Janice Wycoff had given Stephanie and Oz a short list of names of her daughter’s friends and it was this list they had in hand when they made their way back into the main building of St. Ursula’s.
They were met, almost immediately, by the headmistress. She exuded the same calm that she had the day before, moving almost soundlessly on her plain low-heeled shoes and wearing what looked like the same suit as the day before. Perhaps it was. The blouse this time had lace at the collar. It seemed incongruous.
“I’m sure you understand how upsetting this has been for all of us,” she said, leaving the list untouched between them on her desk, a piece torn from a yellow legal pad, the words scrawled across it in black ballpoint. “I can’t tell you if these girls are students here. That would violate their privacy.”
She touched the list then, picking it up and offering it back to them. “Morgan’s unfortunate death has already disrupted the beginning of the school year and we’re trying very hard to keep things as normal as possible.”
“We understand your concerns, Sister,” Oz said and Stephanie squirmed slightly, thinking that there was something too placating in his tone. Where did this woman get off thinking that she could decide who they could question?
“But we really do need to talk to these girls,” Oz continued. “It’s essential for our investigation.”
Sister Rose let the list hover a moment more and then, seemingly resigned to the fact that they wouldn’t take it back, let it flutter back onto her clean desk surface. She sighed and pressed a hand to her throat for a moment in an absent-minded gesture that reminded Stephanie of someone choking.
“I’ll need to secure parental permission,” she said. “That could take a while.”
Stephanie coughed and Oz glanced at her and gave an imperceptible nod. “Listen, Sister, we don’t have a while,” she said, trying to sound as sympathetic as Oz, but knowing that her impatience was probably not well hidden. “The first hours of an investigation into any crime are the most important.”
“Crime? What crime?” Sister Rose’s voice climbed and for a moment the placid mask cracked and the fear shone through, her pale eyes widening until Stephanie could see the veiny whites fully circling the pupils like variegated marble. “Morgan’s death was an unfortunate accident,” she said. “But it has nothing to do with the school. She made choices that were different from the ones offered here—”
She stopped short and the hand crept to her throat again and then down to fiddle with the edge of the leather blotter on which the list sat.
“Either I or our guidance counselor, Mr. Ryland Pierce, will need to be present,” she said. “That’s the only way I can allow it.”
“Who does she think she is, the Pope?” Stephanie complained when the older woman left to find the counselor.
“She’s just protective,” Oz said. “She’s been at the school a long time. Almost thirty years, I think.”
Which had to make her what? Around seventy? She seemed younger than that, Stephanie thought, or maybe not younger but ageless. Timeless.
A short time later, as they walked through the halls to the library where they’d be conducting the interviews, Stephanie noticed the pictures on the walls of other girls, other classes, other years. There was a strange uniformity to it all even though time and hairstyles had changed. And habits. The nuns in the old pictures wore the scary-looking penguin costumes, their faces the only part of their bodies revealed, other than their hands, which always seemed to be folded as if in prayer.
It was clear within ten minutes of interviewing the girls that Janice Wycoff hadn’t been as clued in to Morgan’s life as she thought.
Several of the girls on the list denied being friends with Morgan at all.
“We had, like, one class together,” one of the girls said, twirling a strand of straight brown hair around her finger. She looked at them with vapid eyes.
“What class?” Stephanie said.
“Religion. But we talked maybe once.”
“What was that about?”
The girl shrugged with one shoulder as if she couldn’t be bothered to raise both. “I don’t know. I think it was something about there being no women priests. Something like that. Just how stupid it was, just bullshit—”
She covered her mouth, eyes widening with the first real interest they’d seen and an angry flush covered her pimply face. “Sorry.”
Of the girls who conceded that yes, they had in fact been her friend, only one of them had anything of any significance to say.
She was short and dumpy, the boxy uniform skirt and kneesocks further shortening her body. Heather Lester, according to the list. She looked at them with suspicion, one pudgy hand fiddling with the strap of her messenger bag.
“Hey, Heather, come have a seat,” Oz said, doing the whole fraternal thing, just one of the guys. He grinned, pointing to the chair at the table across from them, but while Heather took a seat, she didn’t return his greeting or his smile. She had a pretty face, Stephanie thought, and then wondered how many times the girl might have heard that. Her features were small and even, her eyes round and outlined in heavy black liner. Her mouth was clearly and carefully outlined in a deep red shade of lipstick. Along with her short dark hair, which was pulled into little knots—sort of mini-ponytails—on either side of her head, it gave her the appearance of a child playing dress-up. Small silver earrings in a geometric shape hung from her ears. Around her short neck was another shape hanging from a leather cord.
“Morgan was fed up with the hypocrisy of this hellhole,” she said. “All the rah-rah for St. Ursula’s, one big happy family.”
“It isn’t one big happy family?” Oz said casually.
The girl rolled her eyes. “Hardly. All that school spirit is such shit.”
Unlike the other student, she didn’t seem concerned that she’d cursed. “Morgan was one of the few real people here.”
Her eyes unexpectedly teared up, softening her harsh assessment of her fellow students.
“We’ve heard that Morgan believed in Wicca,” Stephanie said. “Do you?”
The girl shook her head. “No way. I’m not into anything organized. It’s all just one control system or another, isn’t it?”
“But Morgan believed in it?”
Heather nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know how serious she was. She liked the whole feminist thing, the goddess within us stuff. I think that’s what appealed to her.”
“Did the other girls accept her beliefs?” Oz asked.
The girl gave him a look that suggested she questioned his intelligence. “Hardly. They’re all conformists. They made fun of her.”
“How?” Stephanie asked.
“They called her ‘witch,’ ‘satanist,’ that sort of thing.”
“Was it just name-calling?”
“No, sometimes it was more. Someone left a broom outside her door once, like it was her broomstick, and they used to leave nasty notes on her door, like ‘You’ll burn in hell,’ that sort of thing. Just the kind, Christian response to a nonbeliever.” The sarcasm was heavy in her voice.
Oz frowned. “Did she tell someone about it?”
“Like who?”
“The headmistress or the guidance counselor?”
Heather snorted. “No way.”
“Why not?”
“Look, they don’t listen to people like us.”
Oz exchanged