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.”
Chapter 60
THE TENANTS’ MEETING HAD HEATED UP to a full boil by the time Cindy got there. A couple hundred people, more or less, were crammed into the lobby. President of the Board Fern Galperin was a small, pretty woman with wire-frame glasses, her head barely visible over the crowd as she tried to quell the clamor.
“One at a time,” Ms. Galperin shouted. “Margery? Please go on with what you were saying.”
Cindy saw Margery Glynn, the woman she’d met in the garbage room yesterday, sitting on a love seat, jammed between three other people.
Glynn cried out, “The police sent me a form to fill out. They’re not going to do anything about Barnaby, and Barnaby was family. Now I feel even more at risk because he’s gone. Should I get another dog? Or should I get a gun?”
“I feel as scared and sick as you do,” Galperin said, clutching her own small dog to her bosom. “But you can’t be serious about getting a gun! Anyone else?”
Cindy put down her computer bag, whispered to a striking brunette woman standing next to the refreshment table, “What’s going on?”
“You know about Barnaby?”
“Afraid so. I was in the garbage room when Margery found him.”
“Nasty, huh? Barnaby was kind of a pest, but for somebody to kill him? It’s certifiably crazy. What is this . . . New York?”
“Catch me up, will you? I’m new here.”