Pearl Cove

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Mind?” Becky laughed in disbelief. “You’ve accomplished more in a few minutes than any of us have in hours.”

  “You had already done the initial sort on that lot,” Hannah pointed out.

  “Don’t bother to be modest,” Becky retorted. “I’ll bet you could have done the first sort buck naked and standing on your head.”

  “I’ve never tried it that way.” Hannah smiled as she added, “Standing on my head, that is.”

  Fred laughed and his brown eyes glinted with a wicked male light.

  Archer swallowed hard. The thought of watching her naked in a room full of pearls made heat settle heavily in the pit of his stomach. The smooth texture of her skin would rival that of the pearls. The flush of passion would be more beautiful than any pearly luster . . . and her sleek heat would be a delicious contrast to the cool heaviness of pearls.

  “But it’s too cold to work naked here,” she added, “so I’ll do it the hard way.”

  She turned to the next table, where groups of pearls were spread out flat. With amazing speed she moved pearls around in the first group, following clues only she could see. Very quickly she divided the group into two piles. The first she simply pushed aside and didn’t look at again.

  “Do you have more trays or should I use the one on the other table?” she asked without looking away from the pearls.

  “We have more,” Becky said.

  “Coming up,” Fred said.

  Nodding vaguely, Hannah moved on to another unsorted pile. When the trays appeared at her elbow, she put them to use without a word. The only sound in the room was her soft humming. The tunes were a mixture of Australian folk songs and the hymns she had been raised with. Though the speed of the music varied, her concentration didn’t.

  Archer watched every move she made. He was fascinated by her skill, her quickness, her agile fingers. He considered himself a good pearl sorter, but she was better. Much better. Even in Mikimoto’s huge sorting rooms, he had never seen anyone work with her speed and precision. No wonder Len had demanded that she match the Black Trinity for him.

  Rows of pearls formed with dazzling speed on the sorting trays. Once the gems were lined up, the subtle color variations that separated one line from the next became more obvious. Sometimes it was simply a matter of surface perfection. Most often the differences lay in the orient, beyond man’s ability to touch or change. Orient was the soul of the pearl, the mystery of it, and the primal magic; the god seed that mankind had worshiped for thousands of years.

  Hannah looked at the finished trays, stepped back, swapped several pearls among the trays, and brooded over the result. One tray held only twelve pearls. Each one had the same silver-white, moon-goddess sheen. She turned back to the first tray she had sorted, picked up the seven gems from the top row, and mixed them in with the twelve other pearls.

  The match was perfect.

  Archer’s skin prickled in primal response to the gift Hannah took for granted. It was one thing to color-match while looking at the pearls; it was quite another to have a visual memory so precise that you could match new pearls to remembered ones without ever comparing them except in your mind.

  If he had any doubts about her statement that she would recognize individual pearls from the Black Trinity no matter where she found them, he had no doubts now.

  “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it,” Fred said in a hushed voice. “She never even looked back at the first group.”

  “Dear, any time you want a job, come to us,” Becky said. “We’d pay twice the going rate—three times—for someone with your skill.”

  Hannah made an absent sound. Her attention was on the unopened boxes of pearls. “I love matching them. It’s like an endless, beautiful puzzle. The only thing I enjoy as much is carving wood, but all my tools are in Broome.”

  “Well, in that case,” Becky said, heading for the unopened boxes, “why don’t we dive into a few more of these lots?”

  Archer started to object, but decided not to. The haunted look was gone from Hannah’s eyes. For now she wasn’t thinking of Len and death and the Black Trinity. If sorting pearls gave her that much pleasure, then the rest of the world could just stay on hold for a while longer.

  “Wait,” Fred said. “Do you remember all pearl colors that well, or just white?”

  “My husband and I farmed South Seas pearls,” Hannah said. “We had every color.”

  “Then maybe you can settle an argument my wife and I have been having. That’s why we asked Archer to come here. I bought some pearls I think are abalone, even though they’re big and round. She says they’re from cultured saltwater oysters.”

