Danielle Ganek

by The Summer We Read Gatsby (v5)

  “Not home on a Sunday morning?” He raised his eyebrows in comic fashion. “Well, we know she’s not at church.”

  “She’s at a friend’s house,” I said, trying to be discreet. That morning Peck had updated me via text messages that began WARNING: MAY CONTAIN TMI. (TMI = Too Much Information.) On this, she was absolutely correct. I really did not need to hear how many times Miles Noble was able to get it up in the hot tub. Much as I suspected, they had watched from behind a curtain hanging in a second-floor window until Finn picked me up. Then Miles suggested a swim in the indoor pool, which was lit with all those candles. When the houseguests attempted to join them, he suggested they swim in the outdoor pool if they were so inclined, and asked them not to disturb their host and Peck when they left in the morning.

  “A friend, you say?” He’d opened the bag of cinnamon buns and passed them around. Scotty was holding one delicately, eyeing it as if he couldn’t figure out what to do with it. Finn took one too, always polite. I shook my head but Hamilton rattled the bag at me impatiently. “I didn’t figure you for one of those tedious New York women who are perpetually on a diet.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “But I just ate eggs, bacon, and three pancakes.”

  He reached into the bag and took out a cinnamon bun and handed it to me. “Don’t postpone joy. It’s one of my mottoes. Now, what friend is this of whom you speak? Might he be the friend in possession of the ugliest house in the Hamptons?”

  Finn was grinning. “He might.”

  “If you must know,” I said, in my best mocking imitation of prim, “it’s Miles Noble. And yes, she stayed the night.”

  “We may never see her again,” Hamilton said, grinning at me and indicating the cinnamon bun in my hand. “Now take a bite. You’ll be most grateful you did.”

  I did as I was told. “So, what’s the news?”

  “You tell me,” Hamilton said. He hadn’t been surprised to learn that the code to Lydia’s safe was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birth date and he also hadn’t been surprised to learn that the only thing contained in the safe was a stack of love letters. He had been shocked to learn, however, that Lydia had been secretly married. “I’m still disappointed that all we’ve had so far is the grand news of a wedding. It’s so . . . pedestrian,” he commented now, making a face as he chewed his cinnamon bun. “I would have expected something more dramatic. A love child, perhaps. Or an identical twin separated at birth.”

  “You said you had news,” I reminded him. “Was it about Biggsy? That’s why Finn stayed here last night. He thinks he’s dangerous.”

  Hamilton nodded. “Finn’s right. And you’d do well to listen to him. The boy is trouble. Too bloody good-looking. Those sorts of looks warp the senses.”

  “He’s not that good-looking,” Scotty said, through a mouthful of his second cinnamon bun. “I don’t think he’s at all right in the head. And there’s nothing attractive about that.”

  “You’re a jealous little fellow, aren’t you?” Hamilton fussed at him. “Now, here’s what we’ve learned. Someone—and we suspect it was him—has been texting Giles from a cell phone with a Utah area code about selling a Jackson Pollock. I’ve decided we need a plan. First we have to confirm that Biggsy or Jonathan or whatever his name is does, in fact, have the painting. I suspect that he does. Then, second, we will get it back.”

  “Then, third, we’ll get rid of him,” Scotty added.

  Hamilton smiled in my direction. “We? We have to get rid of him?”

  “I think he also took Lydia’s copy of Gatsby,” I told them.

  “Well, we’ll get that back too,” Hamilton said, very matter-of-factly. “Now, here’s what I propose. And I offer my services willingly. I can get the young man to tell me if he has the painting.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” I asked, noting the way Scotty looked at Hamilton sideways, as though he’d had a little experience with Hamilton’s plans and wasn’t so pleased with the direction this was going.

  “The old-fashioned art of seduction, my dear,” Hamilton said with a smile. “I’ll take one for the team, as you Americans might say.”

  “What makes you think he’ll allow himself to be seduced by you?” I said, half laughing. “He’s straight.”

