Shoot, Don't Shoot (7 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

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.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, my daddy’s dead, and her mom is. She’s staying with her grandparents. While you’re away, I’ll be staying with mine.”

The situations of the two girls weren’t exactly mirror images. Joanna was on her way to take a course that would help her be a better police officer, Jorge Grijalva was in jail, charged with murdering his former wife. Jenny’s surviving grandparents had just enjoyed a companionable meal with one another. Ceci Grijalva’s maternal grandparents had refused to allow Juanita Grijalva to attend her own daughter-in-law’s funeral. But Joanna didn’t mention any of that to Jenny.

“You’re right,” she said simply. “You have a lot in common.”

“Could we go see her?”

“Who?”

“Ceci. Next weekend when I come up for Thanksgiving?”

Joanna was carrying her purse and keys. Jenny was carrying Juanita Grijalva’s envelope. As far as Joanna could see, it hadn’t been opened. Joanna found herself wondering if Jenny had been hanging around the living room eavesdropping while Joanna had been talking to Juanita.

“Why would you want to do that?” Joanna asked guardedly.

Jenny shrugged. “Almost everyone else in Mrs. Lassiter’s class has two parents. There are two kids whose parents are divorced. I’m the only one whose dad is dead.”

“So?”

“At Daddy’s funeral, everybody said how sorry they were and that they knew how I felt. But they didn’t, not really. They weren’t nine years old when their fathers died. If I tell Ceci I know how she feels, it’ll be for real, ‘cause she’s nine years old and so am I. Maybe if I tell her that, it’ll make her feel better.”

They had reached the truck by then. Joanna wrenched open the door and tossed both her purse and Juanita’s envelope into the car. Now she leaned down and pulled Jenny toward her, grasping her in a tight hug while a sudden gust of wind blew a whisp of Jenny’s long, smooth hair across Joanna’s cheek.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re one special kid?” Joanna asked, holding Jenny at arm’s length so she could look the child in the eye.

“Daddy did sometimes,” Jenny answered wistfully.

“He was right,” Joanna said. “You’re right to be concerned about Ceci. And I’ll see what I can do. If I can find out where she’s staying, maybe we could take her out to do something with us while you’re there.”

“Like going to Baskin-Robbins?” Jenny asked.

“Just like,” Joanna said with a fond smile. Joanna had spent days and nights agonizing in advance about this leave-taking. Now the moment came and went with unexpected ease and without a single tear. “I’ll miss you, Mommy,” Jenny said hugging Joanna one last time. “I’ll miss you, but I’ll be good. I promise. Girl Scout’s honor.”

“I’ll be good, too,” Joanna replied.

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll see you Wednesday night.”

Jenny stepped away from Joanna’s grasp. “What’s the name of the place we’re stay’ again?”

“The Hohokam Resort Hotel.”

“Does it have a swimming pool?”

“It’s supposed to.”

“Come on, Sadie and Tigger,” Jenny said to the dogs. Then she looked innocently back up at h mother. “Me and the dogs’ll race you to the corn of the fence.”

Joanna’s grammar-correcting reflex was automatic. “The dogs and
I  
will race
you,”
Joanna countered.

Jenny grinned up at her impishly. “Does that mean I get to drive?” she asked.

The nine-year-old humor was subtle. It took a moment for Joanna to realize she’d been had, that for the first time in months, Jennifer Ann Brady had actually cracked a joke. And then Joanna was grinning, too.

“Last one to the corner is a rotten egg,” she said, bounding into the Blazer and turning the key in the ignition. Jenny and the dogs took off running. Joanna let them win, but only just barely.

After passing them, Joanna glanced in the mirror. The last thing she saw as she drove away from High Lonesome Ranch was Jenny, standing on tip-toe by the corner of the fence and waving her heart out. Her long hair blew in blond streamers behind her, while the two dogs danced around her in crazy circles.

“She’s going to be all right,” Joanna marveled to herself as the Blazer jounced across the rutted track that led out to High Lonesome Road.

A couple of stray tears leaked out the corners of her eyes as she drove, but they were welcome tears—not at all the kind she had expected.

Maybe it was trying to drive two hundred miles on a full stomach. Maybe it was the warm autumn sun slanting in on her through the driver’s window. By the time Joanna had driven as far as Eloy, she could barely stay awake. She stopped at a truck stop for coffee break. Reaching for her purse, she caught sight of Juanita Grijalva’s envelope and carried it along into the coffee shop. As she slipped into a booth, she tore open the flap.

Sipping coffee, she shuffled through the stack of copied newspaper articles. Even though most of the articles were undated, as soon as she started reading them, the chronology of events was clear enough.

The first article was little more than three inches long. It reported that the partially clad, badly beaten body of an unidentified woman had been found in the desert a few miles south of Lake Pleasant. The grisly remains had been discovered by a group of high school students ditching school for an afternoon keg party. Officers from the Peoria Police Department were investigating.

The next article identified the murdered woman as Serena Maria Grijalva, formerly of Bisbee. At age twenty-four, she was the divorced mother of small children.

Joanna stopped short when she read Serena’s age. Twenty-four was very young to have a nine year-old daughter. Joanna herself had been eighteen years old when she got pregnant and nineteen when Jenny was born. Serena had been four whole years—four critical years—younger than that.

The article noted that Peoria Police Detective Carol Strong, primary investigator in the case, indicated that detectives were following up on several leads and that they expected a break soon.

