Exhume (Dr. Schwartzman Series Book 1)

by Danielle Girard

  “A lot of folks,” Harper agreed. “Don’t feel like you need to come to the house if you don’t want to. I know you’ve probably got a lot to do for tomorrow.”

  Schwartzman didn’t want to admit that she’d already decided she would go straight to Pinckney’s house. That she would find some way to collect hair. At the very least, she needed hair.

  “I’ve got to go find my mom,” Harper said. “I’ll touch base later.”

  “Sure.” Schwartzman watched her go. Then, making certain not to appear to be in a rush, she walked down the block to her car to head to Jasper Street.

  Hand in her pocket, Schwartzman held on to the roll of tape as she stepped into Pinckney’s house. Frances Pinckney’s house was a traditional Charleston double like Ava’s. As Schwartzman walked in, she saw the stairs straight ahead. The foyer was filled with people, the living room open to the left. It would be difficult to go up the stairs unnoticed. No. Not difficult. Impossible.

  A man approached. “I’m David Pinckney, Frances’s son.”

  “Annabelle Schwartzman,” she said.

  “Ava’s niece,” he said. “You lost your aunt, as well. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yes,” she answered and found her eyes welling.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” He scanned the room. “Let me find a tissue.” He patted his coat pocket. “I gave Caroline my handkerchief.”

  She pressed her fingers beneath her eyelids. “I’m fine. Really. It hits me sometimes.”

  He touched her shoulder. “Of course.”

  She looked around the house. “Did you grow up here?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Mom and Dad bought the house when Patrick was two, so I was born here.”

  “It’s beautiful. My aunt’s is a similar style, I think. Three bedrooms?”

  “Four,” he said.

  “In Ava’s, the master is on one side and two children’s rooms on the other.”

  “Actually,” he said, “Mom and Dad and Caroline were on that end.” He pointed up the stairs to the south side of the house. “Rob, Patrick, and I were on the south side. It’s two bedrooms with a Jack and Jill bathroom in between.”

  Schwartzman made a note of the layout. “Made sense to keep you boys together.”

  “I’m sure Caroline was happy to have her own bedroom. Teenage boys aren’t the tidiest.”

  “I don’t imagine.” Schwartzman glanced at the door. She had the information she needed. Upstairs, south side. She wanted to go and be done. Particularly before Harper arrived. But she couldn’t see a way to leave the conversation gracefully. “Are you all in the area?”

  “None of us are, I’m afraid. Spread out all over. I’m in Chicago. Rob is down in Memphis, and Caroline’s closest. She lives in Durham.”

  “I imagine that was tough on your mother.”

  “Yes. She would have liked us to be closer, especially after Dad died.”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “It’s hard to stay here. Jobs are pretty limited.”

  “Sure.” Schwartzman began to feel antsy. No sign of Harper. Yet. But she didn’t have much time. Harper was on her way.

  “Unless you’re in tech or education,” he continued. “I’m an engineer. Best offer came from Chicago, and I’ve been there ever since.”

  Schwartzman forced a smile, stole another look out the front. If Harper arrived, she’d have to slip to the back of the house, hide until she could get upstairs.

  Just then someone called his name.

  Schwartzman exhaled silently.

  “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “My brother’s calling me.”

  “Of course,” she told him, gently squeezing his arm. “I appreciate the time.”

  “Okay, Rob,” he called as he started across the room.

  Schwartzman looked up the stairs, trying to decide how to get up there. She wanted to walk straight up. But she couldn’t. Someone would surely stop her. Or at the very least follow her up.

  She needed time in Frances’s room. To collect hair and skin.

  At least three or four minutes. And that was if nothing had been disturbed. If someone hadn’t changed her sheets or cleaned the room.

  If, if, if . . .

  No. She could not go up those stairs.

  Schwartzman saw Harper Leighton on the street. Before Harper saw her, Schwartzman turned away from the door and walked to the powder room. She ducked her head in. Empty. With a quick glance over her shoulder to ensure no one was watching, she pulled the door closed and continued to the back of the house. As she was turning the corner, she saw Harper being greeted by David Pinckney. On her arm was an older woman. From their similarities, Schwartzman guessed it was her mother.

