Beautiful Lies (2 page)

For the first time since her return, the room was silent except for the dull grumble of traffic beneath her window. But even with the door bolted, Liana knew she was never quite alone here. This office had belonged to her father, and the ministrations of an interior designer hadn't erased Thomas Robeson's ghost. Worse yet, inside the wall lay tangible proof that some things endure forever.

She echoed Graham's words, but her tone was bitter. “It's only a pearl.”

Before she had time to consider what she was about to do, she strode to the O'Keeffe print and carefully removed
it, placing it face-up on the credenza before she turned back to the paneled wall.

Four tiny screws held this narrow section of paneling in place, and she removed them with the help of a screwdriver from her desk. When the paneling was lying neatly on the floor, she stared at the brass-adorned wall safe with the imposing lock.

Graham and Frank knew the pearl was here, of course, and so did the rest of the management staff. The paneling fooled no one, although it might deter a random burglar. But the safe itself was as secure as any device of its kind. Her father had demanded the best and gotten it.

“You were a son of a bitch, Thomas Robeson.”

Her hands were clammy as she reached for the dial. Some days she could almost forget that the pearl was embedded deep in the heart of the room, its moonbeam glow extinguished in velvet darkness. When she remembered its presence, she told herself that hidden behind cast iron and steel, shielded by sheets of redwood and the endearing O'Keeffe poppies, the pearl had no power to harm her.

But there were days when she felt the pearl watching her, speculating, laughing….

“Tell it to a psychiatrist, Liana.” She grimaced and thrust out her hand. The dial was cool to the touch, and her hand, sweating now, slid right over it. She wiped her palm on her skirt, then reached for the dial again. She imagined it grew warmer as she began the long series of numbers that would open the safe. Only three people in the world had ever known the combination. Her father, herself, and the man who had calibrated the dial.

She stepped back before she set the final number, preparing herself to remove the pearl.

Her intercom buzzed, and Carol's high voice came over the speaker. “Miss Robeson, Mr. Llewellyn's on line one.”

She flinched, and her heart sped faster. She was suspended between the pit and the pendulum, the pearl and the man who had even more power to hurt her.

“Miss Robeson? Are you there?”

She heard Carol coughing softly. She turned the dial to the final number, then she threw open the door and abandoned the safe, marching to her desk. She punched the intercom and cleared her throat. “Has he told you how Matthew is?”

“No. I'm sorry, but he sounds furious.”

Liana sagged against the desk. Clearly she had no choice but to take the call. “Thanks.”

She lifted the receiver, and her finger hovered over the blinking button before she punched it savagely. “Cullen, don't start with me. Just tell me how Matthew's flight went.”

A silence ensued. Somewhere at LaGuardia there was an announcement over a loudspeaker. The line crackled. She had no patience to lose. “Damn it, Cullen. Don't play games.”

A familiar voice with a broad Australian accent rumbled across the lines. “What do you mean, how his flight went? What flight? Do you take me for a bloody idiot?”

There was a soft rapping at her door, and Graham's voice sounded from the other side. “Liana, it's time to leave.”

Liana put her free hand over her ear. “You're not making sense,” she said into the receiver. “It was a simple question. Did he get there on time? Did he have rough weather? Look, if Matthew's there, just put him on the line. I'm in a hurry. You and I can talk another day.”

“Get here? He bloody well didn't get here, Liana. You
know he didn't, because you didn't put him on the fucking plane!”

For a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. “What are you talking about?”

“Matthew wasn't on the plane! He was never on the plane! Where's my son? Either you tell me what's going on, or I'm taking the next flight to San Francisco to shake it out of you!”

Graham grew louder. “Liana, we're going to be late.”

Liana pressed her palm against her ear. “You met the wrong flight, Cullen. Damn it, he's there at the airport somewhere, waiting for you. I sent all the information. You told Matthew you had it.”

“I met the flight. He wasn't on it. In the past hour I've met every flight coming in from Denver and two directly from San Francisco. He wasn't on any of them!”

“I took him to the airport myself. I saw him board. I saw the plane take off!”

There was silence again. The line didn't even crackle. Finally Cullen spoke. “Then somewhere between San Francisco and New York, our son went missing, Liana.”

