Free Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1) by Danielle Girard Page A

sweethearts. Sam had been the biggest catch in high school. He’d lettered in football, baseball, and basketball. Harper had been a track star, but she’d had none of the star appeal that Sam did. Despite the frequent attempts by one or another of the cheerleading squad to break them up, they’d stayed together through high school graduation.
    “I need to talk to Kimberly Walker. You want to come?”
    Sam cocked an eyebrow high the way he used to do in high school when he was teasing her about being bossy.
    She smiled in spite of herself. “Come on, Pearson. It’ll be fun.”
    The porch creaked as Sam followed her down the alley. He had almost five years with the department to her sixteen. Most of his peers in patrol were ten or twelve years his junior. Technically speaking, Harper was his superior, but she did her best not to act it. She supposed they had found a sort of comfortable awkwardness. It was just so different from the way they’d been in high school, and she had to force herself not to try for that old, easy banter.
    Harper rounded the house and walked about fifteen yards down the alley before stopping in front of a traditional Charleston single, painted white with green shutters. The large metal disk on the side of the house indicated that it was built prior to the earthquake of 1886.
    Because much of historic Charleston was built on landfill, the earthquake had caused houses to sink into the quicksand-like dirt they were built on. The ones that survived the earthquake were fixed with bolts, which could be tightened over time to pull the houses back together, inch by inch. The disks merely created a pleasing aesthetic to cover the bolts.
    Before starting up the stairs, Harper checked her notes to confirm the address she had for Kimberly Walker. Sam crossed to the other set of stairs and moved up them quickly. As it wasn’t proper for men to see women walking up the stairs, where they might accidentally catch the view of her ankle or, heaven forbid, her calf, many of Charleston’s older homes were built with two sets of stairs.
    Etiquette dictated that the man be waiting when the woman arrived at the top of the stairs. Though he no longer looked like her high school sweetheart, there were parts of him there. Sam was always there, at the top, waiting. Even if he never met her eye.
    Strange what bitterness did. All over the fact that she had gone to UNC and he had stayed behind.
    Harper rang the bell while Sam stood back, hands clasped in front of him. Walker was home. At least that was what she’d told Harper’s mom.
    She reached for the bell again when Sam grabbed her hand. Their eyes met, and Sam dropped his hold. “She’s coming,” he said, nodding to the door.
    The front door cracked, and Harper displayed her badge. “Mrs. Walker, I’m—”
    “It’s Davies now. Mrs. Davies. And I know who you are,” she said, the frown running into the creases around her lips. “I worked for your parents for almost four years.”
    “I understand you heard noise coming from Mrs. Pinckney’s house this evening. We’d like to ask you a few questions if we could.”
    Kimberly Walker Davies unlocked the chain, opening the door with a flourish. She stood in a nightgown and matching robe in a color Harper would call salmon. Sam closed the door behind them. As Harper stepped inside, Mrs. Davies’s gown blended into the apricot-painted walls of the front room. Peach carpet and a chandelier that hung from the ceiling twenty or thirty feet above, with its heavy cut crystal leaves and cantaloupe accents. This was clearly her color.
    “Please. Join me in the sitting room.” Davies swayed across the foyer like a belle at a ball. Davies was using Frances’s death as an opportunity to place herself center stage.
    Harper held back a series of not-so-nice thoughts. Growing up in Charleston hadn’t armed Harper with any tolerance for wealthy Southern women. They got under her skin like no other type of folk. Always