  Schwartzman turned the corner, expecting to find the kitchen.

  Instead there was a second staircase. Back stairs. She started straight up the stairs.

  “Excuse me,” a woman called behind her.

  Schwartzman turned around, trying to look as though she might cry. Her pulse trumpeted in her throat, and it was hard to believe the throbbing wasn’t visible from even where the caterer stood four feet away. Schwartzman motioned up the stairs and ran her fingers under one eye. “David told me to use the upstairs bathroom because the one down here is occupied.”

  The caterer glanced toward the front of the house. “Okay, sure. We’re just supposed to keep guests downstairs.”

  “Of course,” Schwartzman agreed. “I won’t be long,” she added and walked up the stairs without looking back. It was all about looking like you belonged. Not hesitating. She reached the top of the stairs and turned toward the south side of the house. Pressed herself against the wall, squeezed her eyes closed.

  This was a terrible idea. Sneaking into a dead woman’s room to collect her DNA?

  She had to convince the police. They had to believe Spencer was connected to both Ava’s and Pinckney’s deaths.

  Schwartzman crept across the hall, staying close to the wall. She could just make out the tops of heads in the foyer below. She chose the first door on the south side of the house and found a small bedroom. Caroline’s room. She pulled the door closed and quickly moved to the next door.

  The master bedroom.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered, forcing herself to step inside.

  The room was large and smelled of the sweet ripeness of the old. The sounds of the guests downstairs filtered through the door. She scanned the room quickly. The four-poster bed. Handmaid quilt, the edges a little frayed. Someone had made the bed. Or perhaps Frances made it the day she died. Schwartzman pictured Ava’s bed and forced the images away.

  Hurry. She pressed the button to lock the door and moved directly to Frances’s bed. She pulled the small roll of packing tape and the Ziploc bag from her pocket, put on the thin leather gloves, and pulled the quilt and sheet back to expose the fitted sheet pillows.

  There was a sound at the door. She yanked off the gloves and threw the covers back over the pillows. Froze.

  Scratching. She crossed the room quickly, shoving her gloves and the tape into her pocket before turning the knob just enough for the lock to pop from the knob. Listened. A whimper, a high-pitched bark. She cracked the door, and a small white dog ran into the room.

  “No,” she told the dog that stood in the center of the room, wagging his tail. The dog let out a playful bark.

  “Shh,” she whispered, returning to the bedroom door. She scanned the hall; seeing no one, she closed and locked the door again.

  All she needed was Pinckney’s brush to make sure she had sufficient DNA. Hair with follicles. She didn’t have time to check the ones from the sheets.

  She would collect extras and check them later.

  The dog barked and scratched at her shoes, barked again. Panic filled her limbs until moving felt like shifting sandbags. She reached down and lifted him up.

  “Shh,” she said again, reached into her pocket for her gloves.

  A creak.

  The direction of th
e front stairs. She rushed back to the door. Popped the lock. Her breath like a windstorm in her ears. The sound like high heels on wood.

  Close.

  She stepped away from the door, holding the dog close.

  The door opened, and Schwartzman stood, facing Caroline Pinckney. “What are you doing in Mom’s room?”

  Schwartzman felt the blood rush to her neck as she turned back. “I’m so sorry. I—”

  Caroline’s face hardened.

  “I came up to use the bathroom,” Schwartzman said. “When I came out, I heard this little guy, scratching.”

  “He was in Mom’s room?” Caroline asked.

  Schwartzman nodded, her throat too tight to form words.

  “Cooper,” Caroline said and reached for the dog, taking him from Schwartzman’s clutches. “What are you doing in here?”

  Schwartzman followed Caroline out of the bedroom. Took a last look at Frances Pinckney’s bedroom as she closed the door. She hadn’t retrieved any DNA. Not a single hair. The idea that she was leaving empty-handed left her feeling cold and sick to her stomach.

