“They think it’s me,” Tash murmured.

“Un fantasma,” the bartender managed to say.

“No,” Coltrane said hurriedly in Spanish. “Not a ghost. My friend is the granddaughter of the woman in the photographs.”

“¿La nieta?”

“Sí,” Coltrane said. “De Rebecca Chance.”

“¿Señorita?” a frail voice asked.

They looked toward a stoop-shouldered, white-haired, white-bearded man in the doorway. Unlike the Indians in the village, he had a broader facial structure – of Spanish descent.

“¿Quién es usted?” Who are you? The old man seemed afraid to ask.

“Mi nombre es Natasha Adler.”

“La nieta,” the bartender said. The granddaughter.

The old man stepped uneasily closer. Behind him, a crowd had gathered beneath the portal.

“¿Es verdad?” The old man paused before Tash, studying her. Is it true?

“Sí.”

“Después de tanto tiempo.” After so much time. The old man continued in Spanish: “You must speak with Esmeralda.”

The name jolted into Coltrane’s memory. Esmeralda had been the first name of the woman whom Tash’s mother had said was Tash’s grandmother. But she couldn’t be. Rebecca Chance was Tash’s grandmother.

“Esmeralda Gutiérrez?”

“Sí. Mi esposa,” the old man said. My wife.

8

A SPLENDID FLOWER GARDEN SEPARATED THE SMALL COTTAGE from the rain forest. Sitting in chairs made of woven branches, with glazed cups of papaya juice on a table in front of them, Coltrane and Tash peered mystified toward a wizened, cinnamon-skinned, white-haired woman, who kept staring at Tash, shaking her head, and fingering her rosary.

“You look exactly like her,” the old woman, Esmeralda, said in Spanish, pointing toward faded photographs of Rebecca Chance that her husband had brought from the house.

“My mother claimed that you were my grandmother,” Tash replied in Spanish.

“No,” Esmeralda said, “although I did take care of your mother.”

How old must she be? Coltrane wondered in dismay. In her eighties?

“Especially afterward.”

“Afterward?”

“After your grandmother’s death.” Esmeralda’s voice was whispery with age. Coltrane had to lean forward to hear what she said.

“Then why did my mother lie to me?”

“Why does anyone lie? To avoid the truth.”

“Do you know the truth?”

The old woman nodded. “I regret so.”

“Drink,” Esmeralda’s husband said. “This talking will make you thirsty.”

Esmeralda dropped her rosary into her lap and used both hands, slightly atremble, to raise her cup of juice to her wrinkled lips, then set it back down. “Why have you come here?”

“Because of a man named Randolph Packard.”

The old woman grimaced.

“You know of him?”

“Too well. If he sent you here-”

“No. He died recently.”

Esmeralda’s aged eyes narrowed. “Randolph Packard is dead?”

“A few months ago.”

“Then the world is a better place, but I pity the poor souls in hell.”

“I inherited some property from him. We think it’s the estate on top of the cliff to the south of the village.”

“Burn it.”

“What?”

“Destroy it. It can only bring you harm.”

“What are you talking about?”

The old woman shook her head in distress.

“Tell them,” the old man said. “It was so long ago. If Randolph Packard is truly dead, you no longer have anything to fear.” He looked at Tash and Coltrane for confirmation.

“I saw his ashes sprinkled into the ocean,” Coltrane said.

Her hands more unsteady, the elderly woman again raised the earth-colored cup to her lips, drinking, then slowly setting it down.

9

WHEN SHE WAS SEVENTEEN, she said, the village was so isolated that Acapulco was a three-day trek along a snake-infested trail through the rain forest. Outsiders were unheard of. Then the first stranger she had ever met – and the first gringo – sailed into the harbor.

“He was amazingly tall. His leanness emphasized his height. But what I noticed most were his oddly handsome face, his shock of black hair, and his eyes, which never stopped searching.”

“Randolph Packard,” Coltrane said.

Esmeralda nodded. “He told us that he planned to live near the village, that he wanted to be a good neighbor, that he had brought us gifts of clothing, tools, and medicines. He would pay us generously to work for him, he said. So the corruption began. Each year after the rainy season, he returned. In the meantime, we built his estate up there, tended his gardens, kept everything clean and in repair, flowers in vases, fresh linen on the beds, ready on a moment’s notice for when the sails of his sleek boat would reappear, approaching the harbor. We grew dependent on him. If he was late, we worried that he might not come at all. Without the money, goods, and medicines he brought, we knew we would suffer.”

One year, Packard didn’t come alone. He brought many other boats and an army of gringos who unloaded electrical generators, cameras, lights, sound equipment, sets, tents, an invasion of movie equipment that the locals knew nothing about and that caused chaos within the village. Along with the invasion came more money and luxuries than they had ever seen. The corruption worsened. Esmeralda hated all of it. With one exception – an actress, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, to whom she was assigned as a maid.

Esmeralda’s wrinkled gaze lingered on the face in the yellowed photographs on the table. She redirected it toward Tash, reverential, as if Rebecca Chance sat before her.

It soon became clear, she said, that the reason Packard had brought the movie company to the village was to ingratiate himself with Rebecca, to put her in debt to him for going to such extremes to advance her career. At the same time, it also became clear that Packard had a rival for Rebecca’s affections – the film’s producer, Winston Case.

The name brought Coltrane and Tash to greater attention.

Esmeralda learned about Rebecca’s situation because the actress, who spoke Spanish, confided in her. Winston Case had produced Rebecca’s previous three films. They had formed a close professional and personal relationship. Knowing her struggle to rise within the film industry, he had even given her a house that he owned in Los Angeles. She was indebted to him. But at the same time she was attracted to Randolph Packard, whom she had met one day when she discovered him photographing her house. A conversation had led to a dinner, then other dinners, then weekend outings. His flamboyance and wit had been irresistible.

Esmeralda felt helpless, watching the two men vie for Rebecca’s attentions, seeing how Rebecca was torn between them. But Esmeralda wasn’t the only one who noticed, for the film crew and the actors soon realized that their work was secondary to the greater drama developing behind the scenes. Several times, Winston Case and Randolph Packard exchanged angry words in front of the company. Packard wanted to take photographs of her whenever she wasn’t working. Winston Case wanted her to spend every evening with him. Their persistence so wore her down that she finally demanded that they both leave her alone, and there the matter remained when the film was finished and the cast and crew returned to Los Angeles, including Rebecca, who accompanied Winston Case, while Packard followed her.

“I never expected to see Rebecca again,” Esmeralda said, “but the boat came back in less than a year, Rebecca and Packard, no one else. To my delight, I was asked to be Rebecca’s maid again, but my delight became worry when Rebecca told me that she had not come willingly, that Packard had invited her onto his boat for a weekend cruise and then had kept sailing, refusing to let her off. Escape through the snake-infested jungle was out of the question. But Rebecca vowed to get away and prayed for someone else’s boat to enter the harbor.”