Martin entered the drying shed. It was made out of caña and so bright inside—it had a skylight ceiling—and the floor was covered with cacao beans, which had now acquired that rich brown color I was so familiar with.

“The beans dry here for three or four days if it’s sunny, a little longer if it’s cool.”

He strode up and down the shed with a rake to shuffle the beans from corner to corner. I may have to give this man a drink for him to start talking. As I stepped inside, I inhaled the beans and their scent made me falter. They brought back a memory—aboard the ship. It was the smell of the man who’d killed Cristóbal.

I held on to a wooden pole.

“Are you all right?” Martin asked me.

“Yes, yes. I was just thinking about the house we saw yesterday. The one that had been set on fire. You said that the son had survived. Did he work here?”

“Yes, why? Why are you so interested in him?”

I hesitated. “Well, I saw a man with a scar like the one you mentioned on the ship we took in Cuba.”

I examined his reaction. Martin’s jaw tightened. Had he sent him there to kill me?

“It must be a coincidence,” he said.

“Why? Is the man still here?”

“No, he left a while ago, but he wouldn’t have the means to go on a trip to Cuba. Or a purpose.”

No purpose? Ha! A crooked, evil one, thank you very much.

“Why did he leave the plantation?” I asked.

“I don’t know. After the accident, well, he and his mother moved to Vinces. We haven’t seen much of them since.”

“Is his mother still there?”

Martin shrugged. “I suppose.”

I wanted to know their names badly, but it would be too suspicious if I asked, wouldn’t it?

A clatter of hooves warned us that a horse was coming. I peeked outside the storehouse. A man in a white two-piece suit and a boater hat stopped by the entrance. Behind me, Martin groaned.

The man on the horse clapped.

“Martin Sabater! Come out so I can see you!”

“What the hell do you want?”

The dozen workers surrounding the area stopped whatever they were doing to watch.

The man on the horse flashed a piece of paper. “Doña Angélica is suing me? She lent ears to her father’s nonsense?”

“I have nothing to do with this, Del Río. Talk to her!”

“Of course you have something to do with it. You run this damned plantation!”

“Doña Angélica has never asked anyone’s permission to do anything. You should know that better than anyone.”

“Oh, shut up, Sabater.” He looked so arrogant with his chin slightly tilted up and his trim mustache. “If you don’t have any answers, then I shall go talk to her myself.”