  “Straight to the next man,” Hamilton scoffed. “That chap will play it any way he can.”

  “He had pictures of Peck in his studio,” I pointed out. “I think he likes women.”

  “He has pictures of everyone,” Scotty added, speaking up suddenly. “And their houses. The insides of their closets. He told me all about it. He fancies himself the next Great American Artist, if you know what I mean.”

  “So what will you do after you seduce him?” I asked Hamilton.

  He looked at me as though the answer were obvious. “If he has the painting, I’ll play the patron, of course, and offer to help him sell it. I’ll arrange a meeting with the potential client, have him bring the work, and then we’ll grab it. You and Peck will be there and then you’ll kick him out.”

  “Sounds too simple,” I said.

  “The best plans are always simple.” He grinned at me and then pointed at the garage, where there was no sign of Biggsy’s motorcycle near the door. “Is he up there?”

  I shook my head no.

  “He’ll be back,” Finn said.

  Hamilton nodded, picking up his Financial Times. “Let me know when he returns. We’ll set our plan in motion.” He gestured at the rest of the breakfast items. “We’ll leave the rest of this for you adorable creatures. Let’s go, Scotty. We must give the lovebirds back their Sunday.”

  Finn and I hung out on the porch for a few hours after they left, then he went home to shower and change. When he picked me up that afternoon to go to Shelter Island neither Biggsy nor Peck had returned to Fool’s House.

  “You’re not going to spend every night on the couch until he comes back,” I said, once we’d settled easily into our usual spots in the jeep, as comfortable and relaxed as if we’d been doing so for years. “Besides, Peck will have to come back eventually. She doesn’t go anywhere without an extensive wardrobe.”

  “From what you told me, she didn’t need much in the way of clothing,” he pointed out.

  “She’s into dressing gowns and gold lamé and sunglasses that match. She buys vintage ballgowns and faux fur stoles. She actually wears hats. At some point she’s going to need a look.”

  For the rest of the ride he gave me the color on the family I was about to meet: his mother, Pat, and the four brothers, Seamus, Ryan, Liam, and Dean, and their wives, Marty, Lisa, Diana, and Tina. We took the five-minute ferry ride to Shelter Island and made our way to the battered old wooden house that Finn’s family had owned for many years.

  The house was simple and well-tended, with a gently sloping back lawn that ran down to the water. On the lawn two extra-long picnic tables draped with red-white-and-blue-patterned tablecloths were set for the early dinner we were to enjoy with the family. There were stars-and-stripes napkins and cups and a big sheet cake decorated as the American flag with strawberries and blueberries and whipped cream.

  “My mother must have gotten a discount on the red, white, and blue decorations after the Fourth of July,” Finn said with a laugh as he led me down to the dock, where most of the family was gathered, watching the younger children paddle about in the water and some older ones maneuver a canoe. They were all big, or so it seemed to me, enormously tall and muscled, even the women. As we approached I assumed Finn’s mother must have been inside, but then a figure that I’d taken for one of the teenagers, in loose shorts and a T-shirt, turned and greeted us with a wave and a shout. She was petite and brown from the sun, with her hair brushed casually off her forehead, and she wrapped her arms around me in the tightest hug and wouldn’t let go.

  “I’m Pat. I adored your aunt,” she said, grinning warmly at me. The lines around her faded blue eyes were the only indicator of her age, as everything else about her was youthful in
the most natural way. “I think I’m going to adore you too.”

  I fell in love that day. Not necessarily with Finn—that would come later—but with the whole boisterous lot of them. They were loud and friendly and opinionated and fun, the athletic brothers with their sporty wives and photogenic children, and they included me in their table discussions as readily as if I’d been there many times. They asked a lot of questions about Switzerland—“Do you have a cuckoo clock?” one of the smaller boys wanted to know—and about Lydia and Fool’s House. Pat was more than eager to talk about her friend. I’d brought the photo of the two of them that Finn had given me, and I pulled it out after the cake had been devoured and the kids had run off to catch fireflies and throw lacrosse balls with their dads while their moms cleared the dishes.

