Chapter 18
IT TOOK ME all of about six seconds after storming out the doors of X/L to place an urgent call to Jill. I took her through the frustrating meeting I’d just come out of.
“You’re looking for a subpoena,” Jill cut me off, “to get into Lightower’s files?”
“Duh, Jill, and fast, before they send in the Arthur Andersen boys to do a little office tidying.”
“Any evidence there’s anything in Lightower’s computer to back that up?”
“Call me suspicious, Jill, but when a guy I’m interviewing starts to twist around like a cod on a fishing line, those little police antennae behind my ears always go twang.”
“How do they go, Lindsay?” Jill chuckled back.
“Twang,” I said, more firmly. “C’mon, Jill, I’m not screwing around.”
“Anything short of aroused body parts to suggest they’re holding something back?”
The blood began to roil in my chest. “You’re not gonna do this for me, are you?”
“I can’t do this for you, Lindsay. And if I did, whatever you found wouldn’t make it through arraignment. Look, I could try to cut a deal with them.”
“Jill. I’ve got a multiple-murder investigation.”
“Then if I were you, I’d try to apply some nonlegal pressure.”
“You want to spell that out for me?”
Jill snorted. “Last I checked, you still had a few friends in the news media….”
“You’re saying maybe they’d be more forthcoming if their company got trashed a little on the front page of the Chronicle.”
“Duh, Linds…” I heard Jill giggle.
All of a sudden a beep sounded on my cell phone.
Cappy Thomas at the office. “Lieutenant, I need you back at home base, posthaste. We got a line on the au pair.”
Chapter 19
TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING in Interrogation Room 1 when I got back. They owned a small placement service for nannies and au pairs, Cappy informed me. “A Nanny Is Love!”
“We called in when we heard about what happened,” Linda Cliborne, in a pink cashmere sweater, explained to me. “We placed Wendy Raymore in that job.”
“She seemed perfect for it,” her partner, Judith Hertan, jumped in. Judith took out a yellow file and pushed it across the table. Inside was a filled-out A Nanny Is Love! application form, a couple of letters of recommendation, a Cal-Berkeley student ID with a photo on it.
“The Lightowers adored her,” Linda said.
I stared at the small laminated photo of Wendy Raymore’s face. She was blond with high cheekbones, a wide, blossoming smile. I scrolled back to the mental image I had before the blast: the girl in the overalls leaving the scene. This could be her.
“We carefully screen all of our girls. Wendy seemed like a gem. She was cheerful and attractive, a totally likable kid.”
“And the Lightowers said their little baby had taken to her like honey,” her partner added. “We always check.”
“These recommendations… you checked them, too?”
Judith Hertan hesitated. “We may not have followed up on all of them. I did check with the school, made sure she was in good standing. We had her college ID, of course.”
I fixed on the address: 17 Pelican Drive. Across the bay in Berkeley.