Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

scream. Swiftly he pulled her behind him. It wasn’t much protection, but it was all he could do until he knew the source of the danger. Legs slightly braced, body relaxed, weight poised on the balls of his feet, he waited for whatever might come.
    Nothing came but the silent, intangible blending of tide and time and night. No movement, no furtive scuff, no rush of breath held too long.
    “It’s all right,” Hannah said, belatedly realizing why he had shoved her behind him.
    “The hell it is. You froze like you had been shot.”
    “Just nerves. Since Len died . . . claustrophobia, that’s all.”
    Archer heard what she didn’t say, all the things that had come crashing down around her in a few short hours. The devastation of the cyclone tearing Pearl Cove out by its roots. The horror of finding Len’s ruined body. The certainty that his murderer would kill her as soon as he discovered that she didn’t know the secret of the experimental pearls.
    “Can you take a few more minutes in here?” Archer asked softly.
    “Of course.”
    Her voice more than her words told him that was how Hannah faced life: whatever was required of her for as long as she could give it. He turned, touched her cheek for an instant, then stepped back before she could do more than take a startled breath. His penlight switched on, slicing through the tropical night. Everything the light touched was broken, bent, battered, and water stained.
    “Describe the shed for me, the way it was,” Archer said.
    Hannah let out the breath she had taken when he touched her face so unexpectedly, so gently. “There was only one door. Tables with trays of pearls went down the center aisle. The pearls are sorted for shape, color, size, and surface. We do the color sorting with natural light. Fluorescent light for orient and spotting blemishes on the surface. Indirect light, of course. With pearls, direct light hides more than it reveals.”
    While she spoke, the blade of light Archer held moved slowly across the interior of the shed.
    “Where did you work?” he asked.
    “Over there.” Hannah’s narrow, elegant hand flashed through the beam as she pointed toward a missing wall. “There were windows. Screens, actually. I worked with the best of the pearls, matching colors for necklaces or brooches or bracelets.”
    “Were the pearls left out or locked up at night?”
    “Locked up.”
    “Where?”
    “There.”
    With her hand over his, she moved the flashlight toward the place where the roof had collapsed. When Archer realized what he was looking at through the jackstraws that had been lumber, he whistled. Poured-concrete base, steel walls, tumbler locks and industrial-strength handles on all the locker doors. Ten feet high if it was an inch. Even with the outer door ripped off and the drawers yanked out and strewn around, the safe still looked as intimidating as the inside of a bank vault.
    “That’s a hell of a lockbox,” he said.
    “Len wasn’t a trusting kind of man.”
    Archer gave an odd crack of laughter. “I take it the pearls were in the drawers when the storm hit?”
    “Not all of them. Not even most of them. When the storm hit, pearls must have scattered all over the place.”
    “You weren’t here?”
    “No. Len kicked everyone out, locked down the storm shutters, and then did whatever he did when he was alone.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Hannah sighed and wondered how she could explain in a few words the husband she had never understood in ten years. “Len was forever pulling security checks, sending everyone outside and searching them for pearls. Sometimes, for no reason anyone could discover, he would just throw them out and spend an hour or two in here alone. He ate here, slept here, lived here.”
    “Sounds like he was worried about something being stolen.”
    “Pearls. And he was right. They’re gone.”
    “Stolen?”
    “The insurance people said the storm hit before Len could close up the safe. Everything was washed out to sea. An act of God. Uninsured, of course. So sorry, luv, and your next premium will be due on the twelfth.”
    Archer’s mouth curled. “Sounds like every insurance agent I’ve ever known.” Then, in a low voice, he asked, “What about the chisel marks on the door?”
    “It’s hard to find what you’re not looking for.”
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He swept the light from side to side, looking for a fugitive glimmer of pearl. Nothing came back but shades of black.