Sorority Sister (11 page)

“A makeover? Me?” Maxie glanced around nervously.

The woman read her mind. “Oh, relax, sweetie,” she said, waving jewelled hands in Maxie’s face. “Now just sit right there and let me get to work.”

What the heck, Maxie figured as she sat down in front of the dresser. It might be fun, being made over. She could always undo whatever Tia Maria did if it was really awful.

While Tia Maria worked, she talked. Nonstop. She set Maxie’s hair on hot rollers, talking the whole time about politics, religion, child-rearing, and the state of the nation in general, all in that brassy, booming voice. By the time she started on Maxie’s face, Maxie’s ears were ringing.

She worked quickly, efficiently. Maxie admired the way her fingers, in thin plastic gloves, flew, and how the brushes she used seemed to fit so perfectly in her hand, as if they were a part of it.

“And you poor guys here,” Tia Maria said as she brushed Maxie’s brows upward in firm but gentle strokes and applied tiny dabs of vaseline to hold the hairs in place, “you’ve really been having a time of it, haven’t you?”

At first, Maxie thought she was talking about something political, like state budget cuts that had affected the university, or a recent hike in tuition.

“I mean,” the hairdresser continued, nimble fingers applying blush high on Maxie’s cheekbones, “first, those things being stolen and then the ants in the pantry, yuck! And that poor kid tumbling into the fountain, and then of course, that dreadful insecticide. You girls were really lucky there. Could have been all she wrote, don’t you think? Beats me what the world is coming to.”

Maxie froze in her chair. Her eyes went to the mirror in front of her. Every nerve in her body sprang to attention as she watched Tia Maria bend to fill a huge, fluffy brush with loose translucent powder and then stand to shake off the excess. Maxie couldn’t think, couldn’t sort things out … something bad had just happened and she had to concentrate, so that she could figure out exactly what it was.

Yes, now she had it. How … how …

“How did you know about all of that?” she demanded. She had let this woman into Omega house. Without seeing any identification except for a stupid bright-pink business card. Not enough. Not nearly enough proof that she was who she said she was.

“Oh, Allie told me,” the hairdresser said breezily. “Clients tell me everything. You’d think I was their best friend or sister or something.”

Maxie sat perfectly still, not even wincing when Tia Maria, began pulling the hot rollers from her hair and had to pull sharply on one that had become slightly tangled. That explanation made sense. Allison Barre might very well have told her hairdresser everything that had happened lately at her daughter’s sorority house.

There was only one problem with that explanation. There was only one reason Maxie still hadn’t relaxed, her stomach hadn’t stopped churning, her hands trembled in her lap.

She hadn’t relaxed because she knew, she
knew
that Candie had never
told
her mother about any of that stuff. She wouldn’t have. Candie had said that her mother would never believe her, never. That her mother would more readily believe that Candie, a straight-A student, was suddenly flunking all of her courses before she’d believe anything negative about Omega Phi.

Then how … if that were so . . . how did Tia Maria know … ?

The last hot roller had been removed. Tia Maria began to brush, swiftly and thoroughly, Maxie’s shoulder-length brown hair. One hand held the brush, the other firmly held Maxie’s head still.

Would a woman whose profession was making other women beautiful really do such an inexpert, outlandish job when she made up her own face?

Was the garish makeup Tia Maria was wearing really just her style?

Or …was it a disguise? No one could possibly figure out what the woman
really
looked like underneath all that makeup.

Maxie’s heart thudded down into her kneecaps. Oh, God, she thought miserably, I fell for it. I fell for her whole stupid routine. I don’t
believe
this. How could I be so
dumb
? Now I’m alone in the house with someone who should
not
know anything about what’s been going on here. … but
does. Someone who isn’t who she says she is.
There is only
one
way this person could know what happened in this house. She had to have something to do with all of it. What am I going to do?

