The wife glared at me. “I know where you’re going with this, Detective, because the TV people haven’t been shy about it. One of them asked my sister straight up—was Leaf screwing this art teacher?”

We waited a second.

“No way,” she said.

“What makes you so sure?” Remy asked.

“I had an affair three months ago,” she said. “It was a way out for me. Away from him. Then I confessed it to Leaf.”

Remy and I waited.

“It didn’t go well, but he didn’t leave either,” she continued. “Leaf would say over and over, ‘Maybe I’m gonna screw someone today and tell you about it.’ So I’m pretty sure if he did, I would’ve heard.”

Remy was typing notes in her laptop, and I was watching Ginnie Tanner’s eyes. They were set deep in her face. Two circles of lead, dead of emotion.

“Now he’s some kinda hero, and I’m gonna be the mean-spirited bitch about to leave him.”

I slid forward a photo of Jed Harrington. “Do you know this man?”

“Nope,” she said. “They’ve been rotating the same three photos of him on TV. I’ve never seen him before.”

We needed more background on Tanner. Something that put him in that art room at 1:54 p.m. “Was your husband friends with other teachers?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said.

“Which ones?” Remy asked.

“Pam Gronus, the algebra teacher,” she said. “Jessica Lopez. She teaches history.”

Both women, I thought. Was Leaf screwing around? Maybe he was and just hadn’t shoved it in his wife’s face, like she thought he would.

“Putting aside a physical relationship,” I said, “did your husband ever mention Kelly Borland? As a professional? Were they friends?”

“Not that I knew of,” she said. “But he was that kinda guy. Women liked talking to him.”

“Do you know what he usually did during his free period?” Remy asked. “From two to three?”

Ginnie Tanner made a noise with her nose, as if struggling to blow something from it. “Went online?” She shrugged. “ESPN.com?”

The cuticles around the woman’s pinkie finger and thumb were red, and tiny splinters of skin stuck out like cilia, the remains of anxious scratches and pickings.

“Sports were an interest?” I asked.

“That and teaching were his only interests,” she said.

We went on with Ginnie for another half hour. Where she grew up. Where her husband had lived. Jobs they’d had. Schools they’d gone to. Military service. All of it with one purpose—to search for some overlap between Harrington and her husband.

It didn’t exist.

We moved on then. Got a name and address to follow up with the man she’d had an affair with. It didn’t sound like a solid lead, but we had to consider every angle.

On the way back to my desk after we sent the wife home, Abe found me.

“What’d you make of Ginnie Tanner?” he asked.

“She’s got nothing to do with this,” I said. “But Leaf Tanner.” I shrugged. “All women friends? That guy you tell your sad stories and secrets to? We’ve seen that type of guy. He usually ends up getting himself into trouble.”