comments after another. ”Wherever did you get the odd idea that you could write a book?“ is my personal favorite. As far as I’m concerned, that was the topper on the cake. What my ego needs now is a little dose of positive feedback from my two favorite people in the world. I promise, I won’t try to talk. I’ll sit in the corner quiet as a mouse and watch you work-make you work-if need be. And I won’t even hint about spending the night.”
By the time Butch finished his sad lament, Joanna was laughing at him. “All right,” she relented. “But no more whining, either. I can’t stand it when you whine.”
“I don’t like it either,” Butch agreed. “I’m afraid my folks bring out the worst in me.”
He was out at the High Lonesome within fifteen short minutes. By then Joanna had thawed out some ground beef and was frying corn tortillas for tacos. Jenny had chopped up tomatoes and onions and was busy grating cheese when Butch walked in the door.
“Boy,” he said. “Are you two a sight for sore eyes! I’ve had about all of Maggie Dixon I can stand, and she’s been in town for barely twenty-four hours.”
Jenny wrinkled her nose. “You mean you don’t like her either, even though she’s your own mother?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Butch said.
Joanna’s phone rang just then. When she dragged it out of her shirt pocket, Butch relieved her of the tongs. “I’ll finish frying the tortillas,” he said. “You talk on the phone.”
“Where are you?” Joanna asked when she heard Jaime Carbajal’s voice.
“Benson,” he said. “We’ve given up for the day, and we’re on our way home. Dispatch said you wanted us to call.”
“I did-do,” Joanna said. “How’s it going?”
“Not too bad, considering. I guess Frank told you that we missed the boat when it came to talking to Melanie Goodson. And the nun you wanted us to talk to, the one who’s the principal at Santa Theresa’s…”
“Sister Celeste,” Joanna supplied.
“Right. We didn’t see her, either. She was out sick today, but we did have one bit of luck.”
“What’s that?”
“Not surprisingly, the Pima County homicide detectives weren’t too thrilled when we showed up hot on their heels. Since they wouldn’t let us anywhere near their crime scene, Ernie and I were stuck just sort of milling around down on Old Spanish Trail at Melanie Goodson’s turnoff, which, by the way, seems to be paved from there all the way to her house. That had to have cost a fortune. Anyway, we were left cooling our heels there, and since people are just naturally curious when they see a couple of stopped police vehicles, we did manage to talk to some of Melanie’s neighbors.”
“Jaime, could you stop stringing me along and try getting to the good part?”
“We ended up talking to a lady named Karen Gustafson who lives just up the street, if you could call it that. It’s a road, really. Anyway, she told us that she and her husband were coming home from Webb’s Steak House on Friday night about ten when they saw Melanie Goodson’s Lexus coming down the road. Karen said she was sitting in the car while her husband went over to the mailbox to pick up their mail. She said that when the car came by, she saw there were two people in it-Melanie Goodson and some other woman. The thing is, until we started asking her questions, she didn’t even know Melanie’s car had been stolen.”
“Good grief!” Joanna exclaimed. “Pima County’s supposedly investigating that case. What did they do, drop the ball?”
“I don’t think they ever bothered to pick it up. Grand-theft auto evidently isn’t a very high priority around here. In most cases they don’t do much more than take the report over the phone. I believe Melanie Goodson got an in- person officer visit because of who she was and what she did for a living. Of course, now that she’s dead, a possible homicide case is gathering a lot more attention than her stolen car did.”
“Could it be that Melanie Goodson and Sandra Ridder both went to Cochise Stronghold that night?”
“That’s how it sounds to Ernie and me,” Jaime answered.
“But why would she go along?” Joanna asked.
“I don’t know,” said Jaime, “but my guess is, once we have an answer to the first question, we’ll also know how come she’s dead. She was Sandra Ridder’s attorney, right?” Jaime asked.
“Right.”
“And Ridder went to prison on a plea bargain. That means there was never any trial in regard to Tom Ridder’s death, so maybe there wasn’t much of an investigation, either,” Jaime continued. “The detectives probably figured they had a slam-dunk domestic-violence case. Frank told us Tom Ridder got thrown out of the army for assaulting one of the brass. And since Sandra was willing to stand up in front of a judge and accept full responsibility for plugging her husband, the detectives on the shooting case probably figured, why waste any more time digging any deeper? She goes to prison. The detectives clear one case and go on to the next.”
Joanna considered the possibility. “So you’re thinking the same way I am-that all this has to have something to do with Tom Ridder’s death?”
“It’s the only tie-in Ernie and I can think of.”
“Me, too, Jaime,” Joanna said. “And maybe we’re on to something. Melanie Goodson told me that Sandra was planning to buy some new clothes, have her hair done, and pretty much get herself fixed up before she went on home to the Dragoons to see her mother and daughter. She also said she didn’t have any money worries about her upcoming makeover and shopping spree. We need to find out whether or not Catherine Yates sent Sandra get-out- of-jail money or if she had savings from her prison wages. If neither of those options pans out, maybe she was expecting to collect some cash somewhere else. What if somebody else killed Tom Ridder and Sandra stepped up to the plate and took the rap for it? What if she knew who really did do it? Then, after all these years, she gets out of jail and decides to collect on that old debt. What would happen then?”
“Whoever she was trying to put the squeeze on might prefer some other medium of exchange-say a hot bullet in place of cold cash.”
“Exactly,” Joanna said. “And since Melanie Goodson was Sandra Ridder’s attorney back then, she may have known about the connection as well. So where do we go from here?”
“I don’t know about you,” Jaime Carbajal said, “but I’m on my way home. Whatever we’re going to do next will have to wait until tomorrow. If I don’t get home in time to see at least the last couple innings of Pepe’s game, Delcia is going to kill me.”
“Your wife isn’t going to kill you over missing a Little League game,” Joanna said. “But if she does, we’ll see to it that Delcia doesn’t get any less of a sentence for knocking you off than Sandra Ridder did for shooting her husband.”
“Thanks, boss,” Jaime Carbajal said. “You’re all heart.”
CHAPTER 19
Over dinner, Butch turned serious. “What’s this I hear about Reba Singleton making a scene at Clayton’s funeral?”
Joanna glowered at Jenny. “It wasn’t a big deal,” Joanna said. “She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“She did too,” Jenny insisted. “She said you wouldn’t get away with it. She sounded so mean when she said it, that it scared me. It really did.”
“And now that I’ve heard about that,” Butch said, “there’s something worrying me as well. When I came home, there was a car pulling out of the drive onto High Lonesome Road, but Jenny tells me there was no one here but the two of you.”
“What kind of car?” Joanna asked.
“I couldn’t tell,” Butch replied. “All I saw were headlights. Still, if someone came to the ranch without coming up to the house and talking to you…”
“It was probably somebody using the facilities,” Joanna said. “People do it all the time, especially regulars who are stuck driving Highway Eighty on a weekly or monthly basis. It’s a long pit-stop-free zone from Benson to, say, Rodeo, New Mexico. People will pull off the highway and then come up High Lonesome Road until they hit the dips. Figuring they’re out of sight, they’ll stop there to relieve themselves.”
“Mom!” Jenny objected. “That’s gross.”
