Mean Sisters: A sassy, hilariously funny murder mystery

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © Lindsay Emory 2016

Paige Nick asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780008173562

Version: 2016-02-15

To J.A.K.

In the U.K., a book dedication is actually more valuable than Premier League tickets. This is how much I love you.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

A Note From the Editor

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading ...

About the Publisher

A Note from the editor

The lovely, witty Lindsay Emory has provided you lucky Mean Sisters readers with a terribly funny glossary of all the US terms us non-Americans may find challenging. So, if at any point you feel you need more humour, just flick to the back of your ebook for more Margot LOLs.

CHAPTER ONE

Sisterhood is powerful.

I have a pillow with that saying embroidered on it. My big sister Amanda gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday, along with a bottle of tequila and a shot glass with the Delta Beta sorority crest enameled on it.

We weren’t blood sisters. Amanda was my sorority big sis, a pledge year ahead of me, and she and the rest of the Delta Betas (or Debs, as we’re known) taught me everything about true sisterhood. Things like loyalty, pride and always being there to hold your sister’s hair back when she’s puking tequila on her twenty-first birthday.

The words on Amanda’s pillow came back to me as I stood in the chapter room of the Delta Beta house at Sutton College. I didn’t know anyone’s name, but I marveled at the strength of our sisterhood as I held hands with the active sisters and recited the words to our sorority creed, which is similar to the Apostle’s Creed, only a little more inspiring. There were no strangers here tonight. We were all sisters, bound by our oaths to one another.

Every chapter I visited, the rituals of Delta Beta were the same. The same lit XXXXX, the same book of XXXXX, the same song lyrics espousing XXXXX and XXXXX. (Details redacted to protect the sanctity of Delta Beta rites.) Here at Sutton College, it was no different. I was proud to call this small chapter of fifty young women my sisters. The rituals were even more meaningful here because Sutton College was my alma mater. This was the house where I was initiated and became a Delta Beta woman. I lived and laughed in these walls, called them home for four years.

That was the beauty of the Delta Beta sorority. Everywhere I went, anywhere in the world, I had a sister, which was nice for an only child like me. Maybe that’s why I took to sorority life so well in undergrad and why, after graduation, I applied to be a Sisterhood Mentor. Nearly all of the national sororities have some programme like Sisterhood Mentors. Young alumnae travel to different chapters to advise and assist the collegiate members on all sorts of very important sorority issues. Don’t laugh. There are lots of important sorority issues. Generally, the programmes last for two years and then the Consultants, Advisors and Mentors move on to real careers. Me? I’m on my sixth year.

I’m not an idiot. The Delta Beta executive council has hinted a few times that maybe I should step down. They even offered me a permanent position at headquarters, something to do with accounting or rush consulting or something. But I always talk them out of firing me. With a few choice quotes from our founders, Leticia Baumgardner and Mary Gerald Callahan, the executive council is putty in my hands. They love Delta Beta as much as I do. They can’t resist the wisdom of Leticia and Mary Gerald.

I’m Margot Blythe, professional sorority girl.

I was a philosophy major. What do you expect?

After the opening ritual was completed, the Chapter President began conducting business and I was lured into the familiar rhythms and subjects. From my corner, I listened carefully, taking detailed notes. In six years, I had learned that the key to successfully mentoring sisters was often found in the minutiae of these chapter meetings. How they talked to each other, what problems the chapter was facing and which fraternities they mixed with all provided clues about the state of the chapter. Sometimes it took an alumna to see what was really going on between the Tory Burch flats and the Lilly Pulitzer prints.

After a full hour of debates on t-shirt designs, scholarship awards and the next date party theme, the closing ritual began. We joined hands again – always a beautiful gesture of trust and strength. With one voice, we chanted the words to our motto (in Greek, of course, like all serious sororities) and lifted our hands in our secret sign.

It was precisely because we were all doing the exact same thing that I noticed something was wrong. One of us did not form a circle with her forefinger and thumb. One of us did not place the circle over her heart.

One of us fell to the floor, lifeless, before the meeting was officially closed.

CHAPTER TWO

Ten years as a Delta Beta had prepared me for dealing with hysterical young women. Of course, I’d never dealt with the aftermath of a Chapter Advisor dropping dead in a chapter meeting. My closest experience with this level of tragedy was when the Western University chapter failed to win the Epsilon Eta Chi sorority’s Sing-a-thon. Total and complete heartbreak.