  “I don’t know if I could tell the difference,” Hannah said. “I’ve only worked with saltwater oyster pearls.”

  “I might be able to,” Archer said. “Let’s see what you have.”

  Fred went to an electronic wall safe, entered the combination on a number pad whose keys were capped with mother-of-pearl, and pulled out a velvet jeweler’s case.

  “If they’re abalone,” he said, walking back to Hannah and Archer, “then they’re basically museum goods. The chance of finding enough for commercial use would be slim, because abalone pearls are nearly always baroque.”

  “But if they’re cultured oyster pearls,” Becky said, “there are more where they came from.”

  “These are too colorful to come from oysters,” Fred objected as he opened the case.

  Rainbows swirled and smoldered beneath clear black ice. The pearls were perhaps fourteen millimeters, spherical, and had superb orient.

  “Oyster,” Hannah said huskily. “Cultured. Australian.”

  “But—” Fred began.

  “She’s right,” Archer said flatly. “If you cut one of them open, you’d find a bead of American pigtoe mussel. In fact, Hannah could have seeded the oyster that produced that pearl herself.”

  “Told you,” Becky said. “If you would ever listen to me, you wouldn’t have to bother other people with your problems.”

  Fred shot her a look. She smiled serenely.

  “May I look at the pearls more closely?” Hannah asked.

  Grumbling at having lost an argument to his wife, Fred handed the box to Hannah. Silently she turned toward better light and studied the pearls. After a time she carefully closed the box and gave it back to Fred.

  “Hannah?” Archer asked softly.

  She shook her head. However beautiful the pearls were, however valuable, they weren’t from the Black Trinity. “A different group.”

  “Where can I get more of these?” Fred asked.

  “Wherever you got those,” Archer said before Hannah could answer.

  “He said these were all he had.”

  “Who was he?” Archer asked.

  Fred hesitated, then sighed. “They’re stolen, aren’t they.” It wasn’t really a question.

  “Yes,” Hannah said simply.

  “From you?”

  “Yes. And from Archer. We’re partners in an Australian periculture operation.”

  Fred looked at Archer, who nodded.

  “You’ve been sitting on pearls like this all these years and never told me?” Fred demanded, angry and more than a little hurt.

  “My partner’s husband was sitting on them,” Archer said. “I saw one about seven years ago, then never saw another until last week. Who sold them to you?”

  Fred opened the box and stared at the pearls, frowning. He wasn’t happy about any of it, especially the knowledge that he had bought stolen goods from a long-standing source. He snapped the box closed. “Teddy Yamagata.”

  Twenty-two

  Impatiently Hannah stared at the café doorway as she tapped her short, buffed fingernails over the forest-green Formica of the table. Two tall double Americanos sent heat and fragrance up into the air. Archer was halfway through his. She had taken only a few sips. Espresso was a taste she hadn’t yet acquired.

  “Why don’t we just invite them over t
o have coffee with us while we wait for Yamagata?” she asked irritably.

  Archer didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know who Hannah was talking about. The Feds were discreet but hardly invisible. They were parked just inside the front door of the small café, sucking up prime caffeine with the gratitude of stakeout cops who were more accustomed to muddy sludge than the kick-butt espresso of good Seattle coffee.

  Outside the warm little café, wind blew clouds and rain sideways. Though it was only two o’clock, the streets were dark slices of autumn-to-winter gloom. The interior of the café was bright, colorful, and painfully retro. Neon light fixtures arced down the wall to end up in pots whose tall plants were made of welded junk. Vintage Rolling Stones pounded out of speakers the size of fists. Two espresso machines screamed and frothed, slamming steam through darkly aromatic coffee.

  He glanced at his watch. If Teddy didn’t put a hustle on, they would be late for the party that The Donovan had rescheduled when his oldest son left so abruptly for Australia.

