just inviting him to get picked on,” Oz said as he drove back to the station. “What’s wrong with old-fashioned names like Michael or John?”
“Isn’t your youngest one named Jaspar?”
Oz scowled. “It’s a family name.” He drove for a few minutes in silence, making faces at the windshield. “There’s nothing wrong with that name. What’s wrong with it?”
Stephanie looked out the passenger window to hide her grin. “I don’t know, just seems a little, well, girly to me.”
“Girly?” Oz’s already booming voice hit sonic levels.
“Ssh, it’s ringing,” Stephanie said, turning to show him the phone held to her ear, while she struggled to suppress laughter.
“Girly my ass,” Oz muttered. “Jaspar is a fine name. He goes by Jas anyway.”
“No answer,” she hit the off button. “This might take time.”
“It wasn’t my choice,” Oz said in a sulky voice. “I wanted Trevor, but Eileen insisted. It’s someone on her side, General Jaspar.”
Stephanie couldn’t hold back the laughter and it burst forth in peals that were almost painful she’d been holding them back for so long.
In under a minute a multitude of expressions crossed Oz’s wide face, running the gamut from insulted to puzzled, then back to insulted, before a grin finally slipped out and he guffawed.
“Okay, ballbuster, you got me.”
“That’s Miss Ballbuster,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with Jaspar. Trevor, on the other hand—”
“What’s wrong with Trevor? That’s a good masculine name.”
“Reminds me of a dog. Here, Trevor, here, boy.” Suddenly her cell phone rang. “Detective Land.” She listened for a moment and then snapped her fingers at Oz and made a spinning motion with one hand.
He turned the car around, fishtailing with practiced ease, and smacked the siren on the dash.
Stephanie snapped her phone shut. “We got him.”
The first thing Stephanie thought when she saw sixteen-year-old Beau Steuben was that this wasn’t a kid who played football. He was small and slight, with spiky brown hair, a pug nose with a scattering of freckles, and big brown eyes.
He was dressed head to toe in black, the tight T-shirt and skinny jeans only serving to emphasize his diminutive size. While the black leather and silver-spiked dog collar around his neck and the silver barbell in one eyebrow were probably supposed to make him look tough, they had the opposite effect. He looked like someone’s pet. If she’d been a drama teacher, Stephanie would have cast him as Puck in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He wasn’t, unfortunately, wearing Heelys, but black Chuck Taylors; he fiddled absently with the laces on the left foot. He’d drawn that leg up when he sat down in the oversized armchair in the living room of the Steuben home.
“We’re sorry about your friend Morgan’s death,” Oz said, and Stephanie was so ready to hear the boy disavow any connection to the girl that she wasn’t at all prepared for the tears that welled in his eyes.
Stephanie looked at Oz, who blinked, clearly surprised, and she glanced at the boy’s mother, Valerie Steuben, who’d been hovering in the arched entrance to the room since first summoning Beau. She vanished and came back with a tissue box, carrying it over to her son while shooting nervous looks at Oz and Stephanie as if she thought they might stop her.
“Thanks,” he mumbled, taking one and swiping at his eyes.
“You were close?” Oz asked, recovering.
“Yeah.”
“How did you two meet?”
His mother answered for him. “They went to school together all through elementary.”
“But she didn’t go on to the public high school with you?”
Beau shrugged, but Valerie Steuben seemed to take this as an affront. “Gashford’s school system is one of the best in the state,” she said. “Our high school is top ranked.”
“Why did Morgan choose St. Ursula’s instead?”
“She didn’t choose it, her mother did,” Beau said with disdain.
Mrs. Steuben gave them a nervous smile. “I think Janice thought that same-sex education was beneficial for girls.”
“How did you hear about her death, Beau?”
“A friend told me.”
“Who? Heather Lester?”
The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open slightly, apparently a reaction to their incredible investigative powers. He nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know that?”
“We talked to Heather,” Stephanie said. “Where were you three nights ago, Beau?”
His mouth closed and he stopped fiddling with his laces. “Home.”
Valerie Steuben said quickly, “He was here all night.” She sank down in the chair opposite his, one hand straying to her mouth as if she were going to bite her nails before she pulled it hastily down to her lap.
There was no sign of Mr. Steuben, who was probably out earning the paycheck that paid for this big house on one of Gashford’s older, leafier streets, but if Beau owed anything to his dad in the looks department Stephanie would be surprised. Valerie Steuben was just an older, female version of her son. A tiny woman with big nervous eyes and small restless hands, she reminded Stephanie of some Disney-created, anthropomorphized woodland creature.
“Are you sure you weren’t with Morgan that night?” Stephanie said to Beau.
“No, I mean, yeah, I’m sure.”
“We know she wasn’t alone,” Oz said. “We also know that you used to visit her. How did you get up there? Did you drive?”
“I wasn’t up on the Hill.”
“C’mon, Beau. We know you hung out with her.”
“Sure, I mean, she was my friend. But I wasn’t up there.” His right foot beat a silent tattoo on the carpet.
Oz glanced down at his notebook. “You’re a self-proclaimed pagan?”
“Yeah.” The small chin jutted forward as if the boy expected a fight. It came from his mother.
“It’s just a phase,” she said, shaking her head at him.
“Mom!”
She aimed her hand at him like a stop sign and looked from Oz to Stephanie, “We’re Lutherans. This is just some idea that girl gave him.”
“You
