The Best American Mystery Stories 2015

Theresa E. Lehr Staircase to the Moon From Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine

I wore leathers to her funeral, along with the pearls. The newspaper said the necklace was worth $70,000 Australian. That’s big bikkies in Broome. A small fortune. At least to me. I thought my sister had hocked the necklace. She’d sold her BMW and lost her apartment overlooking Sydney Harbour last year. Just goes to prove what I always told her: you can’t be addicted to heaven dust and the material world at the same time.

Our mum had eyed that string of South Sea pearls longer than I care to remember, so I was caught off guard when my twin sister left them to me. I figured her motive was to twist the knife in Mum one last time. It had nothing to do with me. Making amends was not Shinju’s style.

The day after the funeral, photos of me wearing her famous pearls and straddling my Ducati at the front of the motorcade plastered the Herald and later the Australian gossip magazines. I didn’t wear my helmet and Mum said I had an ax to grind. I denied it, but we both knew I’d never forgiven Shinju for the ink-vine scar that runs down the right side of my face. Did I want everyone to know that? Maybe so.

But murder has a way of either bringing families together or driving them apart. In our case, Shinju’s homicide squashed us into a world we’d never shared. Mum, Pop, and I leaned on each other, licked one another’s wounds. Unfamiliar, sticky emotions drove us to hound the Broome police until they stopped returning our calls and refused to see us at the station.

You may wonder why a screwed-up family with very little tenderness for one another would join together. Was it out of love for Shinju? Or guilt over getting whatever was left in her bank accounts? Was there even enough love left between us to miss her? I’m not sure. But I have a feeling the way she died had a lot to do with it.

Shinju and I began our lives sharing the same primordial sea. Mum said we wrestled in her belly like Jacob and Esau, and we would’ve been named after the brotherly-love-gone-awry twins if we’d been boys. Instead, Pop had his way, naming us with the family business in mind. Even though I was born first, and in my opinion should’ve been named Shinju, meaning “pearl,” I was dubbed Kashiko — child of the seashore. Turns out Pop was prophetic. I became the pearl hunter. Shinju wore them.

Unfortunately, as the years went by, Pop’s heavy drinking wrecked our small pearl-diving business. Fewer trips out to sea meant fewer opportunities to search for oysters, resulting in smaller profits. By the time we were fifteen, he had to sell our lugger. Without the boat, the business went belly-up.

Fate smiled on my sister, though. When she was sixteen, Shinju was hired by world-renowned Broome South Sea Pearls as a jewelry model for their Aphrodite’s Tears Collection. Strands of diamonds and pearls, sapphires and pearls, platinum and pearls hung across Shinju’s back, thighs, small breasts, and even bare bum in glossy advertisements in international magazines and Australian TV commercials. Sales at Broome South Sea Pearls doubled. Two years later, you couldn’t take the bullet train in Tokyo, the subway in New York, or even sip a cup of java in a Broome coffee shop without her long black lashes and glowing white skin beckoning you like a seductive sea nymph. Men ogled her, but women idolized her, imagining if they just bought perfectly matched Broome South Sea pearls the diameter of lychee fruit, her alabaster skin and black lacquered hair would become their own.

But the fantasy didn’t last. My sister died here in Broome two months ago, the middle of January. I’d just come off a twenty-one-day stint on a pearling ship. Because I had nothing in the fridge at the one-bedroom bungalow I rent two blocks from the beach, I stopped at the Moon market at Town Beach. Bought a couple of overpriced star fruits, a package of soy nuts, and a liter of alfalfa juice. Walking home I heard sirens, but didn’t think much of it. Tourists can get crazy as a cut snake on our famous Staircase to the Moon nights.

When there’s a full moon the tides recede far from shore, exposing the mudflats in Roebuck Bay. As the moon rises, light reflects off the wet ripples in the sand, creating the illusion of glowing amber steps shimmering straight up to the moon. Tourists overrun Broome every month to see the Staircase to the Moon. Turns out an American couple on their honeymoon found my sister’s body on the beach. I don’t care for tourists much, but still, I wouldn’t want a death haunting my anniversary.

Pop rang me at 1 A.M. When he whimpered the news about Shinju, I couldn’t breathe. Then I remembered I woke up gasping two nights before in my bunk on the Adelaide. The clock had glowed 10:42 P.M.

Some say identical twins have a special connection. Like telepathy, or ESP. Shinju and I had such ties: unknowingly buying the same outfits, the same bikinis; carrying on conversations without speaking a word; making the same grades on exams in school. Falling for the same boy in Year 9.

Others say it’s bunk — there’s no science to prove twins can sense each other’s feelings and thoughts. But then how would they explain last October, when a horrifying dream woke me? My hands were cold and clammy and my heart flopped around in my chest like a dying fish. I saw Shinju’s face, bloodless and still, floating across my bungalow ceiling. I knew it wasn’t my face — hers was perfect. Mine has a scar stretching from the temple to the corner of my lip.

I forced myself to sit up, grab the phone, and ring my parents.

“Call Shinju in Sydney,” I said. “If there’s no answer, ring the police. And make damn sure they send for an ambulance.”

Mum didn’t ask questions. She knew the bond Shinju and I shared. Her call saved Shinju’s life. She’d snorted enough cocaine to kill a bloody roo, then chased it down with six cold ones — Victoria Bitter, her favorite from the old days in Broome. Blamed me for news of her addiction becoming social gossip, and her employer, BSSP, warning her not to let it happen again.

Was it that same connection that woke me on the Adelaide? Was 10:42 the time of her death? I decided not to share my morbid thoughts with Pop when he called that night. Instead I told him not to worry, I’d take care of everything at the coroner’s office in the morning. Pop hadn’t been back on the wagon long enough to be able to say to the coroner, “Yes, this sea-battered body belongs to my little pearl.” But after ringing off, I was restless. I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, slid into a jacket, and grabbed the keys. But once I straddled the bike, my hands started to shake. I couldn’t slip the key into the ignition.

A taxi dropped me at the county morgue. The main entrance was unlit. I peered through the window but couldn’t make out much — an empty reception desk, some green molded-plastic chairs. I rapped on the door and waited. Nothing. I knocked harder. I was about to ring for another taxi when a young bloke unlocked the door and stuck out his head.

“What the bloody hell?” he said.

“I’m here to identify my sister’s body.”

He stared at my scar, like everyone does when they first see the hideous thing, then his gaze darted erratically. “Oh, sorry, lady. But, yeah, like we open at eight o’clock. You’ll have to come back.” He lifted his shoulders in a halfhearted shrug.

A sweet, lemony cloud drifted over me. It wasn’t that the dude was smoking weed that ticked me off. It was his bloodshot and dilated eyes. I’d seen Shinju high enough times to guess he’d snorted heaven dust too.

I glanced at his name tag. “Look, Jeff, I don’t think I can build up the nerve again to do this.” It was a lie. I can face just about anything, but I had my reasons for being there.

He narrowed his eyes and peered at me. “Do I know you?”

“You do now.” I stuck out my hand, gave him a hurried shake, and stepped inside. “Kashiko Nakagawa. My sister drowned. Her body was found on the beach at the Mangrove Resort.”

He shook his head. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I could get in a lot of trouble.”

“World’s full of trouble, Jeff. And I’d feel just terrible if you lost your job because someone found out what you were really doing on your break. That would bring down a shitload of problems.”

He seemed to think about my words, then nodded slowly. “Right-o. Do you have a photo of the deceased?”

