Donovans - Pearl Cove Part 3

"My wife lives in Kuala Lumpur."

"I don't care if she lives on Jupiter. I'm not in the market for a married lover. Nothing personal, Ian. It's just the way I am. It won't change. I value your friendship, but not enough to have this conversation every time we talk. Change the subject."

"b.l.o.o.d.y nun," Chang muttered under his breath.

"Yes."

Neither said another word until they were in the shade of the verandah. The storm had done little damage to the house: broken windows, ripped screens, one corner of the roof torn away, plants snapped off or whipped to rags by the wind. Small things, compared with death.

"Who replaced the windows?" Chang asked.

"Christian's brother-in-law is a glazier. Christian did all the screens. The verandah was a mess."

Chang's full mouth thinned. He didn't like the thought of the s.e.xy, shrewd, young Aussie hanging around Pearl Cove, even if he was living with the type of blonde most men only dreamed of getting their hands on. "Why didn't you call me?" Chang asked. "I would have sent workmen over."

"Thanks, but Christian was here when the storm hit."

"I suppose he fixed the roof, too."

"Tom did. Since he stopped diving, he's made himself invaluable as a handyman."

Chang tried to imagine the bent old j.a.panese man scrambling up a ladder and nailing tin sheeting in place. He shook his head. "Nakamori is too old for that kind of work."

"He's only sixty." What Hannah didn't say was that Chang was fifty-three. And Len had been forty-five. Too young to die.

"A sixty-year-old former diver is an old man." Chang looked at his watch. "I have ten minutes. Fifteen at most."

"Tea? Beer? Water?"

"Nothing."

Hannah rinsed off her dive gear, dumped it in a basket on the verandah, and waved Chang toward the wicker chairs. She went to her favorite place, a hammock chair suspended from a bolt in the slanting roof. The airy netting of the sling let a breeze swirl around her with every gentle push of her foot against the wooden floor. The verandah's new screening shimmered and rippled in the sun, making the world beyond look dreamy, unreal.

"All right, Ian. What does the Chang family want from me?"

"We're willing to a.s.sume Pearl Cove's debts."

"Any particular reason?"

"The usual."

"Which is?"

"Business," Chang said curtly.

"I see. What do I get out of this business?"

"A partner who can rebuild Pearl Cove."

"Partner." Hannah toed the floor and swung gently. If Chang knew she had a partner already, he wasn't letting on. She wondered if that made him more or less likely to be Len's killer.

"I give you fifty percent of Pearl Cove and you a.s.sume all debts, is that it?" she asked.

"Seventy-five percent."

The hammock chair paused in its swing. "We give up seventy-five percent?"

"There's no 'we' about it. Len is dead. Pearl Cove is just you, Sister McGarry."

"I'll think about your family's offer."

"Don't think too long."

"Is there a time limit?"

Abruptly Chang stood up. "Mother of G.o.d, you can't be that naive!"

For a time there was only the soft squeak of the hammock chair against the ceiling bolt as Hannah swung back and forth, back and forth.

"I guess I am that naive," she said finally. "Explain it to me."

"Do you really think Len died because of that cyclone?"

Every muscle tensed. She wanted to get up, to scream, to run Since it would be stupid to do any of those things, she did nothing at all.

"I could list Len's friends on one finger," Chang said bluntly. "I don't have enough hands to list his enemies. It's not only his charming personality I'm talking about. It's pearls and double crosses. He b.u.g.g.e.red one too many big players."

"How?"

"Don't waste my time. You're his wife."

"Yes. His wife. Not his business partner. I run the house, keep the payroll, collect rent from the workers who live on site, order equipment for the farming operations, and have the final say on color matching the harvest. That's it."

"What about the black pearls?"

"What about them? The 'big players' you mentioned know how to make silver-lipped oysters produce black-toned pearls or gold-toned or pink or all three in the same oyster. Members of the South Sea Consortium developed the technology. And they kept it to themselves. It has nothing to do with Pearl Cove."

"I'm not talking about the normal run of black pearls. I'm talking about the rainbows."

Stillness crept through Hannah's blood like ice forming on an autumn pond. Though no one was supposed to know about the extraordinary pearls, word had inevitably leaked out. Rumors thrived like termites in the emptiness of Western Australia. Yet no one had actually seen those special pearls, except Len and herself. And his killer. Len had died because he knew the secret of producing extraordinary black pearls. People a.s.sumed she knew the secret, too. But she didn't.

