AN: A few more chapters, okay? We gotta catch the bad guys, restore Francie's good name at school, go to prom, and get some physical milestones out of the way for our couple 😉

"Francie? They think they have a break in the case!" Clio told her sister when she came home from school. "Oh my god, I sound like a TV movie or something," she said with a laugh when she heard her own words.

"You do, you do, but what are you talking about?" Francie asked as she set her things down. "Did they catch someone or what?"

"I don't know, but those detectives are here, and they're talking to Dad in the living room right now. You should go in," Clio urged.

Francie followed the sound of voices and sat next to her father, who put his arm around her as he listened to Detectives Bustamante and Chadwick.

"Francie!" Detective Chadwick said with a smile, which was mostly hidden by his mustache. "Perfect. We were just telling your parents that we've made a little progress on finding who's responsible for the graffiti at your school. We were waiting for you to come home so we could ask you a couple of questions."

Francie nodded.

"Does the name David King mean anything to you?" Detective Bustamante asked her.

Francie shook her head. "Why? Should it?"

"We think he's the graffiti artist," the detective explained as she wrote something down in her notebook. "We're getting comparisons of his art to show experts, but he's a fairly well known graphic artist in the New York area. He's had a few shows that were well received, been written up, even had a show in London last year. We took pictures of what was on the wall at your school, so we have something for comparison, so we're pretty sure it's him, but the thing we're stuck on is a motive, you see." She looked between Francie and her father. "Can you think of any reason why he'd want to do this to you?"

"I don't know who he is," Francie said helplessly. "How old is he? Do you have a photograph of him?"

While they'd been talking, Pete had googled him, but it was such a common name, and none of the faces that came up were familiar at all.

"He's about your parents' age, and we don't have photographs of him yet," Detective Chadwick said in his deep voice. "We're working on it, but he doesn't have any social media of any kind, which is pretty strange, considering what he does, just a website with no photographs of himself and an email address. They'll email us his pictures as soon as they have them."

Francie was looking at the artwork her father had pulled up from the man's website, and she could definitely see the similarities in the flowers, the way he'd drawn her face, even the lettering in the speech bubbles.

"Please put it away," she begged her father. "Looking at these is making me feel sick."

"Of course, mimma, mi dispiace molto," Pete murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. I'm so sorry.

Just then they heard Daisy return home from picking up the younger Santangelos at school. They had decided not to risk a repeat of what had happened to Finn by letting the kids walk home alone again.

They made a happy racket as they took off their shoes and put their things away.

"Sorry about the noise," Pete apologized.

"What did I miss?" Daisy asked a few minutes later as she entered the living room.

"Not much, unfortunately," Detective Bustamante apologized as Daisy sat with her husband and daughter.

"No, they have a name, and we're just waiting on a photograph," Francie protested. "We just don't know why. Some older man, a graphic artist I've never heard of? Maybe you know him, Mom? David King?"

As she spoke, the female detective's laptop pinged with an incoming email. "Oh, we have photographs of him, turns out he was in the system for stalking and disorderly conduct, what do you know," she said. She turned her laptop to face the Santangelos. "Does he look familiar to any of you?"

But Daisy wasn't even looking at the screen. "David King? I know that name," she said. "I went to high school with a boy named Dave King." She shuddered with distaste.

At nearly the exact same moment, Pete and Francie, who were looking at the monitor, said, "I know him."

"What?" Both detectives looked up sharply. "From where?"

Pete gestured for Francie to speak first. "He's Jill Wyler's dad. I mean her real dad. She lives with her mom and stepdad, I think, but I've seen him pick her up on Friday afternoons, sometimes. I'm pretty sure that's him." She looked at her dad.

"I met him once, a long time ago, with my wife, in a baby's clothing store in Greenwich Village, called Piccolino's. I remember because of the Italian name, you see. She was pregnant with our first child." Pete said grimly as he looked at his wife.

Daisy was nodding, a look of distress on her face. "Yes, that's him. Dave. I went to high school with him. He didn't like me because he--he wanted to, um, date me and I wouldn't go out with him." She looked at Francie.

