Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

but he didn’t take them like vitamins or anything. At least, I don’t think he did. He could have. Some of the Chinese divers grind up the inferior, usual kind of pearls and drink them in a potion.”
    “What about the Black Trinity? It must have represented something very special to him.”
    Hannah frowned. “Last week, when I was color-matching the strands of the Black Trinity yet again—something he made me do at least twice a week—I said it couldn’t be any better. The last harvest hadn’t added even one pearl to the strands.”
    “Odd. Most matches can be better.”
    “That’s the beauty of the rainbow pearls. The orient—the mix of color overtones—on all the rainbows was usually quite close. All that really had to be matched was size, surface perfection, and shape.”
    That kind of identity was rare, except with clones. Archer made a mental note to look into experiments to clone oysters. “Go on,” he said.
    Frowning, Hannah slicked back her hair with her fingers. Still salty. She turned on the water and bent over to rinse more thoroughly. Her words mixed with the silvery splash and drip of water. “Len refused to believe that the new harvest of experimental pearls couldn’t improve the size or perfection of the Black Trinity. He started screaming at me to look again, it wasn’t perfect, it couldn’t be perfect, because if the Black Trinity was whole, he would be, too.”
    A chill went over Archer’s skin that had nothing to do with his recent dive. “That explains what he wanted from his religion. A miracle.”
    “That’s . . . ”
    “Insane?” Archer asked softly. “We’ve already agreed that Len wasn’t a poster boy for mental health.”
    Hannah straightened, dripping and flushed, and handed Archer the shower wand. “Your turn,” she said, stepping out of the tub.
    Archer stepped in, picked up the wand, and began rinsing off his diving gear. “Tell me about Len’s enemies.”
    “Everyone he met became an enemy, sooner or later.”
    Frustrated, Archer raked his hand through his rapidly drying hair. Salt made his scalp itch, but he noticed it only at a distance. He had more pressing problems than dried brine irritating his skin. No matter how he arranged the information in his mind, it came up with red flags sticking out all over.
    He held his wrist under the water, rinsing off the watch that had gone diving with him. Seconds were fleeing while he looked, seconds turning into minutes, minutes turning into hours, hours turning into too much time lost and not enough information found. He was no closer to an answer than he had been when he arrived yesterday.
    The watch told him that he had wasted several hours diving.
    Maybe it hadn’t been a complete waste. Before diving he had guessed sabotage. Now he knew it. What he didn’t know was who and why.
    “My guess is that it took more than one man to cut those cables before the full force of the cyclone hit.” Archer flipped the fins over, cleaning them thoroughly before tossing them out of on the floor. He didn’t worry about making a mess. The tile floor slanted down toa small grate, which funneled water into the darkness beneath the house. Standard plumbing in the rual tropics for everything but toilets. “Are any of Len’s enemies good friends with each other?”
    “Are we talking about personal enemies or business competitors?” Hannah asked, using her fingers to comb her wet, seal-dark hair away from her face.
    Archer thought about the fluid alliances among pearl producers. The Chinese, the Japanese, the French, the Indonesians, and the Australians all had periculture ventures. Even the Americans had set up a pearl-farming business in Hawaii. Len’s coalition of small farmers wasn’t much by itself, but given the right opening, the independent pearlers could shift the balance of marketing power in one way or another by joining with one of the larger alliances.
    No doubt that was what Len had been trying to do in his sane periods, which meant that any of the big pearling operations might have decided they could live well without him. The quickest way to find out was to catch the murderer and convince him to talk.
    “Personal,” Archer said. He knew more about the rest than Hannah did.
    She opened her mouth, hesitated, and sighed. “Except for me, Len didn’t know anyone personally, only through the pearling business.”
    “Too bad. Murder up close is a real personal kind of crime.”
    Bending to get his head