The Wild West Californio days have returned with a vengeance in this confounding, present-day mystery!

Our teen detectives return home to Las Palmitas, California, from solving a mystery abroad. Their neighbor, Señor Antonio Del Castillo, owner of one of the original Spanish land grant ranchos from the Alta California days (1769 – 1850), hires them to find his family’s stolen heirloom—a solid-gold, watermelon tourmaline-studded tiara! Soon, a vicious highway bandit claiming to be El Lobo, who brought tragedy to the rancho two centuries earlier, stakes a cryptic letter and an encoded poem to the señor’s front door with a wicked signature dagger! Is history repeating? The sleuths are roped into a case like no other, filled with false leads, inconsistencies, treachery, danger, heartache but hope, and valuable life lessons. Prepare for rattlesnakes, real cliffhangers, and dead ends!