“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.”