Sorority Sister (14 page)

Jenna and Skip brought her a cup of soda, kept her company for a little while, and then went off to dance again.

When Maxie realized that a whole hour had gone by, she quickly tried to locate her friends. She hadn’t been keeping an eye on them after all, when she had promised herself that she would. Just in case …

There was no sign of any of them. She didn’t see Brendan or Erica anywhere in the huge room, Tinker wasn’t on the dance floor. Graham was standing with a large group of people off to her left, but Candie wasn’t with them.

A seed of worry birthed itself in Maxie’s mind. So much for promising to stay together. This being one of the warmest April firsts on record, her friends might have gone outside on the terrace.

She was on her way to join them, threading her way through the dancers on the floor, when she passed Graham, dancing with a small, blonde girl.

“Where’s Candie?” she asked impulsively.

He shrugged. “Candie? How would I know?”

Shaking her head, Maxie continued on her way.

The tiny seed of worry sprouted and blossomed into full-fledged concern for Candie. Where
was
everyone? If they weren’t out on that terrace, Maxie was going straight to one of the security guards.

“Where are you going?” Chloe, standing at the refreshment table, called as Maxie limped by.

“To look for Candie and Erica. Come with me?”

“They’re not here.”

Maxie stopped just a foot shy of the glass doors leading to the terrace. “They’re not here? Where’d they go?”

“Erica lost one of her pearl earrings. The ones her grandmother gave her? We looked all over here and couldn’t find it, so she said she had to retrace her steps to find it. She was really in a panic. Candie went with her to help. I offered to go, too, but Erica said one other person was enough. They should be back pretty soon.”

“They went back to the house? Just the two of them?”

“Well, they’ve been gone a while, so I guess they didn’t find the earring right outside. They must have gone back to the house.” Chloe read the expression on Maxie’s face and added quickly, “But there are
two
of them, Maxie. They’ll be okay. It’s not like Erica went all by herself. They have to come back here, anyway, because they didn’t take their coats. They weren’t planning on being gone that long. But,” she glanced down at her watch, “maybe they decided not to come back, after all. I don’t think Erica was having a very good time.”

“I’m going home, too,” Maxie said, deciding suddenly. “My ankle hurts and Brendan’s too busy to even talk to me. If you see him, tell him I’ve gone, okay? Ask him to call me after the party. I’ll take Erica’s and Candie’s coats with me, just in case they decided to stay home.”

“You’re not going to walk, are you? With that bad ankle?”

“It’s not that far to Omega house, Chloe. But no”, I guess I’ll hop the shuttle. See you when you get home.”

Glancing around the room in hopes of seeing Brendan or Jenna and Skip or Tinker to tell them she was leaving, and seeing no sign of any of them, Maxie picked up Erica’s blue blazer and Candie’s white jacket off the chair where they’d left them.

The night air had cooled considerably, and Maxie, in a long-sleeved sweater, hadn’t worn a jacket. Slipping into Erica’s blazer, she climbed aboard the empty shuttle.

As she took a seat in front, it occurred to her, too late, that she might miss Erica and Candie altogether. They could already be on their way back to the student center, Erica’s missing earring on her ear lobe where it belonged.

Maxie felt her heart skip a beat. If they weren’t there when she arrived … she did
not
want to walk into an empty house. Not
that
empty house, anyway.

She would have changed her mind then, returned to the party and waited for Erica and Candie there, or waited until someone was free to leave with her, but as she was debating, she slid one hand into a pocket of Erica’s blue blazer.

Her fingers touched … paper. A note, maybe. None of her business. Erica’s blazer, Erica’s private property.

But as her fingers moved against the paper, something sharp jabbed the tip of her thumb.

Private property or not, the jab hurt. No point in Erica being stabbed, as well.

Maxie pulled the offending object free. It was wrapped loosely in the folds of a paper napkin. A napkin from the party … the words
April Fool
were printed on the maroon-colored paper.

Maxie unfolded the napkin to see what had stabbed her.

