Good luck before autonomy dies, friend. It’s been a ride.
Thanks for the support.
Daisy
X
The card is embossed with a logo that reads BEA’S BLOOMS.
Mal comes to her feet. She has a really bad feeling. She tries to imagine someone—a Daisy?—standing here in the doorway, holding a bouquet of white flowers and a pie, in full view of whoever comes to open the glass door. Then something happens—the pie and bouquet are dropped. Why? Shock? Fear? Threat? Medical incident?
Mal runs her gloved fingers down the inside of the doorjamb. Definitely no signs of forced entry. She enters the home. Her bad gut feeling sharpens instantly.
DAISY
October 17, 2019. Thursday.
Two weeks before the murder.
“No—move it farther to the left, closer to the windows. Yes, like that. But angle it more to face the view,” Daisy Wentworth Rittenberg instructs two muscled men in turbans as they manipulate a leather sofa to her specifications. She’s staging a luxury penthouse for an open house, but the rental furniture has arrived late. It’s already 5:43 p.m., and she’s hungry and tired. She presses her hand to her aching lower back in an effort to support the weight of her pregnant belly.
Daisy is almost thirty-four weeks into her first pregnancy. She’s due December 1, but it feels a lifetime away, and the extra pounds she’s carrying that are not baby weight are making her irritable. Her dress is too tight—it pulls across both her belly and her butt. Her ankles are swollen. Her face is puffy. Her feet hurt. Her usually bouncy hair is limp. Her normally enviable complexion is blotchy, and she has a fat zit bang in the middle of her chin.
Daisy tries to shake her discontent and focus on her job. The penthouse boasts a glorious ocean view, and she’s aiming to leverage it with the furniture layout. The property has just been listed by Wentworth Holdings for a cool $6.7 million. Wentworth Holdings was founded by Daisy’s mother, Annabelle Wentworth, before Daisy was born. Her mom is still hands-on. Of course, Annabelle Wentworth doesn’t need to work. She does it because she enjoys it. And because she cannot relinquish control. Daisy’s mom has a reputation as the crème de la crème of Realtors who cater to very-high-end buyers and sellers of luxury properties in the greater Vancouver area. Annabelle launched Wentworth Holdings when she was only twenty-seven. With Wentworth family money, of course—marrying Labden Wentworth certainly came with perks. Daisy’s dad, Labden, had by then already founded TerraWest Corp., which develops and manages ski resort holdings across North America, in Japan, and increasingly in parts of Europe. Daisy’s husband, Jon, an Olympic downhill ski racer who won two gold medals at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in ’02, now works for TerraWest.
Daisy has never done home staging before. Her background is in interior design. She ran a small bespoke company in Silver Aspens, Colorado, but since she and Jon moved back to their home city in July, Daisy has been helping her mom.
“Is this good?” The mover with a massive mustache interrupts Daisy’s thoughts. She’s so distracted these days. Can’t keep her mind on one thing. Stupid pregnancy hormones.
“Perfect. Thanks, guys. We just need the coffee table brought up, and then we can call it a wrap.”
The two men exit the penthouse to take the elevator down to their delivery truck twenty-six stories below. Daisy checks her watch. She’ll never last to dinner. The little human growing inside her belly has seized control of her body and mind in ways Daisy did not anticipate. Like a little virus. She’s just the host. And the little virus is morphing Daisy into a miserable creature who is not the Daisy she knows. She shakes herself. She shouldn’t think like this. She wants this baby. It will change things for her and Jon. This baby is the whole reason they moved home. That, along with a promise from her father that Jon would get a big promotion. Their marriage needs this baby. And being near her mom and dad when the baby comes is something Daisy feels she needs. It will help put all the nasty business in Silver Aspens behind them. Perhaps she’ll pick up a pizza on the way home. Or Chinese—
“Well, hello, Daisy.”
Daisy jumps and her pulse quickens. She spins around as a tall black-haired woman breezes into the apartment on impossibly high heels. The penthouse owner. The woman tosses her car keys onto the marble kitchen island.
Daisy tries to calm herself. But the words—Well, hello, Daisy—reverberate inside her skull. They’re the exact phrasing of the weird, disappearing text messages she’s been receiving since she and Jon arrived back in Vancouver.
Well, hello, Daisy.
Welcome home, Daisy.
It’s been a while, Daisy.
I know who you are, Daisy.
They appear via her WhatsApp app, then vanish twenty-four hours later. All from unfamiliar numbers. She blocks them, but they just arrive again via another number.
The condo owner absently plucks three grapes from a bowl that Daisy has very carefully positioned on the kitchen island. She saunters into the center of the living area and plops one of the fat grapes into her mouth. Chewing, she turns in a slow circle, critiquing the furniture layout and the paintings Daisy has hung. The woman’s hair is pixie short. Her face is all elegant angles. Luminous white skin; big, flashing dark eyes. And she’s runway-model thin. Basically a coatrack. Daisy feels herself bristle.
The woman plops another fat green grape into her mouth, carefully avoiding her red lipstick. “Sorry I’m late. My meeting ran over time, and I—” She stops suddenly. Her eyes flare to an art piece above the fireplace. She spins back to face Daisy. “Are you confident this is the right look for—”
“Designing for a show home is not the same as designing for living,” Daisy snaps.
The woman’s brow crooks up at Daisy’s tone.
Daisy fights to temper her irritation and her dislike for the coat-hanger woman. This is her mom’s client. Reputation is everything in this business. The Wentworth name is on the line.
She inhales deeply, slowly, and says, “Our goal here is to subtly emphasize the openness of your gorgeous space, to draw one’s eye to the artistic angles of the architecture. We want to be inviting, yet also remain neutral enough so as not to overshadow that magnificent view. We want prospective buyers—no matter their tastes—to be able to step in here and immediately have their eyes go out to the view. We want them to be able to imagine themselves inhabiting this space.”
The penthouse owner plops the third grape into her mouth. “Well, I trust Annabelle. She’s well recommended and gets results. So . . .” She trails off, chewing as her gaze flits over Daisy’s tight dress and the comfortable walking sneakers Daisy picked up at the mall on her way over here. Daisy detests her mass-produced white sneakers with the orange stripes, but she was running late, and her other shoes were killing her back and swollen feet. She needed an emergency replacement.
“I’m over eight months pregnant,” she says in her defense, then immediately hates herself. Why did she even say that? What an idiot. As if she needs to explain her body and her comfortable shoes to this . . . this coatrack snob.
“Oh.” The woman turns her back on Daisy and faces the view.
Heat flares into Daisy’s cheeks. She expected a perfunctory Congratulations at the least. She goes to the grape bowl on the island and turns over the bunch of grapes to hide the ugly stalks that the woman exposed.