Devil's Claw (25 page)

“Right. That’s the one. I believe I was supposed to see him this afternoon, but he called in and canceled. Come on in.”

Melanie Goodson led Joanna into a spacious, cove-ceilinged office that looked as though it had been carved from two separate rooms. The ornate white molding on the wainscoting, the lush floral draperies and muted grass-cloth wallpaper all announced their quality workmanship. In one corner of the room was a seating area that consisted of a polished coffee table, a wing chair, and an old-fashioned settee. Melanie Goodson settled into the chair and motioned Joanna onto the settee, which turned out to be far better-looking than it was comfortable.

“You never answered my question,” Melanie said, pouring two glasses of ice water from a cut-crystal pitcher into matching glasses.

“What question?” Joanna asked after taking a grateful sip of the water.

“My car. When will I be able to have it back?”

“Probably not for some time. There are bloodstains inside it, Ms. Goodson. My investigators have reason to believe it was used to transport a homicide victim. I have a feeling my crime-scene investigators are going to need to keep it in our secure impound lot for some time. We’ll no doubt need to hang on to it as evidence at least until this case comes to trial.”

“You’re saying whoever killed Sandra did it in my car?”

“I don’t know for sure that’s where the homicide actually took place, but the presence of bloodstains certainly indicates that a seriously wounded individual was in the car. Whether or not that person turns out to be Sandra Ridder remains to be seen.”

Melanie shook her head. “They say no good deed goes unpunished, and it must be true. That’s what I get for picking Sandra Ridder up at the prison gate and bringing her into my own home. Not only did she steal my car the moment my back was turned, she also managed to get herself killed in it. Well, no big deal. Maybe I can get my insurance company to total the damned thing so I can buy a replacement and get on with my life. Once you’ve driven a Lexus, a Caddy doesn’t quite measure up, if you know what I mean.”

“Of course,” Joanna agreed, although, never having driven either a Lexus or a Cadillac, Joanna hadn’t the vaguest idea of why Melanie might find her rented “Caddy” so objectionable. No doubt, Joanna would have found both of them equally acceptable and luxurious.

“Is that what you came to talk to me about?” Melanie asked. “The car?”

“Not entirely. Since I wasn’t directly involved in investigating your vehicle, I don’t know that much about it. Detective Carbajal was on the scene, and he expects to come talk to you about it tomorrow if you can work him into your schedule. No, the main reason I’m here is I wanted to ask you about something that came to my attention an hour or so ago.”

“What’s that?”

“A phone call you received around three o’clock Saturday morning. It was placed from a pay phone.”

“What about it?” Melanie asked, her voice hardening. “How would you know whether or not I received a call in the middle of the night, to say nothing of the fact that it came from a pay phone?”

“From telephone-company phone logs. The one to you was part of a series of calls Lucy Ridder made that night, one right after another. Did she actually speak to you, or did the call go to a machine?”

Melanie Goodson frowned. “There was a call,” she said. “I saw it on caller ID Saturday morning when I got up, about the same time I realized the Lexus was missing. And there was a message on it, sort of, although not a real message. All I heard was a voice—a girl’s voice. She said my name, and then for several seconds she didn’t say anything. There was just this breathing on the phone. I thought for a second or two that it was going to turn into one of those heavy-breathing crank calls. But then, whoever it was hung up without saying anything more.”

“Did you happen to mention this to the Tucson cops when you reported your vehicle missing?”

“Report what?”

“The fact that you had received a strange middle-of-the-night phone call. Did it occur to you that the two events—your stolen car and the phone call—might be related?”

“I had no way of knowing they were,” Melanie Goodson replied. “In fact, I never even considered it. I do a lot of defense work, Sheriff Brady. Phone calls coming in from pay phones at three o’clock in the morning aren’t all that unusual for people like me, especially not on a weekend. No offense, Sheriff Brady, but DUIs are my bread and butter, which means three o’clock on a Saturday morning is a golden time for me.

“But if that’s when Lucy Ridder called,” Melanie added, “she was probably looking for her mother. I know Sandra had told someone—her mother, most likely—that she’d be staying with me on Friday night. Lucy probably expected that she’d be able to reach Sandra there. I imagine Lucy was excited at the prospect of seeing Sandra and didn’t want to wait until the next day. I know if I hadn’t seen my mother in eight years, I would have been.”

