“Of course. We’re close . . . or we used to be close.” Her eyes formed tears. “Did you guys check her apartment?”

“We’re doing that right now.”

Her eyes went from Decker’s face to McAdams and then back to Decker. “Have you called her cell?”

“It goes straight to voice mail.” That part was true. “Why aren’t you close anymore?”

The girl looked down. “It’s not like we had a fight or anything. We just drifted apart.”

“I know about Lance Terry. What happened between the two of them?”

“That was over a year ago.” Julia sighed. “She broke it off. Lance was very upset, but he’s moved on. He has a new girlfriend.”

“So . . . is she seeing someone else?”

“I’m not sure. We kinda stopped talking. It was gradual. It’s okay. We all have our own lives.” Tears streamed down her cheek.

“So you don’t know if she has a new boyfriend. Because if you have a name, I need it. Time is important.”

“She . . .” Julia stopped herself.

“What?” Decker motioned to McAdams to sit down and returned his attention to Julia. “Tell me, hon. We need all the help we can get.”

“I honestly don’t know about a new boyfriend, but I’ll tell you what I do know.” She bit her lip. “Angeline doesn’t come from money . . . like a lot of people here. I mean it isn’t as obvious at Littleton as it is at Morse McKinley because we’re more socially conscious.”

A pause.

“She suddenly started toting around very expensive designer bags. The kind you can’t even buy here. You’ve got to go to New York or Boston to get Celine or Nancy Rodriguez or Chanel.”

“How expensive is expensive?”

“Over a thousand dollars retail. Not only that, her boots. I mean I didn’t check the label or anything, but when she crossed her legs, I saw the red sole.”

“Christian Louboutin,” Decker said.

“Yeah . . . right. Exactly. It’s not that she dressed expensively. Jeans and sweaters like the rest of the campus. But she did accessorize expensively. I finally asked her about them. She smiled and winked and that’s as far as she got to telling me about it. I mean . . . someone had to be paying the rent on her apartment. I know she didn’t have that kind of spending cash.”

“Do you think she might have been doing something illegal to get extra money?”

“Like what? Hooking?”

“I was thinking more about pushing, but do you think she was hooking?”

“No. Who’d she ho with? The guys here get it for free and Greenbury isn’t exactly crawling with sugar daddies.”

“So what about pushing?”