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.
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
