Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

door.
    “There, that didn’t hurt, did it?” he asked curtly. “I won’t jump you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
    “You’re married.” Hannah’s voice was flat.
    “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.”
    “Bloody 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 sexy, 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 Japanese 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 assume 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 assume 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 God, 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 buggered 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