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of Poppy. He knew that Greg was Hilliard’s father, but the old man had told him very little about Angel, except she was famous for her looks.
    Even at nine years old, Angel had been a beauty. She was small, with fine bones, her father’s enormous pale blue eyes and a cloud of softly curling blond hair. She was wearing a pink ruffled dress and held a tiny black dog with a matching pink ribbon, and she was smiling sweetly but confidently at the artist.
Angel and Trotty 1889
was inscribed at the base of the baroque gilt frame. Mike would have bet that Angel grew up to be a charmer; it was all there in the picture—the confidence in her beauty and in her position as daughter of the rich, landowning Konstants.
    Sixteen-year-old Greg was tall, dark-haired, and handsome, with his mother’s laughing brown eyes. He was a sturdy lad who had wanted his portrait painted outdoors so it could include his favorite horse. He was leaning on the paddock fence, holding a wide-brimmed Mexican riding hat in one hand, while the thumb of the other was linked jauntily through a leather belt with a chased-silver buckle, of which he was obviously proud. In the paddock behind him a beautiful chestnut gelding with a white blaze on his forehead grazed contentedly.
Greg with Vassily 1889
was the legend at the bottom of the matching gilt frame.
    Greg had a cheerful grin and that direct Konstant gaze, and Mike stared hard at the brother and sister, wondering what lay behind such confident facades, and whether life had lived up to their obvious expectations.
    He walked on through the shuttered dining room in search of a cold beer, into the original adobe part of the house, built by the Indians two hundred years ago. Now it was a gleaming, efficient kitchen, but the old open fireplace where an Indian servant had once cooked Nik Konstant’s meals still remained in the corner.
    Mike poked the glowing embers with his foot as he settled in an old high-backed rocker, a can of Miller in his hand. Despite the modern appliances, this room felt different. Sitting here, staring into the embers, he might have been living a century ago … with Nik and Rosalia, Greg and Angel.
And Poppy Mallory!
    Mike supposed he must have been dozing when the answer came to him … but of course, it was quite logical. He had been looking in the wrong place. What he was seeking would never befound in a library. Where else did every family store its discarded treasures and its secrets—but in the attics!
    “I wondered how long it’d be before you thought of the attic,” Hilliard said, grinning maliciously. “Nobody’s been up there for years, but anyway there’s only a load of old junk. If there’d been anything of value one of the Konstants would have sold it by now!”
    “I’m not looking for valuables, sir,” Mike protested. “I’m searching for information.”
    “Information? Bah … you’ll find nothing up there but a few old theater programs and dance cards—and a lot of moth-eaten clothes.” He relented suddenly. “Still, if you want to …”
    Hilliard was wrong—the clothes weren’t moth-eaten. But there were lots of them, all beautifully folded away between tissue paper in enormous old chests and steamer trunks, plastered with the labels of long-ago Atlantic liners and continental hotels. Mike rummaged through trunks of lace tea gowns and stiff silk afternoon dresses, sneezing as he shook out a cloak of golden brown otter skins that had once been soft and supple but was now dry and cracked, though the taffeta lining had kept its gay, scarlet color. There were evening dresses embroidered with glinting beads and dulled pearls, and a magnificent blue silk chiffon gown with the label WORTH, PARIS sewn inside.
    After a couple of hours he’d found nothing of any use and he slammed the last trunk shut exasperatedly. It was a collection worthy of a museum but it had got him no farther along the trail to Poppy Mallory.
    Brushing a thick coating of dust from the