What she
wasn’t
going to do, she decided when her brain finally roused itself enough to think clearly, was let on that she suspected anything. All she had to do was make up some excuse to leave the room, slip down the stairs and run outside. Whoever this
was,
standing behind her brushing her hair, still prattling on and on about how awful it must have been for all of them, wouldn’t be dumb enough to do anything to her once she was outside, where people could
see.
If Tuttle’s truck was in the driveway, she’d race over there and use his phone to call the police. If he wasn’t …

She’d worry about that when she got outside.

“Tia Maria,” Maxie said, willing her voice to remain perfectly steady, “could we take a break for a sec? I think that I forgot to lock the door when I let you in, and the rule now is that the door has to be locked at all times.” She forced a smile. “Since you know what’s been going on, I’m sure you’ll agree the rule makes sense, right?”

“Absolutely, hon.” The hand on the side of Maxie’s head didn’t ease. “But you
did
lock it. I saw you. So relax.”

“No, I …”

The hand tightened. “It’s
locked.”

She knows,
Maxie thought. She knows that I know.
Now
how am I going to get away from her?

The person behind her had made Cath fall off the fountain wall. She couldn’t have known that Cath wouldn’t be killed in that fall. And she had, by her own admission just now, done something with insecticide, whether the police had found evidence of that or not, that had sent many of Maxie’s friends to the hospital writhing in pain. Again, she couldn’t have known that they wouldn’t die. Maybe she had even been hoping that they would.

So, although Maxie didn’t add the word “alive” to her question, it was there, dancing around in her head, tormenting her, taunting her …

How am I going to get away from her
alive
?

M
AXIE’S MIND RACED ALONG
with her frantic pulse. Where
was
everyone? It was almost six o’clock. Weren’t they coming back for dinner?

Maxie felt totally abandoned.

Think, think … make the hairdresser think she’s mistaken, that you really don’t know anything at all, you’re not suspicious … then she’ll let down her guard so you can get away before … before
what
? Don’t think about it.

“The police didn’t find any insecticide in the spaghetti we ate that night,” Maxie said, in a casual tone of voice that anyone would use in an ordinary, everyday conversation. It took great effort.

“Well, of course not,” Tia Maria’s voice boomed. “It wouldn’t
be
in the spaghetti, darlin’. Too easy to trace. Anyone with any brains would simply spray the stuff on the plates while they were sittin’ on the dining room table, before any food was on them. Then it’d get mixed in with what was eaten, but once the plates were washed, who’d know?”

Maxie’s heart fluttered. She had something concrete to take to the police now. If she ever got the chance to
go
to the police.

Tia Maria, hairbrush in hand, moved to Maxie’s left side.

The black cord from the hot rollers was still plugged in. It draped its way down from the top of the dresser to an electrical outlet near Maxie’s feet. And it was hanging between Maxie and the hairdresser, a thick black snake separating them.

The door out of the bedroom was to Maxie’s right.

“I mean,” Tia Maria amended, as if aware that she had said too much, “that’s how I figured someone did it. When Allie told me about it.”

Allie
never
told you about it, Maxie thought angrily, and with Tia Maria’s fingers still in her hair, she took a deep breath, let it out, and dove sideways, to her right, yelping in pain as several strands of hair were left in Tia Maria’s hand. She hit the floor ready to run, scrambling to her feet as an astonished Tia Maria yelled, “Hey!” and dove after her.

And tripped over the cord from the hot rollers.

Tia Maria was flung forward, thrown face-first into the hard wooden chair that Maxie, only a split-second before, had been sitting in.

Feet flying, Maxie ran. Out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs … no one there … sounds of footsteps on the stairs … chasing her … the feet behind her moved quickly for someone as big as the hairdresser …

To the front door, fumbling with the chain lock. Shouldn’t have slipped it back into place after letting the hairdresser in, too late now …

Behind her, the heavy feet, pounding, pounding too close … no time to open two locks … run,
run
!

Maxie ran into the dining room, slammed the swinging door shut behind her, thrust a heavy dining room chair against it. It wouldn’t stop the person who
wasn’t
Tia Maria, but it might slow her down.

Hide. Should hide. Back door has two locks on it, not enough time to unlatch both before heavy hands would be on her throat, choking the very life out of it … have to hide …

Where?

