He turned his eyes to the filmy curtains and beyond, to the beautiful, brutal tropic world that surrounded the house. Sky and land, heaven and h.e.l.l combined, waiting just beyond the verandah"s silvery screens.
And silence behind him.
"Were you alone when you found him?" Archer asked curtly.
Hannah jumped, licked her dry lips, and took another drink of tea. "Coco was with me. The others were searching the mangrove side of the headland."
"Coco?"
"Colette Dupres. She"s worked here for years."
"Doing what?"
"She"s our best technician. The oysters she seeds have a seventy percent better survival rate and more spherical pearls than anyone"s except Tom Nakamori."
"A great a.s.set."
"Great a.s.s, period," Hannah said without thinking.
Archer"s left eyebrow rose in surprise or amus.e.m.e.nt, Hannah couldn"t tell which. Then she replayed her own words in her mind, hearing them as he must have. She would have laughed if she had the energy. But she didn"t. Archer was going to get the truth from her, without any frills or civilized flourishes. She simply didn"t have the strength to be polite, much less coy.
"What did Coco think when she saw the oyster sh.e.l.l in Len"s chest?" Archer asked.
"She flinched. Then she laughed."
"Nerves?" He knew that violent death affected people in many ways. Hysterical laughter was one of them. Throwing up your toenails was another.
"I don"t know," Hannah said. " She kept on saying, "Perfect. So f.u.c.king perfect. Done off by the sh.e.l.l he worships.""
"Done off?"
"French is Coco"s native language. She still has trouble with English, especially when she"s upset. She meant done in.
Killed."
"Killed or murdered? There"s a difference."
"The police say Len was killed."
"But you don"t."
"No, I don"t." She tensed, waiting for him to ask why. He didn"t, which surprised her into relaxing just a bit.
"How long had Len been dead when you found him?" Archer asked, keeping his opinion on murder to himself. He would have to examine Len"s body before he decided whether Hannah was smart or paranoid.
"I don"t know."
"Who does?"
"You could try the Territorial Police in Broome, but it"s a waste of time. They"re understaffed, overworked, and had their own cyclone problems to deal with."
"Where is Len"s body?"
Hannah drew a shaky breath. "In Broome. The cremation is set for tomorrow. Early."
Archer glanced at his watch. He would have to move quickly if he wanted to see Len. "Do you miss him?"
He shouldn"t have asked. He had no right to the answer. But it was too late to call back the words.
Abruptly Hannah laughed, then pressed her hands over her mouth to push the laughter back down. It was impossible. The thought of missing what Len had become was so horrifyingly absurd it was hysterical.
Archer watched Hannah struggle with her composure, watched her lose, and felt a chill in his gut as her laughter rose and rose, only to crash into sudden silence. Len, what did you do to your innocent, missionary-raised wife?
But that was the one question Archer wouldn"t ask Hannah. He had no right to the answer. He was part of whatever had happened to her.
"I mourn the man I thought I married," she managed finally, breath breaking. "I mourn the man who could laugh. But that man died seven years ago. I"m through mourning him. The man who took his place, I can"t mourn. He taught me too well."
"What do you mean?"
"Len came to hate me as much as he loved pearls, and he loved pearls more than my parents loved G.o.d. Len taught me not to love him, not to like him, not to care about him at all." She looked up at Archer with eyes that were as bleak as his own. "If that shocks you, I"m sorry."
"It doesn"t. I knew Len better than you did." Archer wanted to ask why Hannah had stayed with Len, but he had no right to that answer, either. It had nothing to do with Len"s death. And that was the only reason Archer was here: his half brother"s death.
If he told himself that often enough, maybe the message would sink through his skull all the way to his crotch.
"Why do you think someone killed Len?" Archer asked.
"Pearls," she said simply.
"Greed?"
"Greed. Money. Power." Hannah closed her eyes. "Maybe he was killed because someone could, so someone did."
"Who do you think killed him?"
Hannah went still. It was a question she had asked herself over and over again. She had no answer but the one she gave Archer. "I"m only sure of two things. I didn"t kill him. You didn"t kill him. After that, there"s a whole b.l.o.o.d.y world of people who hated Len."
"What makes you think I didn"t kill him?"
"You had no reason."
Archer looked at her short, sun-streaked hair, spiked by careless combing and shining like a dream. Her lashes were long, thick, the color of bittersweet chocolate, and her eyes were an indescribable color from the dark end of the rainbow. Her lips were too pale, too tight, yet nothing could hide the promise of sensuality in their full curves. As for the rest... she was long, slender but for her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, even more elegant than his memories.
If he had known how it was going to turn out, he would have fought Len McGarry ten years ago and let h.e.l.l take the leftovers. But Hannah had watched Len with worshipful eyes, and Archer had told himself that she was what Len needed, that her lush, sweet innocence would heal the breaks in his half brother"s soul.
Remembering his own naivete, Archer smiled. The curve of his lips was about as comforting as a scythe. No reason to kill Len? "You have no idea how wrong you are, Hannah."
Her breath stuck in her throat at what she saw in his face. At that moment he reminded her chillingly of Len. Dangerous. Distant. Ruthless.
"But in one thing you"re right," Archer said. "I didn"t kill Len. Where were you when he died, Mrs. McGarry?"
She met his eyes straight on, as controlled and remote as he was. "I didn"t kill Len."
"You had a better motive than most."
"If I wanted his death on my conscience, all I had to do was walk out on him."
"What does that mean?"
"Hating me kept him alive. Loving pearls almost kept him sane."