The third article was longer—more of a feature story. Because it was situated at the top of the page, the date showed, and Joanna’s eye stopped there. September 20. The day of Andy’s funeral. No wonder that two months later, most of this was news to Joanna. That nightmare week in September she had been far too preoccupied with the tragedy in her own life to be aware of anyone else’s. Still, the realization that Serena and Andy had died within days of each other put a whole new perspective on the words she was reading.

When Serena Maria Grijalva left her children home alone last Wednesday night to go four blocks down the street to the WE-DO-YU-DO Washateria, she had every intention of coming right back with a grocery dart loaded with clean laundry. Instead, the twenty-four-year-old single mother was bludgeoned to death in a desert area a few miles north of Sun City.

The mother’s absence did not initially alarm the Grijalva children, nine-year-old Cecelia and six-year-old Pablo. Ever since moving to Phoenix from Bisbee several months earlier, they had been latch-key kids. That morning, when they awoke and discovered their mother wasn’t home, they dressed themselves, fixed breakfast, packed lunches, and went to school. And when they came home that afternoon and their mother still hadn’t returned, the y helped themselves to a simple dinner of microwaved hot dogs and refried beans.

Almost twenty hours after she left home, Serena Grijalva’s supervisor from the Desert View Nursing Home stopped by the house, checking to see why Serena hadn’t reported for work. Only then did the resourceful Grijalva children realize something was wrong.

A call from the nursing home brought the children’s maternal grandmother into the case. A missing person report from her filed with the Peoria Police Department resulted in authorities making the connection between the two abandoned children and an unidentified dead woman found earlier that afternoon in the desert north of Peoria.

Joanna found herself blinking back tears as she read. She was appalled at the idea of those two little kids being left on their own for such a long time. They had coped with an independence and resourcefulness that went far beyond their tender years, but they shouldn’t have had to, Joanna thought, turning back to the article.

The tragedy of the Grijalva children is only one shocking example of an increasingly widespread problem of the nineties—that of latchkey kids. Cute movies notwithstanding, children in this country, are routinely being left alone in shockingly large numbers.

Most children who are left to their own devices don’t go to luxury hotels and order room service. The houses they live in are often squalid and cold. There is little or no food available. They play with matches and die in fires. They play with guns and die of bullet wounds. They become involved in the gang scene because gang membership offers a sense of belonging that they don’t find at home.

Sometimes the parents are simply bad parents. In some cases the neglect is caused or made worse by parental addiction to drugs or alcohol. Increasingly, however, these children live in single-parent, households where the family budget will simply not stretch far enough to include suitable day care arrangements. Divorce is often a contributing factor.’

Although Serena Grijalva’s divorce from her forty-three-year-old husband was not yet final, Cecelia and Pablo Grijalva fall into that last category.

“Serena was determined to make it on her own,” says Madeline Bellerman, the attorney who helped Serena Grijalva obtain a restraining order against her estranged husband. “She had taken two jobs—one full-time and one part-time. She made enough so she didn’t have to take her kids and go home to her parents, but beyond food and rent there wasn’t room for much else. Regular day care was obviously well outside her budget.”

Serena’s two minor children have now been placed in the custody of their maternal grandparents, but what happened to them has forced the community to examine what options are available to parents who find themselves caught in similar circumstances. This is the first in a series of three articles that will address the issue of childcare for underemployed women in the Phoenix area. Where can they turn for help? What options are available to them?

“You want a refill?”

Joanna looked up. A waitress stood beside the booth, a steaming coffeepot poised over Joanna’s cup.

“Please.”

The waitress glanced curiously at the article on the table as she poured. “That was awful, waddn’t it, what happened to those two little kids? Whatever became of them anyway? Their father’s the one who did it, isn’t he?”

Joanna lifted the one page and glanced at the next one. EX-HUSBAND ARRESTED IN WIFE’S SLA the headline blared.

“See there?” the waitress said. “I told you.” She marched away from the table, and Joanna picked up the article.

Antonio Jorge Grijalva, age 43, was arrested today and booked into the Maricopa County Jail on an open charge of murder in connection with the  bludgeon slaying of his estranged wife two weeks ago. He surrendered without incident outside his place of employment in southeastern Arizona. Sources close to the investigation say Mr. Grijalva has been a person of interest in the case since the beginning.

Two City of Peoria police officers, Detectives Carol Strong and Mark Hansen, traveled over four hundred miles from Peoria to Paul Spur to make the arrest. The Cochise County Sheriff’s Department assisted in collaring the suspect, who was placed under arrest in the parking lot of a lime plant as he was leaving work.

Court records reveal that the slain woman had sworn out a no-contact order against her estranged husband four days before her disappearance and death. The fact that the suspect was not at work on the night in question and could not account for his whereabouts caused investigators to focus in on him very early in the investigation.

Mr. Jefferson Duffy, father of the slain victim, when contacted at his home in Wittmann, ex-pressed relief. “We’re glad to know he’s under lock and key. The wife and I have Serena’s two kids here with us. With Jorge on the loose like that, there was no telling what might happen next.”

“Hey, good-looking, you’re working too hard. I’d be glad to buy you a piece of pie to go with that coffee.”

Joanna heard the voice and looked up, not sure the words were intended for her. An overall-clad, cigarette-smoke-shrouded man was leering at her fro m the booth next to hers in a section reserved for professional truck drivers.