Dark, stringy hair framed a thin but flabby face. Sunken cheeks and puffy addict eyes said her life had been ravaged by bad decisions. But lurking behind all that was the delicate bone structure and symmetry of a woman born pretty, and if I looked hard enough I could see Tiara’s lineage.

Or maybe I was looking too hard.

Maude Grundy’s birth date made her fifteen years older than Tiara.

I said, “She could be an older sister.”

“Could be but isn’t. Darrell found Tiara’s birth certificate. St. Vincent hospital, the main one in Santa Fe. Daddy unknown, Mommy the minor known as. Recommendations were made for adoption but it never happened. Nothing like pedigree, huh? On all Maude’s arrest forms, she listed an address in Española, which is a working-class town thirty miles out of Santa Fe. Darrell traced and it used to be a trailer park, is now a Walmart. Tiara may have avoided conviction but Maude wasn’t so lucky, has a whole bunch, some jail time, but no prison. Check kiting, dope, shoplifting, and, big shock, getting picked up on streetwalker stings.”

He took the paper back and stood.

I said, “Where to?”

“Hey, I’ve got secrets of my own.”

“Oh, boy.”

He slapped my back. “Nah, I’m lying. No confidentiality in my business. I learn nasty secrets, someone’s life changes big-time. C’mon, let’s go mommy hunting.”

One long stride propelled him out of the tiny office. He whistled his way up the hall.

“Maude lives in L.A.?”

“Pico near Hoover. No driver’s license but last year she got pulled in for shoplifting downtown. Trying to boost crapola from one of those stalls the Central Americans set up in the old theaters on Broadway. She pled to petty-t, got a thirty-day at County, was out in ten due to overcrowding. I couldn’t find any landline or cellular account and she doesn’t pay taxes, but I might as well give it a try. No matter what she is, she deserves to know.”

I said, “Tiara lives large on Mark Suss’s dough but Mommy holes up in the inner city.”

“Maybe the kid didn’t appreciate her pedigree.”

The address matched a decrepit, four-story, hundred-year-old apartment building neighbored by similar masterpieces and besmirched by gang graffiti: Stompy, Topo, and Sleepy celebrating some kind of victory in greasy black Olde English lettering.

Rusting fire escapes ended raggedly in the middle of the second story. A lot of the windows were boarded with plywood and the ones that weren’t were dark. No external mailboxes; anything out in the open would stay unmolested for an eyeblink.