26 Marley
Marley
“Daisy? What the hell are you doing here?” Marshall’s entire face lit up, the trauma of the moment entirely forgotten amid his surprise.
He closed the space between himself and his former sister-in-law’s little sister in three long strides.
As he enveloped her in a hug, Marley wasn’t sure what to do with herself.
The last person she expected to be crashing on the floor of a construction zone—besides maybe Lily herself—was Daisy.
She had always had a complicated relationship with Lily’s little sister, ten years her junior.
Primarily because, while Marley found the woman fascinating and fun to be around, their time together almost always devolved into some sort of fight wherein Daisy accused Marley of trying to usurp her as Lily’s best friend.
“Hey, bro,” Daisy said, reaching up to hug him.
She was as petite as Lily, which meant she was a hundred pounds soaking wet and barely topped five-foot-two in bare feet.
Marshall dwarfed her in her tiny white dress and sparkly pink sweater.
Her blond hair was pulled back in a haphazard updo, and her youthful face was makeup-free, not that she ever needed makeup.
Daisy was a semipro surfer who lived on the beach in California and pretty much only ever wore sunscreen on her skin.
“Hi, everyone else,” Daisy said when Marshall released her.
“It’s . . . something . . . to see you all here. ”
“Oh, no way. That’s Daisy Fitzmore,” Florence whispered, and Vienna quickly snapped a photo from across the room.
Daisy gave the girls and Grant an odd sort of look, but they were busy editing the picture, and he didn’t seem fazed. “So you must be . . . Lily’s sister,” he said.
“That’s me,” Daisy said, reaching back to tighten the tie in her hair.
“And that was your stuff we found,” Suzy said, eyeing the sweater.
“Yeah, and I’ll take my candlesticks back, if you don’t mind,” said Daisy with a touch of sarcasm.
“I think you mean my candlesticks,” Hazel put in.
Daisy’s face went red at being addressed by Hazel. She didn’t look at her as she said, “They were a gift from me to my sister, so I’m taking them back. Suzy, you’ll get them for me, won’t you?”
Suzy didn’t answer, and Marley didn’t blame her. Hazel’s glower was a powerful force.
“Hey, Daze,” Marley said, trying to stop an argument before it could happen. She skirted around Marshall to give the girl an awkward half hug. “It’s good to see you.”
“I’m sure,” Daisy said flatly. The two words were full of accusation and judgment.
She must have talked to Lily and known how pissed and upset Lily was that they’d come here without her.
Had she spoken to her in the last twenty-four hours?
Did she know where Lily was? “Well, since you’re doing the whole whodunit thing here, I saw Lincoln around two a.m. He was coming downstairs from the second floor, and he reeked of pot. ”
Hazel’s eyes narrowed, and she looked at Sean, who had just admitted to being stoned. Sean raised his meaty hands. “Don’t look at me. I got high on the basketball court with Roddy and those guys from accounting.”
“Wow. The guys from accounting really know how to party,” Suzy said under her breath.
Something tickled at the back of Marley’s mind. She’d seen an ashtray on the ground . . . on the deck outside Juliet’s room. “Juliet?” she said. “Who were you getting high with last night on the sunporch?”
Slowly, everyone turned to look at Juliet. Marley could see her trying to figure out a way out of this one and finally giving up.
“Omigod, okay, fine. Lincoln came up to my room for a minute last night. After the guests went home,” Juliet said.
“I knew it!” Hazel shouted, and Grant had to hold her back from lunging at Juliet.
Juliet staggered back a few steps, almost knocking into Gemma’s back. At some point, Gemma had sat down on the couch, facing away from them, and she barely flinched when Juliet collided with the furniture.
“It’s not what you think!” Juliet said. “He came up to talk about . . . about my note. And we shared a blunt. It was no big deal. That’s what you saw us arguing about at the party, Marley.
” Juliet looked at her, desperate for support.
“He said he couldn’t talk to me then, but he’d come by after.
And I don’t know how he ended up with one of my necklaces.
They were on my bedside table last time I saw them.
Maybe he took one to fiddle with it while he was smoking?
He does that tactile thing when he gets high, right? ”
Marley waited for the guys to answer. She didn’t smoke, so they would know better than she did.
“That’s true,” Sean said. “He always needs something to play with. It’s usually his watch. Clasping and unclasping it.”
This small detail made Marley crushingly sad. Something she never knew about Lincoln that made him all the more human.
“And then he said there was something he had to take care of and bailed,” Juliet told them. “I was pissed because we weren’t done talking yet and he said he’d come back, but he never did.” She swallowed and brought her thumb to her mouth to gnaw on. “I assumed he was just blowing me off.”
But he was already dead. The unspoken words hung in the air all around them. Marley looked around at the faces of the people she was trapped here with. Someone in this room had murdered Lincoln and Trevor. She wished they would just confess already. She didn’t know how much of this she could take.
“Sorry, can we take a step back?” Marshall said to Daisy. “How did you even end up at the party? Did Lincoln invite you?”
Daisy laughed, and it sounded so much like Lily’s laugh it made Marley’s heart catch.
“Um, no. Me and some of the other girls from my team are out here for a photo shoot. I met Cole at a bar in town yesterday, and he said he and his friends had scored invites because they were with Coco P.’s label. He asked me to come.”
They all looked over at Cole, and he gave an awkward wave.
“Okay, I might have forced him to bring me with him, but I’d heard there was construction going on, and I wanted to see what Lincoln and this one had done to my sister’s house.”
She tilted her head in Hazel’s direction. Hazel blew out a loud, impatient breath, which Daisy ignored.