“Lucy never went to visit her mother while she was in prison?” Joanna asked.

“No, not as far as I know.”

“What about Catherine Yates, Sandra’s mother?”

“Sandra told me that both her mother and her grandmother used to come, until her grandmother got too sick. But never Lucy.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“I didn’t have to. It’s not too hard to figure out. Sandra was ashamed to have her daughter see her in a place like that. Lucy didn’t want to come and Sandra didn’t want her to, so they were in total agreement on that score. But when I picked Sandra up on Friday, she told me she was looking forward to seeing Lucy and explaining things to her.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. I think there were things that occurred between Tom and Sandra Ridder—problems in the marriage—that Sandra refused to discuss with a seven-year-old child. But I think she thought that at fifteen, Lucy might be old enough to understand what all had gone on.”

“What had?”

“Look, Sheriff Brady,” Melanie Goodson said. “I’m sure you know all about the rules of client privilege. I can’t tell you anything more than I just did.”

“I do know about client privilege,” Joanna conceded. “And I’ve seen a number of working defense attorneys, but other than you, I don’t know of one who would drive well over two hundred miles to bring back a client who had just been let out of prison or who then would let the same ex-con spend the night in his or her own home. That strikes me as a little unusual, Ms. Goodson. Care to explain that one to me?”

“Ever hear of guilt?” Melanie asked.

“You mean as in guilty or innocent?”

“No, as in guilty conscience. Sandra Yates Ridder and I go way back. We were friends at college—roommates for two years. It was one of those college things, and we both did it for a time—we went out protesting for NAT-C.”

“The Native American Tribal Council,” Joanna supplied.

Melanie nodded. “I’m part Cree; Sandra was part Apache. We figured it was a way of reclaiming our roots. Sandra even changed her name for a while. She called herself Lozen, after the Warm Springs Apache woman who fought with Victorio and Geronimo. The next thing I knew, she quit school. She told me she was going on the warpath—literally. She dropped out of sight for several years—long enough for me to graduate from the U., go to law school, and pass the bar exam. When I heard from her again, she had gotten herself in some kind of activist hot water and was ready to give up life on the road.

“I had a few contacts by then. Lozen went back to being plain old Sandra Yates and I helped her find a secretarial job out at Fort Huachuca. That’s where she was working when she met Tom Ridder. I attended their wedding and that was the last I heard from her until the night Tom Ridder died. She called me up and told me she needed help. I was at her house the next morning when she reported Tom Ridder’s death, and I was there with her when she surrendered to the police.”

“And to suggest the plea agreement?” Joanna asked.

“Sandy came up with that brilliant idea all on her own. In fact, she insisted on it. And that’s where my guilty conscience comes from. If I had been more experienced or tougher, I never would have let her do that. She was a victim, Sheriff Brady. Her husband had beaten her to a bloody pulp. I should have taken the case to court and used a domestic-abuse defense. If I had played the cards right, even if she’d been found guilty, she would have been locked up for three to five years at most. As it stands, I figure my inexperience cost Sandra Ridder a good five years of her life. My fault, Sheriff Brady. Don’t you think I owed the poor woman a ride home? It’s the least I could do.”

“So why didn’t you take her straight home?” Joanna asked. “On the one hand you said she was eager to get back to her daughter. Why, then, did she stay over, or
pretend
to stay over in Tucson for that extra night?”

“They let women out of the Manzanita unit in Perryville wearing whatever they happen to have on hand. Sandy showed up wearing a pair of used jeans, a pair of old tennis shoes, and somebody else’s used sweatshirt. She told me she had some money. She wanted to go shopping on Saturday and get herself some decent clothes to wear home. She wanted to buy some makeup, have her hair cut and fixed. I think she wanted to go home looking like a human being instead of some kind of street person.”

“And where was the money coming from to enable this combination makeover and shopping spree?” Joanna asked. “From you?”