I opened my jacket and pulled out a shot Pop had taken of Shinju on an old lugger a few years back. She held a rice-paper parasol to protect her face from the relentless Australian sun. Jeff studied the photo as we walked down the corridor to the holding room. I gave him my sister’s name and he checked the labels on a couple of large metal drawers that lined the walls. When he got to the last drawer on the left side, he yanked it open.

Immediately the stench hit me. I clamped my hand over my nose.

“How’d you say your sister died?”

“Drowned,” I mumbled.

He tilted his head to one side. “No, I remember this one, heard the coroner talking about her. She was that famous model, right? She didn’t drown.”

He pulled back the sheet and my mind went blank. Shinju’s face, bloated and bluish, was pockmarked where the sea life I loved so much had taken nibbles from her flesh. Her dull hair was matted with sand and salt, and her usually powdered and perfumed skin smelled of rotting meat. A wave of nausea rolled over me.

“That’s her,” I whispered. “Pop’s little pearl.” I reached out and smoothed down her eyebrow. Her skin was cold and stiff, and fine sand rolled under my fingertips.

The reek wafted up again. I grabbed an aluminum basin just in time.

Jeff handed me a brown paper towel. “You know,” he said as he stared at Shinju’s picture, “I’ve been studying bone structure, and skulls and whatnot. You two could have been twins.”

“Yeah, we could have been.” I spat out all that was left of my overpriced star fruit. The paper towel was scratchy, but I wiped my mouth again anyway. Spotting a chair, I sat down, bringing the basin with me. Jeff brought me a cup of water.

“How’d the cops know to call my parents?” I asked.

“The cops at the scene thought they recognized her. Went to school with her, they said.”

Considering the state of Shinju’s body, it was a miracle anyone could have recognized her. Bile stung my airways and I was ready to get out of there. “Don’t I need to sign some papers or something?”

“You know, you could have waited until I fixed her up some before identifying the body. You didn’t have to come and see her like this.”

Yeah, I did. But I didn’t tell him that.

Jeff replaced the sheet, slid the steel slab back into the locker, and twisted the handle. He slipped papers from a folder onto a clipboard and told me to sign at all the X’s.

There was no place to sign on the first page, so I flipped to the next. CAUSE OF DEATH stopped me. I sped back to the first page and glanced at the document title. Jeff had accidentally handed me the Initial Autopsy Report. I stole a look at him. He was busy texting. Quickly I scanned the report. The last page was an eight-by-ten glossy. At first I thought the photo had to be a mistake. I stared at the object, amazed at what I saw.

After signing the proper paperwork, I handed Jeff some cash for his trouble and left. The taxi dropped me off just after six. My bike was still in the carport where I’d left it, but the front door of my tiny bungalow wasn’t. Smashed and splintered, it hung wide open.

I peered in. A tightness cinched my rib cage, constricting my heart. Overturned chairs, strewn cushions, and the contents of my travel duffel littered the room. I threaded my way through, stumbling over a potted orchid. A rattan chair broke my fall, and I lowered myself to the floor, fighting for air. My underwater training kicked in — slower, deeper breaths, relaxed muscles, a cleared mind. I scanned my tiny room. Whoever had broken in was gone, but fear returned and my heart raced again.

I called the cops. Then I crawled onto the slashed sofa and curled up at one end. I had just taken a breath when my hands started to shake. Weeks of physical labor aboard the Adelaide, the sight of Shinju’s body, and the break-in had taken their toll. I yanked a blanket from the floor and wrapped myself up tight to keep from shattering into a million pieces.

Closing my eyes, I recalled Shinju’s disfigured face. “Be careful what you wish for,” Pop liked to say. Well, my deep-seated hope had come true: my sister’s famous face was finally more hideous than mine. To see her spoiled looks had been my reason for going to the morgue. But nothing could have prepared me for what I’d seen. The long-awaited satisfaction didn’t come. Instead I felt my heart rend in two.

I must have fallen asleep, because shouts startled me awake. I pivoted my head backward on the arm of the sofa and viewed my ruined doorway upside down. Even distorted, I’d know Tom Lafroy anywhere. After all, I’d seen him from all angles, even half naked enough times. He carried a piece of door frame, picking his way through the room, calling my name. I leapt from the sofa and grabbed the knife on the coffee table I’d used to slice up my star fruit.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” I said.

He looked up, wariness on his sunburned face. “Kashiko, put down the knife.” His voice was soft, measured, and touched with just enough of his father’s Irish lilt to make my heart skip. “I just heard about Shinju.” He fumbled his words then, not sure what to say next. Let him squirm, I thought.

“Are you okay? Your da’s been trying to reach you.” Righting the wicker chair, he came closer. And I wondered for the millionth time if he’d ever really loved my sister.

“I’ll ring him,” I said.

“What happened here?” He swung his head around, quickly taking it all in. Reminded me of the way we pearlers search for oysters on the seabed.

“Maid forgot to show up. Now get out of my house.”

He shook his head. “You still hate me.”

“Shinju’s dead. No one else will ever have her. Happy now?” I picked up the dishes from the coffee table.

“That’s not fair. She left me, remember?”

I tossed the knife into the sink with a clang and turned to face him. “Was that after she found you in bed with a hooker or after you hooked her on cocaine? I forget which came first.”

He picked up an extra-large pillow and leaned it against the wall. A painted Aboriginal design covered the pillow’s fabric. Shinju had bought it for me with her first paycheck from BSSP a lifetime ago. Back when she was still trying to buy my forgiveness.

“Keep your hands off my stuff,” I said.

In two strides he was close to me. Too close. I pushed him, even though in the past I would never have done that. “Get away,” I said, and waved my hands. “Out, out!”

“Listen. Shinju was into something way over her head.”

I checked at that remark, reviewing the facts I’d gathered from the autopsy report, but I shook it off. “How do I know you aren’t just trying to destroy her all over again?”

He lowered his head and leaned toward me in that way I always found unnerving. “We’ve been friends long enough for you to know I’d never do that.” He placed a hand on my shoulder.

I twisted out of his grasp. “Why should I trust you? You falsify your oyster counts more than anyone in the business.”

“We need to talk. About Shinju. Let’s go for a coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee. Remember?” I turned my back and walked toward the bathroom. “You can let yourself out.”

“Won’t be hard to do. There’s no door.” He waited a beat, then spoke. “Call me when you’re ready.”

Once locked in the bath, I pulled out the eight-by-ten I’d snatched from the report and hidden in my jeans. A pearl of extraordinary size sat above a measuring tape. Eighteen millimeters in diameter. Size of a mothball, harshly glinting light. A coroner’s photographer can’t capture a pearl’s radiant luster. Not like the talent at BSSP’s advertising agency can. Those blokes could almost convince me I needed to buy a strand worth tens of thousands.

I undressed, turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it, and stepped in. Rising steam warmed my face, except along the deadened scar line. I dropped my head back, letting the water stream down my hair and onto my shoulders. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. But my mind wouldn’t stop. What did Tom know? And what the bloody hell had Shinju gotten herself into?

When the cops arrived, I took a quick inventory. The only thing missing was an old photo of Shinju and me I’d stuck beneath a Down Under magnet on the fridge. Mum had snapped a fuzzy shot of us on Eighty Mile Beach. At thirteen, we wore our new bikinis with an excitement that only slightly covered our insecurity. Mum told us of young girls who revealed too much and ended up being taken advantage of. Girls right in our neighborhood. But with Shinju’s arms locked tightly around my neck, I felt safe.