“So much for ‘I’m here by myself, I swear,’” Grant said to Cole.
“Sorry, man.” Cole raised both palms. “She swore me to secrecy. Said the lady of the house would kill her if she found out she was here.”
“She’s not wrong,” Hazel said with a sneer.
“I don’t really think we should be joking about murder right now,” Marley said.
There was a long, drawn-out moment of silence, punctured only by rumbles of thunder and the screeching of the wind.
“Anyway, I wanted to talk to Lincoln,” Daisy continued, “but it was pretty clear during the party that it wasn’t going to be possible, so I waited until after everyone else left.” She spotted the coffee carafe, still out on the table, and went over to help herself to a cup.
“You squatted in my house, you mean,” Hazel said.
Daisy looked at Marley. “Can you please tell that person to not talk to me?”
“I . . .” Marley felt suddenly exhausted. “I can’t. It is her house now.”
Daisy lifted one shoulder, her blue eyes sparkling. “We’ll see.”
What the heck did that mean?
“What did you talk to Lincoln about? How did he seem?” Marshall asked.
“Was anyone else there?” Sean put in.
“No,” Daisy said to Sean. “And he seemed fine. Stoned, but fine. Until I told him what I came here to tell him. Then he was pissed.”
Marley swallowed hard. “What did you come here to tell him?”
“I told him to stay away from my sister,” Daisy said, crossing her slim, strong arms over her chest. “They talked practically every day, and it wasn’t fair to her.
She was never going to move on if he kept calling her all the time, making her his confidant.
It was pathetic, really. Like, he made his bed. Now he has to lie in it.”
“I can’t listen to this shit anymore,” Hazel said, storming across the room and into the kitchen.
They all stood there for a moment, listening to Hazel open and slam cabinets against the backdrop of the rushing wind.
“It’s all true, you know. He wouldn’t leave her alone,” Daisy said, striking a defiant pose. “She was never going to get better if he didn’t stop. I came here to make it clear he had to stop.”
There was something about the way she said it that made Marley’s blood run cold. It sounded like a threat.
“Okay, so you told him this, and then what?” Marshall asked.
Daisy blew out a sigh. “He basically told me to screw off and that I’d better be out of here before the sun came up.
As if that was even possible.” She gestured toward the glass doors at the back of the room.
“And that was pretty much it. He was going outside to put away some speakers around the pool, and I should go find someplace to crash.”
Marley’s breath stopped as the air seemed to get sucked out of the room. Marshall gave her a meaningful look. Speakers. By the pool.
“You’re sure he was alone?” Marshall asked.
Daisy shrugged. “Yeah, I mean, I told him not to go out there. It was raining pretty hard at that point, and I was worried he was gonna electrocute himself. But he said the speakers were expensive, and he just got them, and you know how Lincoln thinks he’s invincible.”
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, and Juliet covered her mouth with one hand. Daisy blinked, seeming to remember what they were talking about, and straightened up.
“Sorry. I . . . I told him to put on sneakers or boots or something and wear rubber gloves. That’s what everyone does at my events, you know? Just to be safe. If you’re so much as standing in a puddle when you plug something in, you could kill yourself. So.”
Everyone in the room went quiet. The wind howled. Down the hallway, one of the babies was crying.
“So that’s it,” Juliet said finally. Hopefully. “It was an accident. Lincoln electrocuted himself and fell in the pool.”
“No,” Marley and Marshall said at the same time.
“What?” Suzy said, stroking the top of Wintour’s head absently. “That makes sense to me.”
Marley felt like there was something sharp and hard in her throat. She tried to clear it, and her eyes stung. She was sure they all wanted this theory to make sense, but unfortunately, it didn’t.
“If he electrocuted himself with one of the speakers, the speaker would have still been by the pool. Or in the pool with him,” Marshall said. “But it wasn’t. It was in the storage closet with the rest of them.”
“And he was wearing the gloves when I found him,” Hazel put in, stepping back into the room, but hanging back near the door as if she needed to be able to make another quick escape.
“And the blood . . .” Marley said finally.
“So someone had to put the speaker away . . . after Lincoln was electrocuted,” Sean said.
“And he was wearing sneakers too. Like Daisy suggested,” added Sean, “so he probably didn’t do it accidentally.”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Suzy waved her hands in front of her face like she was trying to clear a cloud of smoke. “So what we’re saying here is . . . someone purposely electrocuted Lincoln, threw him in the pool, and then put the speaker away?”
“Yeah,” Marshall said, his voice cracking. “I think that’s what we’re saying.”
“But then where does the blood come in?” Marley asked.
“I don’t know,” Marshall said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Maybe they fought first? In the storage room? And then somehow ended up outside?”
“And maybe Trevor saw the fight. Or the murder. Or something, so the murderer silenced him next,” Suzy said.
“Who’s Trevor?” Daisy asked.
“I need air,” Juliet said, heading for the front door. As she went, Gemma suddenly let out a pained yelp. She looked up, hand on her head, and Juliet paused. “Oh! Sorry.” She lifted her wrist. “Your hair got caught in my bracelet.”
“Oh my God, hey, Gem!” Daisy said, brightening at her first glimpse of Gemma. “I didn’t know you were here!”
Marley shook her head. “Gem?” she said, mimicking the way Daisy had said it, the g soft this time. Gem, Gem, Gem . . . Why does that sound familiar? “How do you two know each other?”
Gemma’s face was the color of ripe eggplant as she shakily stood up from the couch.
“What do you mean, how do we know each other?” Daisy asked, confusion etched across her still-smiling face. “She’s Lily’s oldest friend.”