“No, although I did offer. Sandy said that wasn’t necessary, that she had enough money to get what she needed. I assumed her mother must have sent it to her, or she earned it and saved it. Prisoners do have jobs, you know.”

Joanna considered Melanie’s answer. In view of the fact that Catherine Yates claimed to have known nothing at all about her daughter’s impending release until the very day it happened, it seemed unlikely that she had been the source of Sandra Ridder’s cache of cash.

“Why do you think she stole your car?” Joanna asked.

“You’re asking me? I have no idea. I suppose she wanted to go someplace and she didn’t want me to know about it. When I went to bed around ten-thirty, she was tucked away snug as a bug in my guest room. When I woke up the next morning, she and the car were both gone. No note, no explanation, no nothing.”

“Do you have a phone in your bedroom?” Joanna asked.

“Yes, why?”

“So do you turn off the ringer overnight?”

Melanie Goodson paused. “Well, no.”

“If you went to bed at ten-thirty, you must have heard the phone ring at three a.m. So why didn’t you answer? Why did you let the call go to the machine pickup, even though the caller might have been a well-heeled client in need of middle-of-the-night hand-holding over his latest DUI?”

“Come on, Sheriff Brady,” Melanie said. “Why are you doing this? Are you trying to make out that I’m a suspect in stealing my own car?”

For no reason Joanna could put a finger on, she had the sudden sense that Melanie Goodson was lying. But why? What was she covering up? For the first time the thought crossed Joanna’s mind that despite Melanie’s claim of long-term friendship, the defense attorney might well have had some connection to Sandra Ridder’s death. The problem was, Joanna understood that if she even hinted at Melanie’s complicity, the entire tenor of the interview would change, with all the potential of what had been said and learned being ruled inadmissible and thrown out. Not wanting to jeopardize something critical to the investigation, Joanna backed off.

“I’m just trying to get a handle on what happened the night Sandra Ridder was killed,” she said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile. “You say you went to bed at ten-thirty. I have a witness who places Sandra Ridder and your Lexus at the entrance to Cochise Stronghold, seventy miles or so away, at midnight. How did she get there so soon?”

“I always keep my car keys in a drawer in the kitchen,” Melanie replied. “Sandra probably saw me put them away after we came home and knew where to go looking for them. So it’s not like she had to hot-wire the damned thing in order to steal it. And now that the Eastern do-gooder fifty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit is history, anybody can make seventy miles in an hour and a half. In fact, most people can do it in a lot less than that.”

Joanna glanced at her watch and was astonished to see how much time had passed. There were other nonthreatening questions she might have asked, but it was already after four. Her mother’s command-performance dinner deadline was fast approaching.

“Speaking of speed limits,” she said, rising to her feet, “I need to head out. I have a meeting in Bisbee at six-thirty, and I can’t afford to be late. You’ve been very cooperative, Ms. Goodson. I appreciate it.”

“Glad to help,” Melanie Goodson said.

“And you have a lovely office, but then, I’m sure you hear that all the time.”

“My partner and I like it.”

“Partner?” Joanna asked. “I didn’t know this was a joint practice. There’s only one name stenciled on the front door.”

“My partner’s not an attorney,” Melanie said with a ready smile. “Ed’s a contractor who’s into buying and rehabilitating old houses. He does the heavy stuff—the grunt labor. He gets all the permits, handles all the structural problems, and makes arrangements to bring the plumbing and electrical systems up to code. I oversee all the interior design work. It’s a hobby of mine. In another life or if I hadn’t been able to make it in law school, I might have become an interior designer instead. Once the places are rehabbed, we lease them out. This one happens to be the pick of the litter, which is why I’m here. As you can imagine, the lease rates are quite favorable.”

“Nice workmanship,” Joanna said admiringly as she made her way back to the outside office.

“Thanks,” Melanie Goodson said. “I’m glad you like it.”

Once back in her oven-hot Blazer, Joanna turned the air conditioner on high and rolled down the windows to let some of the heat blow out. While the hot air drained out and even though the clock was ticking, she wrote herself a note: “Have Jaime check with Melanie Goodson’s neighbors to see if we can find out whether or not she really was home and asleep when Sandra Ridder took off in the Lexus.”