As Laurent and Angélica called out numbers, I took advantage of the distraction and, making sure no one was watching, I stepped away from the group at the same time a woman yelled: “Bingo!”

I darted up the stairs, glancing behind me every few minutes, and headed straight to Angélica’s bedroom. Hopefully, she didn’t lock her door.

Drying my sweaty hands on my trousers, I turned the knob.

My sister’s chamber consisted of two rooms: a sitting area and a sleeping area. I felt a little stupid standing there, not knowing where to look, playing detective. What could I possibly find here to tie my sister to Franco?

“Quiere cacao, quiere cacao.”

¡Mierda!

Ramona flew toward me. I ducked.

“Quiere cacao, quiere cacao.”

“Shhh,” I told her, but she kept repeating the same mantra.

Before anyone else could hear her, I headed for one of the night tables and opened the top drawer. There didn’t seem to be anything remotely incriminating unless you considered a French-Spanish dictionary and a jewelry box suspicious. Inside the second drawer was a pile of letters wrapped in a red ribbon. Upon inspection, there seemed to be letters to Angélica from different men. Admirers? I thought it strange that she would keep letters from other men in close proximity to her husband.

There didn’t seem to be any correspondence from Franco, at least not in the letters I checked. Underneath all the envelopes was a photograph of a little girl, her face vaguely familiar though I couldn’t pinpoint why. I was only certain that this wasn’t Angélica or Catalina because both of my sisters’ coloring was much lighter than this child’s. The girl, who couldn’t have been older than ten, stared at the camera with a hardened expression, as though she couldn’t stand the thought of having her picture taken. But there was more than anger here. Her expression revealed pain, too, as if she’d been crying minutes before the picture was taken. Her hair was fixed in two stiff braids and she wore a sailor dress she had outgrown.

As I circled the bed toward the other table, I noticed a glass box sitting under the window. A rectangular, large cage. A slight tremor took over my legs. I slowly made my way to the cage. Curled on the bottom, behind a large rock, was the red, black, and white snake I’d seen in my room. Ramona became more agitated. She flew over my head. This time she was saying something else, some kind of warning, but I couldn’t understand her.

My hands turned sweaty.

Why would Angélica keep a snake in her room? Even worse, why was her venomous snake in my bed the other night? It would be too much of a coincidence that it had escaped its properly secured cage and found its way next to me, wouldn’t it?