“I read the clippings,” she said.
“You remember what she was wearing when molested?” Nick said.
“She was at the party alone,” Holly said. “He came up behind her, put his left hand on her breast and slid his right hand down inside her jeans in the front and touched her, ah, flower.”
“Flower?”
“It’s what she called it,” Holly said.
“Flower,” Nick said.
Holly nodded.
“Do you have jeans you would wear to a frat party?” Nick said.
“I have clothes to wear to anything,” Holly said. “You know that.”
“What kind of jeans would they be?” Nick said.
“The ones that I wore wet for several days so that they shrank to my body so tight that I’d have to lie down to get them on.”
“Tricia look like she could wear something like that?”
“Pictures of her say she’s slim and pretty,” Holly said.
“You got jeans like that?”
“Of course.”
“Go put them on.”
“Now?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are we going to a frat party?”
“Just put them on,” he said.
Holly left the breakfast room. Jake poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the silver carafe. He added cream from the matching silver pitcher and sugar from the matching silver bowl. It made him smile.
Long way from the brickyard, Nicky.
Holly came back in wearing low-slung slate-colored jeans and a cropped T-shirt, the color of amethyst, that exposed her navel. Nick nodded in approval.
“As long as I’m not required to breathe,” Holly said.
Nick stood and walked around behind her.
“Don’t get jumpy now,” he said. “We’re going to reenact the crime.”
“Reenact? Are you sure you’re not just trying to cop a feel?”
“Pretty sure,” Nick said.
He stood behind Holly and put his left hand lightly on her left breast, then put his right hand around her and tried to slip it down the front of her jeans. They were too tight. Nick couldn’t get his hand down the front of Holly’s jeans.
“No flower,” Holly said.
“Of course maybe Tricia’s jeans were looser fitting,” Nick said.
“And maybe it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.”
“They’d be tight,” Nick said.
“Like a glove,” Holly said.
“So if it don’t fit,” Nick said, “you must acquit.”
They were still for a moment.
“You figured that out?” Holly said.
“I’ve often been thwarted by jeans,” Nick said. “It was a thought.”
“Are you still thinking?”
“Well, yes.”
“About Jamal Jones and Tricia Clark?” Holly said.
“Well, no.”
“But since we’re here in this compromising position, anyway…”
“Exactly,” Nick said. “When’s the last time we had spontaneous sex in the middle of the morning?”
“Yesterday,” Holly said. “On the living room rug.”
“Oh,” Nick said. “Yeah.”
“This time,” Holly said, “could we at least use the bedroom?”
Nick pulled the car in beside some shrubs outside the Omega Omega Nu house in the east quadrangle at North Atlantic University. He looked at Holly in the front seat beside him. She wore a tailored blue suit with an open-necked white shirt and a red silk scarf around her neck. She had on too much makeup.
“Perfect,” he said.
“I look like the traveling secretary of Omega Omega Nu?” she said.
“Exactly.”
“Have you ever seen a person from the national headquarters of a sorority?”
“No.”
“Are you sure it’s in Tulsa?”
“I looked it up,” Nick said. “You look just right.”
“If I had on any more makeup,” Holly said, “I’d have a stiff neck.”
“Remember, your name is Elinor Gilmore,” Nick said. “I looked her up too.”
“What if they ask me for a secret handshake or something?”
“Dismiss it haughtily,” Nick said.
Holly gave him an air kiss, took her big handbag and got out of the car.
They met downstairs in the sorority chapter room: Holly; Tricia; the president of Omega Omega Nu, whose name was Wilma Trent; and an Omega Omega Nu alumna named Evelyn Akers, who was an attorney and served as chapter adviser. There was tea and scones.
“How may we help you, Ms. Gilmore?” President Trent said.
She was slim and pale with a lot of blond hair, and she spoke with dignity and reserve, a kid pretending to be a grown-up.
“We at national,” Holly said, “are very concerned about what happened to Tricia. If a sorority means anything, it means sisterhood.”
Would she get away with that line?
“And a sisterhood cares equally for every sister.”
Everyone nodded.
“Is there,” Holly said, “anything we can do to help you?”
Everyone looked at Tricia. She looked startled.
“I don’t know. He groped me.”
“At a party.”
“Yes.”
“Were you wearing anything provocative?”
“Ms. Gilmore!” the lawyer said.
Holly shook her head and gestured the lawyer to be quiet.
“National needs the answer,” Holly said. “Just for the record.”
“No,” Tricia said. “I wasn’t. I had on jeans and a good T-shirt like everyone else.”
Holly smiled. “I remember,” she said. “I always wore jeans to parties. They were so tight I could barely sit.”
Tricia found herself on more familiar ground. “I know,” she said.
“Is that what you were wearing?”
“Yes. I stood up the whole time.”
They all laughed, except the lawyer, who glanced at Tricia and frowned.
“Trying to breathe,” Holly said, chuckling.
“I know,” Tricia said. “What we do to look good.”
“So how’d he get his hand down the front?” Holly said.
“Excuse me?”
“How could he get his hand down the front of your jeans when they were that tight?”
“I don’t know,” Tricia said. “He just did.”
“Must have been a struggle,” Holly said.
“It was.”
“And no one noticed?”
“No. Everyone was drunk. People were making out.”
Evelyn Akers suddenly leaned forward and put her hand on Tricia’s arm. “That’s enough talking,” she said.
“He did it, she can’t say he didn’t.”
“Stop talking, Tricia,” the lawyer said.
“We could re-create the scene,” Holly said.
“No. I’m not talking to you anymore. What kind of traveling secretary are you?”
“What are you implying?” the president said.
“Sisterhood requires trust,” Holly said. “Trust requires truth.”
Will I get away with that one?
“He did it,” Tricia said. “He really did. He pushed his hand down the front of my jeans. He did it.” She began to cry.
“Ms. Gilmore,” Evelyn Akers said, “this is very strange. Could you leave us alone for a moment?”
“Of course,” Holly said. “I assume my purse is safe here?”
“No one will steal it,” the lawyer said.
Holly left the room and stood in the small hall outside it.
Is there anything in the world as silly as sororities?
Holly looked at her watch. Two minutes.
Yes, fraternities.
She leaned against the wall and made a mental list of silly things.
After fifteen minutes Evelyn Akers came to the door and gestured for Holly to come back. Tricia was still sniffling when Holly sat back down.
“We are all Omega Omega Nus,” the lawyer said.
Holly’s purse was where she’d left it. It hadn’t been stolen.
Holly nodded.
“Omega Omega Nu is, of course, a secret society,” Evelyn Akers said. “And we have all agreed to that.”
Holly nodded again.
“So what is said here stays here?”