Inside, a chandelier shimmers and drips from the ceiling like a Dickens wedding cake. A black spiral staircase snakes upward and disappears in the shadows behind it. There’s mail and cardboard packages on an entry table, surrounding a vase overflowing with flowers. Double doors open into a sitting room full of pillows, extra blankets folded in a basket, gold-framed mirrors, and blue-and-white vases. Everything is pale—pale pink, pale blue, pale yellow—but there are heavy, mahogany-stained antique cabinets and side tables, giving the room the impression of a nineteenth-century salon. Our footsteps echo loudly on the hardwoods, and I have the feeling we’re sneaking around uninvited and someone might call the police before I remember—we are the police. I almost smile, but then I hear heavy footsteps and a forceful southern drawl.

“Can I help you?”

The woman in the doorway is in her early sixties, platinum-dyed hair, wearing white capris and a pink blouse that floats around her thickening midsection. She stares at Teddy, pulls a phone from her pocket, and then she turns to me. I can tell she’s not reassured by my presence. But before she can say whatever thinly veiled racist or condescending thought is forming on her lips, I withdraw my badge.

“I’m Detective Kaplan and this is Detective White. We need to speak with Katie Coleman,” I say as we walk back to the foyer.

She takes a deep breath and steps forward to inspect my badge like it might be fake. I wonder if she knows what she’s looking for. I doubt it. But she raises an eyebrow at Teddy, so he pulls his out, too, and she nods to herself like she’s satisfied.

“I’m Trudy Walton, the house mom here at Gamma Delta Alpha Delta.”

Up close, she smells of tea leaves and lavender. She examines the vase on the center table and rubs a flower petal between her thumb and forefinger. “Katie’s in her room. Says she has a migraine. She hasn’t left since we heard about that poor boy at Kappa Phi Omicron. She’s not talking to anyone.”

She eyes the pair of us like if her sisters can’t get her to talk, then we won’t either.

I nod sympathetically. We’ve all had our hearts broken, my look says, I remember what it was like to be eighteen, nineteen, however old Katie is.

“I understand,” I say. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important.”

Trudy purses her lips, and a wry smile appears. If there’s a house mom gossip train, she’ll have the best seat of the year.

We follow her up the stairs, and I notice she takes them gingerly—one hand on the railing at all times.