Turns out the cops, Liam Walker and Cooper Riley, had gone to school with Shinju and me, and were the same ones who’d been first on the scene at the Mangrove. In those days they’d been Shinju and Tom’s friends, not mine.

“Damn shame about your sister,” Walker said. It had to be the tenth time he’d said it, and I wondered if he’d slept with her in school.

Riley nodded. “She was a beauty, all right.” They exchanged a look, and I was sure they were remembering fonder days.

“Yeah,” I said. “She made sure she was the beauty of the family.”

They became flustered after that. Everyone knew the story, or at least thought they did. How Shinju “accidentally” sliced my face open with an oyster knife. Trying to protect me and Mum during one of Pop’s drunken rages was the story Shinju gave.

Walker coughed. “You have any idea who would break in and steal the photo off your fridge?”

“Maybe one of the blokes Shinju slept with in secondary school?”

Riley stole another look at Walker. “Miss Nakagawa, you don’t seem too broken up over your sister’s death. Any reason for that?”

I had to laugh. “How much time do you have? But if you think I had anything to do with my sister’s murder, I’ve got twenty BSSP divers who’ll swear I’ve been harvesting oysters on the Adelaide for the past three weeks.”

Riley raised an eyebrow. “I don’t recall saying your sister was murdered.”

“I’ve been to the morgue,” I said. “I know about the pearl. The bruises on her neck. Just because Shinju and I fought like the devil doesn’t mean I don’t want justice.”

Walker handed me his card. “Call me if you think of anything else.”

I would have slammed the door after them if it’d been possible. I called Mum and Pop and told them I’d be over after I cleaned up the mess. Mum said she’d come and help me, but she never showed up. No surprise there.

I remembered my neighbors had renovated their bungalow a few months before, so I asked to have their old front door. I nailed the jamb in place and hung the door as best I could. When I finished, I grabbed my keys and stepped out the back. Locking up, I stared through the kitchenette window. What kind of person would steal a photo of a couple of thirteen-year-old girls? Possibilities raced through my mind, and despite my bravado with the cops, fear seeped deeper into my spine.

Two detectives were sipping tea at the kitchen table when I got to Mum and Pop’s. Both were middle-aged, pudgy above the beltline. Gray Suit Number One spoke first.

“The autopsy revealed your daughter didn’t drown. She suffocated.” He held up a copy of the eight-by-ten glossy like the one I’d snitched. “This pearl was lodged in her throat, Mr. Nakagawa. Ever seen it before?”

My father is a second-generation Australian pearler. His father emigrated from Japan in the thirties, eventually buying a used but seaworthy lugger. He hired Aborigine women as pearl divers instead of immigrant Japanese women because they had larger lung capacities for free diving. My grandfather made steady money, and wasn’t a drinker. Can’t say the same for Pop. He lost everything — the shop, the equipment, the lugger — by the time I was fifteen. The same year Shinju sliced my face open.

Taking the photo, Pop clicked his tongue in appreciation. Everyone in my family knew a prize when we saw it. “Back in ’eighty-seven, I held a cultured pearl harvested out of Kuri Bay,” he said. “It measured sixteen point five millimeters, was light gray in color, and had a nacre depth of point eight millimeters. I thought I was holding a ray of moonbeam.”

I leaned against the kitchen counter, nursing a glass of lemon squash. Pop could be poetic when he felt like it. I smelled the faint tang of whiskey spiraling up from the sink drain. Mum or Pop? I wondered. Probably both off the wagon now.

“But no,” Pop continued. “I’ve never seen this pearl before.”

Gray Suit Number Two leaned back in our kitchen chair. “Material recovered from under your daughter’s fingernails is not from the mudflats in Roebuck Bay. The sand grains are more coarse. Perhaps from one of the islands along the coast. Do you have any idea why she would have been there? Maybe on a photo shoot for BSSP?”

Mum spoke up, her voice shaky. “I don’t think so. She spent an hour here, after her business in town. She said she had a flight back to Sydney later that evening.”

As always, this was news to me. Shinju would sometimes visit Mum and Pop after a meeting with BSSP. Drop off an ambrosia dessert from the pastry shop, along with a bit of cash. I’d usually find out about it after she’d gone. My parents had given up trying to piece the family back together.

Mum didn’t look so good. Worse than usual. She hadn’t dyed her hair pitch-black to cover the gray. Her housecoat was rumpled with what looked like gooseberry jam dried on the breast, and her face was puffy. I walked over and sat down next to her. I can’t tell you why, but I put my arm around her.

I turned to the first detective. “Any idea of the time of death?”

“Hard to say for certain, but the medical examiner estimates the time to be approximately forty-eight hours ago, give or take eight hours.”

I realized two nights ago at 10:42 in the evening would fall in that range.

A familiar but more gentle than usual rap sounded on the back door, and Thomas Lafroy, Sr., stepped in. The Lafroys had lived across the street from us for ten years. When Mrs. Lafroy died from colon cancer last year, Captain Lafroy sold the house. Everything reminded him of her, he said. Her cornflower-blue hydrangea bushes the size of Volkswagen Beetles had definitely suffered at the hands of the new neighbors. The captain hadn’t maintained his rugged good looks since his wife died, but it was still easy to see why Shinju had wrapped herself around Tom Jr. from the start. Father and son both had a crooked smile and a confidence that drew women like bottlenose flies to crocs on the barbie.

“Fierce hard time for ye,” he said. “So sorry.” Unlike his son’s slight Irish lilt, Captain Lafroy’s brogue was heavy and thick.

Pop got up and fell into Lafroy’s arms, wailing like a baby. When Mum joined the group hug, I began to fidget. We were not huggers.

“We’re the detectives on the case,” said Gray Suit Number Two. “Did you know the deceased, Mister—?”

Captain Lafroy introduced himself and sat down. “I know Kashiko better than I knew Shinju.” His thick accent caused I to be oi and than to be dan. “I captain BSSP pearling ships, and Kashiko here is one of our best divers. One of only two female divers in the fleet.” He tugged on a lock of my hair, something that had always annoyed me but I’d never complained about.

“The captain was the only one who’d give me a chance,” I said, and pulled my head away.

“And the other captains are kicking themselves over it.” He clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “But about Shinju, detective. She and my son Tom were sweethearts. They talked about getting married, but things didn’t work out. Broke up several years back. Upset both the Nakagawas and my wife and me. It was a hard time.”

“Whose decision was it to break up, your son’s or the deceased’s?” the detective asked.

Lafroy stared at his hands, then stole a look at Pop. “Shinju called off the engagement.”

“How did your son take the news, Captain Lafroy?”

Tom’s father looked at me, and I shook my head, trying to warn him.

“Not well, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Captain, did he ever threaten her, harm her in any way?”

Lafroy rubbed his forehead. “Just remember that Shinju dropped the charges.”

“And what charges were those, Captain Lafroy?”

“Assault,” I said. “Shinju said Tom threatened to strangle her.”

The morning of the funeral I woke before sunrise, slid onto the Ducati, and headed for the Japanese Pearl Divers Cemetery on Port Drive. The tombstones, hewn of beach stone and inscribed with various Japanese dialects, are surrounded by a sea of packed dirt and scattered gray pebbles. In better times, Grandfather drove Shinju and me to the cemetery to sweep and weed the graves. Although he hadn’t known any of the ancient residents, he said it was a matter of honor to keep their graves presentable. My sister and I couldn’t wait for those peaceful Saturday afternoons when we escaped Mum and Pop’s clashes and the stench of cigarette butts drowned in whiskey.

