Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

you’ll have to pass the word that Hannah McGarry is off the table. No exceptions. Not even Uncle.”
    April raised sleek, black eyebrows. “The only way she’s taken off the table is if she tells all she knows about making those damned pearls.”
    “I don’t know anything,” Hannah said curtly. “If you knew Len, you know how secretive he was.”
    “You were his wife.”
    “I was his color matcher. I wrote out the bills. I ordered supplies. That’s it.”
    April started to say something cutting, then looked at Archer. He had the appearance of a man thinking hard and deep. “Think out loud, slick.”
    He shrugged. “I’m trying to imagine Len having the patience, the training, and the vision to breed and then clone a special strain of oysters.”
    “So?” April demanded.
    Hannah was shaking her head. Patience and finicky techniques hadn’t been Len’s style.
    “Not Len,” Archer said simply. “As for cloning . . . no. He never even finished junior high. He wouldn’t have had the first idea how to begin cloning anything. At least, he wouldn’t have before the accident that put him on wheels for the rest of his life.”
    “He didn’t develop patience, kindness, or a curious mind after the accident,” Hannah said. “If anything, it was the opposite. He shut down, not opened up.”
    April didn’t argue the point. Len’s file had been brutally clear on his limitations as an agent and human being. “Ian?” she asked.
    “I didn’t know Len before his accident. After, he was a very clever bastard with the devil’s own genius for making trouble. He could play people off against each other better than any diplomat. People didn’t like him, but they damn well paid attention to him. Including me.”
    Hannah made a weary gesture. “Len hadn’t finished junior high, but that didn’t mean he was stupid. Especially about what made people tick.”
    “Yeah,” April agreed. “He had a hell of a jugular instinct.”
    “From you, that’s quite a compliment,” Archer said.
    Her smile showed a lot of neat white teeth. “I could say the same of you.”
    He turned back to Hannah. “Beyond the usual machinery needed for running a cultured-pearl operation, did you have any lab equipment at Pearl Cove?”
    “Nothing different from anyone else in the business.”
    “You’re certain?” April asked.
    “I did all the buying. I would have noticed if we had exotic equipment.”
    “How about the experimental oysters?” Chang asked. “Did you see any difference in them?”
    “Just the pearls they produced. There were normal in every other way. In fact, it was a problem.”
    “What do you mean?” April demanded.
    “When you breed your own shell—oysters—you have to keep breeding back to wild shell or the strain goes bad and dies out. But when Len bred back, he lost the mutation that made rainbow pearls. At least, he must have. It’s the only explanation for the fact that he let the strain go weak when it should have been easy to fix by breeding back.”
    April looked at Chang, who nodded. “Every pearl farmer knows that strains of captive shell go bad after a few years,” he said. “We’re working on the problem in Tahiti and Australia, but we’re not making much progress.” He turned to Hannah. “So, whether induced or natural, it was a mutation that made the rainbow shell?”
    Hannah shivered at the intensity in Chang’s eyes. Like Len. Obsessed. “That’s my guess. There’s a huge natural color variation in oyster nacre. The black rainbows are just one more color on the spectrum. It would be more surprising if the mutation hadn’t occurred.”
    “Did Len ever say how he got onto the rainbows?” Chang asked.
    “He was chasing them when I first found him ten years ago,” Archer said. “He was the reason I became interested in pearls.”
    “Chasing them how?” April said.
    “Following rumors. Twisting informants. Buying secrets when he couldn’t get them any other way.”
    “Where?” Chang asked.
    “From the Gulf of Siam to the Arafura Sea. The riot that injured Len started when he trashed a smuggler who operated outside of Kupang. The man was a raider, not a pearl farmer. He didn’t want to tell Len where he got the special black pearls.” Archer shrugged. “My guess is he finally told. By the time I got to Len, the smuggler was dead and Len was damned close to it. But he had a smile on his face and a black rainbow clenched in his fist.”
    “That fits,” Hannah