I’d just met Liza McCarthy, the now shrouded young woman currently being wheeled out by the Sutton medical examiner. I crossed myself like the Real Housewives of New Jersey did as I saw the ambulance doors close behind her. She had been a sociology graduate student at Sutton and was by all accounts a smart, beautiful woman who truly personified the Delta Beta ideal. Our sisterhood had lost a star. And one so young! Liza McCarthy must have been around my age, too young to be felled by a heart attack or stroke or whatever silent killer had the gall to interrupt our sorority’s most sacred rites.

With the Chapter Advisor rolling away to the morgue, I was left as the responsible adult on the scene. I herded the pledges into the dining room, the initiated members into the TV room and called for volunteers to distribute lemonade and whatever snacks could be rounded up in the kitchen, hoping to distract the young women until the police had finished.

The Delta Beta sorority house was not overly large at three stories tall. The first floor had a dining room, TV room and chapter room directly off an impressive two-story foyer with a curved stairwell. Through the dining room was the kitchen and a small office. Off the TV room was a dark hall leading to a laundry room, a half bath and a studio apartment. The second and third floors had bedrooms for about thirty initiated members. Essentially, a sorority house was a dormitory, but it felt more like a gracious, large home. I felt the warmth and comfort of the house envelop all the hyperventilating, confused young women grieving the sudden death that had occurred in their midst.

Even though I knew Sutton, North Carolina, was a small town, I was highly unimpressed with the police force that had shown up at the house. TV made police work look far more intense than it was. After the paramedics and medical examiner left, only two police officers strolled around, taking notes and photographing ‘the scene.’ I guessed they had nothing better to do on a Monday night except make a big production out of an unavoidable tragedy.

I was busy consoling several girls when I overheard one of the policemen. ‘Tell me what happened next,’ he said to one of the chapter officers.

Heck, no. That was not happening on Margot Blythe’s watch. I marched right over to the policeman to put a stop to that – but not before I noticed that this was one extremely good-looking man. Several inches over six feet tall with wavy, dark blond hair, of course I noticed. At a different time, I probably would have approached him differently. Maybe I would have smiled charmingly, batted my eyelashes and placed a hand on that very firm looking bicep of his. But people were grieving and I couldn’t let him take advantage of our pain.

‘Don’t say another word,’ I said to the young woman being questioned. Her nose was red and puffy, her cheeks tear-stained, her chapter-worthy shift dress wrinkled and tired looking.

‘We were in the middle of something,’ said the police officer. I turned to him, my hands on my hips. He wasn’t in uniform, but he wore a navy polo embroidered with the police insignia. A name tag identified him as ‘Hatfield’.

‘Mr Hatfield,’ I addressed him.

‘Lieutenant Hatfield,’ he corrected me.

‘This is a minor. You can’t question a minor without a guardian or parent.’ I’d read that somewhere in a manual. It seemed legit.

‘She’s not under suspicion, Miss …’

‘Blythe,’ I provided my name with all the authority I could muster. I was the chapter’s assigned Sisterhood Mentor, after all. ‘Margot Blythe.’

Hatfield’s head jerked back then. When I got authoritarian, I noticed that respect changed people. ‘Ms Blythe,’ he started to say again, ‘I’m just talking to witnesses. This is a friendly conversation. Nobody’s under any suspicion.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But I’m staying right here.’ I wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulder so she knew I was there for her, for support or for protection – whatever she needed.

Hatfield didn’t seem to love that idea, but he couldn’t do much about it. He looked back at his notes and then started again with the questions.

‘You said you were wrapping up the chapter meeting and the girls started to recite something …’

‘Objection,’ I said.

Hatfield raised his eyebrows at me. ‘What did you say?’

‘Objection,’ I repeated. He obviously only watched the ‘law’ part of Law & Order. The ‘order’ part was always the more dramatic stuff. I looked at the girl. ‘Don’t answer that.’

Hatfield looked between me and the girl and instead of respecting my objection, he went ahead and repeated the question. ‘What were y’all reciting?’

‘Objection!’ I glared at him.