The receiver slid through her hands, and she felt the blood draining from her face. She could hear Cullen's voice from the desk, small, so much smaller than the man. Graham rapped on the door again and called to her.

She turned slowly and stared at the open safe, as if the Pearl of Great Price—the flawless, hideous pearl that for a century had determined the destiny of her family and Cullen's—had rolled from its velvet pedestal and kidnapped her son.

As she stared, she realized how foolish that was. Because the safe was empty.

Like the child who meant more to her than anything in the world, the Pearl of Great Price had vanished.

Full fathom five thy father lies;

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes…

—William Shakespeare
The Tempest
, Act I

Broome, Australia—1900

A
ustralia fed on the souls of men, grinding them into a fine red dust that swept across treeless gibber plains and sifted into stagnant billabongs. She was a land of promises that would never be fulfilled, a sky choked with unfamiliar constellations, a year of seasons so tormenting a man was forced to long for whatever hell he'd recently left behind. And still, none of that mattered. For better or worse, Australia was Archer Llewellyn's new home. In 1898, in Cuba, in the thick of battle, he had murdered an officer of the First Volunteer Cavalry.

He could never go home again.

“I'll take this one, Tom.” As a man came flying across the rickety table, Archer ducked; then, at the perfect instant, he battered him with his fists to send him sprawling. When his attacker, a gargantuan specimen who stank of rotting oysters, tried to right himself, Archer tipped the table and sent him crashing to the floor, where he lay still, eyes open
but puzzled, as if no one had taught him to contend with failure.

“Thanks!” Tom Robeson sent his friend a swift grin that fragmented under the blow of another stranger's fist. Tom, who could hold his own in a boxing ring with padded gloves and Marquess of Queensbury rules, never watched for the unexpected.

“For Chrissake, Tom, keep your head down!” Archer wrapped Tom's attacker in a crushing bear hug, battering the stranger's skull with the side of his own. For a moment the stars he saw were blessedly familiar—unlike the ones he'd seen every night for the past two years. Then the stars disappeared, his head cleared, and the man in his arms stopped struggling and collapsed to the floor.

“Anyone else want to give it a try?” Archer stepped a good distance from the two downed brawlers. “Anyone else in this godforsaken town got a score they want to settle?”

The half-dozen men who had been lounging on the sidelines turned away as if nothing had happened.

“You okay?” Archer turned Tom's cheek to the light.

Tom cheerfully slapped away his hand. “What about our mates?”

Archer's gaze flicked to the defeated men. The smaller was helping the giant to his feet. As they stumbled toward the door, neither spared a glance for the two Americans. Archer grimaced. “Looks like they'll live to fight another day.”

Tom rubbed his jaw. “You saved my neck. Again.”

Archer touched his chin to his chest, his ears to his shoulders, checking for damage. “You'll never learn, will you? You think other people pay attention to the rules. Well, no one fights fair in a place like Broome. It'll get you killed.”

“Apparently not as long as you're around.” Tom held out
his hand. It was an aristocratic hand, with long, calloused fingers, a strong hand, despite its appearance. It was a hand that didn't mind dirt or sweat or reaching out to help a friend.

Archer grimaced again, but he clasped it in his broader one for an instant before he pushed Tom away. “Let's get on with it.”

Tom had an easy smile, even when his lip was swelling. “Get on with what? Brawling, drinking, or plotting how we're going to make our fortune?”

Archer had already tired of the first, and what remained of a tumbler of square-face gin was now a puddle on the warped plank floor. That left plotting their future, which looked grimmer by the minute.

“I'll shout you another one. For saving my neck.” Tom waved his friend toward an up-ended chair and started for the front of the room.

Archer hauled the chair to their table and settled into it as he watched Tom maneuver his way toward the bar. The boardinghouse, their temporary home, hardly deserved the title. It consisted of a few rooms behind this bar, with filthy bedding and a view of the bathhouse. The bar itself—known locally as a grog shop—was built from sheets of corrugated iron propped into alignment by the misshapen trunks of native trees. No glass or gauze graced what passed for windows, and the door was nothing more than a gap between two sheets of iron, hung with cork-laced fishing line to discourage flies.

There were decent hotels in Broome, where pearling masters in crisp white suits and solar topees told stories of pearls they had won, and European pearl buyers came to quench their thirst and scout for the gem of a lifetime. But the boardinghouse was the best Tom and Archer could afford, and before long even
it
would be beyond their reach.

