“Something isn’t making sense,” Mulrooney said. “And I don’t see any Oxford here.”

“Could be he was padding his C.V. and no one bothered to check.” McAdams thought a moment. “Betcha he had connections. That’s really the way it’s done.”

Decker said, “What about his family? Any connections there?”

“Nope. They’re fairly local—grape farmers in the Finger Lakes District.”

“You mean wine?” Tyler asked.

“No, I mean grapes . . . Concord table grapes. They were devastated when we told them the news, but they didn’t have a hell of a lot to add. He hadn’t kept in touch with any kind of regularity. Packed out when he was eighteen and except for the occasional Christmas phone call, he had pretty much vanished from their lives. They had no idea who’d want to murder him. They didn’t even know that he went to college.”

“They were that out of touch?” Decker was skeptical.

“I think they were telling the truth, but I didn’t press them too hard. They’d just lost their son.” Mulrooney held up his hands in a hopeless gesture.

“If he was from the Finger Lakes District, he probably knew about the Five Colleges of Upstate. It would make sense that he’d choose Morse McKinley. But at his age, he wouldn’t have overlapped with Angeline Moreau . . . well, maybe with a master’s.”

Tyler had gone back to looking at the codebook. He was mouthing some of the words out loud.

“You read Russian?” Mulrooney asked.

“I can read it although I don’t know what I’m saying. The same with Greek.” He looked up. “We were required to learn the classic languages in prep.”

Decker pointed to two words. “This is Hebrew.”

Mulrooney asked, “Does it say anything?”

“I don’t know Hebrew so I couldn’t tell you. I can read it, but they don’t seem like real words. You’d never have two alefs in a row. Maybe it’s Yiddish, which uses Hebrew letters.”

Tyler said, “Is it possible to get a copy of the notebook?”

Mulrooney frowned. “How many pages is it?”

“About twenty.”

“Give it to Frosty. She’s down the hallway, first door to the left. Tell her I’m saying please.” He looked back at Decker. “Sometimes you get a case where there’s nowhere to go. This case, we’ve got too many places. Is it an art theft, something personal, something with the university, something with the estranged family that they’re not telling me? We still have to look into all those keys he had, we’ve got codes and someone who was involved with something international. And we’ve got a real, real vicious crime. The bad people are real bad. It’ll take a while to sort this one out.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Decker said.