Anne gave him a look. “No, I wasn’t on the news, and thanks for the fashion advice, Mr. Blackwell.”

“Well, honestly, how do you expect to attract a man, Sister Anne Marie? Image is everything.” Fran’s image: preppie with a twist. Today he wore khaki pants and Top-Siders, and an orange bandana at the throat of his blue buttondown oxford.

“I don’t expect to attract a man at school. Who is there to attract? Arnie the janitor?”

“Mr. Garnett.”

“I’m not interested in having an affair with our married principal.”

“His wife is sleeping with her yoga instructor. He’s as good as divorced, that’s all’s I’m saying,” which he said with an extra-thick Long Island accent.

Franny was originally from Boston. Number fourteen of fifteen Goodsell children. Irish Catholic to the tenth power. “Eight girls, seven boys; two fags, one dyke; six married and divorced, six got it right the first time,” was his standard description of the Goodsell siblings.

He had spent a number of years in New York City and the Hamptons, teaching brats of the rich and famous—his words, of course.

“You’re horrible,” Anne said without meaning it. “A woman was murdered. Three of my kids were there. I was there. It was terrible.”

Franny put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I know, honey. I’m sorry.”

“And what now?” she asked. “Am I supposed to say something about it to my class, then just carry on with the day’s lessons? They never prepared us for this in college.”

“No,” he said. “But they also never told me teaching kindergarten would make me sterile.”

Anne managed to find a chuckle at Franny’s famous line. He professed on-the-job experience had driven him to drink and had brought him a better understanding of why some species eat their young.

In truth, he was an excellent, award-winning teacher, and his kids and their parents loved him.

Anne glanced at her watch. “I’d better go. My kids will be coming in.”

“Come tell me if any of them get arrested.”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

Principal Garnett and the good-looking detective (she assumed) from the news coverage were waiting for her outside her classroom.

“Miss Navarre.” Garnett spoke first. He was a neat-and-tidy kind of guy—starched shirt, stylish tie tied just so. It had always been Anne’s suspicion that he would be more likely to fall for Franny than herself, wife or no wife. “This is Detective Mendez from the sheriff’s office.”

The detective offered his hand politely. Square-jawed, stocky build, dark complexion, macho mustache. His expression was guarded in a way she would come to recognize as being common to his profession. His grip was firm, but not trying to prove anything.