The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek Page B

with so-and-so. And they create the illusion that they’re social. But that’s all it is, an illusion.”
    “If we go over there,” I said, “we have to take Hamilton. When she handed me the invitation he told me to let him know if we decided to go. Said he wanted the opportunity to sneer at it from the inside.”
    “He’s so naughty ,” Peck said, grinning and handing me the phone. “Tell him to get his white English ass over here and let’s go.”
    The house that the Samuelses owned had replaced whatever small house had been there before it, and was too large for its lot and soulless. It was the kind of house that had been thrown up quickly and greedily, by a builder looking to cash in with no specific buyer in mind other than one with money to burn. It came with all the bells and whistles, a media room, a wine cellar, a gym, and plenty of steam showers, flat-panel televisions, and Viking appliances, but not an ounce of charm.
    I’d hardly had time to hang up the phone and slip on my shoes before Hamilton was in our driveway, waving his fan at us, a pink sweater tied jauntily around his neck. “Are we really going to pay a call on our neighbors?” he called out. “I feel deliciously sneaky .”
    “Come up and try my lemonade,” Peck instructed him, and then added in her usual slightly irritable tone, “It’s delicious. But of course, my sister could never say so. God forbid she should pay me a compliment.”
    “I drank three glasses of the stuff,” I reminded her. “I oohed and aahed over everything.”
    “You didn’t say anything specifically about the lemonade,” she quibbled. “It’s disheartening, to work that hard on something and then have you gulp down three glasses and not even mention it.” She sighed. “And then when you do say anything, it’s just dripping in sarcasm, as if it’s supposed to be funny. I’m telling you, I’m at my wit’s end with you.”
    “Now, girls,” Hamilton said, once he’d accepted a chilled glass of lemonade with ice from Peck and quickly declared it “marvelous.” He gestured with his fan in the direction of our neighbors’ house. “What exactly is the reason for our visit to the unsightly mass of cedar shingles on the other side of you?”
    Peck quickly explained about the missing painting and Hamilton took his glass of lemonade into the house as we followed him. There we gazed up at the forlorn hook that was all that was left in the empty spot above the mantel.
    “When the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre,” Hamilton said, “more people came to see the empty spot where she’d hung than had ever come to see the painting.”
    “This was hardly the Mona Lisa .” Peck gestured toward the hook. “Do you know who painted it?”
    Hamilton rubbed his chin. “I always wondered. She was somewhat coy about this one. One got the sense it was more important than any of the others. But she never said who the artist was. I’m not sure I ever asked.”
    I told him about the words on the back of the frame.: FOR L.M. FROM J.P. Peck shared her theory that Miles Noble had figured out what it was and taken it.
    “I wish we could just ask the old girl,” he said, somewhat deflated. An air of sadness seemed to have come over him suddenly. “I just don’t know.”
    “Could this be the thing of utmost value she was talking about?” I asked him.
    He shrugged. “I haven’t the foggiest. We never talked about dying. I didn’t know what was in her will. I didn’t even know she had one.”
    “Well, there’s a reason someone took this painting,” Peck proclaimed with authority. “Now let’s go see if we can get anything out of that nosy pipsqueak next door.”
    As we headed off together down our driveway on foot, Hamilton threw one arm around each of us. “I’m having a party on Tuesday. I want you both to promise to be there. I’m simply adoring having the two of you here.”
    “See, Stella,” Peck said, peering around his girth at me.