Clifford's Ghost: An Art Mystery

Chance brings together an unlikely pair: Xavier Escudero, a young, gay Puerto Rican from Spanish Harlem, and Emeline Hughes, older widow from Manhattan's chic Upper East Side. Drawn into the death of a Seventh-Avenue fashion designer, then the theft of a 9th-century Chinese statue, they come face-to-face with questions about a 17th-century painting, "The Duke of Abrantes." And a question more troubling: Was the recent death of Emeline's husband really an accident?. Before the hammer falls at an auction in Barcelona they must contemplate--besides art, its price and value--what's authentic, what's fake, family histories, and the possibility of change.