Donovans 03 - Pearl Cove

glasses. It looked like they were bifocal, but they weren’t. There was just an extra thickness of glass at the bottom of the lens. The frames were thin, black, the latest in Italian flash. The lenses were amber tinted. The glasses, like the hat, completely changed the lines of his face.
    She lifted her eyebrows in silent salute. “Spoiled, bitchy, and way too picky. Anything else?”
    “I don’t know anything about pearls. And my name is—”
    “Sugar,” Hannah cut in quickly. “I’m rotten with names.”
    “Sugar?” His mouth curled up at the corners. “Okay, I can live with that. It beats buttercup.”
    “Buttercup?” She looked him up and down, lingering on the size and set of his shoulders. “Doesn’t suit.”
    “Thank you. But that’s what my sister Honor calls her husband when she’s annoyed with him. And vice versa.”
    “Buttercup. Is her husband, um, small?”
    “Am I?”
    “No.”
    “Jake’s the same size as me.”
    “Buttercup.” She rolled the word around on her tongue and grinned. “I like it.”
    Archer had a feeling he was going to wish he hadn’t let Hannah in on that particular family joke. Yet seeing her face light up with amusement was something he couldn’t really regret.
    The inside of the store was like a museum rather than a commercial enterprise. Instead of putting out as much merchandise as possible, the decorator had used empty space to create a feeling of importance around the display pedestals. In place of the brilliant, pinpoint lighting used by jewelers to enhance diamonds and other faceted stones, the light aimed at the pearls in their satin nests was soft, carefully color balanced, and often fluorescent rather than incandescent.
    No glass caged the tops of the pedestals. Potential buyers were kept just out of easy arm’s reach by burgundy velvet ropes. A very old, fabulously costly silk carpet muffled the sound of expensively shod feet. French Impressionist paintings and works by ancient masters of calligraphy hung on the walls, adding to the feeling of richness and cultural worth. Intricately carved, museum-quality folding screens separated various areas. Quietly, repeatedly, the decor let customers know that they were privileged to be part of such elegance and taste.
    The interior was divided into suites. Each had its own type of pearls. Freshwater baroques from every river, stream, pond, and lake in the world, in sizes from hummingbird to chicken egg. Saltwater baroques from abalone whose rainbow orient was intense, but lacked the mystery of the Black Trinity’s pearls. Small Japanese Akoya pearls, with their natural pale blue tones and their unnatural pink and silver ones. Larger Tahitian pearls, whose highlights ranged from steel gray to peacock blue to jungle green. Big South Seas pearls with their silver-whites and radiant golds—angel dreams fashioned into necklaces and bracelets, set into earrings and brooches and rings. The Australian pearls were biggest of all, legacy of the Indian Ocean’s sweeping tides and the pearl farmers’ skill.
    Most of the suites held customers conversing in Chinese. There were a few speaking English and what might have been Italian. The suite specializing in black pearls was empty but for a man sitting at a desk. The polished brass plaque announced that he was Paul Chevalier. Archer knew that Monsieur Paul was one of Sam Chang’s head pearl buyers, an up-and-comer from Tahiti who had his eye on one of the Chang granddaughters. If rumor was correct, the granddaughter had both eyes on the very handsome Paul.
    Paul barely nodded to Hannah and Archer before he went back to his phone call. He left the distinct impression that he knew important customers on sight, and they didn’t qualify.
    Archer bent over Hannah, nuzzled and nibbled on her neck, and said softly, “We’re in luck. That’s their top black pearl expert. If anyone can get us into the vault room, he can. Word is that he’s a vain, self-important son of a bitch. The kind who loves to put people in their place, which is the dirt under his feet.”
    Her slow smile was pure acid. “Only in the colonies,” she said in a calm, carrying voice, “would anyone think their great-grandmother’s hallway rug was classy.”
    “You’re the one who wanted to look at pearls,” Archer said. A twang had appeared in his voice, something between Oklahoma and Texas. “We were told this was the place to look, darlin’. So look. Screw the rug.”
    “You never