  “She loved that painting,” she said when I explained that it was missing and asked if she knew who the artist had been. “But she was so secretive. I remember I asked her about it once and she went all mysterious. Wouldn’t tell me who painted it or where she got it.”

  “Do you think it could have been a Jackson Pollock?”

  At first she shook her head. “Oh no. She would have told me that. She was mad for Pollock.” But then she changed her mind. “But come to think of it, anything’s possible. She did have a strange attachment to that painting.” She took another small bite of cake and chewed thoughtfully. “I suppose it could have been. She may have had her reasons for not wanting to tell anyone. Maybe she didn’t want it to get stolen. She never locked her doors.”

  “In her will she told Cassie and Peck that she hoped they would find ‘a thing of utmost value’ in the house,” Finn explained. “And then they’d only been in the house a few days when that painting disappeared off the wall during a party.”

  “Well, she did like to talk that way,” Pat said, considering the idea. “We used to poke fun at her. But it would make sense, I suppose, if she did have a Jackson Pollock she wanted you to have but didn’t want to say what it was. Perhaps for the taxes. She did like to be cryptic too. She was always trying to get us to answer her riddles.”

  “And there was an old hardcover Great Gatsby too,” I added. “With a dust jacket.”

  “I didn’t know anything about that,” she said. “But with Lydia there was always another story to everything. First there’d be one tale, and then another. Or there’d be a practical joke involved, so the first tale was the setup for the prank. I never knew what to believe with her. It sure made it fun to be her friend, though.”

  We chatted for a long time as the sky grew dark and thousands of stars erupted in the inky blackness. The children were carted off after giving “Nanny” a good-night kiss, and the brothers and their wives all hugged me and Finn.

  When it was just the three of us the talk turned to selling Fool’s House.

  “Have you buried a statue of Saint Joseph in the front yard?” she asked.

  “Oh, Mom,” Finn groaned. “Don’t start with that stuff.”

  “It works,” she said to him. To me she added, “Buy a statue of Saint Joseph and then bury it near the front door. I know it sounds silly. I don’t usually go in for mumbo jumbo. But I’ve seen amazing things come from this. That is, if you really want to sell it.”

  “I don’t want to. But we have to sell it,” I said, despite the second thoughts I’d been having about letting go of Lydia’s house.

  Eventually Finn said it was time for him to take me home, as he had an early flight to Colorado to check on a job site, and we said good-bye to his mother. She wrapped both her arms tightly around me for the second time and said, “I’m thrilled to know you.”

  “Well, she convinced me,” Finn said as we drove back to the ferry. “I’m starting to think that was a Pollock.”

  “If it is and Biggsy took it, do you think he plans to sell it or keep it for himself?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Hamilton better get it back soon.”

  “The man has a plan,” I said jokingly. “Did you see the look on poor Scotty’s face when he realized what Hamilton had in mind? Hamilton has no idea the guy’s madly in love with him.”

  When he pulled up to Fool’s House, the place was dark. Biggsy’s motorcycle was not there and no lights were on in the house or the studio. “I’ll be fine,” I said as Finn hopped out of the driver’s seat and came around to open my door. I’d already gotten out, though, and he stopped in front of me, blocking my path to the house. He looked down at me with an unreadable, almost pained expression.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I had a great day. And I fell in love with your family. Especially your mom . . .” My voice trailed off as I noticed that he was looking at me funny. “Are you okay?”

  Suddenly he took my face in both his hands and pulled me toward him. He kissed me passionately, leaning me against the side of the car and pressing his whole body into mine. It’s a good thing he did, because my knees went weak at the contact after the physical tension that had been building between us over the ten or so days I’d been there. I melted into him and we kissed for what seemed like a very long time.

  When we came apart, I’d never wanted anyone as intensely as I wanted him. I’d never felt this way before, like I needed his touch.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Don’t apologize,” I whispered. “Come inside.”

