Amber Beach by Elizabeth Lowell

amber a few months ago, she had become fascinated by its unique physical characteristics – an organic gemstone created by once-living trees rather than the more usual gemstone created by geological processes. Amber was the only gemstone that was also a fossil.
    It was also beautiful in a mysterious, satiny, sensuous way. The piece she was holding now had been rounded by time, a distant sea, and the very nature of fossilized resin itself; the fist-sized lump of amber was both a window on the past and a tantalizing glimpse of the future sculpture that lay concealed within the translucent golden mass.
    Honor had been studying the amber in her apartment in Laguna Beach, California, when Archer called and asked her – ordered her, actually – to Kyle’s cottage. The idea of her fiercely self-contained older brother’s actually needing something from her had been so startling that she simply had swept the recent shipment of amber into a suitcase along with some clothes and grabbed the first plane out of John Wayne International Airport to SeaTac.
    The days that followed were so hectic and unsettling that there had been little time for work. Yet she and Faith had a show to prepare for in Los Angeles in less than six weeks. All of the jewelry and decorative art for the show already was designed, created, polished, and ready to display. All of it was in the traditional, inorganic gemstone material she was accustomed to working with.
    But ever since Honor saw the recent shipment of Baltic amber from Kyle, she had been haunted by its possibilities.
    There was something within this one piece of amber. Something remarkable. She was certain of it. She just hadn’t been able to discover it.
    Amber in her left hand, pencil in her right, Honor stared at the shifting lines of light and shadow within the ancient resin. Shadow and light twisted, turned, twined, slid achingly close to becoming… something.
    A knock at the door made her jump. A vision of new, strong dead bolts replaced the elusive image in the amber. Her heartbeat doubled. She swallowed in a throat suddenly gone dry and licked equally dry lips.
    “Who is it?” she asked in a raw voice.

 
6
     
    “It’s Jake Mallory.”
    With a long sigh Honor set aside the amber and closed her sketch pad. She shouldn’t feel relieved that Jake was here, but she did. His solid, if sometimes overpowering, masculine presence reassured her in a way she couldn’t put into words. Instinct, hunch, she didn’t care. She simply knew that he wasn’t the type to make scary, one-sided telephone calls to women.
    She walked quickly to the door, opened the locks, and gestured Jake inside with a smile that was too bright, too brittle.
    “A fishmonger who delivers”, she said. “I’m in heaven.”
    “Wait until you taste these beauties.”
    He reached into a paper shopping bag and pulled out one of the “beauties” for her to admire. She stared at the huge, rust-red crab dangling from his hand. Half a crab, actually. A ragged half.
    “What happened to it?” she asked.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Crabs in the shell come whole, with their legs tucked so that they can crouch neatly on your plate. What you’re holding looks like the loser in a crustacean demolition derby.”
    “That’s because I cleaned it before I steamed it.”
    “That makes a difference?”
    “A big one. No belly flavor.”
    “Belly?”
    “Guts. I clean the crabs after I kill them, rather than boiling them alive, guts and all, the way most people do. You clean everything else before you cook it, why not crabs?”
    “Ugh. I’m sorry I asked.”
    “Supermarket predator, huh?”
    “Devoutly.”
    He smiled. “Have any plates?”
    “I’ll get them.”
    “Where do you want me to put the Chapman?” he asked. Honor glanced at the big, open book that covered half of the table. “It would make a heck of a tablecloth.”
    “It makes a better reference. It’s saved my butt more than once. Besides, this table