She recognized the earring immediately. She had seen it before, and another just like it, when the pair had been returned to Omega house after being stolen.

Erica’s pearl earrings from her grandmother.

Maxie had been stabbed by the sharp, pointy little post on the back of the earring. She turned the pearl earring over and over in her hand. Then she sat very still, the earring lying in the palm of her hand. Anyone watching the way she was staring at it might have thought she had never in her life seen anything like it.

But she was staring at it because she couldn’t figure out exactly what it meant.

An earring could fall off an ear. Happened all the time. She’d lost more than one earring that way herself. An earring could even fall from one’s ear into a jacket pocket without the wearer realizing it.

But … an earring could
not
fall off someone’s ear and then promptly wrap itself up in a paper napkin.

An earring could only end up inside a wrapped paper napkin if someone
put
it there. Someone’s fingers had taken that earring, wrapped it in the napkin, and put it in the blazer pocket.

Erica’s
blazer pocket. Erica, who had said the earring was missing. Erica, who had taken Candie with her on an earring hunt.

For an earring that wasn’t missing.

Questions boiled and bubbled in Maxie’s mind.

Why would someone wrap an earring in a napkin, hide it in their jacket pocket, and then tell other people the earring was missing?

Well, Maxie’s inner voice suggested, didn’t it make a great excuse for leaving the party? Wasn’t a missing earring a great reason to return to Omega house, where there are no painters standing guard outside and no housemother, and there are no sorority sisters because they’re all at the party you just left? And they’re going to be there for a while? So you know you’ll have the house all to yourself?

Why would Erica want the house all to herself? Maxie questioned. Besides, Erica didn’t
go
back to the house all alone. She took Candie with her.

Too bad for Candie, the voice answered.

Scarcely breathing, Maxie pictured tall, wide-shouldered Erica as the gray-haired, white-clothed caterer’s helper she’d seen in the pantry. Then she pictured Erica as the fake Tia Maria. In her mind’s eye, she slathered Erica’s face with makeup, dressed her in the lime-green and hot-pink outfit, slapped a cranberry-colored wig on her head. It worked. Erica’s own mother wouldn’t have known her.

Then Maxie erased that picture and pictured instead Erica in a white exterminator’s uniform, a cap and sunglasses completing the picture. That worked, too. Feeling as if she were playing paper dolls, Maxie then wardrobed Erica in a white medical coat, pushed her blonde hair up underneath a gray wig and covered half her face with a white handkerchief.

That, too, worked.

We were wrong, she thought, leaning forward to clutch at the back of the seat in front of her as nausea overtook her. We thought it was different people, maybe the friends of girls we hadn’t pledged. But it
wasn’t
different people. It was
one
person, in different
disguises.
Erica?

No …

But she was the right size, and she had the sort of square, strong face that, without makeup and with darkened eyebrows and lashes, could pass for masculine. She had been in drama classes in high school, and would know something about makeup and disguises.

No … All of those people who had come to the house had been
Erica
?

Maxie struggled to think of even one instance when one of the disguised people had come to the house while Erica was there, proving that it couldn’t have been her.

The catering staff? Erica had been somewhere in the house, but it wouldn’t have taken that long to throw on a gray wig, a white uniform and white shoes and glasses. And she’d only been in the pantry a few minutes … in and out … just long enough to plant the garbage in the frig. Then she must have slipped up the back staircase, removed her disguise, and rejoined the group.

And, of course, she hadn’t been home when the doctor showed up. The ants must have been in the black medical bag that was part of her disguise.

Where had she found so many ants?

That one was easy. Erica worked in the entomology lab two afternoons a week.

And only Chloe had been home when the fake exterminator showed up.

Maxie groaned aloud.

“You okay back there, miss?” the driver asked nervously. “Not getting sick on me, are you?”

“I’m fine,” she answered, although she wasn’t. Far from it.

Erica.

Omega Phi’s president had been sabotaging them.

Why
?