Hatfield looked stunned. ‘What in the world are you objecting to?’

‘You’re asking about privileged information!’

‘Was a lawyer there? A doctor? A priest?’

Now he was talking crazy. ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘you’re asking about secret sorority rituals. We can’t share those with anyone who has not been initiated and that includes the police.’

Hatfield lowered his pad and pen and stared at me, like I was some kind of tropical bird he’d never seen before. ‘Who are you again?’

‘Margot Blythe,’ I repeated hotly.

‘Got that,’ he said. ‘I meant, why are you here?’

‘I’m the designated Sisterhood Mentor to the Sutton chapter for the next six weeks in the unfortunate absence of the chapter advisor. It’s my duty, as the representative of Delta Beta Executive Council, to advise these young ladies accordingly.’

His posture and expression remained hostile, like my explanation hadn’t been convincing enough. ‘You can’t object to these questions,’ he ground out.

‘Do you see this badge?’ I asked him, hooking a thumb into my suit lapel, where a small gold pin in the shape of a delta and a beta was prominently displayed. ‘This badge says I can object.’

Hatfield looked resigned. I was relieved that he understood my position and was going to be reasonable. Then he took something out of his pants pocket: a gold shield. ‘Do you see this badge?’

And that was when I was arrested in front of an entire sorority chapter. It was just heartless, in my opinion, to add to the ladies’ grief that way and take away two of their sisters in the same night.

CHAPTER THREE

It turned out that I wasn’t officially ‘arrested.’ Hatfield escorted me to his police car with a firm grip on my elbow while I said some not very nice things under my breath that neither Mary Gerald Callahan or Leticia Baumgardner would have thought befitting a Delta Beta lady. Hatfield told me to sit in the back seat and slammed the door, which was really uncalled for.

Did you know that the back seat doors of police cars have kiddy locks on them? Who locks children in the back of a police car? I tried for nearly thirty minutes to get out of the car until the second police officer at the scene, who was both less attractive than Hatfield (unfortunately) and less personable (hard to believe, I know), got in the front seat and drove off, completely ignoring my protests and the not-so-nice things I was yelling in the back seat.

The second police officer’s name tag, which I saw once he let me out of the back of the car and escorted me to the cell, identified him as ‘Malouf.’ The Sutton police station had one large holding cell that was surprisingly grim. I was all alone in the cell, which was just a square, blank room with benches. I passed the time redecorating the cell in my mind until Hatfield reappeared.

I really wanted to be cool and ignore the man, but I also wanted to bust out of here and return to the chapter. I had to put my best Deb face on and charm him out of keeping me locked up.

Hatfield stood at the door silently while I pretended not to notice him. ‘This is really unnecessary,’ I finally said, once I decided that I’m not cut out to be that cool. ‘You probably traumatised those poor girls back there when you hauled me off without probable cause, you know.’

He chewed the inside of his jaw. I couldn’t tell if he was sorry or just embarrassed for what he’d done.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything? Don’t I get a phone call or something?’

When he still didn’t answer, that ticked me off. ‘I know people! You do not want to mess with me!’

Hatfield held up his hands in surrender. ‘Oooh, I’m scared of the official sorority representative.’

I stood up, putting my hands on my hips. ‘Yes, yes, you’ve made your point. Your badge is more important than mine. I still think you have your priorities out of whack.’

Hatfield’s eyes widened before he quickly (and dramatically, I might add) squeezed them shut. ‘I have my priorities out of whack? You put your stupid poems before a police investigation!’

‘A poem? This is way more than a poem! You’re just putting your ego before the proper oversight of young college women who need someone responsible and caring in their lives tonight!’

Blowing out a rough sigh, he reached for the cell door and unlocked it.

‘A rug would be a nice touch,’ I said, as I walked by him.

‘In there?’ he asked. ‘Do you know what people do on that floor?’

I looked at the drain in the middle of the holding cell. Hatfield finally had a decent point.

Safely out of the cell, I turned and looked around the town’s police offices, disappointed by the lack of activity on a Monday night. No detectives were hustling perps out of interview rooms, no skankily dressed undercover cops drank bad coffee out of paper cups. Nope, it was just me and Hatfield, a few desks, some computers and a half-filled water cooler.