Her husband had trusted no one. He always opened the "experimental" oysters himself. And he was careful to have ordinary oysters in among the special ones, just to have some pearly junk to show the curious. He never would have told her about the rainbows at all if he hadn't needed her hyperacute color perception to find the best matches among the iridescent, seductively colorful black gems.

Despite all Len's care, despite his paranoia, in the past few years, some of the special black pearls had been stolen and found their way to the marketplace. Yet Len wouldn't share the secret of producing the black rainbows.

He had been killed for it. As soon as the murderer discovered that she knew nothing about producing them, her life would be worthless. She would be all that stood between the killer and ownership of Pearl Cove, home of the oysters that produced fabulous, unique black pearls.

"Rainbows?" she asked through stiff lips. "We've had some lovely peac.o.c.k blue "

"No," Chang cut in. "They're not the same."

"If your family is buying in to Pearl Cove for these so-called rainbows, you'll be disappointed. I don't have any for you." That, at least, was the truth. Most of the special pearls had been destroyed as unworthy. The rest had been kept in the vault.

And the vault lay like a cracked steel egg inside the ruined shed.

Chang watched her with clear black eyes and formidable intelligence. "Think about our offer."

"You don't believe me."

"I believe that the cyclone season is coming."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact. Sell Pearl Cove to the Changs. We're big enough to weather the coming storm. You aren't. Don't follow Len into the grave."

For a breath Hannah wished she owned all of Pearl Cove and could turn it over to the Changs. Then she would run. The Stone Age villages in the rain forests of Brazil had never looked so good to her. So safe.

But that was cowardice whispering seductively in her ear. She couldn't sell, had no money to run, and was d.a.m.ned if she would be again what she had been at nineteen a runaway stranded in a strange city with night coming on and no a.s.sets to sell but her newly unvirginal body.

"I can't sell Pearl Cove," she said evenly.

"You mean you won't."

"No. I mean I can't."

"Why?"

"Half of it belongs to Archer Donovan."

"What?" Chang demanded, too shocked to hide it.

"Archer Mr. Donovan was Len's silent partner."

"For how long?"

"Seven years."

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. No wonder Len is dead. He finally b.u.g.g.e.red the wrong man."

"What are you saying?"

Chang laughed curtly. "They don't come any more ruthless than Archer Donovan."

"I didn't think the Chang family would back up for anyone."

"A man who can tangle with the Red Phoenix Triad and come out on top deserves respect. Archer Donovan has it." Chang turned away. "I've got to make a call. This changes everything."

The screen door swung shut behind Chang. Moments later, red dust boiled, then settled in the wake of his car.

For a long time Hannah sat on the verandah in the hammock chair, unmoving but for the occasional prod of one foot against the floor. Back and forth. Back and forth.

She didn't doubt Chang's appraisal of Archer Donovan; she had been in a position to see just how ruthless he could be. But not with Len. Never with Len. Despite ample provocation, Archer had never acted against Len McGarry. Quite the opposite. He had saved Len's life, paid for his rehabilitation, and made him a partner in Pearl Cove. Then he did what Len had demanded: he got the h.e.l.l out of Len's life and stayed out.

She didn't know what the bond was between the two men. She only knew that it existed. Perhaps it extended beyond the grave. Perhaps Archer Donovan would care enough to do what no one else would find Len's murderer.

If revenge wasn't enough to move Archer, there was always money. Even the most ruthless man might be persuaded to search for Pearl Cove's vanished treasure if he was promised half of something that was worth three million dollars wholesale.

The Black Trinity.

Three.

With reflexes left over from the years he couldn't leave behind, Archer came from deep sleep to full wakefulness. Lean fingers s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from its cradle before he even looked at the clock.

Two a.m.

Visions of all that could have gone wrong with the family sleeted through his brain. Faith was first in his mind. The man she had just broken up with had knocked around his first wife and at least one of his girlfriends. The Donovan brothers had told Tony what to expect if he laid a hand on Faith, but Tony's memory wasn't reliable when he started drinking.

Archer looked at the display on the phone that gave incoming numbers. It was blank. That left out the family, and let in Uncle Sam.

s.h.i.t.

"What," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"Is this Archer Donovan?"

"Yes."

"This is-"

"Hannah McGarry," he interrupted, wondering if he was still asleep. That smoky voice of hers had haunted too many of his dreams.

"How did you know?"

"I have a good memory. What's wrong, Hannah?"

"Len's dead."

Archer didn't try to sort out the boil of emotions those two words brought him: disbelief, relief, guilt, anger, sadness for all that might have been. He didn't say anything about his own feelings. The tension in Hannah's voice told him that she had more to say, none of it good.

"When?" he asked.