Juanita nodded. “One of the boys at school said that Ceci’s mother got killed up in Phoenix,” Jenny continued. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” Juanita said. “My daughter-in-law is dead.”
“Is Ceci going to come back to Bisbee, then? We both had Mrs. Sampson in second grade. Maybe we’d be in the same class again.”
Juanita shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Ceci and her brother are staying in Phoenix right now. With her other grandparents.”
“Jenny,” Eva Lou called from the kitchen. “You haven’t finished setting the table.”
Jenny started toward the kitchen, then turned back to Juanita Grijalva. “When you see Ceci, tell her hi for me, would you?”
Juanita nodded again. “I’ll be sure to tell her.”
Jenny left the living room without seeing the stray tear Juanita Grijalva brushed from her weathered cheek as Joanna eased the older woman down onto the couch. “I may not, you know.”
“May not what?” Joanna asked.
“Ever see Ceci again. Or Pablo, either. And that’s why I’m here,” she said. “Because I don’t want to lose them, too.”
Joanna had settled herself on the hassock. Jolted by Juanita’s last comment, Joanna leaned forward, her face alive with concern. “Has someone threatened your grandchildren?” she asked.
“If my son is convicted of killing Serena,” Juanita said, “I’ll never see them again. The Duffys—Serena’s parents—will see to it. Even now, they won’t let me to talk to them on the telephone. I got a ride all the way to Phoenix and back, but they wouldn’t even let me go to Serena’s funeral. Ernestina’s brother was there, and he told me to go away. They didn’t let me see the kids then, either.”
‘Mrs. Grijalva,” Joanna began, but Juanita hurried on, ignoring the interruption.
“Do you know anything about my son’s case?” asked.
Joanna shook her head. “Not very much. It was all happening right around the time my own husband died, and I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention to much of anything else.”
“‘That’s all right.” Juanita picked up the bulging envelope she had dropped on the couch beside her and handed it to Joanna. “Here are all the articles from the papers. The ones we could find. Lucy, my sister-in-law, read them to me. And she made copies. You can keep those.”
“But, Mrs. Grijalva,” Joanna objected. “I don’t know what you expect me to do with them. You have to understand, this isn’t my case. It happened up in Phoenix, didn’t it?”
“Peoria.”
“Peoria, then. My department only has jurisdiction over things that happen in Cochise County. We have no business meddling in a case that happened that far away from here.”
“You don’t want to help me, then?”
“Mrs. Grijalva, please believe me. It’s not a matter of not wanting to,” Joanna said. “I can’t.”
“His lawyer wants him to plea-bargain,” Juanita Grijalva said.
Joanna nodded. ‘That probably makes sense. If he can plead guilty to a lesser charge, sometimes that’s better than taking chances with a judge and jury.
“But he didn’t do it,” Juanita insisted firmly. “No matter what they say, I know my Jorge didn’t kill Serena. She may have given him plenty of cause, but he didn’t do it.”
“Even so, there’s nothing I can do about it,” Joanna responded. “It’s not my case. I’m sorry.”
Juanita Grijalva rose abruptly to her feet. “We could just as well go, then, Frank. This isn’t doing any good.”
Frank hurriedly took Juanita’s arm and led her back out of the house. Still holding the unopened envelope, Joanna watched as Chief Deputy Montoya guided the grieving woman out the door, across the porch, and down the steps. Following behind them, Joanna resisted the temptation to say something more, to make an empty promise she had no power to keep. Even though her heart ached with sympathy, there was nothing she could do to help Jorge Grijalva. To claim otherwise would have been dishonest.
Frank was busy maneuvering his pickup out of the yard when Eleanor Lathrop’s elderly Plymouth Volare came coughing up the road. Seeing her daughter standing just inside the front door, Eleanor parked in an unaccustomed spot nearer the front door than the back.
“Who was that?” she asked, bustling up onto the porch. “Frank Montoya?”
“Yes,” Joanna answered. “Frank and a friend of his mother’s. Her name’s Juanita Grijalva. Her son has been accused of murdering his ex-wife up in Phoenix. Juanita thought I might be able to help him, but I had to tell her I can’t.”
“If it happened up in Phoenix, of course you can’t do anything about it,” Eleanor said huffily. “What a stupid idea! I can’t imagine why they’d even bother to ask. Frank certainly knows better than that.”
“Frank wasn’t the one doing the asking, Mother,” Joanna said.
“But he brought her here, didn’t he?” Eleanor returned. “And on your day off, too. I don’t know about him, Joanna. He just doesn’t seem all that sharp to me. And why you’d want to go out on a limb and make one of the men who ran against you your chief deputy ...”
This was ground Joanna and Eleanor had already covered. Several times over. “Never mind, Mother,” Joanna said, opening the door and herding Eleanor into the house. “Let’s go on out to the kitchen and see if Eva Lou needs any help.”
Just then, Marianne and Jeff’s sea-foam-green VW pulled into the yard and stopped at the back gate. When Joanna went out through the laundry room to open the door, she was still holding Juanita’s Grijalva’s envelope.
Joanna stood by the dryer for a moment, examining the still-sealed package. The best course of action would probably be to throw it away without ever knowing what was inside. Still, Jorge Grijalva’s mother had gone to a lot of trouble to bring her that material. Didn’t Joanna owe the woman at least the courtesy of reading it?
True, the case was 140 miles outside Joanna’s jurisdiction. And no, she couldn’t possibly do anything about it, but there was no law against her reading about it. What could that hurt?
Making up her mind, Joanna dropped the envelope onto the dryer next to her car keys and purse, then she hurried outside to greet the last of Eva Lou’s invited guests.
CHAPTER 5
The dinner went off surprisingly well, from the moment they sat down at the dining room table until the last morsel of Cynthia Sawyer’s praline cake had been scraped off the dessert plates.
AII through the meal, Joanna couldn’t help noticing that Eva Lou was right. Eleanor Lathrop wasn’t at all herself. After the initial wrangle about Frank Montoya, she had curbed her critical tongue. She was so uncommonly cheerful—so uncharacteristically free of complaint—that Joanna found herself wondering if it was the same woman. Once, when Eleanor was laughing gaily—almost flirtatiously—at one of Jim Bob’s folksy, time-worn quips, Joanna found herself speculating for just the smallest fraction of a moment if there was a chance Eva Lou was right after all. Maybe there was a new man in Eleanor Lathrop’s life.
In the end, though, Joanna attributed her mother’s lighthearted mood to the fact that there were nonfamily guests at dinner. She reasoned that Jeff and Marianne’s presence must have been enough to force Eleanor Lathrop to don her company manners. Whatever the cause of her mother’s sudden transformation, Joanna welcomed it.
The festive dinner with its good food and untroubled conversation helped ease Joanna past her earlier misapprehensions about being away at school. Jenny and the ranch would be in good hands while Joanna was gone. There was no need for her to worry. She said her flurry of good-byes, to everyone else in the house; then Jenny alone walked Joanna out to the loaded Blazer.
“Ceci and I are almost alike, aren’t we,” Jenny said thoughtfully.