  He shook his head. “I’m . . . I . . . I . . . want to take things slow.”

  “I’m only going to be here a couple more weeks,” I said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” he said, and then he kissed me again, gently this time, before heading back to the driver’s side of the car. “See you when I get back,” he said before he slid into the jeep with no indication of when that might be.

  13

  I could hear the screams from the porch. By the sound of it, someone—Peck?—was inside the house upstairs being stabbed or robbed or beaten. Whatever it was, a crime was clearly taking place.

  It was Tuesday morning and Peck, as far as I knew, was still at Miles Noble’s. The Bosleys were coming to look at Fool’s House, but they were not due for another half hour at least. I’d taken Trimalchio for a walk, and I should have backed the hell out of there and called the police when I returned to hear all that racket from inside. Instead, like a heroine in a bad movie, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife I could find before hurrying up the stairs. Trimalchio, trotting along at my side, didn’t appear at all concerned, but he was a New Yorker and thus, jaded.

  The screams were coming from Peck’s room. And, as far as I could tell, from Peck herself, whose one and only line as a television actress had been a high-pitched yelp that sounded exactly like the sounds emanating through the door. She was being violently attacked, that much was evident. Was it Biggsy? I turned the knob, ready to burst in and save her—with a knife?—but the door was locked. Just as I was about to kick down the door like I was a character on NYPD Blue, I heard her say, “Fantastic.” Actually, she practically screamed it. “Fan-tas-tic!” What I was hearing wasn’t attempted murder: it was the unmistakable sound of extremely rigorous sex.

  Peck and Miles—at least I hoped that’s who it was—must have decided to slum it for some reason. I listened outside the door for some indication that the screaming couple might be slowing down or picking up the pace, as in reaching a climax, but this sounded like it was going to go on for a while. What were they doing at Fool’s House when there was so much more room to roll around over at his place? Besides, I had cleaned her room that morning, tidying huge piles of clothes that covered the floor and making the bed up with the throw pillows in anticipation of our real estate showing.

  Finally I knocked. “Sorry to interrupt,” I called out.

  There was no immediate answer but the screams subsided somewhat. Then muffled voices. I knocked again as the moaning sounded like it was picking up again. Either this was the most mind-blowing orgasm ever or one hell of an acting job.
r />   Finally Peck shouted, annoyed, “Okay!”

  “The Bosleys are coming to look at the house,” I said. “With Laurie Poplin. You might want to get up. They’ll be here soon.”

  When I got to the foot of the stairs, still clutching the huge kitchen knife, I was startled to see that they were already there. A whole family of them, peering in through the screen door at me. Four children and their frazzled-looking parents—Heather in stained yoga pants and those strange plastic shoes with holes in them called Crocs, and Ollie in his Harvard crew shirt and his own pair of purple Crocs. The two of them looked deflated, as though their hopes—a charming and well-located house in the Hamptons they could actually afford—had been dashed by the sight of the rickety little shack with its sagging porch.

  Ollie threw both arms in the air. “I didn’t do it. Wrong guy, I tell you, it wasn’t me,” he joked.

  “Daaad,” the older boy drawled, admonishing him. He had shoulder-length hair and wore a purple rash guard and long shorts. “Dylaan,” his dad said, mimicking his tone.

  “Is this a bad time?” their mother asked in a sharp tone. She held up a plate covered in tin foil as they all looked at me expectantly. “We made an appointment, remember?”

  “My wife likes to be early,” Ollie explained, as though this was one of many things he found impossible to understand about the woman he married.

  “Of course,” I said. “Come on in.” I inadvertently waved with my weapon, hoping Peck and Miles were finishing up and getting dressed.

  “These are for you.” Heather gestured with her plate. “Health muffins. We baked them this morning.”

  The littlest Bosley was too afraid to come into the house. “Oh, Poppy,” her mother said, glaring at the knife in my hand. “The lady was just using that for cooking. Like Mommy does all the time.”

  Her older daughter corrected her. “You never cook.”