"Almost," Archer repeated softly, understanding much of what Hannah didn"t say. Even ten years ago, Len had gone off on rages of laughter or drinking or s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g. Or mayhem. "Yet you stayed with him. You"re either very brave or very stupid, Hannah."
"I"m neither. Life happens one day at a time, like water dripping on stone. You don"t notice the change except over years." She rubbed her aching eyes. "As for the rest, no one deserves all the good or the bad that comes their way. You just take it the way it comes, one day at a time."
"Echoes of a missionary upbringing?"
She shrugged and stuffed a slippery piece of hair behind her ear. "I no longer thank G.o.d for the good that happens or blame my inborn evil for the bad. I just..." Her voice faded.
"Survive," Archer finished.
"Yes. What else is there?"
"Everything."
"For some people, perhaps. Not for me."
There was no self-pity in Hannah"s voice, no anger. She accepted, and from that acceptance she drew the strength to survive. It hadn"t always been that way. Len had very nearly destroyed her.
"What do you want from life?" Archer asked before he could think better of it.
"What I"ve earned: the Black Trinity. But to find it, I we will have to find Len"s murderer. Whoever killed him took the pearls. If you help me find what has been lost, I"ll give you half of whatever we get for it."
Hearing all that Hannah hadn"t said in the tension of her voice, Archer wondered who else knew about the pearls, who had killed to take them, and who would kill again to keep them.
She rose, gathered plates, and took them to the sink. When she turned, he was watching her, waiting.
"What"s the Black Trinity?" he asked.
"An unstrung triple-strand necklace of black pearls. The whole necklace is worth three million American, wholesale."
Archer whistled softly through his teeth. "Three million?
That would be some necklace. Especially since the Aussies took the steam out of the Tahitian black pearl market when they learned how to make Australia"s huge silver-lipped oysters produce big black pearls."
"The Black Trinity is worth at least three million," Hannah said evenly. "The smallest strand is twenty inches long, with twelve-millimeter pearls. The middle strand is twenty-two inches, with fourteen-millimeter pearls. The longest strand is twenty-four inches, with sixteen-millimeter pearls. All of the black pearls are round and color-matched within and across their strand."
"l.u.s.ter?"
"Superb. The pearls have a surface that is as close to flawless as nature gets. If nature doesn"t provide it, I try."
"You"re a pearl doctor?" he asked, surprised. Softly, softly, sanding a pearl down through layer after layer of nacre in the hope of finding a less flawed surface was like rolling dice with the devil. When you lost, you lost it all. It took guts and confidence to peel a pearl as patiently as the oyster had created it in the first place.
"If the stakes are high enough, I doctor pearls," Hannah said. "It"s rather like sculpting. You remove whatever gets in the way of the vision. Sometimes your vision is clear and you end up with something beautiful. Sometimes you end up with a pile of sawdust."
Soapy sponge in hand, she began washing the lunch dishes. The food had helped her physically. Her hands were much more sure. Not that it mattered. Her dishes were the high-tech kind that could be shot from a canon without taking a scratch.
Archer watched, thinking about Len and pearls, greed and obsession, cruelty and accident. Len had loved pearls, but only one kind of pearl had obsessed him enough to make him take crazy risks. "What shade of black?"
For the first time Hannah hesitated. Once she told him, she wasn"t certain she would be able to trust him. But she didn"t really have any choice. If she went after the murderer alone, she would end up like Len, facedown in the warm, pitiless sea.
"The Black Trinity"s pearls are every color of the rainbow, all at once," she said flatly. "Red, green, blue, gold, all of it gleaming under a clear black surface, like liquid gemstones under black ice."
"So he did succeed. I a.s.sumed he had, but I never saw the proof of it."
Swiftly Hannah turned toward Archer. Her eyes were wary. She was very much afraid that she had just invited the wolf to dine with, and possibly on, the lamb. "You knew about the black rainbows?"
"I knew Len found an extraordinary pearl in Kowloon. I knew he was determined to discover where it came from, no matter who got hurt. I a.s.sumed he had found what he wanted, put it to work, and kept the results to himself. It would be like him."
Breath trickled out of her lungs in a hidden sigh. "Len found out where that first black rainbow came from. Then he found out how to culture more."
"No surprise there," Archer said. "Len could have pried secrets out of the Sphinx."
The casual tone of Archer"s voice disarmed Hannah. "Do you want to know the secret?" she asked, curious.
"What will it cost me?"
Oddly, his answer rea.s.sured her. She had seen enough envy, enough obsession to possess, enough plain greed, to recognize their presence at a glance. Archer was interested, but he wasn"t avid.
Even so, she hesitated. It was one thing to know your life was at risk. It was another to simply hand over the means of your own destruction.
"It won"t cost you a cent," Hannah said, her voice low. "I don"t know the secret of producing the rainbow pearls." She took a broken breath, let it go. "And if the vultures circling around Pearl Cove discover my ignorance, I suspect that my life won"t be worth a handful of broken sh.e.l.l."
This time Archer couldn"t resist offering some comfort, however small. Gently he put his right hand on her cheek. Her skin was cool, too cool. On some cellular level, Hannah was running on empty. But there was nothing he could do about that right now.
He had an urgent appointment with a dead man.
"Can you stay awake for a few more hours?" he asked.
She shivered and raised her chin. "Of course. The children will help."
"Children?"
"When I have time, I teach English to some of the workers" children."
He almost smiled. For a few hours, kids would be as good as an armed bodyguard protecting Hannah. "I"ll leave when the kids get here and I"ll be back as soon as I can."
"Where are you going?"