Read Online Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) by Danielle Girard - Free Book Online

take it. He was going to nail Spencer. She had long since stopped believing that was possible. Maybe. Just maybe, she thought as she handed the box to Hal. “It’s all yours.”
    “We’ll get this to Roger,” Hal said.
    “I honestly don’t think there’s anything in there that’s useful. Notes, cards . . . no one is going to believe he went from that to murder.”
    Hal wrapped his free arm around Schwartzman’s shoulder and pulled her in. Her father had not been a big man, but for a moment she imagined he was there, watching her. That he had somehow sent Hal and Hailey. With the solid strength of Hal beside her, she even let herself lean in a little. How long had it been since she’d let herself lean on someone?
    “You’re going to be okay,” Hailey said. In those words, Schwartzman heard her father’s voice. You’ll be okay, sweet girl. How often had he said that?
    How she wanted to believe it. Hal let go, and the three of them walked to the door in silence.
    She wondered about the conversation they’d have in the elevator. Would they ask why she put up with that kind of treatment? Would it make them think differently of her?
    That she was weak?
    “We’ll be in touch in the morning,” Hal said.
    “Get some rest,” Hailey added.
    “You guys, too.”
    Hailey reached out and squeezed her hand before turning down the hallway. She felt the solidarity. They were a team. She was no longer alone with Spencer.
    But as soon as the door was closed, she knew that wasn’t true.
    She poured herself a finger of bourbon, swallowed it in a single long gulp. Coughed into her back of her hand from the burn.
    Bringing them here was a mistake. She should have gone to the department. The issue wasn’t with Hailey or Hal. She would welcome them into her home. By bringing the conversation to her home, she had let Spencer in, as well.
    After years of fighting to keep him out, she had just opened the door and welcomed him in.

6
    Charleston, South Carolina
    Still in uniform from a court appearance earlier in the day, Detective Harper Leighton was butterflying chicken breasts while oil heated in the fry pan. The window above the kitchen sink was open, the air outside stagnant and humid. May used to be cooler in Charleston. Her squad car read the temp as high as eighty-five today. Too hot for May. It meant July would be a bear.
    Harper moved the knife deftly. She’d been wielding a knife since toddlerhood, or at least a fry pan and a spatula, as one would expect from a girl who grew up in the back room of her parents’ restaurant. For her, cooking was as natural as driving. And like driving, while she did it deftly, she did not enjoy it. Not usually and especially not tonight. She had only just walked in the door from work fifteen minutes ago.
    It was nearly nine. She’d planned on coming home by six thirty or seven to make dinner and have it ready before Jed picked Lucy up from volleyball practice and arrived home. Nights like this, she had her go-to recipes. First on the list was her father’s fried chicken. Fill a Ziploc bag with flour, salt, pepper, paprika, and two shakes of cayenne the way she’d seen him do it a thousand times. He never measured. Half the time he wasn’t even watching what he was doing.
    Tonight, she wasn’t measuring either. Too tired, too hurried, too anxious to have dinner on the table so she could sit down.
    Maybe then she could leave behind the two vehicular homicides she was investigating, plus the domestic violence incident that had escalated into a shooting and killed a neighbor through an adjoining wall. Between the back-to-back interviews, follow-up interviews, and two trips to the lab, she’d been at her desk for only about three minutes, enough time to pop two Advil and make one phone call.
    She massaged the chicken to break up the last frozen bits, poured buttermilk into a stainless bowl, dunked the breasts one at a time, shook them in the bag until they were coated, and dropped