The sound of a heavy chair falling to the floor in the dining room, a hinge screaming in protest as the swinging door was flung open.

Right behind her, right behind her …

The pantry? No. No back door. No way out. She’d be trapped in there like an animal in a cage.

There! Beside the kitchen pantry door. The laundry chute. The small window swinging inward a foot up from the floor. Was she small enough to crawl in there? Yes.

If she threw herself in, willy-nilly, she’d fall, fall to the basement below. But if she didn’t break both legs, she could get out the basement door and run for help.

No time to think. Turn around crawl in quickly, backwards, try to slide down the chute slowly, carefully, maybe holding onto the sides. Was there anything to hold onto on the sides of the chute?

Maxie spun around, threw herself into the chute backwards, feet and legs hanging down behind her. But instead of letting herself fall, her hands fastened themselves onto the wooden frame at the top of the chute as the little door swung shut. She hung on for dear life, unwilling to let go and slide down into the darkness below.

She was hidden. If Tia Maria didn’t know about the laundry chute, she might not notice it. Maybe she’d give up, leave the house. Go away.

Be gone, Maxie thought giddily, be gone!

The telephone shrilled, once, twice, three times, four … Maxie yearned to crawl out and answer it, scream into it for help. But she didn’t dare.

Footsteps in the kitchen. Voice bellowing, “Where the hell are you, you little witch?”

Don’t look in here, Maxie prayed, don’t notice the chute, let your false eyelashes get in the way and don’t notice the chute. Her fingers ached from clinging to the narrow strip of molding. She would have to let go soon. If she could only hold on until she heard the footsteps leaving the kitchen, so the hairdresser wouldn’t hear her landing in the cellar and come looking for her there …

Suddenly, one foot, the left, felt colder than the right foot.

Maxie glanced over her shoulder, kicking the left foot upward at the same time.

Oh, no, it was
bare
! No white terrycloth slipper. Had the slipper dropped off while she was hanging there? Or had it … had it dropped off when she was climbing into the chute? Was it even now lying just outside the little swinging door, screaming her location to her hunter?

Please, she prayed, tears of terror gathering in her eyes, please let that slipper be down in the cellar where no one can see it.

No such luck. “Gotcha!” a voice boomed from only inches beyond the chute’s door, telling Maxie the slipper was not in the cellar. It had just been discovered in the kitchen, pointing the way to her hiding place.

Maxie stopped breathing, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t. The blood in her veins stopped rushing as if it had been dammed somewhere in her body. Let
go
an inner voice ordered, let
go
! Drop to the basement, take your chances on a broken leg or ankle, and do it
now
!

But her fingers were frozen in place.

The door swung inward, slapping into her face. A large, strong hand reached in and grabbed her wrist.

She screamed.

And, as if in answer to her scream, a car door slammed outside. Then another. Footsteps on the cement walk outside, voices … talking, laughing.

The hand on her wrist froze.

Feet shuffled backward uncertainly.

Then, a muffled oath, the hand on her wrist flew away, the swinging chute door dropped back into place, and feet scuttled away, toward the back door.

The sound of the back door opening and closing came at exactly the same moment as the wonderful sound of the front door opening, and afterward Maxie couldn’t have said which sound was more welcome to her ears.

The phony Tia Maria was gone.

Her friends were home.

She was safe.

She could crawl from the chute into the kitchen, tell her story, call the police … she was
safe.

And even as she thought that, her fingers, numb from holding onto the thin wooden molding, released their grip.

By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.

Her hands slid free of the doorframe and her body slid, feet first, down the long wooden chute like a child on a playground toy, to the hard basement floor waiting below.

R
ELAX YOUR LEGS RIGHT
now,
an inner voice commanded as Maxie whizzed down the laundry chute, or the bones will shatter when you land. Pretend you’ve fainted.

Obeying, Maxie went limp.

Just in time. Although she flew out onto the basement’s cold stone floor and landed in a heap, there were no sharp cracking sounds as she hit. There was only her own sudden yipe of pain as her left ankle twisted cruelly sideways beneath her.