“I went to dinner at the dining hall. Then I guess I was in my dorm all night. My door was open. It’s always open unless I’m doing my business with my woman. People coming and going. Lucy came over at around ten. She left at twelve and I went to bed.”

“We are now at Monday.”

“I had classes. Then I had practice. Then I showered and did a little work. And then Lucy came over and we went to a party at Palm Hall in Littleton. Lucy came back with me and . . .” He grinned a third time. “We are now up to date.”

“I need phone numbers,” Decker said. “We’ll need to verify everything.”

“Go ahead,” Terry said. “I’m down with that. Angeline and I hadn’t been together for a year. Like I told you, I moved on.”

“But you’ve been in contact though.”

“A few texts here and there.”

“You’ve spoken to her on the phone as well.”

“When she called me, I didn’t hang up on her.”

“Did you ever call her?”

“Not once I found out she had someone else.”

“Yeah, the freak. John something . . . do you recall his last name? There are a lot of Johns out there.”

“I’ve been thinking. Leather . . . Letter . . . it’s something like that.”

“Keep thinking. You’ll nail it down. And in the meantime, tell me about him.”

“Pretentious arty type.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Well . . . no.” Lance blew out air and took a swig of coffee. “No, he just looks pretentious. Really, really skinny. Like he lives on air or something. He has a scrawny beard and a long braid down his back. He wears black—including a black hat.”

“Hipster meets hippy,” McAdams said.

“Yeah . . . like he can’t quite decide. And he’s old . . . old for her, I mean. Maybe thirty-two or thirty-three. He’s just got the type of face that you want to put a fist through. Smug little bastard. I just don’t understand what she sees . . . saw in him. I asked her about it . . . when she called me up. What the fuck do you see in him?”

“What’d she say?” Decker asked.

“She’d just laugh . . . like I couldn’t understand. Bitch!”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m angry at her for being conned.”

“Maybe he was a secret prince?”

“Right . . . living in a one-bedroom shit house in Summer Village outside of Boston. The locals call it Slummer Village.”

“So you know where he lives,” Decker said.

Terry turned a deep red. “Uh . . . she told me. Angeline did. I said he looked old for a college student and she told me he wasn’t a student. That he was some kind of lecturer or postdoc or something.”

“Tufts University is in Medford, which is next to Summer Village,” McAdams said.

“Yeah, I know,” Terry said. “Angeline told me he was at Tufts.”

“What was his field?”

“I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell me. We didn’t speak that often after the breakup.” Terry exhaled. “This isn’t politically correct to say out loud but he looked gay. For the life of me, I can’t understand what she saw in him.”

“Could they have had something else going on?”

Terry was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Julia Kramer told me that about the same time Angeline broke up with you, she began toting around expensive handbags. Could they have been doing something illegal together?”

Lance was stoic, then stunned. “You don’t think they were sleeping together?”

“I don’t know. And it’s possible that they were sleeping together and still doing something illegal. We’re exploring everything. And if you say that he was a postdoc student, it appears she wasn’t getting her money from him.”

“I don’t know where she got her money,” Terry said. “I . . . was out of her life.” He turned to McAdams. “Are you from Massachusetts?”

“I went to school there.”

“Tufts?”

“Yeah,” McAdams lied.

“Did you know him?”

McAdams said, “Lots of Johns in the school, Lance. It would help if I had a last name.”

Terry went quiet. So did McAdams. Decker said, “Did you ever pay the mysterious John a visit, Lance?”

“No . . . why would I?”

“You knew he lived in Summer Village. And I know you were in the area when you went on your audition at the Boston Repertory Company,” Decker said. “Maybe you took a little side visit.”

Terry turned red again . . . this time out of anger. “Lucy told you about the audition?”

“She did. Now I’m not saying you were stalking Angeline—”

“I wasn’t stalking anyone! I had an audition and it didn’t go well. To blow off some steam, I drove by his apartment, taking great pleasure and schadenfreude in his shabby building. Je-ez! Can I go now?”

Decker took a chair and pulled it up close to Terry. “Lance, you’re not a suspect—”

“Well, thank you.”

“You’re here to help us find a killer, okay? So if there was another guy in her life, I want to know about him . . . starting with his last name . . . which I know you know. So tell me.”

Terry closed his eyes. “Latham. John Latham.”

McAdams was already on his iPad. “There’s a John Latham who’s a stage actor in England who’s fifty.”

“The guy wasn’t fifty,” Lance said.

“There’s a John Jeffrey Latham who won a Windsor Prize: Political Analysis of Prolekult and the Soviet Socialist Realism Art Movement.”

“Well, ex-cuse me!” Lance said.

“Let me get an image.” McAdams showed the picture to Lance. “Is this him?”

Lance stared at the picture. “Yeah, that’s him. Do you know him?”

“Nope.”

“What does the article say about him?”

“Not much . . . it mostly talks about the Windsor Prize. It’s given to candidates every four years who have excelled in the fields of arts and politics . . .” McAdams looked up. “I know that Tufts is known for the Fletcher Graduate School of International Affairs. I bet he’s either a postgrad there or maybe a lecturer—something like that.”

“He’s a prick, that’s what he is,” Terry said.

“Lance, do you know anything else about Latham?” Decker asked. “If you know something, tell me now.”

“Only that he and Angeline like to go out for Thai.” He bowed his head. “Okay. So I followed them a little in the beginning. Then Lucy and I starting hanging and I lost interest.”

“Do you have any idea where Angeline got the money to buy expensive purses?”

“No.” Said emphatically. “And it’s really ironic. Because if she wanted nice things like that, I would have bought them for her.”

“You went together for two years and you didn’t buy her anything nice?” Decker asked.

“I took her out to nice places—restaurants, concerts, sports events. I took her to a couple of Jets games, a Knicks game. We went on a couple of nice weekends. But . . . I never bought her much of anything: T-shirts, books, flowers a few times . . . nothing expensive like designer handbags.”

“If you loved her so much, why not?”

“Well . . . for starters . . . she never asked.”

CHAPTER 13

IT WAS TURNING up dawn by the time Lance Terry left the station house. Decker offered to drive him back, but the kid elected to walk, saying that he needed to clear his head. Decker was putting on a fresh pot of coffee when his cell rang. He depressed the button. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Rina answered back. There was an awkward pause. “Just like old times.”

“Sorry. I know this isn’t what you bargained for.”

“I’m fine, honey. You sound tired.”

“A little.”

“But you’re also wired.”

“A little.” Decker smiled although she couldn’t see it. “Did you go back to the city last night?”

“Not without you. I slept on the couch in the kids’ nonexistent living room but that was fine with me. I got to wake up with Lily who seems to enjoy a predawn glass of milk. We’re watching Elmo right now. Later, we’ll go to the park, around eleven after she wakes up from her morning nap.”

“You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“I do. I’m leaving for Philadelphia in the late afternoon by train. The kids are taking me out to a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Spice and Chai. I’ll save you samosas.”