“The real James Bigelow was just a little boy when he died,” Belinda says numbly as she reads the document at the same time I am reading it.

“Yes.”

“But how did he know about him?”

“I don’t know.” I keep at the task.

The next document is a marriage certificate between Annabeth Bigelow, apparently the older sister of the ill-fated James Bigelow, and a man named Percy Grover, who were wed on June 4, 1896, in Trinidad, Colorado. Next is Annabeth’s death certificate a year after her marriage to Mr. Grover, the result of a riding accident. When I flip this certificate over to look at the next item in the folio, my breath hitches in my throat, as does Belinda’s. There atop the rest of the documents is an unframed wedding portrait, small in size, but clearly of Martin and another woman. And it’s not Candace. I’ve seen Candace’s photograph. This begowned woman is plump and brown-haired and a bit older than Martin, I’d wager. I turn the photograph over. Someone has penciled in Annabeth Bigelow and Percy Grover—June 4, 1896.

“Good Lord,” I whisper. Martin is not only masquerading as dead James Bigelow; he married under the name Percy Grover, too. It is falling into place now as I stare at a younger Martin in a wedding suit. I turn to Belinda. “That cattle ranch wasn’t his father’s like he told you, nor did it belong to a kindhearted rancher who gave him a job like he told me. The ranch was his father-in-law’s. And then his wife’s. Martin inherited it when this Annabeth died in a riding accident.”

When I say this last bit, a cold thought prickles inside my head.

“She’s a rancher’s daughter and she died in a riding accident?” I mumble, and I should’ve left the thought unsaid. Belinda falters next to me. I grab the chair I’d pushed aside and pull it to her.

“Sit down.” She doesn’t argue with me.

“You can’t be thinking he killed her?” Belinda says with a gasp, her eyes glittering with fear and dread.

I suddenly remember Kat was hovering at the doorway when I began working on the lock. I glance up and relief pours through me. She has wandered off, thank heaven, apparently having gotten bored with my efforts to pick the lock.

“We don’t need to be wondering about that right now,” I say. “Forget I said it.”

And she nods, wide-eyed. But we both now know Martin is a coldhearted liar who can’t be trusted. Everything in this drawer tells us we know that much.

I turn back to the folio, which seems to me now to be a grand collection of Martin’s accomplishments as much as important personal records, or why else would he keep them all? I want to find Candace’s death certificate; Candace, that young woman whose parents had enrolled her in a prestigious riding school where she met Martin Hocking. I want to see the cause of death as consumption. Martin could not have killed Candace outright to get an inheritance from her, not if she died of consumption. I need to know her disease killed her and only her disease so that I’ll know if Belinda, Kat, and I must run from this house this very night and report Martin to the police.