  “Do Feds always work in pairs?” Hannah asked.

  “Except when they work in fours, sixes, eights, and more.”

  “Is that your government’s answer to unemployment?”

  “It’s your government, too.”

  She blinked. “It’s been so long that I forgot. Tell me again why my government is following me.”

  “To see where you go.”

  “Right. Why can’t I remember that?”

  When she saw the small smile tugging at Archer’s mouth, she wanted to lean forward and brush her lips over his. Then the smile vanished, leaving behind a man with remote gray-green eyes and a midnight stubble accenting the hard lines of his face. That was the face he had showed her since last night: cold, hard, distant. If he touched her, it was as impersonal as rain. About as warm, too.

  She told herself it was better that way.

  And knew she lied.

  She wanted his incandescent sensuality again. She wanted to feel her body ignite, to burn from the inside out, to be drawn on a rack of passion until she shattered into a million bright pieces of ecstasy . . . and then to sleep tangled with him, certain that he felt as she did. Complete.

  She hadn’t known that kind of pleasure existed between a man and a woman. Knowing, she couldn’t forget, couldn’t ignore, couldn’t stop wanting more.

  Tonight, she promised herself. Tonight I’ll get past his pride. I know he wants me. His eyes are controlled, but his body isn’t. Not always. I can raise his heart rate just by leaning against his arm. He can raise mine just as easily. We’re adults who owe nothing to anyone. There’s no reason not to be lovers.

  Unbidden, memories of Summer flicked through Hannah’s mind. The relaxed, satin weight of the child resting against her arm and her hip. The sweetly drooling smile. Clear gray-green eyes watching her, glinting with laughter and intelligence.

  Archer’s eyes.

  If you wanted a child without complications, you should have gone to a sperm bank.

  He and Len were alike in so many ways, it irritated Hannah that they couldn’t have been alike when it came to children. Len hadn’t worried when she miscarried. If anything, he was pleased; he didn’t want children. Ever. After her miscarriage, she agreed with him. She would have no more children, not with a man who was too ruthless to be trusted with a child’s fragile heart. She had taken great care not to become pregnant. After Len’s accident, the question of children was answered. There would be none. Ever.

  Then Len had died and she had fallen headlong into passion with another man who was too ruthless to be trusted with a child’s heart; enjoying a niece wasn’t the same as having the patience and generosity of spirit to raise a child.

  Bitterly she wondered if there was something wrong in her, if unsuitable men would be the only kind she ever responded to sexually.

  Beneath her bitterness was fear, the growing certainty that whatever man she finally chose as her mate, the passion she felt with Archer was unique to him. Even before Len’s spine was severed, her husband had only skimmed the surface of her sensual possibilities. Other men hadn’t managed even that. She had never looked at them and speculated how they might be as a lover; they simply didn’t interest her sexually.

  But Archer had and did. Instantly. Urgently.

  Fear snaked through Hannah as she understood that she might marry and have children someday, but they wouldn’t be conceived in blinding ecstasy. She would respond to no other man as she did to Archer Donovan.

  The certainty made her both angry and bleak, like Archer’s eyes watching her right now.

  “Teddy’s coming in the front door,” Archer said. Then, reluctantly, “Are you all right?”

  “Bloody wonderful. Why?”

  “You look . . .” Frightened. Exhausted. Hurt. “. . . pale.”

  “Then I should fit right in with the natives.” The emptiness in Hannah’s voice was as unmistakable as the lines of tension and pain etching her face.

  “You should have let me take you back to the condo,” he said. “You need rest.”

  “Don’t worry, boy-o. I’m not made of frigging French glass.”

  It had been one of Len’s favorite sayings. Repeating it in Len’s cadences gave Hannah a certain bitter pleasure. Seeing the narrowing of Archer’s eyes gave her more.

  “I’m with you every step of the way to the Black Trinity,” she said in a low, savage tone, “so stop trying to dump me on your family while you run off and play without me.”

