Devil's ClawJ

by J. A. Jance

  “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.”

  Then, having done what she could do, Joanna headed out of town. Traffic wasn’t all that bad getting to and on the freeway, and once she passed the exit to I-19, most of the local commuters disappeared as well. Out in the desert with mostly eighteen-wheelers for company, she dialed into the office. Despite the fact that she had called Kristin’s number directly, the phone was answered by the switchboard operator.

  “This is Sheriff Brady,” Joanna said. “Where’s Kristin?”

  “She went home sick at noon,” the operator said. “Is there anyone else you’d like to speak with?”

  “How about Chief Deputy Montoya?”

  “One moment.”

  “How’s it going, Frank?” she asked when he came on the line.

  “We’re not having a real good day around here.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, our canine unit seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. I finally broke down and called out Search and Rescue after all. I dispatched a crew out to Texas Canyon. I was afraid if we waited any longer—until however long it takes for Deputy Gregovich to resurface—there wouldn’t be much chance of picking up Lucy Ridder’s trail at the rest area.”

  “So with me out and with Kristin home sick . . .” Joanna began.

  “Sick!” Frank snorted. “If she’s sick, she’s sure as hell not home. I went by her folks’ place and checked. Her car wasn’t there. And then, because I have a suspicious mind, I went by Terry’s apartment, too. Guess what? His patrol vehicle is parked out front, and so’s Kristin’s Geo, but Terry’s little four-by-four is nowhere to be seen. So wherever they are, they’re together.”

  “What about Terry’s pager?” Joanna asked.

  “Turned off.”

  “Damn,” Joanna muttered. “I had a feeling this morning that I needed to talk to her about this—to both of them, really—but I was in a hurry and I let it go.”

  “Do you want me to handle it?” Frank asked. “I’ll be happy to haul them both on the carpet.”

  “No,” Joanna said. “It’s my job, and I’ll do it—first thing in the morning. Give me their home numbers, Frank. I’ll call them both right now and leave messages.”

  Frank located the two numbers in the departmental directory and read them off while Joanna jotted them down. “Anything else going on?”

  “Ernie Carpenter came in a little while ago. He said they’d just finished up with the Sandra Ridder autopsy. No big surprises there. She died of a gunshot wound from a twenty-two. The doc recovered the slug. It evidently hit soft tissue only, so it’s in fairly good shape. Jaime will bring it up to Tucson tomorrow and drop it off at the Department of Public Safety gun lab for analysis. And yes, I did warn the S and R guys to be careful and wear vests. I told them Lucy Ridder is to be considered armed and dangerous. I also told them that she’s accompanied by a red-tailed hawk. I don’t know whether or not Big Red should be considered dangerous, but I suppose he could be.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Are you planning to stop by the department on your way home?”

  Joanna glanced on her watch. “Not really. I have a date at six-thirty. If I really push it, I’ll just have time to go home and change—”

  “That’s why I asked. Butch stopped by a few minutes ago and dropped off some clothes for you to wear. I had him put them in your office.”

  “He did what?”

  “He dropped off some clothing for you to wear to your mother’s place tonight. He said your mother called and that she especially wanted you to wear some certain outfit. He was worried that you might be running late and not have enough time to go home and change, so he dropped the clothes off here thinking it would save you a few minutes. He also said that he and Jenny will feed the animals, pick up his folks from the RV park, and then meet you at your mother’s place.”

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Joanna exclaimed. “I’m thirty years old. I’ve been elected sheriff, and I’m being married for the second time. How dare my mother still think she can tell me what to wear? That in itself would be bad enough, but here’s Butch—my fiancé—helping her do it.”

  “I wouldn’t be too hard on the man if I were you,” Frank said.

  “Why not?” Joanna demanded. “What did he say to you to get you on his side?”

  “Butch didn’t say a thing,” Frank answered. “He didn’t have to. If I were about to inherit your mother as my mother-in-law, I’m sure I’d jump when she said so, too.”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Joanna retorted. “No matter what Eleanor says, I’m sure what I wore to work today will be plenty good enough for my mother, and for meeting my new mother-in-law as well. And if it isn’t,” she added, “Eleanor Lathrop Winfield can go jump in the lake. Or else, she can send me home.”

  For a time after ringing off, Joanna was still so torqued with both Butch and her mother that she didn’t trust herself to speak. Finally, after giving herself ten or fifteen miles of driving to settle down, she picked up the phone again and left almost identical messages on answering machines at Terry Gregovich’s apartment and at the home of Kristin Marsten’s parents. “Sheriff Brady. Be in my office tomorrow morning at eight o’clock sharp. Both of you. No excuses.”

  That should settle that hash, Joanna thought grimly. And the only thing I have to worry about in between now and then is doing battle with my mother.

  CHAPTER 16

  By the time Joanna finished driving the hundred miles between Tucson and Bisbee, she had cooled down considerably. The situation with Terry Gregovich and Kristin Marsten would be resolved the next morning one way or the other. And as for Eleanor . . . Joanna realized that she was just being Eleanor. How typical of her to want to pull off some elegant, sit-down meal to impress Joanna’s incoming relatives. The problem was, just because Joanna understood what was going on with her mother didn’t make it any easier to deal with. And it also didn’t mean Joanna was going to knuckle under and obey.

  She came over the divide and down into Bisbee’s Tombstone Canyon just at sunset. There would have been plenty of time to run by the department, change into the specified outfit, and still be at Eleanor and George’s house within five minutes of the appointed hour. Instead, Joanna drove straight to their place on Campbell Avenue.

  Joanna was surprised to see Jim Bob and Eva Lou Brady’s car parked out front right along with Butch’s Subaru. Although Eleanor got along fine with Joanna’s former in-laws, the down-home Bradys hardly qualified as the kind of elegant dinner guests Eleanor much preferred to have gracing her dining room.

  As soon as Joanna opened her car door, her ears were assailed by the steady thrum of blaring mariachi music that seemed to emanate from George and Eleanor Winfield’s backyard along with bursts of laughter and the party sound of sev
eral voices talking at once. The whole neighborhood was permeated with the tantalizing odor of meat cooking over open-air charcoal.

  “A barbecue?” Joanna said aloud to herself. “My mother’s having a barbecue?”

  When it came to the Eleanor Lathrop Winfield Joanna knew, an outdoor barbecue was something totally out of character. In the months before D. H. Lathrop’s death, he had devoted all his spare hours to planning and building a massive used-brick barbecue in the far corner of the backyard. During the construction process, Eleanor had disdained the whole idea. She claimed that if she had to have grilled meat, she much preferred going to a restaurant. Despite his wife’s objections, Big Hank Lathrop had persisted. Once the grill was completed, D. H. had been inordinately proud of his do-it-yourself handiwork. Unfortunately, he had been able to use it only twice. Within two weeks of finishing the project, D. H. Lathrop was dead.