case?”
Ernie Carpenter shrugged. When he frowned, his eyebrows seemed to come together, forming a solid caterpillar of hair across his broad forehead. “What about them? Like I said before, they’re not going to give us the time of day unless a specific order comes down to them from upstairs, preferably one signed in God’s own handwriting.”
Joanna scribbled Bill Forsythe’s name on the top line of her day’s to-do list. “I’ll get right on it,” she said. “Any information about when the Goodson autopsy will be completed?” she continued.
“Preliminary results today,” Ernie said, consulting his own notes. “But it’s going to boil down to toxicology reports, so you know that’s going to take time-a week or so, most likely.”
“Frank, what about you?” Joanna asked. “Do you have anything to add?”
“Fortunately, our working relationship with the City of Tucson PD is a little less troubled than our dealings are with Pima County,” Frank answered. “Consequently, I did manage to lay hands on a copy of the original case file for the Thomas Ridder shooting.”
“Complete with ballistics reports?” Joanna asked.
“Yes,” Frank said. “I think so.”
“Does it say what size bullet killed him?”
Montoya opened the thick file and thumbed through several pages before stopping to peruse one in particular. “Here it is,” he said. “Says here he died of a twenty-two-caliber bullet wound. The slug hit him in the heart, killing him instantly.”
“Was the weapon ever recovered?” Joanna asked.
Once again Frank consulted the file. “Not that it says here; why?”
“How soon can we get a ballistics report back from the DPS gun lab on the bullet that killed Sandra Ridder?”
“Today, probably, if I call up and ask them to rush it. But what’s going on?”
“What if the murder weapon is what was hidden in Sandra Ridder’s Tupperware bowl all this time?” Joanna asked. “All along I’ve been thinking that Sandra Ridder may have been killed with the gun Lucy lifted from her grandmother’s place. But what if that isn’t the case? What if she was killed with the same gun she used to shoot her husband years ago?”
“I’ll call up to Tucson and check as soon as we finish up with this meeting.”
“Would a twenty-two fit in that Tupperware container?” Jaime Carbajal asked.
“Sure,” Frank said. “One of those little featherweights would fit in a minute.”
Joanna turned to her detectives. “Ernie, what are you and Jaime doing today?”
“Paper, mostly. Then, if you can clear us to talk to those Pima County guys, I’d like to be able to shadow their investigation as closely as possible. Sandra Ridder’s funeral is scheduled for this afternoon at two over in Pearce. I don’t see any reason for both of us to go, so Jaime’s going to handle that.”
Joanna looked at the younger detective. “And here’s something else you can take care of at the same time. I’ve gone through all the Tom Ridder material Frank gave me yesterday. Nowhere does it refer to Melanie Goodson as being Sandra Ridder’s court-appointed attorney.”
“Somebody paid the bill,” Jaime said at once.
“Right,” Joanna returned. “Since you’ll be at the funeral, maybe you can ask Catherine Yates if she’s the one who paid Melanie Goodson’s fee. If it was somebody other than Sandra’s mother, let’s find out who that person was.”
“Will do,” Jaime said.
Joanna directed her next request to Detective Carpenter. “Ernie, you’re the one with contacts out at Fort Huachuca. I want to know more about Thomas Ridder’s dismissal from the army. He evidently punched out a superior officer, but that officer is never once mentioned by name. I want to know who he was and what the beef was all about.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”
“Yes, there is one more thing. As you know, I’ll be gone all next week. I’m going to expect you to give Chief Deputy Montoya here your utmost cooperation. With any kind of luck, things will stay pretty quiet, but we all remember what happened last summer as soon as Doc Winfield left town on
“We’ll keep things under control, Sheriff Brady,” Ernie Carpenter assured her, standing up. “Don’t worry about a thing.”
The two detectives were almost to the door when Joanna called Jaime Carbajal back. “What happened at Pepe’s game last night?” she asked.
A wide grin suffused her young detective’s face. “I made it to the field in time for the last two innings, including Pepe’s third home run of the season.”
“And Delcia didn’t kill you?”
“Not yet,” Jaime answered, “but there’s another game tonight.”
“Get out of here,” Joanna said.
Once the two detectives were gone, Joanna and her chief deputy turned their attention to the stack of incident reports. Forty-five minutes later, Joanna was back in her office and dialing Sheriff Bill Forsythe’s number up in Pima County.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff Brady?” he asked.
“We have a murder down here in Cochise County with possible links to one of yours-the Melanie Goodson death out on South Old Spanish Trail.”
“What kind of links?”
“One of Melanie Goodson’s neighbors saw her driving her Lexus with another woman in the vehicle. Two hours later, our homicide victim was spotted with that same Lexus near a campground in the Dragoon Mountains down here in Cochise County. The next morning, Melanie Goodson called your office and reported the Lexus stolen, even though she herself was the last person seen driving it.” Joanna paused for breath. “It seems to me that, based on all that, there should be enough connections to justify the sharing of information.”
“That remains to be seen.” Bill Forsythe replied. “I take it the officers in question are the same ones who were making nuisances of themselves out at our crime scene yesterday afternoon?”
“My detectives were doing their jobs,” Joanna answered evenly. “They were asking questions. They had an early-afternoon appointment to speak with Melanie Goodson at her office. When she stood them up, it was for the very good reason that she was dead. Wouldn’t you find that a coincidence worthy of asking questions, one of which has to be: ”Who didn’t want Melanie talking to my investigators?“ ”
“Give me the name of the neighbor who talked to your guys,” Forsythe said. “The one who claimed to have seen Melanie Goodson driving her car. Once my dicks talk to him or her, I’ll see what I can do.”
“What you’re saying is, none of your ”dicks,“ as you call them, have yet spoken to Melanie Goodson’s neighbors.”
“We’re still very early in the investigation-”
“Can it, Sheriff Forsythe. You want your department to piggyback on my detectives’ work and then you may or may not decide to share information with us. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not in so many words.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Sheriff Brady, you don’t have to get hysterical about it.”
Her voice dropped to the bare whisper that people who knew Joanna Brady well also knew as a warning to duck for cover. “Believe me, Sheriff Forsythe,” she told him icily, “I’m a long way from hysterical. I am pointing out, however, that our two departments have a long-standing mutual-aid agreement-one that predates your election, and mine as well. I expect both of our departments to live up to the terms of that agreement.”
“Right,” Sheriff Bill Forsythe responded. “When pigs fly!” With that he slammed the receiver down in her ear.
A stunned Joanna Brady was still sitting with the phone in her hand when Kristin came into her office moments later carrying that day’s stack of mail.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were still on the phone.”