As he wound his way toward the front, Tom, with his elegant stride, his proud bearing, looked like a king sympathetically assessing the plight of his lowliest subjects. He wasn't unusually tall, but he held himself as if he were seeking the rarefied air reserved for the gods. He was dark-haired, fine-boned, pale-complected, a man with a quiet smile for everyone and a warmer one for the people he cared about. Archer, in contrast, had a wiry, compact body, the sandy hair and freckled complexion of his Irish mother and the impaling blue eyes of his Welsh father. And although usually he was as cheerful as his friend, today his face was etched with an uncharacteristic scowl.

A chair scraped the floor beside Archer, and a deep voice boomed, “Just where is it you hail from, stranger?”

Archer turned to see a man who had just come through the door pulling up a chair beside him. Archer evaluated him quickly. “Who wants to know?”

“John Garth. Skipper John Garth.” The man, both older and cleaner than the other patrons, held out his hand. He was tall, with a ruddy complexion and a slickly waxed mustache. He wore the formal white uniform of the pearling masters, but his tunic was casually unbuttoned over a spotless singlet. “Call me John.”

Archer, having taken his measure, relaxed a little. “Archer Llewellyn. And I hail from America.”

John made himself comfortable. “We don't get many Americans in Broome. If you're here on a holiday, you've jolly well come to the wrong hotel. You'll get nothing but a scuffle from the patrons and crook from the tucker. By the time the cook's finished his morning pipe, he can't tell if the meat's fresh or flyblown.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“That was my shell-opener and bosun you laid out just
now. I saw them dragging themselves out the door. I came to investigate.”

“How do you know I'm the one who did it?”

John smiled. “From the looks of this mob, you're the only one who could have.”

“Your sheller insulted my friend.”

“Do you always stick up for a mate?”

Archer shrugged carelessly. “When he needs sticking up for.”

“Loyalty's a fine thing. If it weren't for loyalty, we wouldn't have any order in town, or out on the water, either. It's loyalty we look for when we're hiring our crews.”

“And I suppose you're loyal to your men, and you've come to finish what they started?”

John raised one brow. “Shall I show you loyalty?” He reached inside the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a drawstring bag. “Have a look.”

Frowning, Archer spread the opening with his thumb and forefinger and peered inside. Three pearls, small but seemingly perfect, gleamed back at him. He looked up to find the skipper watching him closely. “A man could get himself killed over pearls like these,” Archer drawled.

John held out his hand, and Archer returned the bag, which the skipper tucked back in his pocket. “I'd say you're from Georgia, or maybe the Carolinas?”

“Texas.”

“And your friend?”

“California.”

“So why are you here?”

Archer was still thinking about the pearls. He wished he could have rolled them lovingly in his hand. Off Broome's coast lay the finest mother-of-pearl in the world, which was
in constant demand worldwide for buttons. Men were making fortunes from pearl shell alone.

But the by-product of the oyster that produced the mother-of-pearl was pearls like these, pearls considered some of the finest ever brought up from the sea. Unfortunately, in the three days since Archer and Tom had arrived in town, Archer hadn't held a one.

Tom returned with two grime-streaked schooners and set them on the table, offering his hand to the skipper before he sat down. “Will we have to fight you, too? Can we at least finish our drinks?”

John signaled, and the Amboinese landlord, who hadn't moved from behind the counter since Tom and Archer came in, drew another schooner from a large wooden keg and brought it to the table. John held it in the air. “To mates.”

The men drank in silence for a moment. The beer was sour and nearly flat.

“I was just asking Mr. Llewellyn why you're here.” The skipper set his glass on the table.

Tom answered easily. It was a story he and Archer had agreed on a long time ago. “We fought with Roosevelt in Cuba. Afterwards we decided to see some of the world. We went looking for luck and tried your gold fields, among other things. So far, we haven't been well favored.”

“There's luck here in Broome. For some.” John shrugged.

Archer pushed his glass away. “I've seen some of your poor twisted bastards who haven't been so lucky. Sitting outside in Chinatown like the living dead, waiting for the sun and the sandflies to finish them off.”