It was clear that life as a Sutton police officer was boring as heck. No wonder Hatfield didn’t know what to do with me tonight. I was so outside his comfort zone.

‘Can I make my phone call now?’

Hatfield rolled his eyes. ‘You don’t get a phone call.’

‘I know my rights.’

‘You’re not under arrest.’ He paused, seeming a little uncomfortable. ‘You were accidentally transported here.’

For as long as I can remember, I have never been really, truly speechless. Accidentally transported to a holding cell? Of all the inept, low-rent, unprofessional, amateur-hour moves … I wanted to rail and rip this guy a new one. And remind him again that yes, I knew people and, yes, those people knew people that could maybe, potentially get him fired. But there had been a tragedy tonight and I needed information from Deputy Do-Right.

‘What comes next?’ I asked, ‘For Liza?’

‘Who?’ The exasperation on my face made him self-correct. ‘Oh, Liza. Liza McCarthy. Yes, she’ll be checked out and released to her family.’

‘Checked out?’

‘For cause of death.’

‘I’d like to be there.’

‘For an autopsy?’ Hatfield asked, like no one had ever asked that before.

But that wasn’t what I was asking. ‘No. To talk to her family.’

Hatfield frowned, deeply. ‘Who are you? Are you family?’

In a sense, yes. ‘She’s my sister,’ I said simply. ‘Delta Betas are there for each other.’

Hatfield rubbed a hand over his face like he was super tired. It sounded like he mumbled something like, ‘mother of God,’ but that didn’t really make sense.

I decided to spell it out for him. ‘Look, I know you don’t get it. But like I said, there are a bunch of traumatised young women back at the chapter house. With Liza gone, I’m going to have to take responsibility for the chapter and I’d appreciate you respecting that.’

‘Right,’ he bit out. ‘And I’d appreciate you respecting the legal authority of this police department as we investigate this matter.’

Okay, fine. He had another decent point. I saw where he was going with that. A Delta Beta woman always respected the law. But as Hatfield drove me back to the Deb house, I wondered why he seemed to think there would be an ongoing investigation of Liza McCarthy’s sudden stroke or heart attack.

CHAPTER FOUR

After a death in the chapter room and a quasi-accidental arrest, my immediate response should have been to call back to Delta Beta headquarters in Atlanta. And I did that. Sort of. I called someone back at HQ, just not my immediate supervisor. Casey Kenner was the Delta Beta Director for public relations and my best friend at HQ.

The hoarse voice that answered told me I may not have called at the best time.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ The growling on the other end of the line was disconcerting.

I looked at my rose gold Michael Kors watch. It had been a present from the UCLA chapter after a particularly difficult semester, grade-wise. I had helped them institute a new study buddy system and regular study hours. After just a semester, the chapter had reached a C average. They had been thrilled. ‘It’s not that late in my time zone.’

‘Girl, we’re in the same time zone. North Carolina and Georgia are practically neighbors.’

Love that Casey. Smart as a whip.

I briefly went over the events of the evening and, like I predicted, Casey was all over it since deaths and arrests were kind of sort of related to public relations. ‘You’ve been there half a day,’ Casey moaned.

‘And isn’t it a good thing I was here!’ I exclaimed hotly, thanking Jesus that I was sent to the right place at the right time. ‘The chapter needs me, now more than ever.’

Casey yawned audibly over the phone. I didn’t have the heart to point out the incredibly bad manners on display at two in the morning.

‘I have to call Mabel. She’ll want an update, too, but I wanted to give you a heads up before things get crazy in the morning.’

‘Thanks.’ The word was a little flat, but like besties always did, Casey came around. ‘Do you need me? Are you okay?’

Once again, for the fifth or five hundredth time that day, my heart nearly burst with love for a true Delta Beta friend. ‘I think I’ll be alright,’ I assured myself as much as my friend. ‘Thank you for asking.’

After I got off the phone with Casey, I called Mabel Donahue, the Vice-President of Collegiate Chapters. She also reminded me of the time, but as soon as I explained what was going on, she forgave me. When I told her I had already called Casey, she said that saved her a step. And then, because Mabel is a true Deb, smart and sharp even in the middle of the night, she asked me – ME! – to take over the Chapter Advisor position at Sutton College on a temporary basis, while the whole mess got sorted out.