I squatted under a gum tree and fingered Shinju’s pearls. That peace I longed for didn’t come. Instead anxiety spread like a rising tide. I hadn’t seen Tom since the morning my bungalow was broken into, but I needed to talk to him. For several days I’d shown up at the police station and asked the suits if they had any information on Shinju or the pearl. I couldn’t decide if they were lying to me or just plain inept. Either way, I got nothing from them and called Tom. There was no answer, so I left a message for him to meet me in the morning at the Japanese cemetery at seven-thirty.

When he didn’t show by eight, I stood and brushed the dirt from my leathers. Mum had asked me for breakfast. Probably just tea and toast, but I knew she needed me that day. I took a step in the direction of my bike and Tom Lafroy slithered out from behind a six-foot tombstone.

“I got your message.” He lifted his face to the breeze and his shoulders visibly relaxed.

I faltered, but only for a moment. “You said Shinju was in over her head. What did you mean?”

He raised an eyebrow. “And g’day to you too.” He was unshaven, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. I knew he was planning on being at the funeral, but it wasn’t scheduled until ten o’clock. He’d be dressed to the nines by then.

“Sorry.” I attempted a smile. We both knew it wasn’t genuine.

He plucked a pack of Dunhills from his pocket, tapped it against his forefinger twice, then gripped the cigarette with his lips. He was about to pull it from the pack when he saw my face. He spit the ciggy back into the pack and pushed it out of sight with a fingertip. “Sorry. Forgot you can’t handle the smoke. Trying to quit anyway.”

I pulled the eight-by-ten from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. “The pearl’s one in a million, Tom. Something like that can’t be kept a secret — unless it came from a stray.”

Occasionally currents caused oysters to cut loose from their basket moorings. When BSSP divers found a stray, they were awarded a finder’s fee. Any diver caught not returning a stray was fired on the spot. But that wasn’t always a deterrent.

Breath from his low whistle grazed my ear as he marveled at the pearl. “Maybe it was a stray. Maybe BSSP produced it. Who knows?”

I frowned. “You’re just like those detectives. Holding out on me.”

He grabbed my shoulders with both hands, startling me. Then he put a bead on me that caused me to take in a sharp breath of cold air. “What I’m about to say, you have to promise to keep it quiet. At least until we know more.”

I wanted to shrug his hands loose and step back to safety, but I needed the information. “Right-o,” I said.

He searched my eyes, uncertain, I suppose, whether he could trust me. “The Indian Princess,” he said finally. “Part of the BSSP fleet. I was having a pint at Jack’s about six months ago and heard a rumor about a stray that produced a pearl like that. But it was never returned to BSSP. The diver kept it. I didn’t believe it, figured someone was just blowing smoke... until I saw the photo of the pearl in the paper. Word was, the diver was working on the Indian Princess at the time.”

“Who was he, Tom? Between you and me, we know almost every diver in the fleet. Twenty boats, twenty divers per boat. We can find him.”

His hands were still on my shoulders. I felt them tremble, which I found strange. Tom’s hands had always felt so strong, so sure. Then his touch disappeared and he straightened my jacket collar.

“Right-o,” he said with a forced smile. “I’ll get the ship’s log from the Indian Princess for the last two years. We’ll find him.”

I returned his smile. Mine, at least, was heartfelt. “Working together again,” I said. “Just like old times.”

Pain wrinkled his brow, and his smile faded.

That little show of disappointment sent my spirits spiraling downward. “See you at the funeral,” I said quickly and backed away.

But his face turned brooding as he pulled out his Dunhills. The ciggy lit, he inhaled deeply. He turned his head sideways to blow the smoke over his shoulder. When he turned back, I thought he was going to say something. Instead he swung his lanky body in the direction of the tombstone and disappeared.

For the next six weeks I spent my time badgering the suits for updates on Shinju’s murder investigation and upending bottles of Famous Grouse Scotch into Mum’s kitchen sink. But nothing I said or did seemed to make much difference at the police station, or at home. I finally wised up and remembered I couldn’t solve Mum and Pop’s problems. But maybe I could do something to help find my sister’s killer. The pearl was unique. Only a few companies could have produced it. I figured a BSSP pearling ship was a good place to start. I was headed back out to sea and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Broome was closing in on me.

Tom and I hadn’t crewed together for several seasons, so I was surprised to find him stowing his gear onto the Adelaide three cabins down from mine late one afternoon at the end of February.

“Hey, stranger,” I said.

He gave me his crooked smile and a quick nod, but that was all I got. After checking my wetsuit, mask, and regulator for signs of wear and damage, I stowed the gear in my locker and headed for the galley. I kept an eye out for Tom, but he never showed. I guessed he ate in the captain’s cabin with his father. The cook served grilled saltwater barramundi and fresh veggies. My favorite. Afterward I turned in early. Being the only female diver on the Adelaide, I never had to share a cabin. Not unless I wanted to, of course. But one-nighters in sandy sheets were not my thing. To the blokes on the ship, I was just another mate.

The ship arrived at our destination sometime during the night. Oyster bed locations are guarded secrets, so except for Captain Lafroy and his first mate, the rest of us hadn’t a clue about the Adelaide’s exact coordinates.

Pinctada maxima — the oysters that produce South Sea pearls — are found only in Australian and Tahitian waters. Because P. maxima have a short lifespan, just six years, pearl manufacturers have to maintain a steady supply harvested from the ocean. As a diver, my job is to scour the sea floor and snatch as many of the giants as I can during my shift. Oyster season is from January to March. Unfortunately, it’s also the high season for the deadliest creature in the world, the box jellyfish. One sting can kill a person in thirty seconds.

My diver’s watch buzzed at 5 A.M. I pulled on a one-piece bather, a well-worn kimono, and boat shoes, then padded down to the galley for a cup of green tea. Sounds of the morning routine drifted through the open portholes: shots of compressed air hissing as the ship’s air tanks were tested, the flapping and submerging of the sail anchor, and the creaking of the two metal harvesting arms, each dangling six air hoses and tethers, as they swung into place over the water. The ocean lapped lazily against the ship, and I had just closed my eyes to enjoy the familiar sounds when the blaring of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” shattered my peace. Damn that Yank, and Tom Lafroy. Besides annoying me with his favorite music too early in the morning, he hadn’t come through with what he promised.

“Da says he can’t get the Indian Princess records from BSSP,” he’d told me a few weeks earlier when we met at the Honeyeater Café for an update. He’d sat picking the grilled fennel root and bean sprouts from his soy burger, then smothered the patty with Keen’s mustard. “The company’s worried the pearl was stolen. Sounds like it might have been a stray, like you suggested. Da says he’s tried contacting a couple of his captain buddies, but everyone’s clamming up. So I went back to Jack’s.”

“Find out anything?” I asked as I scraped his discards onto my soy burger.

He shifted his eyes away from me. “The boys said the diver was a new bloke from Sydney. His body was found at Coulomb Point last October.”

I noticed for the first time how his fingers tapped a nervous staccato on the table. I wasn’t sure he was telling me everything.

But now, as I sat in the galley on the Adelaide, Johnny Cash was singing “I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher” through the porthole, and I wondered if I’d been a fool to believe him. I gulped the tea and returned to my cabin to get ready for my shift.

