse who was using it.

“Me?” I stuttered, almost at a loss for words. The woman had lost her grip on reality. “You told them you had talked to Nick Holden first.”

Sheila's lip curled. “And then you had to copy me like always!”

“What are you even talking about?” I asked, confused at her nonsense. “Copy you? I wasn't copying you. I was trying to make sure Nick Holden wasn't poisoned by the lies you told.”

“My lies? I'm an outsider here, I'm the only one that will tell him the truth!”

She grunted her frustration when she threw her shoes into the closet. I gasped. Those were Louboutons.

“We have to spend the next twenty-­four hours together. We should at least try to be civil.”

Sheila scoffed. “I tried to be civil when I came to the Little Debbie house before rush started. You called me a skanky sellout.”

I opened my mouth to confirm that opinion, then closed it. Sheila might have been a little right about that. Those words were less than civil.

“I'm sorry,” I said. Sheila shrugged off my apology, but I wondered if I had really hurt her feelings that night. What had she said? That she was trying to be friends? That we were alike? Here I thought she had possibly been high on her hair spray when she'd said that. And now look where we were. Locked up, like two very-­stylishly-­coordinated zoo animals.

“I'm sorry,” I repeated. “As I'm sure you know, rush can be extremely stressful.”

Sheila nodded in agreement. “So stressful.” There was a pause before she spoke again. “I have hardly gotten any sleep the past few days.”

“I can count up my total weekly sleeping hours on two hands.”

Sheila winced. “That explains those circles under your eyes.”

I gasped. “I thought we were being civil.”

She reached out to push down my hand, pressed against my cheekbone. “We are. I didn't mean it like that.” She seemed really contrite. “I almost didn't notice the dark circles because you're looking so thin.”

My hand dropped to my belly button. My pants had seemed looser this week, but I'd attributed it to stress and not eating solid food.

Thinking about my stress levels brought everything back. Sheila must have been thinking about it, too, because we both looked at our watches at the exact moment.

“T minus sixty minutes,” she said.

I put a hand to my chest as my heart sped up at the thought. “I need to be there,” I said, mostly to myself.

Sheila wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “I don't know if Sarah can handle the schedule by herself.”

Oh no. I closed my eyes. I had the remote control for the house lights in my purse. How would the chapter know when to start the skit without me there to dim the lights? It felt like my chest was in a vise.

“I can't breathe,” Sheila said, putting her hand down and lowering herself to the bed.

“Air,” I said, moving to the A/C unit under the window and flipping it to high. The roar of the unit filled the room, and a blast of hot air was shot into my face instead of the cool air I was expecting; given that this was January, when the unit was used for heating. The heat made me feel faint, and I quickly sat down on the other side of the king-­sized bed.

After a few minutes, I still felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins. This is not healthy, Margot, I told myself, and bad for my under-­eye circles besides. There had to be something else for me to think about aside from whether the Delta Beta chapter was hurtling toward disaster if they couldn't pull off a synchronized hula tonight.

“How bad was the cheese?”

“What?” Sheila asked after a beat.

“The cheese in your ducts. How bad was it?”

A tortured sigh was her first response. “Pretty bad. Someone inserted it in the heating vents in the dining room. We didn't discover it until this morning.”

“Accessed the heating vents from the crawl space under the house?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a guess.”

Sheila looked across the span of the bed at me, the question plain in her eyes. “Nope, it wasn't me. Or any other Debs.”

“Too busy tweeting last night?”

“That was Nick Holden,” I assured her.

She frowned. “What do you think he's up to?”

I rubbed my hand over my forehead. It was a good question. Why would a reporter like him try to stir up so much trouble?

“I guess he's just trying to get a story,” I suggested.

“How did you know about the—­”

“Crawl space that's accessible from the western porch?” I finished that for her and decided to answer truthfully. The statute of limitations was up, anyway. “There was a night, much like this one, seven years ago, when four brave Debs placed smoke bombs underneath the Moo house. The Moos had to evacuate until the firemen said they could go back in.”

Thankfully, Sheila didn't run to the courtesy phone to report me to 9-­1-­1. Who even knew if the dispatch operators took bets on things that happened seven years ago.

I picked up the remote control and turned the TV on and got a sign that God still loved me, Margot Blythe, sorority criminal, after all.
Law &
Order
was on.

 

Chapter Twenty-­one

T
URNS OUT,
L
AW
&
O
RDER
is the universal language that brings us all closer. Sheila and I were soon sucked into the episode with the snotty society mother and her sociopathic, prep-­school son, like there had never been any conflict between us. I wondered if the United Nations knew about this secret for world peace.

As engrossing as it was, the show didn't completely make us forget everything that was going on in the world. As the afternoon and evening ticked by, I soon noticed that Sheila would check her watch just when I did—­both still on rush schedules, even as we watched the young blond DA verbally tear apart the molesting priest on the witness stand.

