Cayo Largo is a small Cuban island that serves as a recurring point of contact in the story: Loïc and Laurence return there to escape winter, while Rodrigo Lerbier once searched the island for the vanished Aurelio. The place connects a quiet holiday setting with the unsettled history of the missing cameo and the people drawn into its disappearance.

Setting and Earlier Search

Aurelio was born on the nearby Isla de la Juventud and, before taking a job at a hotel in Varadero, appears to have worked with his parents on Cayo Largo. After the cameo vanished, Rodrigo noticed that Aurelio had also disappeared from the Havana temple where he was training as a Yoruba officiant. Rodrigo questioned people in the religious community and elsewhere, then went to Cayo Largo under the pretext of meeting another officiant he knew. The visit produced no answer about Aurelio’s whereabouts.

Loïc and Laurence’s Return

In February 2015, Loïc and Laurence had again fled winter for Cuba, choosing Cayo Largo for their stay. Rodrigo had been told they were coming. The day after their arrival, he appeared suddenly in the dining room of the El Pelicano resort complex while the couple were having breakfast. He wore neither his customary babalao clothing nor an ordinary unobscured expression: an opaque black monocle covered one eye, giving him the look of a one-eyed pirate.

The Cameo’s Unfinished Trail

Rodrigo went straight to Loïc and asked to meet that evening at the couple’s apartment, saying that he had something important to tell him about the cameo. He proposed eight o’clock, then left as furtively as he had arrived. Against the background of Rodrigo’s earlier failed search for Aurelio on the island, this abrupt approach makes Cayo Largo more than a holiday refuge: it is where the pursuit of the missing man and the continuing mystery of the cameo converge.