“The divers?” John looked properly regretful. “Pearling has hazards as well as treasures. Some of our men die,
some are crippled for life. Others find enough shell and pearl to go back home and live like sultans. The Muham-madans are sure their fate's determined in advance. The Japanese put paper charms under their suits to protect themselves. Me, I think a man just needs to educate himself and be cautious. The rewards are fine enough to take a risk or two.”

Archer considered all the risks that he and Tom had taken since the day they had been mustered out of the United States Army. And the risk he had taken the day he killed a man to save the life of his friend. In the years since his escape from certain court-martial and death, he and Tom had crewed on a rumrunner's ship in the Caribbean, harvested the giant kauri trees of New Zealand, ridden boundary fences in New South Wales and scoured the Kimberleys for gold.

And through it all, the rewards had been meager, the work filthy and degrading. Archer Llewellyn had been born for better, but better had eluded him all his life.

“Broome's no place for a white man.” Archer scraped a fingernail through the grime on his glass. “Tom and I are experienced sailors, but unless a man has enough money to buy his own lugger, he won't have a chance of work. The town is teeming with slant-eyed bastards and native niggers who'll do what any white man would only do for three times the pay.”

“Do I take that to mean you can't tolerate the company of our Asians and Aborigines?” the skipper asked.

“Me?” Archer grinned. “I could tolerate the company of Old Nick himself if I thought there was a dollar in it. I'm just saying there's a difference in how far that dollar goes for me and those bastards living ten to a room or sleeping on the beach. I require more.”

“Yet you say luck has abandoned you….”

“That's the thing about luck, isn't it?” Tom interrupted. “When you least expect it, there it is.”

Archer lowered his voice. “About those pearls…”

“Right-o, the pearls.” John toyed with his mustache. “There's a certain class of men who'll do anything, cheat anyone, to make a shilling. The stones I showed you came off my own lugger, the
Odyssey,
but I never saw them until today. Cambridge Pete, the bastard you laid low, found them in shell he opened. He hid them, and sold them when he got into port yesterday. The man to whom he sold them is known to buy snide—”

“Snide?” Tom asked.

The skipper waved his hand. “Stolen pearls. Smuggled off luggers by crew members. Divers, sometimes. Anyone with the opportunity to do it. This time Cambridge Pete hollowed a rope and hid the stones until he could take them safely ashore. The man who bought them sold both the stones and the tale back to me this morning. He and I, we have an understanding….”

“And you're sure he was telling the truth?”

“Pete wasn't expecting me to be in port, so he was careless. I found the rope in question where Pete always sleeps. Hollowed like a reed, it was. Pete wasn't smart enough to throw it overboard.”

“Then you're out a crew member or two.”

The skipper nodded. “And Pete and his mate won't live long enough to see the sun set if they don't board the afternoon steamer to Perth. Of course, they'll be boarding with nothing in their pockets after we've had a private chat.”

Archer wasn't surprised. Broome was a frontier town, with a jail that was often filled to capacity. But in towns like this one, teeming with the flotsam and jetsam of a
dozen island nations, justice was often administered by those who hadn't been sworn to uphold it.

John leaned forward. “I need a new shell-opener. Unfortunately, I can only hire a white for the job. The colored crews can't be entrusted with that sort of authority.”

Tom grimaced. “Hiring a white man doesn't seem to be a guarantee, does it? If I don't miss my guess, Cambridge Pete is white enough under the dirt and stench.”

“My friend grew up with Chinese servants,” Archer explained to the skipper. “He has a fond place in his heart for any yellow-skinned man with a queue.”

“Don't get me wrong,” John said. “I respect any man who does his job, but this is one job a white man must do. My shellers report directly to me, and they share in my profit. We have to understand each other perfectly.” He paused. “Do
we
understand each other? Perfectly?”

Archer leaned back in his chair. “There were two men. A bosun, too…”

“Precisely. There are two openings on my lugger. There are two of you. You say you're sailors. I know you can take care of yourselves. You've shown me you know how to be loyal….”

“And we're white,” Tom said.

“I've always been a gambling man, and my instincts are good. The season's almost over. You can learn what you need from the rest of my crew. You can share the jobs if you like. The
Odyssey
only came in to port because the bosun claimed she needed repairs and supplies. But she'll be ready to sail again tomorrow. Tell me, gentlemen. Will you be sailing with her?”