Maya had dinner delivered for us, and the Mexican takeout from El Loco Pollo made me think of Ty, with his donuts, pizza, chicken. I wondered if he'd made any progress with the Shannon Bender case. Watching
L&O
was taking my mind off rush but reminding me of the inevitable progress of the legal system. First there was a death. Then there were several visits from world-­weary and rumpled detectives. Then the lab came back with a piece of incontrovertible evidence that the detectives couldn't ignore anymore, and they would make an arrest.

Apparently, when rush wasn't consuming my brain, there was room for other, sadder things.

Sheila waved her hand in front of my face. “Hey. They just arrested the stockbroker, and you didn't say, ‘so obvious.' ”

I cast a quick look at the screen. “Well it is.”

“So obvious,” Sheila said for me. “I think I've seen this episode about ten times though.”

“You're a
Law & Order
fan?”

She nodded. “I travel so much, it's pretty much the only thing that's on no matter where I go in the country.”

I knew what she meant. “When I traveled as a sisterhood mentor, I watched it everywhere.”

A shadow crossed her eyes. “It's probably why the chapter was in such good hands last year, after the . . . unfortunate incidents.”

The murders. I did appreciate her trying to be polite about it.

“And now you have another one . . .” Her voice ran out, like the slowing down of a treadmill that had been unplugged.

I glanced up sharply at her, looking for any sign that she was about to mock me, my chapter, or use this against us in anyway. Just because we'd bonded over
L&O
and tacos didn't mean that I was letting my guard down where the Tri Mu rush consultant was concerned. It was still her job to take us down.

But there was no gloating on Sheila's face. No sign of a malicious intent or sneaky snarkiness. Instead, she looked . . . lost. Maybe a little bereft. Maybe a touch of fright was there.

“Yes,” I said carefully, wanting to watch what I said, especially with the expression on Sheila's face. Evil Incarnate Sheila I could deal with. Emotionally vulnerable Sheila might be more dangerous. “But the police are taking care of that.”

“Do they know . . .” And the way she left that open-­ended further confirmed my gut feeling that I did not want to get into this with Sheila. Not here. Not now. Not without my cell phone to text a warning of impending bedbug invasion.

And I guess that she didn't want to talk about it anymore, either, because then she turned the volume up, and since it was a good episode, with Angie Harmon as the tough-­talking brunette DA (as a natural brunette myself, I empathized with her struggles to break the blond Assistant DA glass ceiling), I closed my mouth and let the soothing rhythms of
Law & Order
relax me.

Nearly nine hours later, I woke to a knocking at the door of the suite.

Sheila stumbled to the door while I tried to make sense of the mystery of what had just happened. Sleep? During rush week? And in Sheila DeGrasse's hotel room?

If you had told me this set of events several weeks ago, I would have calmly and firmly escorted you down to the Student Health clinic and requested a head exam.

Even now, I wasn't sure I believed it, except I felt this strange peace that could only come from a full night's sleep.

That peace lasted about thirty seconds.

“I got permission from the council,” Maya was saying. ‘You guys need to head back to your houses.”

She wouldn't tell us more, and when she handed back our cell phones, they were both dead. I grabbed my tote, Sheila locked the door to her room, and we walked downstairs to the lobby together.

“Margot . . .” she began.

“It's okay.” I put a hand on her coat sleeve, interrupting her. “I accept your apology.”

She should have looked overjoyed at my benevolence, but that same sad, stressed expression was on her face again.

“I was hoping we could call a truce.”

A truce? “But we haven't done anything to the Tri Mus.”

Sheila gave me a look like she didn't want to argue. Well, we hadn't done anything to the Moos that we hadn't done to everyone else, I thought, thinking of the anonymous Twitter account that pushed more than a few Panhellenic buttons.

We were at our cars. “Don't you get tired of all this?” She waved a hand around in the air.

“Sutton's a nice place,' I said defensively. “Maybe it's a little small, but really, it has everything—­”

“No, the constant competition. Sorority life. Always being so ruthless and mean.”

My car keys stilled in midair as I thought about that. My automatic answer was, of course, no. I loved everything about sorority life, everything about Delta Beta. I even loved the bouncing and the snapping, and the flurry of activities and the constant chatter of college women and the lack of sleep . . .

Okay, there were some things I was probably over.

But I wasn't nearly over most of it. It was clear, though, that something was bothering Sheila. Maybe the great Sheila DeGrasse was nearing retirement, planning to leave at the height of her success, like Posh Spice's first retirement.

I kind of felt sorry for her. She was a wanderer, like I had been, going from chapter to chapter, with no permanent home, no true friends. A hired gun who just wanted to hang up her spurs and relax on a nice piece of property out West. Maybe I needed to stop watching the Western movies that always came on after an
L&O
marathon. Maybe I needed to try harder with Sheila.

“Okay,” I said, even while a little Deb voice a lot like how I imagined Mary Gerald Callahan sounded was shouting in my head. “I think we can handle a little truce.”

Little TRUCE?

I wasn't really sure what that might entail, but Sheila seemed reassured by it and stuck her hand out to shake on it.

I drove away, wondering whether I had just made a deal with the devil.