“I’m betting you never fall apart at all,” he said. “But you don’t usually have a kid bring a severed human finger to your classroom either. I think you can cut yourself some slack.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

Their food arrived. Her caprese salad, his baked ziti. Vince pushed his plate at her.

“Eat,” he ordered. “Have some ziti. My Italian mother’s cure for everything. She would tell you Avete bisogno della vostra resistenza! Ci e niente a voi!

She seemed pleased with his flamboyant Italian. “What does that mean?”

“You need your strength. You’re too skinny. My mother thinks everyone under two hundred pounds is too skinny. Never mind that I can pick her up with one hand.”

“How old is she?”

“Eighty-two. And your mother?”

“Passed away.” She dropped her eyes and picked at a piece of pasta. “A few years ago. Pancreatic cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” Vince said. The different turn Anne Navarre’s life had taken. Her mother died. She left school. “And your father?”

“Will outlive both of us, despite his alleged poor health.”

She didn’t seem especially happy about the prospect.

“You still haven’t told me how I’m supposed to help your investigation,” she said. Back to business.

He stuck a fork in his side of the pasta. “Tell me about Tommy Crane.”

She thought he’d thrown her a curve ball. She looked up at him, suspicious again. “Why would you want to know about Tommy?”

“We have to pursue all possible angles in a case like this,” he said. “Understand?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not saying the investigation is going in one direction or another at this point. We’re still trying to piece together the last day anyone saw Karly Vickers, the missing girl. Miss Vickers had a dentist’s appointment last Thursday. It was her last appointment of the day.”

“With Peter Crane.”

“So far, he’s the last person to have seen her—that we know of.”

“You can’t possibly think he’s involved,” she said. “He’s the nicest man. Tommy adores his father.”

“I didn’t say he was a suspect. He’s not even a person of interest at this point,” Vince explained. “But he is the last person to have seen this young woman. We have to account for his whereabouts that night. I would like to do that as discreetly as possible.”

“I can’t tell you anything about that,” she said. “But I can tell you he seems to be a wonderful father. Now Tommy’s mother, on the other hand ...”

“Difficult?”

“The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. Ask Detective Mendez.”

“And what’s Tommy like?”

“He loves baseball, he plays the piano, and has a better head for math than I do,” she said with a crooked smile. “He’s smart, thoughtful, quiet. Every mother’s dream.”

“Outgoing?”