Exposure of just one square inch of skin is deadly during box jellyfish season. An ounce of venom can kill sixty men. Cody, my dive buddy, a mate I’d partnered with numerous times, checked the hood that covered my head and neck, the tightness of my mask, the juncture where my gloves overlapped the nine-millimeter neoprene suit at my wrists. I did the same for him. Once we completed our check, we gave a thumbs-up to the dive master and climbed onto the dive platform. Each of the ship’s two metal arms, one port and one starboard, serviced six divers. Fitted with air hoses and tethers, the device allowed us to be pulled along for extended periods with an ample supply of air. All I had to do was scan the uneven seabed and pluck oysters. Easy. Like riding a finely tuned bike.

I was assigned the far tether on the starboard side, my buddy the second from the end. Once underwater and then again on the sea floor, we exchanged a thumbs-up to indicate that our ears had equalized, our air was flowing, and we were good to go. Every five minutes throughout the dive, we were to signal our status. Adjusting the air in our buoyancy compensators, we hovered an arm’s reach from the ocean floor.

At a depth of thirty feet, weightlessness as well as the current teased the strain from my muscles. Pulled along by the tether, I spotted speckled cowries and spiral-shaped wentletrap shells tumbling along the seabed. Under a brain coral, a sea slug rippled its purple-trimmed mantle. It was good to be back.

I refocused on my work, straining my eyes to distinguish the oyster shells from the drab underwater terrain. We were paid per oyster, and shifts could amount to big bikkies in your pocket. At the fifteen-minute mark I returned my buddy’s signal. My netted bag was half full of oysters, despite the poor visibility. I was certain to return to the surface with a full haul.

Captain Lafroy gradually turned the boat north. The currents were stronger in this section and had churned up the water, making it difficult to see the oysters even though they were as big as supper platters.

I spied a huge oyster shell peeking out from a clump of dead man’s fingers when my lungs felt the tug of decreased air flowing through the hose. I calmed myself, slowed my breathing, and looked up, following the heavy black hose that was keeping me alive. The slack in the hose didn’t concern me at first, but when I inhaled a small mouthful of saltwater, panic prickled my sense of calm. And when I saw the black tubing descending in lazy loops before me, I knew my lifeline was severed.

I searched for my buddy. We could share his air. The water darkened as an overhead cloud hid the sun. Visibility was now only a few feet. Where was he? My body screamed for air. Instinct to inhale invaded my brain. But if I did, I’d fill my lungs with water. Training kicked in. I flipped onto my back, released my weight belt, and fumbled for the CO₂ cartridge attached to my buoyancy compensator. I yanked hard on the cord. The BC expanded like a balloon. Exhaling what little air I had left in a constant flow of little bubbles, I shot toward the surface. With all my strength, I forced myself not to suck in the blackness around me. It seemed thirty feet had turned into a thousand. My lungs ached, but to survive I had to exhale every bit of breath in my lungs. A free ascent would protect me from getting the bends. In theory, anyway.

I popped to the surface like a harbor buoy. Riding the four-foot waves was rough, but I quickly realized a new danger approached. The huge underwater sail anchor — dragged behind the ship to decrease the ship’s speed so divers could work — was almost on me. If I got tangled in its cables, I’d be strangled before I could drown.

I heard a shout from the boat. Captain Lafroy threw out an orange ring as the crew fought with my sixty-foot tether line. His aim was off, and the sea roiled, throwing me down into the trough of the wave and the ring onto the crest. Johnny Cash’s lyrics rang in my head. Down, down, down, he sang. Down, down, down. I swallowed a blast of wind-tossed wave and saltwater scathed my windpipe. I watched as a gust lifted the ring into the air, spinning it on its edge like a coin. Finally it fell within five feet of me. Hope ignited the lactic acid in my muscles, boiling it away. I swam hard against the current. When I reached the ring, I shot my arms through and clamped down with everything I had. I floated on my back and was hauled away from the sail anchor cables and toward the boat. Like a giant tuna.

Once on the dive platform, I was stripped of my gear and rolled in a wool blanket. My heart skittered inside my chest like a pinball. I shook like hell. A couple of deckhands lifted me onto a stretcher and carried me below.

“Thanks, mates,” I said, once lying in my bunk. The adrenaline rush had drained me. I just wanted to be left alone. They each gave my hand a squeeze and disappeared. I inhaled the salty air mixed with diesel, thankful to the sea gods I was alive. Someone rapped on the door. Tom’s head appeared.

He sat next to me on the narrow bunk and tucked the blanket around my legs. “Da called off the harvesting for the day.”

I pulled an arm from under the blanket and angled it across my eyes. “The guys won’t be happy about that.”

“Sea’s getting rough anyway. Storm’s coming. I checked your air hose. Looks like sun damage. Cracks weakened the rubber. The hose snapped off just below the surface — that’s why no one noticed. Your buddy didn’t see a thing. Feels like an ass. Da wants all twelve hoses checked. Replaced if necessary. He’s just sick about it.”

He took my cold hand in his. At once my exhaustion disappeared and my mind was on alert. His hip pressed against mine, and even though I felt an uncomfortable stabbing pain due to the pressure, I didn’t want him to move.

“One time I had to do a free ascent like you did today,” he said. “Spent twelve hours in a hyperbaric chamber.” He frowned. “Diving’s risky business. You should take a break from it for the rest of the trip.”

I lifted my head, bristling at his words. “Is that a threat?”

“Just a penny’s worth of free advice.”

“Piss off, Lafroy. And take your pennies with you.”

He got up from the bed and pulled up a stool. “Da said to keep an eye on you for the next couple of hours. If you start having symptoms, we’ll have to get you a chamber in Broome. Now lie flat. We’re headed to one of the islands to ride out the storm.”

I lay back down. It was stupid to raise my head and risk nitrogen rising to my brain. I had to admit that Captain Lafroy was right about that. He was also right about the storm. We’d all be safer on one of the nature reserve islands in the Timor Sea where BSSP maintains a pearling operation site.

Tom looked at me through lowered lids. “So what should we talk about?”

I thought back to my time being tossed around in the sea like a Styrofoam cup. Tom had not been part of the first shift of divers, but I didn’t remember seeing him on deck during my rescue. Where had he been?

“I dunno,” I said finally. “How about the night in Sydney when you tried to strangle my sister?”

He clicked his tongue. “About time someone wanted to hear my side.”

The air in the cabin was getting cooler with the storm and I slipped my arms back under the blanket. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear his explanation. I liked keeping my resentment toward him alive and healthy. But I owed it to Shinju to find out more.

“Shinju wasn’t only addicted to cocaine,” he began. “She was addicted to the party scene. But I was sick of that life.”

I folded my arms under the covers. Tom offered Shinju and me our first joint in Grade 10, our first snort of cocaine a couple of years later. Shinju got pulled in. I bolted in the other direction.

“That night a movie director was giving a party, but I wanted her to stay home. Shinju just laughed, told me I was bonkers. Why should she be with a bloke from Broome when she could party with Sydney’s beautiful people? I got angry, told her I wouldn’t let her go.”

Imprisoned in my bunk, I couldn’t see Tom’s face too well. But I did hear his heavy exhale.

“I loved her, but I was losing her. A few weeks before, she told me she’d slept with a fashion designer, some famous guy who’d given her some of his stuff to wear. She was cheating on me. It made me crazy.”

