Photo Finish (9781101537510) by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online

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    Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in Body Work .
    First New American Library E-Book Printing, October 2011
    Copyright © Sara Paretsky, 2000, 2011
    Excerpt from Body Work © Sara Paretsky, 2010
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    ISBN: 978-1-101-53751-0
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I
    When he came into my office that July afternoon, I thought I’d met him before. It was something about his smile, sweet but aloof, as if inviting and withholding at the same time. I check databases before my first meeting with a new client, but whatever Hunter Davenport did hadn’t made my favorite search engines yet. If I’d seen him before, it wasn’t on the evening news.
    â€œI’m glad you could meet me on short notice, Ms. Warshawski. I’m only in town a few days and these Chicago hotel bills mount up.” He had a trace of that Southern drawl we Northerners secretly find appealing. “They warned me summer in Chicago could make Charleston feel cool, but I could hardly believe them until I got off that plane.”
    I shook his hand and offered him the armchair in the alcove where I meet clients. Outside, the heat was turning sidewalks into reflecting pools, but in my windowless office, all seasons and hours are alike; with air-conditioning and floor lamps, it might have been midwinter.
    â€œCharleston, South Carolina? Is that your home, Mr. Davenport?”
    â€œI lived there when I was a teenager, but most of my adult life has been spent in Europe. I can’t quite shake the accent, or a secret longing for long summer afternoons when time stops and all we do is lie in the tall grass, waiting for fish to rise and drinking lemonade.”
    I smiled. I feel nostalgia for