“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.