"Ms. Santangelo," Detective Bustamante said softly. "You have to be candid with us if we're to have a chance of catching him. Now is not the time to sugarcoat things. Please tell us everything. Do you need for your daughter to leave so you can do that?"

Daisy shook her head. "No, it's okay," she said with a sigh. "I was very socially active in high school, but I wouldn't go out with him," she explained. "I didn't like him at all, he gave me the creeps." She stared at the picture, and remembered the face, the piggy eyes, the lascivious grin. "So he always hated me, called me names."

Daisy looked at her daughter.

"I'm so so sorry," she said, her voice full of regret. "I never thought for one second that how I lived my life would spill over onto you, my innocent daughter--"

"Please, Mom, you didn't do anything wrong," Francie interrupted her mother. "Nothing. You're starting to make me mad with all this apologizing. Jill's dad is the asshole here, not you. You have every right to decide whom you say yes and no to, and he has no right to penalize you, or your daughter for it, ever. Ever."

"Brava, mimma, brava," Pete said fervently, hugging his daughter and her mother to him.

"So we have firm ID on one King, David," Detective Bustamante said into her phone. "And a direct link to Wyler, Jill, who is a student at the school and a friend of Wozniak, Chester, boyfriend of the victim." She listened for a few seconds, nodding. "Yes, that's right. He's her father. I believe she lives with her mother and stepfather. He's her biological father. Yes. Yes. According to Francie Santangelo. Yes, she's seen him pick her up at school. You should be able to get an address through the school."

She hung up and looked at the three people sitting before her. "What you've just seen is what's known as having a case bust wide open," she informed them with a smile. "We'll probably have both Mr. King and Ms. Wyler in custody before the end of the day. We'll call you when we do, okay?"

"Jill too?" Francie asked, surprised.

At the detectives' nods, she continued, "But she's a minor, she's only seventeen or whatever?"

"We still have to arrest her, Ms. Santangelo, she still committed a crime, or conspired to with her father," Detective Chadwick explained.

The detectives rose and showed themselves out as the rest of the Santangelos came in for an update.

"So it was some mean man who knew mommy before we were even born? And his daughter who likes Chester and is jealous of Francie?" Lottie asked, climbing into Daisy's lap, even though she was too old for such a thing.

Pete nodded as Finn, who was not too old, climbed into his lap.

Brina, who needed comfort also, settled into Clio's lap, just because, and Clio, who loved her sister dearly, put her arms around her and kissed her curly red head.

"Why are people so horrible?" Lottie asked. She hugged Daisy, hard, burying her face in her mother's neck. "How can we even know if someone mean is around us, just waiting to do something to us?"

"We can't, you guys," Francie said. "All we can do is live our lives and be nice and good as much as we can, right? This is only the fault of the mean person, and mean people are all over, just like nice people are. We can't live in fear."

"There are nice people all over, aren't there?" Brina said, smiling. "Like Ms. Friedman downstairs, who lets us make bread with her."

"Or Leo, Beanie and Lily," Lottie added, nodding her head.

Brina's smile grew, her freckles scrunching together. "There are nice people everywhere," she agreed. "We don't have to be afraid all the time."

"For sure?" Finn asked carefully, looking at his father. "What about the mean lady in Italy when I was in Mommy's tummy?"

"But remember the nice guy Fariq who climbed up the wall and tried to help her?" Brina reminded him. "He used to bring us figs every day."

"The truth is that there are good and bad people, like your sister said," Pete agreed, letting Finn slide off his lap. "You just have to keep your eye peeled for the bad ones and avoid them if you can, that's all."

"Oh Pete, it's eyes, not eye," Daisy laughed.

"Why?" Pete asked in confusion. "Why does it make sense if it's plural, but strange if it's only one? It's pretty odd to me no matter how many eyes are peeled, veramente."

Everyone laughed, the tension broken.

"What do you say we order in cake and ice cream and watch a movie, famiglia mia?"

This was met with a roar of approval.

"And before you ask," Pete said knowingly, looking at his two oldest, "Yes, you may invite Archie, and yes, you may invite Chester, just ask them to hurry."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Yeah, thanks, Dad."