  Caroline stopped at the top of the stairs to allow Schwartzman to join her. “You hear all those nightmare stories about people being robbed during their funerals.”

  Schwartzman swallowed the awkward lump in her throat. Was Caroline accusing her? Her original plan was to take a piece of jewelry. What if Caroline had walked in while Schwartzman was looking through her mother’s things?

  “That’s awful,” she offered. The idea of stealing from people who were already totally bereft was appalling. You were almost that person. How low would she stoop to be rid of Spencer? You got rid of the gun.

  “I can’t be in there.”

  “I understand,” Schwartzman agreed. She had stood on the front porch of Ava’s house, dreading the thought of entering the house. How she wished she had more memories of being in Ava’s house, of their time together.

  David Pinckney met them on the stairs. “One of the catering staff said someone was upstairs,” he told his sister, glancing at Schwartzman.

  “Just us girls,” Caroline said.

  David frowned. He seemed about to say more, but Caroline walked past him.

  As the two women reached the bottom of the stairs, Schwartzman saw Harper Leighton in the living room. Schwartzman offered a small smile.

  She turned to Caroline. “I wanted to say thank you,” Schwartzman said. “For the things you said about Ava and for being so kind. I know this is a hard time.”

  Caroline reached out and squeezed Schwartzman’s hand. “You’re welcome.” As she removed her hand, a small white puff of dog hair floated between them. “Oh, Cooper. You make such a mess.”

  “He sure is cute, though,” Schwartzman said, reaching up to scratch the small dog behind the ears.

  Removing her hand, she balled it into a fist and pushed it into her pocket, feeling the downy fluff of dog fur against her fingers.

  As she walked out the front door, she saw Harper catch her eye. But she didn’t stop.

  She couldn’t face Harper.

  42

  Greenville, South Carolina

  Schwartzman stood in a cluster of dogwood bushes across the street from the house she had shared with Spencer.

  The night was dark, the moon hidden behind storm clouds. Light from the street lamps cast eerie shadows along the street. She had parked at the end of the block. She wore a jacket and thin gloves, not unreasonable for a Southerner when the temperatures dropped and the rains fell. It might have been a little warm for it today, but not enough to arouse too much suspicion. The sack of supplies was tucked in her jacket, pinned down by her left arm. Everything else was in the pocket of her jacket.

  She had been over the plan a dozen times in the past hour. Two dozen. Parked in a remote strip mall parking lot, Schwartzman created the evidence. She didn’t let herself consider how quickly the police might dismiss it, wouldn’t allow herself to think about how much better it would be if she had DNA evidence from Frances Pinckney. Used the Saran Wrap from Ava’s room and applied her skin cells to the knee pads. She avoided pressing the tape to the knee pads directly so that there was no transfer of the adhesive residue. Instead she laid the knee pads faceup in a plastic sack and rubbed them with the Saran Wrap, then shook the tape out above them. Even in the dark, Schwartzman could see the bits of skin and dust float down onto the pads. As a final measure, she tucked two of Ava’s long hairs where the Velcro straps were attached to the knee pads. An easy enough place for them to have been caught during the attack.

  Next she unrolled the very end of the duct tape and pressed the adhesive side to the inside of the Ziploc bag containing dog fur from Frances Pinckney’s home, the only thing she’d managed to get there. She dropped the roll of tape, the two knee pads, and two pairs of unused latex gloves into the sack and tied it closed.

  She patted her pocket. Felt her phone. The phone was set to silent. She had ignored two calls from Harper, four from Hal. She would call as soon as it was over. She knew exactly where everything would go. All she needed was four minutes in the garage. She could probably do it in two. Then there was the matter of getting Spencer to confess. He wanted to. He would love to know how much pain he was responsible for, how much she had suffered. If he wasn’t being recorded and he knew she couldn’t use it to put him away . . . then just maybe she could get him to say the words. She needed to hear them. Her pulse was an even, quick drumbeat.