T
HE SHUTTLE STOPPED AT
the foot of Omega’s driveway. The house was dark. Maxie climbed down and stood under a streetlight, debating.

Should she wait in the driveway until the next patrol car circled the block? She could flag down the car and get help. Or would that be wasting precious moments? Candie was probably in that house alone with Erica.

Why Candie? Maxie wondered as she made her decision. She dropped the two coats on the ground and broke into an awkward, limping lope up the driveway toward the house. The heavy white scaffolding against the garage side of the house stood out against the night darkness. The painters had long since gone home. She was on her own.

Did Erica have something against Candie that no one knew about? Or was it just that Candie was
there
when Erica decided to lure one of her sisters back to the house? Would any one of the sorority sisters have suited Erica’s purpose, and Candie just happened to be the unlucky one, in the wrong place at the wrong time?

What
was
Erica’s purpose?

Something to do with her mother’s accident? Maxie wondered as she quietly, carefully pulled the big wooden door open and stepped cautiously into the foyer. Erica’s mother had been injured because of hazing for the sorority, and had limped ever since. No one had had any idea that Erica blamed Omega Phi for that. But she must. It was the only explanation that made sense.

Erica was seeking revenge for a twenty-year-old injury? That was
insane.

The first thing Maxie noticed as she stealthily entered the house was the overpowering smell of paint. A faint glow came from the kitchen at the rear of the house and another was shining down from the upstairs hall, but the lamps that were usually left on in the living room had all been switched off.

Someone wanted the house in darkness.

At first, the only sound Maxie heard was the distant, steady
drip-drip
of the kitchen faucet. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the near-darkness and she listened intently, scuffling sounds in the living room to her right caught her attention.

She was afraid to call Candie’s name aloud. If her arrival hadn’t been heard, she didn’t want to announce it now. She might still have the element of surprise on her side.

Maxie tiptoed over to the wide arch leading into the living room. She stood at the entrance, peering into the darkness.

Someone was in there. She could see a figure that seemed to be dressed completely in white, moving about the room, mumbling softly as it bent and stooped, bent and stooped. Hefting something … Maxie peered more intently … large white containers. Plastic buckets with handles.

Paint containers. Huge white plastic paint containers, like the ones lined up in the garage. The figure in the living room was setting big buckets of paint all around the room, ripping the lids off them, tossing the lids aside.

The fumes made Maxie’s eyes burn.

“Erica,” she wanted to call out, “what are you
doing
? Stop it right now! And where is Candie? What have you done with her?”

But she knew better. The person dressed in what she now realized was a white coverall like the painters wore, a white painter’s cap covering the hair and a stiff, white mask covering the lower half of the face, was so far unaware of her presence.

Best to keep it that way.

If she tried to phone for help from downstairs, she’d be overheard. But there was a phone in her room. If she could make it up there without being seen or heard, she could make a quiet call and end this awful thing right now before it was too late.

Maxie turned, lope-limped to the stairs as quietly as possible, hip-hopped up them, far more slowly than she wanted.

She had made it all the way to the top of the wide, curving staircase, breathing hard, when she misjudged the distance to the top step and fell sideways, slamming into the wooden railing and letting an involuntary “oof” escape.

The sound seemed to carry like thunder in the dark and silent house.

Maxie held her breath.

The scuffling sounds below her stopped, leaving in their place a terrifying silence.

Maxie turned her head slowly, slowly, filled with dread as she glanced fearfully down the staircase.

The figure dressed all in white, masked in white, capped in white, stood in the doorway to the living room, looking straight up at her.

K
EEPING HER EYES ON
the phony “painter,” Maxie inched her way backward, up the final step. She had to get to the telephone in her room.

The painter began moving slowly up the stairs. “Well, hi, there, hon!” the brassy voice of the fake Tia Maria boomed. “Wasn’t expecting company, sweetie, but everybody knows Omega house is well-known for its hospitality, so we’ll just have to see to it that you feel right at home, okay?”

Maxie turned and ran, wincing in pain with each step as her ankle reminded her of its injury.