Which reminds me. “What do you do, Daisy?”
She blinks at me, and I realize it’s the first time I’ve seen her without her giant glasses. Her eyes are large, yes, but the big eyewear must magnify them some. But now I can see her eye color. I was right to say gray, but in her incandescent lights, I’d say her eyes were more steel gray. No matter, she looks… pretty. Very pretty.
She blinks several times before she speaks. “For a job, you mean?”
“Yes. What do you do for a job?”
“Oh, um, I work from home.”
“You do? What do you do?”
“Research.”
Wow, getting information from this girl is like pulling teeth.
“What kind of research?”
“You aren’t going to let this go, are you?” Daisy’s got her hands on her hips and a scowl on his face.
I chuckle. “I guess not.” I mean, what’s the big deal?
“Fine.” She scoffs. “I work for my dad.”
“Your dad?” I thought she didn’t like her father. At least that’s the impression I got the last time we spoke.
“He writes articles and papers. You know, ‘publish or perish,’ as they say in academia.”
I’ve never heard that expression before. I may have to do a little search later. “So, you research for your father.”
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
I want to ask her if that’s a full-time gig, because if not, I’m curious how she affords this place. It isn’t cheap.
Deciding to return to the topic at hand, I say, “So, the guy who just broke into Kara’s place. You see him before?”
Daisy gives me one nod. “He’s been here a few times that I’ve seen, so probably more.”
“Was he living here?” She probably won’t be able to answer that question, but Dylan can.
She shrugs, and that’s all I get from her.
It doesn’t matter if he lived with her. He’s suspect number two, which will help Tayler out immensely. Now we just need to find out what Dylan was up to.
Another good question: How long has he known Kara Becker, and if he killed her, what would be his motive?
Chapter Six
Daisy
The second I saw that guy going into Kara’s apartment, I knew it was my chance to see Officer Golden again. The thought of it made me both nervous and excited. And scared. I mean, not a soul has stepped foot in my place for almost two years.
Except my dad.
But he doesn’t count.
For anything.
Since he’s paying my rent, he thinks he can dictate who I can have in my apartment, which is nobody, because he wants to keep what I’m doing here a dirty little secret. He’s also got a key to the place, so I can’t very well say he can’t stop by—especially when he’s here to pick up his “research.” And by research, I mean his articles, books, and anything else he’s published in the last six years. Yes, I’ve been doing all of his writing since I graduated high school.
It all started rather harmlessly. One night, back when I had a relationship with him, Dad and I were eating dinner, and we began talking about Ernest Hemingway. Since he’s one of my favorite authors, I’d done quite a bit of reading on him. More than my dad had, apparently, because we spent the entire meal arguing the secret meaning behind The Old Man and the Sea, my favorite story of Hemingway’s. My dad got angry with me and told me to “prove it.” So I did. I wrote a paper on Hemingway’s story along with my theories on the symbolism he used throughout and backed it up with thorough research.
After I handed him the paper, he read it and smiled. “Send me your file, would you?” By that, he meant he wanted my digital document file. I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed he was going to edit what I wrote. Little did I know he changed my name at the top of the paper to his and submitted it to a prestigious journal on American literature. He won an award for that article. Not only that, it helped him finally get tenure, something he’d been working toward for years. Now he’s seen as a “leading authority on Hemingway”. I want to scream whenever I see that printed because Dad hates Hemingway. F. Scott Fitzgerald is his favorite. My name, the one he insisted upon, should have been your first clue. And it makes my skin crawl because Daisy Buchanan, from The Great Gatsby, was a bitch.
So that’s how it started. In exchange for my apartment and a little spending money, I write for him. Even while I was getting my own degree, I kept writing for him. My most recent project, the one I’m currently writing, is an entire book about Hemingway. It’s also my chance to get away from here, from my dad. This will be my last project for Dr. Dorian Buchanan. After this, he’s on his own, and I’ll be set free. Because I’ve got plans of my own, and they don’t include my father.
You see, I’ve got a few secrets of my own.
After Officer Golden—Gage—leaves my apartment, I contemplate going to bed, but since I’m not tired, I opt to start going through the containers that hold all of the newspapers and magazines that have been stacked around my place ever since my mom left. They really are hers; she asked me to keep them for her until she got back from her “little trip.” She’s been gone five years, ever since the day she found out dad was using my writing for his own advancement. I guess that was the last straw for her. I’m not surprised. They hadn’t been getting along—not for a while.
I don’t blame her, really. Dad’s career always came before anything else. I suspect she was tired of being second or even third fiddle. We used to be a family. Before my dad became obsessed with his career, the three of us used to do things together. We used to laugh. But something happened to
