Devil’s Claw

by J. A. Jance

  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 several 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.

  Once he was gone, his widow never once deigned to use the thing, and she hadn’t allowed Joanna that privilege, either. For years the grill had sat untouched, protected from dust beneath a layer of multiple blue tarps. But now, with George Winfield in residence and from the looks of the smoke wafting skyward, the tarps were obviously long gone.

  Just then the front door slammed open and Jenny came flying down the wooden steps. “Mom,” she shouted. “You’re home.” She stopped two feet away, just inside the gate. “How come you didn’t change clothes?” she added with a sudden scowl.

  Jenny was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. Her mother, on the other hand, was dressed for work in a dry-clean-only two-piece suit and a creamy blouse along with a pair of sensibly-low high heels.

  “What’s the matter with what I have on?” Joanna asked.

  Jenny shrugged. “It’s going to look pretty funny out in the backyard at Grandma’s picnic table. Everybody else is wearing jeans and stuff.”

  “We’re having a picnic?” Joanna asked. “It’s only the end of March. Isn’t this a little early for a picnic or a barbecue?”

  Jenny shrugged. “It’s what Mr. and Mrs. Dixon wanted.” She paused. “They told me to call them Grandma and Grandpa Dixon, but I don’t really want to. I mean, I just met them. It seems kinda weird.”

  “What are they like?” Joanna asked.

  “Okay, I guess,” Jenny replied, wrinkling her nose. “But they talk funny. Their words are so sharp they hurt my ears. And they must think it’s summer, because they’re both wearing shorts. Shorts and white socks and black sandals. Ugh.”

  “They’re from Chicago,” Joanna said. “I think it’s a lot colder there than it is here. Maybe this feels like summer to them.”

  “Maybe,” Jenny said. “Anyway, when Butch introduced them to Grandma Lathrop this afternoon, she asked them if there was anything special they wanted for dinner. Mr. Dixon said what he wanted more than anything was Mexican food and he wanted to eat it outside. So Grandma Winfield went down to Naco and bought tamales and tortillas. And Grandpa Winfield is making carne asada.”

  “Who hired the mariachis?” Joanna asked.

  “They’re not real. That’s just a tape on Butch’s boom box. He said it would add atmosphere.”

  Butch met them just inside the door. “You didn’t change,” he said, frowning. “Didn’t you get my message? Frank said he’d be sure to tell you.”

  Joanna sighed. “Frank did give me the message, but there wasn’t enough time to go out to the department and still be here on time. I’m sure the clothes I’m wearing will work. I promise not to spill anything.”

  “It’s not that,” Butch said. “It’s just that everyone else is dressed a lot more casually than you are.”

  “Don’t worry,” Joanna said. “I’ll be fine. Now come on. Where are your parents? Let’s go get the introductions out of the way so I can stop being nervous about meeting them.”

  Outside, Joanna found that the backyard was lit with a series of festive-looking lanterns complete with lighted candles. Predictably, three men-George Winfield, Jim Bob Brady, and a portly man in shorts, sandals, and socks, who made Jim Bob look slim by comparison-were clustered near the barbecue. Even across the yard, Joanna could see that Butch Dixon resembled his father, Donald. The older man was taller and much heavier than his son. In contrast to Butch’s clean-shaven head, his father had thick, curly gray hair, but their facial features were almost identical.

  Halfway down the yard, Eva Lou Brady sat at Eleanor’s cloth-covered picnic table engaged in subdued conversation with a heavyset woman with thinning gray hair who looked to be in her mid-sixties.

  “Come on,” Butch said to Joanna, taking her hand and leading her down the backyard. “I’ll introduce you to my father first.”

  They met Eleanor Winfield halfway to the barbecue. She looked her daughter up and down, pursed her lips, and said nothing, but Joanna got the message all the same.

  “Dad,” Butch was saying. “Here she is-the girl of my dreams-Joanna Lathrop Brady. Joanna, this is my dad, Donald Dixon.”

  Donald Dixon turned away from the grill with its layer of thinly sliced beef, looked at Joanna’s face, and beamed. “You can call me Don,” he said, holding out a massive paw of a hand and pumping Joanna’s eagerly. “Everybody does. And I’m delighted to meet you. Maggie and I have heard so much about you. Butch said you were just a little bit of a thing, and by God it’s true!”

  Despite the fact that it annoyed Joanna when strangers and ne
w acquaintances made unsolicited comments to her size, she nonetheless managed to keep her smile plastered firmly in place. “Good things come in small packages,” she responded, knowing that the comment sounded perky and stupid both, but Don Dixon seemed to like it.

  “Right you are,” he said heartily, slapping a beefy, snow-white, shorts-clad thigh. “I do believe my mother used to tell me the same thing. I just didn’t pay any attention. Have you met Maggie yet?”

  Hearing the Chicago twang in his voice-the hard-edged vowels-Joanna recognized what Jenny had meant. Don Dixon’s accent hurt her ears, too.

  “No,” she said in answer to his question. “I just now got here.”

  “Well, by all means go over and be introduced. She’s really looking forward to meeting you. She hasn’t talked about anything else ever since we left Chicago.”

  Taking a deep breath and following Butch’s lead, Joanna turned back to the picnic table. “Mom,” Butch was saying when they arrived at the table. “This is Joanna Brady. Joanna, my mother, Margaret, but everyone calls her Maggie.”

  Margaret Dixon held out her hand. She smiled a thin smile. “How do you do. Glad to meet you, Joanna. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Let’s hope the third time’s the charm.”

  Joanna saw the muscles tighten along Butch’s jawline. “Mother!” he said.

  “I’m sure Joanna knows what I mean,” Maggie Dixon said quickly, waving away his comment as though it were a bothersome fly. “No doubt the two of you will be very happy. And since Butch is getting such a late start on settling down, it’s probably a good thing you come complete with a ready-made family.”

  For months Butch had been hinting to Joanna that his mother was a difficult woman. He had warned that, in a competition of relative prickliness, Maggie Dixon would run Eleanor Lathrop Winfield a close race. Joanna had laughed off his comments, saying he was probably exaggerating or making things up. Now, all it took was that one exchange for Joanna to realize he was right. Maggie Dixon was going to be tough to like. Across the table and behind Maggie’s back, even the perpetually easygoing Eva Lou Brady felt constrained to shake her head and raise a disapproving eyebrow.