His voice cracked a bit with the last sentence, but I didn’t care. A cantilevered lamp swayed with the rock of the ship, sending Tom’s distorted profile skittling across the wall. The storm was on us now.

“So what did you do?”

“I left. Went to a pub around the corner. Got wasted, then came back to the apartment to wait for her. When she got home at four in the morning, we argued again. She threw her shoes at me. Broke off our engagement. The whole thing was ugly as hell.”

“She told me you’d strangle her if she left.”

He punched the wall with his fist. “I can’t remember everything I said that night. All I know is she stormed off to the bedroom and locked the door. I crashed on the sofa. Don’t know how long I was out. The door chime woke me. Three Blue Healers from Central Metro stood there, badges all shiny, saying Shinju reported me for assault — that I’d threatened her.”

I heard the crinkling of cellophane, a familiar tap-tap, then smelled a whiff of fresh tobacco. I was about to protest, but before the words were out of my mouth he said “Sorry” and put his Dunhills away.

“It was nothing but lies,” he continued. “I’d never hurt her.”

I didn’t know what to believe. Shinju had a knack for twisting the knife in your soft underside. But Tom wasn’t trustworthy either.

I heard him rise and then felt him sitting on the edge of my bunk again. He flicked back my hair and found where my scar began at my temple. He traced it across my cheek to the corner of my mouth.

“How did this happen?” He spoke slowly, as if he had to think about each word. The walls of the small cabin collapsed and I felt my throat constricting. I was under the sea again, fighting for air.

“Shinju was trying to protect me from Pop.”

He gave his head a little shake, then shifted his gaze to the porthole. His breath, warm and moist, fell softly on my face. It smelled of coffee and cigarettes, but for some reason it didn’t bother me. Then, as if something other than the steady storm raged outside, he cocked his head. With a raised eyebrow, he turned to look at me again, hand still on my face. “You sticking with that story?”

I didn’t answer. Instead I pulled my head away from his touch. “I always check my air hose before diving,” I said. “It looked fine to me this morning.”

“Huh?” he said.

“What were you doing while I was diving, Tom?”

He stood and walked to the door. “Maybe you should sleep with one eye open. You don’t know who you can trust.”

To tend the company’s offshore oyster farms, BSSP maintains small camps on several island nature reserves. Australia’s restrictions for using the sites are simple: take out what you take in. Every crew I’d ever been part of kept the campsites as pristine as possible.

We arrived at the island around 7 P.M. Box jellyfish season was still going strong, so the sixteen-foot Zodiac made several trips until the crew was landed. I made the trip by Zodiac and stretcher. I was getting tired of the constraints, but Captain Lafroy insisted I lie flat for the full twenty-four hours.

There weren’t enough cabins for the entire crew, so Tom put me in a cramped storage room next to The Implantation/Extraction Room, TIER for short. In TIER, experts inserted perfectly round plastic balls into each new batch of oysters. The balls served as cores for cultured South Sea pearls. The oysters were then taken to the undersea farms, placed in netted baskets attached to lines, and dropped into the aquamarine waters. The oyster excretes a flow of pearly nacre to cover the plastic seed irritating its body. And the result? The largest and most exquisite pearls cocreated by man and nature. BSSP’s claim, anyway.

The plan was for the crew to work at the camp — scrubbing algae off harvested shells, repairing equipment — for a day or two while waiting for the storm to pass. I kept to my room, sleeping on and off the whole day, listening to the wind and rain, going stir-crazy.

Overrested, I was still wide awake after midnight when I heard muffled voices filtering through the wall my room shared with TIER. Was it normal to work around the clock when a new batch of oysters was brought in? I wasn’t sure.

As quietly as I could, I slid headfirst onto the floor and belly-crawled closer. I felt silly, pressing my ear against the wall, but I was determined to find out more about BSSP’s operations. The water-tank filters next door gurgled loudly and distorted the voices. I readjusted my head as much as I dared and listened.

“I’m out,” a male voice said.

Another male voice answered, but his words were muffled. The aquarium tanks splashed and babbled, and I guessed he was standing farther away from the wall between us.

“That bloody pearl was worth a million. Now we’ve lost it. The coppers have it,” the first man continued. “Then you couldn’t even make sure her body didn’t wash up on shore. ‘Take out what you take in,’ you insisted. Bloody hell, now there’s a murder investigation. And the sister? You promised she wouldn’t make it up from that dive alive. I told you, I’m out of it.”

Again I couldn’t make out the reply. I heard the door open, then slam shut. I returned to the makeshift cot. I always told myself I could handle anything. Now I wasn’t so sure. The rupture of my air hose had been no accident. The break-in at my bungalow, I realized, wasn’t just some random act. My heart took off running, and the room started to pitch.

I’d recognized the one voice I heard. It belonged to Crowe, a marine biologist responsible for overseeing TIER. Originally from Sydney, he’d transplanted himself to Broome thirty years ago. A pioneer in the cultured pearl industry. And now, at the very least, an accessory to murder.

I pulled the covers over my head and wanted to hide like I did the night I came home after getting a hundred stitches. Back then, I understood that Shinju had slashed my face to destroy my looks. I’d shivered under the sheets and wondered how my life would change. But this was different. This time I’d be dead if Crowe and his accomplice had their way.

The cheap mattress drilled a wayward spring into my kidney, but I was afraid to move, to make a sound. Too weak to stomp down the memories, my mind raced back to the day Shinju cut me.

On that Saturday morning, Tom and I planned to trek out to the flying boat wrecks in Roebuck Bay. We’d figured out we fancied one another, as much as fifteen-year-olds can know such things, and planned to spend the day sloshing the two kilometers to the wrecks and back. Two or three days a month low tide exposes the remains of three WWII Royal Dutch Air Force flying boats buried in the mud. Not very romantic, but I think we both realized it would give us a reason to hold on to each other as we hiked through the mudflats, and we were both keen on that idea.

But as Tom was backing out his dad’s truck from the driveway, Shinju popped open the passenger door and squeezed in next to me. I remember the expression on Tom’s face. Surprise at first, then obvious irritation. I gave Shinju a fierce look that spelled “Push off!” She ignored it, reached across me, and fiddled with the radio, chattering about the wrecks. Did we know that in 1942 Japanese Zeros raided Broome and destroyed fifteen flying boats in Roebuck Bay?

“Everyone knows that, Shinju.” Tom yanked the shifter into reverse and squealed out of the driveway.

How many times since the Lafroys moved in across the street had Shinju and I talked late into the night, wondering what it would be like to kiss Tom? But after two years of playful flirting, Shinju didn’t win him. I did. Tom and I had more in common, I suppose. We both loved to dive, trek the nature reserves, walk along Eighty Mile Beach. Shinju and I didn’t realize it then, but the day he chose me, Tom Lafroy made the first slice into the one heart my sister and I seemed to share.

Determined to salvage our outing to the wrecks, we ignored Shinju. As we stumbled through the mangrove swamps, Tom held my hand. To keep me from injuring my feet on buried mussels, he lifted me over suspicious pitted mudflats. He wrapped his arms around my waist whenever possible, even though doing so sometimes made it even more difficult to walk. He slipped his fingers through the bikini ties at my hips, and I clung to him whether I needed to or not.

At the wreckage site, an aircraft engine covered with soft coral had settled into the flats. A lonesome jetty post left for posterity angled up from the exposed sea floor. Locals milled about, along with tourists who’d arrived in hovercrafts.

