“Mine.” Starr raised her hand. “But none of us could sleep, so we checked the menu and got all the ingredients out on the counter for you.”
“Thanks, sweetie.” Dani hugged her. “Why couldn’t you all sleep?”
“Maybe because the asshat of a detective accused you of murder and we’re worried about you?” Tippi put her hands on her slim hips.
“Uncle Spence will straighten him out,” Ivy said. Her tone sounded confident, but Dani could see the worry in her face. “He’ll take care of it.”
“I’m sure he will.” Dani hoped by agreeing with Ivy, her prediction would come true.
Although she planned to look into Regina’s death herself, there was no reason for the girls to know that right now. They’d find out soon enough, when Dani started talking to suspects.
Once the four of them were caffeinated, and Ivy and Tippi headed to class, Dani flipped on the overhead fluorescents and flinched when they flickered to life. The coffee and ibuprofen had tamped down her headache to a dull thud, but the bright lights still hurt her eyes.
Starr shot her a sympathetic glance, then they both got busy making the food for the lunch-to-go sacks. In her original plan, Dani wasn’t going to name the daily specials, but when she was training the girls, Tippi had looked at an overflowing sirloin sandwich and called it the Beef of Burden. Soon the others were competing to come up with clever monikers like Lox of Love and Jean Claude Van Ham.
Today’s choices were the Ides of March, a Caesar chicken wrap, and the Chucky Cheddar, roast beef and cheese on sourdough. As they worked, Dani asked her helper about Regina’s friends. Hoping Starr wouldn’t catch on that Dani was investigating the murder, she started with a few casual questions.
“Did you know many of the people at the luau?” Dani concentrated on cubing the sweet potatoes for the healthy options side dish.
“Not really.” Starr’s attention was focused on expertly folding the whole-wheat tortillas around the chicken filling. “That’s not really my scene.”
“Why did you agree to work if you weren’t interested in attending the party?” Dani asked, then immediately answered herself. “Because it meant a lot to Ivy, right?”
“Uh-huh.” The beads on Starr’s braids clicked gently as she nodded. “But I have to admit that Ivy talked about them so much I was curious.”
“You, Tippi, and Ivy have been friends a long time,” Dani said carefully. “Did you feel rejected that Ivy was so set on becoming a part of Regina’s crowd?”
“Nah.” Starr’s fond smile creased her round cheeks. “With her being a couple of years younger than us, she’s always had a hard time with the whole boy/girl thing. Add her super-high IQ to the mix, and dating has been, let’s say, awkward for her. But Regina was an expert at the social scene.”
“Are you saying that Ivy was studying her?” Dani moved on to packaging the triple chocolate chip bars for the decadent lunch. “That she thought of Regina and her friends as lab rats in an experiment?”
“Maybe not quite that cold.” Starr bit her plump bottom lip. “But yeah.”
“Wow.” Dani blinked several times. “I knew Ivy was hoping to meet guys by hanging out with Regina, but that’s…that’s…” Dani threw up her hands. “I don’t know if I’m impressed with her thoroughness or appalled that she’d invade someone’s privacy.”
“She didn’t manipulate them,” Starr objected. “She only observed them.”
“I guess.” Dani frowned.
She couldn’t put her finger on what bothered her about the situation, but it sure as heck didn’t feel right to her. Maybe it was the age gap. Although Dani was only nine years older than Starr and Tippi, the explosion of the internet’s popularity in the past decade had created a disconnect between them. Her boarders’ generation was used to their whole lives being documented on social media, while Dani’s still tried to retain a tiny bit of their privacy.
Starr must have sensed Dani’s continued unease because she added, “And if you knew Regina’s clique, you’d realize that they were so egotistical and self-absorbed, they’d think it was cool that Ivy considered them the ideal research subjects for how to be popular.”
“Why do you say that?” Dani asked.
She’d gotten a little off target for her original goal, but sometimes it was best to let the conversation take its own direction. And her patience was now rewarded. Starr’s comment was the perfect introduction to figure out if one of Regina’s pals or her fiancé might want her dead. It was possible that a random stranger had bumped off Regina, or even that it had been a serial killer after college girls, but from all the mysteries she’d read and watched on television, it was much more likely Regina had been murdered by someone close to her.
“Well, there’s Bliss Armstrong, Regina’s best friend.” Starr finished with the wraps and moved on to the roast beef sandwiches. “That girl does whatever Regina tells her to do.” Starr spread horseradish sauce on slices of sourdough. “Ivy said they were both members of a sorority, but Regina did something and was asked to leave the chapter, and she made Bliss move out of the house too.”
“That’s pretty major.” Dani wrinkled her brow. She knew how traumatic getting kicked out of a sorority could be for a girl. So much of college existence centers around their membership—friends, social life, and sometimes even who they date. “Why would Bliss do that for her?”
“According to Ivy, Regina has some sort of voodoo hold on her friends.”
“From my experience with Regina, I’m sort of shocked that she didn’t have her daddy sue the sorority.” Dani began to bag the lunches. “Or did she?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What did Regina do to get kicked out?” Dani packed entrées, sides, and desserts into the red-and-white sacks, topping everything off with a napkin stamped with her company logo and social media links.
“Ivy never said.” Starr shrugged. “But I’m thinking it had
