The Rich Shall Inherit Read Online Free PDF

immediately. It was eleven-thirty and already the lunchtime crowd was pouring in, mainly men in business suits, jackets off and ties loosened, drinking coffee and talking deals. This was Hollywood and Lauren thought that most of them looked like agents or lawyers—or smart car salesmen.
    She carried out her duties, serving efficiently and with a smile until two-thirty, when at last the crowd began to thin again. With a sigh of relief she began to tidy up her tables, arranging napkins and paper place mats neatly and setting the card with the day’s specials in the exact center. Picking up a discarded copy of the L.A.
Times
from the red plastic banquette, she tucked it under her arm. It would save her twenty-five cents, and she could read it later.
    The day seemed even longer than usual and at four o’clock, when she finally left to pick up Maria, she felt exhausted. She would just have time to shower and give the baby her supper, then bathe her and play with her for a little while, before beginning her evening job as a cocktail waitress at a Valley nitery.
    It wasn’t until much later when she’d finished her shift atTeddy’s Barn for Night Owls and returned home sometime after two a.m. that Lauren finally had time to herself. She paid the baby-sitter, checked Maria and changed her, and then climbed into a washed-out nightshirt and poured herself a large glass of cold milk. With a great sigh of relief she propped her feet on a chair and unfolded the newspaper.
    She was in the middle of a giant bite of the almost-cold slice of pizza she’d picked up for her supper on the way home, when she noticed the black-bordered ad.
Search for an Heiress
… What magic words, Lauren thought wistfully, surely everyone wanted to be an heiress! She scanned the rest of the ad quickly and then sat back, a puzzled frown between her brows. Her own middle name was Mallory—Lauren
Mallory
Hunter. Her heart beat faster as she remembered that her mother had always said it was a family name … but more than that, she felt sure that sometime, somewhere in the vague past, she had heard about
Poppy Mallory.

CHAPTER 3
    Mike walked slowly through aisles in the County Records Office inspecting the high wooden shelves filled with oversize leather-bound books, each numbered by a year. There was just a single slender book for the year 1880, and those for the earlier years were even thinner—a reminder of how recently the area around Santa Barbara had been settled. Dust bounced from the brittle, yellowed pages, floating in the beam of sunlight that penetrated the high window as he leafed through the volume until he found the entry. It was written in spidery old-fashioned script, faded to a mocha brown.
    Record of birth of a child: June 15, 1880

Sex: female

Name: Poppy Mallory

Mother: Margaret Mallory (nee James) Age 33

Father: Jeb Mallory, rancher and gentleman of this county. Age 54
    Place of birth: The Mallory House, The Rancho Santa Vittoria,
    Lompoc County.
    He leaned back in his chair with a pleased sigh. At least now he knew where Poppy had been born, and where she had died—and the names of her parents. He flipped the pages of the record book, scanning the previous entry idly.
    Record of birth of a child: June 1, 1880

Sex: female

Name: Angel Irina Ampara Konstant

Mother: Rosalia Konstant (nee Abrego) Age 35

Father: Nik Konstant, rancher and gentleman of this county. Age 42

Place of birth: The Konstant House, The Rancho Santa Vittoria,
    Lompoc County
    He turned back the page, checking …. Yes, he’d read it correctly. There were
two
girl children, born within a few weeks of each other and living on the same ranch. Then surely the families must have been close; the children would have played together, maybe they’d gone to school together, as young girls they might have shared the pain and joy of growing up, shared their secrets …
    With a triumphant thud Mike slammed the book shut and replaced it on the shelf. Quite by