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I was eyeballing one building in particular, a three-story redbrick house halfway down Waverly. Wong’s Chinese Apothecary was on the ground floor. The top two floors were leased to the Westwood Registry.
My gut was telling me that we’d find at least partial answers in that house — a link between Paola Ricci and the abduction . . . something.
At 8:35 the front door to the brick house opened and a woman stepped out, took the trash down to the curb.
“Time to rock and roll,” said Conklin.
We crossed the street and intercepted the woman before she disappeared back inside. We flashed our badges.
She was white, thin, midthirties, dark hair falling straight to her shoulders, her prettin
ess marred by the worry lining her brow.
“I’ve been wondering when we’d hear from the police,” she said, one hand on the doorknob. “The owners are out of town. Can you come back on Friday?”
“Sure,” Conklin said, “but we have a couple of questions for you now, if you don’t mind.”
Brenda, our squad assistant, swoons over Conklin, says he’s a “girl magnet,” and it’s true. He doesn’t work it. He’s just got this natural, hunky appeal.
I watched as the dark-haired woman hesitated, looked at Conklin, then opened the door wide.
“I’m Mary Jordan,” she said. “Office manager, bookkeeper, den mother, and everything else you can think of. Come on in . . .”
I shot a grin at Conklin as we followed Ms. Jordan across the threshold and down a hallway to her office. It was a small room, her desk at an angle facing the door. Two ladder-back chairs faced the desk, and a framed picture of Jordan surrounded by a dozen young women, presumably nannies, hung on the wall behind her.
I found Jordan’s apparent anxiety noteworthy. She chewed on her lower lip, stood up, moved a stack of three-ring binders to the top of a file cabinet, sat down, picked at her watch strap, twiddled a pencil. I was getting seasick just watching her.
“What are your thoughts on the abduction of Paola and Madison Tyler?” I asked.
“I’m at a complete loss,” Jordan said, shaking her head, and then she continued, barely pausing to take a breath.
Jordan said that she was the registry’s only full-time employee. There were two tutors, both women, who worked when needed. Apart from the co-owner, a fifty-year-old white man, there were no men associated with the registry and no minivans, black or otherwise.
The owners of the Westwood Registry were Paul and Laura Renfrew, husband and wife, Ms. Jordan told us. At the moment, Paul was calling on potential clients north of San Francisco and Laura was off recruiting in Europe. They’d left town before the kidnappings.
“The Renfrews are nice people,” Jordan assured us.
“And how long have you known them?”
“I started working for the Renfrews just before they relocated from Boston, about eight months ago. The business isn’t breaking even yet,” Jordan went on. “Now, with Paola dead and Madison Tyler . . . gone . . . that’s not very good publicity, is it?”
Tears filled Mary Jordan’s eyes. She pulled a pink tissue from a box on her desk, blotted her face.
“Ms. Jordan,” I said, leaning across her desk, “something’s eating at you. What is it?”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“The hell you are.”
“It’s just that I loved Paola. And I’m the one who matched her up with the Tylers. It was me. If I hadn’t done that, Paola would still be alive!”
Chapter 59
“THE RENFREWS HAVE AN APARTMENT down here,” Ms. Jordan said as she walked us around the administrative floor. She pointed to the green-painted, padlocked door at the end of a hallway.
“Why the padlock?” I asked.
“They lock up only when they’re both away,” Jordan said. “It’s a good thing. This way I don’t have to worry about the girls poking around where they don’t belong.”
