Caitlin stabbed another piece of chicken. “Et tu, Bruté?”

“You know Julius Caesar?”

She popped the meat in her mouth. “Brutus loses in the next act.”

He shook his head. “I simply meant, the moment was perfect and I grabbed you.”

“Like with Angela?”

He gave a concerned grandma smile. “You’re not eating your broccoli.”

“If I’m going to die soon, I might as well go full of this chicken.”

The smile disappeared. “Eat a piece of the broccoli.”

Caitlin took a chance. “If you tell me how you got Angela.”

His fingers curled into fists. “I’ll tell you how I collected Angela and Paige if you eat all of your broccoli. How’s that for a bargain?”

She reached for a stalk, started chewing. “Angela first.”

Grandma’s pleasant smile returned. “Okay. Chad had known her for some time. I’d already found my house and had a list.”

“A list?”

“Of possible pieces to collect and protect. My Angel and I kept running into each other. Like me, she was reinventing herself. I kept myself involved tangentially.”

“The coupons,” Caitlin said.

“That’s right, though I really did need the business to take off in order to build all of this.”

“Such methodical madness. So Lakshmi asked you for Molly?”

“Amazing, right? I know you don’t see it yet, but this is all about the timing, the congruence, the perfect moment—”

“The tide and affairs, sure. You were saying how Lakshmi asked you for the Molly?”

“Correct. At this point I knew all about Angela and Lakshmi’s sexual relationship, the boys Angela had been with too, especially Kieran Michelson.”

“How?”

“Because I’d watched for months,” he answered, matter-of-fact. “The girls always ordered pizza on their nights together, so I drove by Lakshmi’s apartment that Friday and waited for the call.”

“But you had no way of knowing when they’d be done or if Angela would leave. How would you have gotten her alone?”

“You see? That’s what I mean by the moment.” He drank his last sip of water and crinkled the bottle.

Caitlin pushed. “But the moment didn’t happen. So then what?”

He tossed the bottle over her head into the drop box. “The frat boys showed up, and I followed them to the bar. Drunks make it easy. I assumed Angela would end up at either her place or Kieran’s. When they started their walk, I dropped by the Monster.”

“Already creating an alibi.”

“Mostly investment management. I pop in and out whenever, make sure no one’s slacking. I even delivered two pizzas in the Villas. We always do a fair amount of business there, especially on the weekend.”

His switch between the minutia of running a business and the hunting of a college girl had no change in tone, all logical steps down the psycho path.