“I’m Sheriff Joanna Brady from down in Cochise County,” she announced, pulling out her ID. “I’d like very much to speak to Ms. Goodson.”
“I don’t remember Ms. Goodson having an appointment scheduled with anyone by that name for today.” While the young woman ran a black-enameled fingernail down the page of a leather-bound appointment calendar to check, Joanna did her best to ignore the unfortunate and noticeable lisp caused by her braces.
No doubt the receptionist was intimately familiar with her boss’s schedule. Hers was a form question worthy of nothing more than a form answer. “No,” Joanna said, swallowing a bubble of annoyance. “One of my deputies had an appointment to see her earlier this afternoon, but he found it necessary to cancel. I’m sure Ms. Goodson will want to see me,” she added. “It’s about her missing vehicle.”
“So someone has found it then?” a husky female voice asked from an open-doored office. “When will I be able to have it back? I hate driving rentals.”
Joanna looked up in time to see a woman appear in a doorway just to the left of the reception desk. She was tall and good-looking but tending to be heavyset. Her highlighted hair was precision-cut in a timeless bob. She wore an ivory silk blouse with a pair of custom-made slacks, and her fingers carried a full contingent of heavily jeweled rings. Here’s a high-maintenance woman if I ever saw one, Joanna thought. Stylish and expensive both.
“I’m Melanie Goodson,” she said, holding out her hand. “Who are you again?”
“Joanna Brady. Sheriff Joanna Brady.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve spoken to one of your deputies.”
“Detective Carbajal?” Joanna suggested.
“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.”