The 6th Target

Chapter 58

IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, 8:30 a.m., four days after Madison Tyler's abduction. Conklin and I were parked in a construction zone near the corner of Waverly and Clay, steam from our coffee condensing on the car windows as we watched the traffic weave around double-parked delivery vans, pedestrians spilling into the narrow, gloomy streets of Chinatown.

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 prettiness 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.'

The bumping sound of footsteps came through the floor above.

'The common room is over there,' Jordan said, continuing the tour. 'The conference room is on your right, and the dorm is upstairs,' she said, looking up at the wooden stairway.

'The girls live at the registry until we place them with families. I live up there, too.'

'How many girls are here?' I asked.

'Four. After Laura gets back from her trip, we'll probably bring over four more.'

Conklin and I spent the remainder of the morning interviewing the young women as they came downstairs, one by one, to the conference room. They ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-two, all European, with good- to-excellent English.

None had a clue or a suspicion or a bad thought about the Renfrews or about Paola Ricci.

'When Paola was here, she said her prayers on her knees every night,' a girl named Luisa insisted. 'She was a virgin!'

Back at Ms. Jordan's desk, the Renfrews' office manager threw up her hands when we asked her if she had any idea who might have kidnapped Paola and Madison. When she answered a ringing phone, Conklin asked me, 'Want me to bust that padlock?'

'Want your next career to be with the sanitation department?'

'It could be worth it.'

'You're dreaming,' I said. 'Even if we had probable cause, Madison Tyler isn't in there. The den mother would spill.'

We were leaving the house, walking down the front steps, when Mary Jordan called out, caught up with us, clutched Conklin's arm.

'I've been debating with myself. This could be gossip or just plain wrong, and I don't want to make trouble for anyone,' she said.

'You can't worry about that, Mary,' Conklin said. 'Whatever you think you know, you've got to tell us.'

'I'd just started with the Renfrews,' Jordan said, darting her eyes to the door of the house, then back to Conklin.

'One of the girls told me something and made me swear not to tell. She said that a graduate of the registry left her employers without notice. I'm not talking about bad manners – the Renfrews had her passport. That girl couldn't get another job without it.'

'Was the missing girl reported to the police?'

'I think so. All I know is what I was told. And I was told that Helga Schmidt went missing and was never heard from again.'