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