During the war, Dutch refugees from Java, mainly women and children, were evacuated to Broome. Since no accommodations were available in town, flying-boat pilots were instructed to keep their passengers onboard. Aircraft were to be refueled, then continue on their way. But at 8 A.M. on March third, Japanese pilots strafed the moored planes, believing them to be war targets, unaware that innocent civilians were onboard.

The morning Tom, Shinju, and I were there, an elderly Dutch tourist started to retell the story of the strike. Tom and I weren’t interested. We’d heard it enough times in school. We moved on and investigated a different plane some distance away. Shinju, I found out later, gave the man her full attention.

“The Nips are a cruel race,” he told her. “My grandfather was a pilot for the Dutch Royal Air Force. He was burned alive here in Roebuck Bay when his fuel tank caught fire. His charred body was one of the few recovered.” He pointed a finger at Shinju. “You people deserved Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Although I was nowhere near my sister, I sensed something was wrong. I ran back and found her collapsed in the mud, surrounded by tourists. Tom was right behind me. He picked her up. Her eyes fluttered once and then she nuzzled her head into his neck. A woman told us what had happened, apologizing for the man, who’d returned to the hovercraft.

How Tom carried her the entire way back, I have no idea. By the time we reached the shore, she was able to walk. In the truck cab, she lay down with her head on Tom’s lap, her body between us and her sandy feet on my sunburned thighs. Once or twice on the way home I thought I saw her hand snake up Tom’s leg, but I couldn’t be sure.

Tom carried her to the bedroom Shinju and I shared, laid her on her bed, then backed out without a word. Mum and Pop weren’t home, so I stayed with her. She explained what had happened at the wreck site. A slight smile crept across her face when she apologized for ruining my date with Tom. Then she fell asleep. But I wasn’t so sure she was sorry.

I showered, towel-dried my hair, and pulled on a thin camisole top and shorts. A hint of lipstick and I was out the door and on Tom’s doorstep. I didn’t know what Shinju was up to, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose him.

Captain Lafroy was sitting on the sofa, reading the newspaper. He asked if Shinju was feeling any better. I assured him she was. Tom was in his room, he added, indicating the direction with a tilt of his head.

I was a virgin and Tom said he was too, but I didn’t believe it. I was right. He knew exactly what to do. He locked the door, turned on the radio, and lit a candle. What happened that incredible night I’ve never experienced again.

Sometime in the night, a knock on the door and his mother’s voice woke us. I hid in the closet while she asked him questions — did he have a nice time, would he ask me out again, did he remember to take the rubbish to the curb. After she left, he kissed me one last time and I crawled out his bedroom window.

I floated across the street until I heard Pop’s angry words through our front door. I slipped inside and saw Mum lift her arms to protect herself. Pop swung his fist, but Mum ducked. Not making the expected connection, he spun with the momentum and lost his balance. When he crashed to the floor, I grabbed Mum. We raced down the hallway, Pop’s threats not far behind. I had just pushed Mum through her bedroom door and heard the lock click when Pop spun me around. I was focused on that crazed look in his eye. I didn’t notice Shinju holding our grandfather’s oyster knife, sharp as broken glass.

Over ten years have passed since that night, and that knife’s long gone. But every once in a while, when I look in the mirror, I still feel its razor sting.

The next morning anxious thoughts woke me. Tom believed Shinju was into something over her head. The previous night’s partially garbled conversation coiled itself around my stomach and pulled tight. A nutcase was loose on the island, and now his sights were set on me. But then I reminded myself that the reason I left Broome was to find Shinju’s killer. Hiding in a storage closet wasn’t going to solve this mystery.

Rummaging through my shore bag, I found my dive knife and strapped it above my knee. Then I stuck my head into the hallway. Lab techs scurried in and out of TIER, but I didn’t see Crowe. I rechecked the sheath buckle, then quietly shut the door behind me.

I snuck out of the building and ran to the makeshift showers. While fresh water rinsed the scaly salt from my body, I wondered what to do next. I hated acting like a hunted animal, but I wasn’t sure who I could trust. Crowe wanted me dead. Who else was my enemy?

I toweled off using the sarong I wore, then rewrapped myself in it. Sticking around a crowd seemed a good idea, so I walked to the small, open-air dining hall, where some of the crew sat on benches taking a coffee break. I saw Cody, my longtime diving buddy, and squeezed in next to him. He apologized several times for not watching me more carefully during the dive, but I couldn’t tell him I now knew my broken hose had been no accident. I sipped my tea, wondering who I could confide in.

Freshly shaven, Captain Lafroy entered, ordered a cup of coffee, and was about to have a seat next to the first mate when he saw me. I waved him over.

He gave me a big smile. “How you feeling?” He tugged my hair.

I swatted his hand away playfully. “Did Tom tell you I almost got my oyster quota? Didn’t drop a one on the way up.”

Captain Lafroy laughed, his crooked smile turned upward in delight. “What’s really important is you’re alive.”

I looked at him carefully. The paunchy middle, the sun-damaged skin, the graying at the temples. This is what his son would look like in another thirty years. But there was one big difference: Captain Lafroy was a man I could trust.

The hall had cleared out some; even my dive buddy had taken off. I wondered if Captain Lafroy would believe me. Crowe wasn’t a favorite among the ships’ crews. He tossed out what he claimed to be questionable, sickly oysters, which decreased divers’ counts. And more importantly, paychecks.

“I need to talk to you. Right away,” I said.

Just then Crowe sauntered into the room. He saluted the captain with a tweak of his hair, but when he saw me, he stopped short. His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened into a thin line. He walked to the counter, ordered, then turned back to stare at me while he waited for his food.

Captain Lafroy looked at his watch. “Sorry, no time. The Adelaide suffered some damage from the storm.”

I leaned in closer. “It’s about Crowe.”

The captain laughed again, but this time more heartily. “Do you think he’s fudging your oyster count numbers? Look, he’s a stickler for keeping the harvest healthy. Cut him some slack.” He glanced at Crowe, who was still glowering, then back to me. “Wait a second. What’s going on here?”

“I need your help,” I whispered. “Can we talk? Somewhere private?”

He sighed. “All right, I’ll give you a wee bit of time. How about Sunset Point in thirty minutes?”

I thanked him and left. As I walked back to my room, Crowe and the oyster counts preyed on my mind. If Crowe was stealing pearls, how was he doing it? I needed evidence to convince the captain. The only way to find out was to sneak into TIER.

Once in the building, I tried the lab door. It was locked. I heard no voices inside, only the gurgling of the water tanks. A blast of cold air hit me and I looked up at the overhead vent. I hurried to my little storage room and turned the bolt. I climbed the shelves, unscrewed the vent cover, and hoisted myself up. The ventilation shaft was a tight fit. Luckily my destination was close by.

After checking to make sure I had no company, I dropped through the vent opening and onto a lab table. A photo of Crowe with the BSSP president sat on the largest desk in the room. On Crowe’s computer screen, the Adelaide’s latest haul was entered on a spreadsheet. I minimized the document, watching it shrink to the bottom of the screen. I found the file from the Indian Princess, the ship connected with the pearl found in Shinju’s throat, and couldn’t make sense of it. I needed more time, but knew my luck was ticking away. A jpeg file entitled Simms saved on the desktop caught my eye. I’d worked with a diver named Simms once. I clicked on the file and felt my jaw drop as soon as the photo popped open on the screen. I knew that hand as well as I knew my own. In her palm, Shinju held the pearl that had killed her.