  She felt fear, but beneath it was something else. Something Schwartzman found wholly unexpected. Something lighter and softer. Giddiness, she might call the sensation. A kind of electricity that was different from the fear. On the dark street, across from the home she had once shared with Spencer MacDonald, she was buoyed by possibility.

  Hope.

  Built just two years before they were married, Spencer had intended the house as a traditional colonial. Directly over the centered front door was a rounded terrace perched atop the second story, which Spencer called his tower.

  Ironically, the tower was false, inaccessible from the house except by crawling out one of the small second-story bedroom windows and going across the roof. Something she’d never seen him do. The house had seemed grand when she first moved in, a starry-eyed new bride. Even then, there was something looming and dark about the house, but she’d convinced herself that moving directly from her parents’ exquisite home into one of her own was a badge of honor. The longer she lived there, the smaller and less impressive the house became.

  Standing on the street, she couldn’t see the appeal of the house at all. The features were out of proportion—the rounded terrace cartoonishly large while the windows on the upper level were puny against the huge surface areas of plain white siding.

  Schwartzman watched the dark house, washed again in the cold fear she’d felt living inside it. Spencer’s anger was woven into the perfectly appointed couches and the carefully set pictures and vases. One incorrectly placed pillow or a picture hung slightly awry was enough to break the thin veneer of his self-control.

  This was the house of her nightmares.

  Same house. Different woman.

  A woman with a way to put him behind bars.

  The master bedroom was on the opposite side of the house from the garage. And unless something had changed, the garage wasn’t included in the alarm system. She would go from the garage’s side door, plant the evidence, and then leave again. From there, she would simply ring the front doorbell.

  A loud mechanical click filled the night. The garage door rolled upward. She ducked, crouching behind a cluster of pink summersweet bushes. Spencer’s gold Lexus backed out of the garage. The car turned out of the driveway and passed her on the street.

  He was gone. Spencer was gone. That was too easy. She checked her watch. Nine fifteen. Where was he going? She stared down the street after he had disappeared around the corner, half expecting to see the headlights come back. The street remained quiet and dark.


  This was so much better, she told herself, stepping out of the bushes and heading toward the house again. She’d wait for him inside. Throw him off guard. Unless it was a trap, somehow he knew she was here. Was it possible? The tissue in her lungs contracted. Breathing became harder. What did it matter?

  Either way, you are going in there.

  Schwartzman rounded the side of the house and passed the small shed where the garbage cans were housed. Beyond that was what Spencer had always termed the “maid’s entrance,” which was essentially a door into the garage. He refused to enter the house this way, just as he refused to take out the trash or clean. She tested the knob, careful to use her one gloved hand. Locked. She was almost relieved. Finding the door unlocked would have unnerved her, as though he were expecting her. She could always go through the window above the garage workbench, but maybe there was another way.

  She crept down along the side of the house and peered into the formal living room, then into what Spencer called the family room, which was a smaller, cozier version of the living room. Nothing had changed. The same goldenrod couches. The same toile throw pillows. On the small table beside the couch was a picture of them on their honeymoon exactly where she’d last seen it.

  Instead of an evil force, Spencer seemed pathetic. This grown man stuck in the past, loving a woman who despised him. Wasted years for both of them, and to what end? Where did he possibly imagine this would lead? Or was this his idea of entertainment? The on-again, off-again stalking a way to stay sharp, to avoid being bored by a life of golf and board meetings?

  But Spencer was anything but pathetic. She knew it. Frances Pinckney knew it. Ava knew it.

  This might have ended years ago. All she would have had to do was reach out to Ava. Ava with her plan. Resources that could have protected Ava, protected Schwartzman.

  Remorse seared into anger, and the anger made her relive the memory.

  She had just begun to feel the weight of the baby inside her, a small but constant pressure against her bladder. It was a weekend morning; only she and Spencer were in the house. It must have been the hottest part of the summer because the air-conditioning was blasting. She was forever wearing sweaters inside while Spencer complained about the heat and told her she was overreacting.