The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek Page A

beyond the grave . . .” Her voice trailed off as she contemplated this version.
    “I didn’t think it was Lydia,” he said, in his usual serious tone. “But I did wonder about the ghost of Fool’s House, the original owner. The one she won the house from in a game of backgammon?”
    I lifted my hands in protest. “My mother said that story wasn’t true.”
    “Well,” he said, still speaking earnestly, “did you look in the closet under the stairs? Lydia once told me the ghost often tucked things away under there for safekeeping.”
    “I can’t believe we’re actually discussing the possibility of a friendly ghost swooping in and taking a painting off the wall,” I said. “We’re all adults.”
    “Stella’s right,” Peck said with a firm nod, like it was time to get back to the real situation. “If it was a ghost, it was the ghost of lovers past. Miles Noble did this. Maybe it was some sort of mating ritual, the first step in a dance of courtship. Or maybe he really believed it was something of value and he stole it. But we’re going to find out.”
    We finished eating and cleared the plates and then Peck, who loved to talk on the phone, began making calls to people who’d been at the party. “Just wondering if you noticed anything unusual last night,” she kept saying. “No, no, nothing serious. Just a strange occurrence that we’re trying to understand. Well, I’d rather not say. I’ll tell you everything when I know more.”
    To someone else she gave hangover advice—“I’m telling you, grease is the word. Get yourself to the Sip ’n Soda,” she advocated—before hanging up. “That person was so drunk last night he thought I was accusing him of going home with the painting himself,” said Peck. “He offered to search his car and call me back.”
    “I think we should go see those peculiar neighbors of ours, the Samuelses,” she said to me, holding her hand over the receiver after she’d placed the next call. The Samuelses lived in the oversized house to the east of Fool’s House, and Peck believed they’d been spying on us from their third-floor window since we arrived. “They might have seen something. Miles sneaking out the back door with the painting under his arm?”
    Bethany Samuels sold jewelry at private trunk shows in her home and her husband worked on Wall Street. We would see them, or more often hear them, going from zero to sixty in their Hummer on our quiet little street. They had two young girls who were always dressed in matching clothes, although one was huge and one was tiny and the outfits, old-fashioned smocked dresses and shoes that buttoned on the side, looked odd in such different sizes. They were often being wheeled in a stroller up and down the street by a nanny in a starched uniform, although the big one was old enough to ride a bicycle on her own.
    Peck had invited them to the party only to avoid having them call the police to complain about the noise. “She’s a faux-cialite,” she’d said of Bethany Samuels, dismissing her. “And so pushy. Give her four minutes and she’ll try to sell you a diamond ring. But we have to be neighborly.”
    Sure enough, Bethany Samuels had arrived at our party with postcard invitations in hand for a jewelry trunk show. “You should come. The best deals on diamonds anywhere.” I don’t know what she thought I would be doing buying diamonds, even at a discount, but she persisted. “Just come and check it out. No pressure. I’m not into aggressive sales. I know it’s a Sunday but so many of us are golf widows I thought it would make sense. Husbands welcome but not necessary!”
    “Social magicians,” Peck called Bethany and her husband. It was the sort of term she’d claim to have coined. This was one I’d never heard before, so perhaps Peck did come up with it on her own. “They show up places, mostly at the parties where you have to buy a ticket. Then they can say, I was at so-and-so’s house or I had dinner