My mind was in a fog as I clambered my way through the vent back to my room. Tom was right about one thing. Shinju was in way over her head. Even so, she didn’t deserve to die. I needed Captain Lafroy’s help.

The sandy path to Sunset Point ended at a rock outcropping that rose high above the crystalline blue water. The tide was in, covering the craggy formations below. I leaned over, judging the height to be about twenty feet. Shadowy box jellyfish dotted the surface. I sat on a wet rock and turned my face to the sun clambering to get out from behind a cloud. I had just closed my eyes when I heard the rustling of scrub brush. I turned and shaded my eyes from the glare. Because his lip was hiked up in its familiar crooked grin, my first thought was that I was looking at Tom Lafroy, Jr. What was he doing at Sunset Point?

“Your sister loved this spot too. Pity to stain its natural beauty a second time.”

I readjusted my brain. The captain was speaking, not Tom, but his words made no sense.

“A free ascent,” he said, nodding his head. “Quick thinking. Thought you’d panic, lass. Well, I can still make this work.” He tugged on a pair of heavy rubber gloves, the kind oyster scrubbers use to scrape off algae and bacteria.

I tried to speak but couldn’t.

“You didn’t wait long enough after the scuba accident, Kashiko. You passed out from nitrogen poisoning. You fell, hitting your head against the rocks. A tragedy.”

“Wait,” I croaked. “First tell me what happened to Shinju.”

He shook his head. “She was a pretty little thing when she was young. The first time I saw you and your sister was the day I decided to buy the house across the street from your family. I made up my mind then and there I’d have you both. Just once was all I wanted. There were a few other young girls in the neighborhood as well. That was a lucky chance. I got Shinju, but I guess she figured she’d save you by ruining your looks. She was right about that. Those stitches, that hideous scar turned my stomach.”

“You raped her!”

“Let’s not bring up the past. Shinju tried that, and look what happened to her.”

“You killed Shinju, didn’t you?” I said, scraping up every smidgen of courage to keep the terror from my voice. “I have a right to know why.”

“Shinju was blackmailing me. Needed big bikkies for her habit. But I couldn’t keep up the payments. She threatened to ruin me. A rape charge by BSSP’s favorite model? I’d lose everything — my pension, my reputation...”

“Your freedom. You belong in jail.”

“You don’t understand. My wife’s cancer bills wiped out our savings. I sold the house, but it wasn’t enough.”

My mind battled to make sense of things. “That poor diver, Simms, offered Crowe the stray, didn’t he? Whose idea was it, yours or Crowe’s, to get rid of him?”

The whites of the captain’s eyes glistened in the sunlight. “We both fancied the idea of a two-way split instead of a three. Later I brought Shinju to the island and showed her the pearl. She fell in love with it. Agreed to be the hand model for the pearls we stole. But later that day the pearl was missing from Crowe’s office.”

“You found her here at Sunset Point.”

“High on cocaine. She opened her fist and flashed the pearl at me. I demanded it back. She just laughed. Said she’d left a note at your bungalow about the rape so there was nothing I could do. The next moment I thought I saw her throw the pearl over the cliff.” He snorted under his breath. “But she tricked me. She must have thrown a shell.

“I lost control. That pearl was worth a mint. I wrestled her to the ground. Pressed her head into the sand. I had to kill her, don’t you see? But I didn’t figure it out until I read the newspaper. She’d put the pearl in her mouth and choked on it!”

He took a step closer. I shuffled back, teetering on the edge of the rock. The waves crashed on the ancient formations below, sending a fine mist high into the air and onto my bare legs. I bent slightly and pulled my knife from its sheath.

“Now, Kashiko, don’t be difficult.”

I waved my weapon back and forth, hoping he wouldn’t come any nearer. Instead Captain Lafroy lunged at me. I yanked the knife arm high, above his head. He grabbed my other arm, but I twisted, coming around the back of him, slicing off his ear. Howling, he stumbled backward off the edge of the rock. But he still had me in his grasp. In the next moment we were both falling through the air.

In his panic, Lafroy released me. I grabbled for the rock face sliding past me. My thigh bounced off a protruding rock and momentarily slowed my fall. My hands, scraped and bleeding, found purchase and my body slammed into the cliff. Every nerve in my body lit up in pain. A second later I heard the captain’s body hit the limestone below with a gruesome crack.

I refused to look down, but the view above did little to console me. I was a full body length down from the ledge. There were no roots or niches to help me climb back up, and my arms were on fire. Down, down, down, sang Johnny Cash. Down to the blue below, swarmed by box jellyfish. My body mottled with stings. My death a diver’s nightmare.

I noticed a narrow fissure in the rock face above me. My knife angled out from it. I reached for it, shoving the blade deeper into the slit, the metal grinding against the rock. My broken ribs screamed in protest. Placing both hands on the handle, I pulled myself two feet higher.

A shadow fell over me. Tom Jr.’s face twisted as he stared beyond me to where his father’s body surely tossed in the surf, surrounded by jellyfish. The anguish I saw stopped my heart.

His eyes shifted to me, then he fell to his knees and gripped my wrists. “Let go of the knife, Kashiko.”

“No!” I screamed.

He grasped my wrists harder. “Trust me.”

I hated to place my faith in Tom, but my grip was weakening. I took a deep breath and released the knife. He dragged me up and over the ledge, my ribs wailing.

Tom rocked me in his arms. “Oh, God, oh, God. I’m so sorry, Kashiko.” He said it over and over. I wished he’d shut up. I couldn’t handle the pain in his voice. But he kept rambling. “I knew Shinju was getting money under the table from somebody in Broome. It had to be Crowe, all Crowe, I told myself. But Da acted strange when I asked him about it. Nervous, suspicious. Still, I had no idea about... about what he’d done to Shinju.”

“You stopped calling me after my face was cut.” It was all I could think to say.

“I was fifteen. I was an ass. I’m sorry.”

He started to cry, but I wondered if sorry would ever be enough. For any of us.

“Miss Nakagawa?”

I awoke from my drug-induced nap. The two detectives were sipping coffee at the foot of my hospital bed. But my lids were heavy and shut without any help from me. When I inhaled, a jolt of pain reminded me I had three broken ribs.

“Miss?” Suit Number One repeated.

I kept my eyes shut. But I talked. About Shinju, Crowe, and the captain. About the pearl. The unfortunate diver, Simms. But I didn’t tell them everything — that the night I slept with Tom, the captain raped my sister. That she cut my face to save me from the same fate. The suits didn’t need to know. At least not right now.

My parents drove me home and Mum offered to stay. I think she was a little surprised when I told her she could. She helped me get into an old nightgown and we sat on the small patio behind the bungalow. A full moon glowed overhead.

A few blocks away, the Staircase to the Moon shimmered on the mudflats. When we were little, Shinju and I imagined skipping up those steps to escape the rows at home. Sadly, she found heaven dust a better way to escape her nightmares.

Mum’s lids drooped and she slumped sideways in her patio chair, palms lying limply on her lap. Her shoulders seemed narrower than I remembered. When had her skin become so thin across her cheeks?

Slipping one hand into my nightgown pocket, I drew out Shinju’s necklace. Each pearl looked unearthly, as if an angel’s halo had been captured in a glass ball. I grasped Mum’s fingers and gently wrapped Shinju’s pearls around our clasped hands. I’ve never believed in anything as ethereal as a soul. But if there are such things, I hoped my sister’s was now free, skipping those amber stairs to the moon.