  Teddy dragged out a chair and sat down. Drops of water sparkled on his high forehead and his red pullover rain jacket. He unzipped the neck opening as far as it would go, revealing a startling pineapple-yellow shirt with a bright explosion of leaves strewn across the front. He nodded to Hannah before turning to the man who was watching him with an unsmiling face and eyes that were a lot colder than the rain outside.

  “I’m supposed to be at SeaTac in an hour,” Teddy said to Archer. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The pearls you sold to the Linskys.”

  “I’ve sold lots of—”

  “You start bullshitting me and you’ll miss your plane.”

  Teddy smiled slightly and leaned back, prepared to do what he was best at: bargaining. “Oh, those pearls.”

  A server appeared and looked at Teddy expectantly.

  “He won’t be here long enough for coffee,” Archer said.

  “I can make it to go,” the server said, then took a good look at Archer. “Uh, never mind. Do you want your check, sir?”

  “Not yet.”

  The server smiled brightly and got out of Archer’s line of sight as fast as she could.

  Archer never took his eyes off Teddy.

  “I would have offered the pearls to you, but you were in Australia,” Teddy said.

  “Who sold them to you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  Teddy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I have a connection.”

  “Who?”

  “Damn it, that’s—”

  “Who sold you those pearls?” Archer cut in coldly.

  Teddy had heard a few things about Archer’s past. Right now he believed every one of them. There was no bargain to be struck here, only the kind of trouble a wise man avoided.

  “A man from Broome.”

  “A man from Broome,” Archer repeated neutrally, praying Hannah would stay out of it. “Name?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Keep it up and you’ll miss that plane and every one after it until we’re finished talking.”

  Unhappily Teddy took off his glasses, polished them, and put them back on. Cleaner lenses didn’t help. Archer still looked like an executioner.

  “Well, hell,” Teddy muttered. His wife had been right: He shouldn’t have bought the pearls from a man he didn’t know. A nervous man, at that. Yet the pearls had been so extraordinary. And so cheap. “Qing Lu Yin.”

  H
annah stiffened.

  “He was the original owner,” Teddy said, glancing at her curiously. “He gave me a bill of sale. It was all done on the books and aboveboard.”

  “Where’s the bill of sale?” Archer asked.

  Sighing, Teddy pulled a breast wallet from his rain jacket’s belly pocket. He had hoped he wouldn’t need the bill of sale for this meeting, but he had been afraid he would. Something about those pearls had fairly shouted of trouble. Reluctantly he took out a sheet of paper.

  “It’s a copy,” he said, passing the sheet over to Archer.

  Ideographs marched down the right-hand side of the page. A smudged thumbprint sat crookedly on one corner. Letters and numbers were neatly written under the print.

  “Keep it,” Teddy said. “I have the original in my files.”

  “I didn’t know you could read Chinese,” Archer said.

  “I can’t. For all I know, it could be a laundry list. That’s why I insisted on a thumbprint and a driver’s license. Washington, state of. That’s the number below the print.”

  “How did you meet him?” Archer asked.

  “A cold phone call from an intermediary who saw my ad in the phone book.”

  “In Australia?”

  “No. Seattle.”

  Adrenaline licked lightly beneath Archer’s skin. A man who wrote only Chinese, yet had a Washington driver’s license—probably a fake, or one that was borrowed/stolen from another Chinese. But all he said was, “He’s here?”

  “He was two days ago.”

  “Where is he staying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  Unhappily Teddy tugged at one earlobe. “Some dump on Third Street called the Dragon Moon.”

  “Didn’t we pass it on the way to the Pearl Exchange?” Hannah asked.

  Archer nodded. Like any city, Seattle had some open civic sores despite persistent urban renewal. The land where Donovan International and the Donovan condo had been built was part of an urban renewal project. The Dragon Moon was one of the oozing pockets that had escaped razing and rebuilding. It was only three blocks away from the Donovan condo.