“Your aunt was mad for that book,” he said to me, with a kindly pat on the arm, as though he knew how I felt. “Oh, did she ever love that book.”
“I never understood it,” Scotty stated, almost plaintively. “I suppose because I’m not an American.”
“Or perhaps because you’re not very bright,” Hamilton said with a straight face.
Scotty nodded amiably at me. “I’m not. But I’m really quite good fun.” He pointed at Biggsy hovering behind Miles Noble, eager for an introduction. “I know that chap. The handsome one in the costume. Do you remember, Ham? The opening where the artist was killed out in the street in front of the gallery?”
“I was with you,” Hamilton reminded his friend. “He was run over by a taxi as he took a cigarette in the rain.”
“Don’t you remember?” Scotty exclaimed. “When we were outside and the ambulance was coming? There was someone filming the scene. And do you remember what he said when we told him to turn off the camera? He said, ‘Hey, man, this is art.’ ”
“Empathetic young chap, isn’t he?” Hamilton pointed out. “The poor man’s body was still steaming under the pelting rain. It was rather astonishing.”
“The piece was for sale at the Basel Art Fair later in the year,” Scotty added. “But I don’t suppose anyone ever bought it. In fact, I remember hearing that the artist had died.”
“Wouldn’t that have been an ironic twist of fate?” Hamilton asked. “But if he is the artist, he appears to be alive and well, doesn’t he? Living the good life here in the Hamptons.”
They were still chatting about Biggsy when Peck appeared at my side. “I need to talk to you,” she whispered, hand cupped against my ear. “In private.”
She pulled me around to the back side of the porch, where earlier in the evening Finn and I had been alone. “Stella,” she whispered urgently. “We’ve been robbed.”
4
When Peck said we’d been robbed, I assumed someone had made off with the safe in Lydia’s mothball-scented closet. But the only thing missing, oddly, was the painting we’d been looking at earlier in the evening, the painting—“For L.M. From J.P.”—that had hung above the mantel for as long as we could remember.
“Why would anyone take that?” we asked each other as, out on the front side of the porch, the party wound down to its natural end without anyone knowing something was awry. Miles Noble left without saying good-bye and we didn’t tell anyone about the missing painting. It hardly seemed like something worth mentioning.
The next day, however, Peck put forth a theory over a lunch she and Biggsy had prepared from the leftover party food—pink lemonade with cucumber, ginger, and mint; tiny cornbread sandwiches with turkey and chutney; crab cakes on ciabatta; homemade potato chips; and a ridiculously delicious avocado and tomato salad with cilantro. The three of us gathered at the table on the porch. The sun was high over our heads in a cloudless sky and the inspiring light that had lured so many artists to this part of the world threw everything into sharp relief.
“Okay, so here’s what I think,” she said, once we were settled in. “It wasn’t until I mentioned Lydia’s paintings that Miles seemed interested in coming over here, right? And then, first thing, he asked me to give him a tour. Right in the middle of the party.” She caught Biggsy’s eye. “I know. Rude, right? But he was so into it, I couldn’t say no. And then here’s where it gets weird.” She paused to take a bite of her crab cake sandwich, oozing with tartar sauce, and then washed it down with fresh lemonade before resuming. “He stood before that painting for a long time, much longer than he looked at any of the others. Almost as if he were trying to place it in his mind.”
“I saw him!” Biggsy cried out, his eyes lighting up, immediately fueling Peck’s suspicions. “You were already back outside and he went back in there by himself. Nobody else was around. He was staring up at that painting forever.”
“Here’s what I think,” she said, leaning forward conspiratorially, even though there was nobody who could hear us. “That painting was the thing of value that Lydia was talking about. She probably didn’t want anyone to know what it was because we would have gotten socked with big taxes. And maybe she didn’t want to make it too complicated for us, because how do you divide a painting? Unless you sell it and share the proceeds. That would explain why she worded the will that way.”
“And this Miles guy, he collects art, right?” Biggsy chimed in. “I knew he did—that’s why I wanted to talk to him about my work. But he was too busy casing the joint. Didn’t even hear me.”
Peck gestured at him with her sandwich, sending a dollop of tartar sauce in his direction. “Literally. That’s what happened. He figured out what it was and that it was worth something. Oh God,” she moaned. “I just realized I told him. I’m such a blabbermouth, I had to go and tell him all about Aunt Lydia’s will and the thing of utmost value.”
“I had another theory,” Biggsy said. “But now it seems silly. I think you were right. He had that horny look in his eye. He wanted that painting.”
“I’m telling you, there’s something shady about Miles,” Peck added eagerly. This was exactly the kind of drama she would work to create when it didn’t exist, and she was enjoying this immensely. “When I was young and didn’t know better I found it sexy. But when you think about it, how did he make all that money? Oh, I do think he could be a thief. He had it in him.”
I’d been listening rather skeptically as the two of them worked themselves into a frenzy of conviction, but I didn’t really believe Miles Noble would appear, seemingly out of the blue, into Peck’s life and into her aunt’s house and walk away with a painting off the wall, even if it was the one I’d liked best. But I had no other explanation. “What was your theory?” I asked Biggsy.
He hung his head. “It’s dumb now.”
Of course this only made Peck and me implore him to tell us what he was thinking, and when he spoke a small smile played at his lips. His looks were distracting. His accent was flat and unplaceable—he told us he’d grown up in Utah, but then he also mentioned having lived in a trailer park in Oregon and summers in Idaho, so the exact source was unclear—and he never sounded particularly intelligent, but it was hard not to be thrown off by the fact that words were emerging at all from such a mouth. It was disconcerting, like one of those Abercrombie ads come to life.
“You know how Lydia always said there was a ghost?” he said sheepishly. Lydia had always enjoyed sharing her tales of the genial figure of the former owner of the house who made an appearance every now and then, hiding a frying pan from the kitchen on the bookshelf, or moving the items on the bar cart. “Well, I’ve seen it for myself.”
“You thought a ghost took the painting.” I couldn’t help sounding dubious.
“He’s more of a poltergeist,” he said, looking to Peck for confirmation. “Sometimes he finds things.”
“Oh! Oh! What if it’s Lydia!” Peck interjected, looking pleased with herself. “Trying to tell us something. Communicating from 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 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. “Hamilton thinks we should stay at Fool’s House.”
“That’s not exactly what I said and you know it,” he corrected her. “If I had the money I’d buy the place and let you enjoy it. I wish I could do that. But the real estate market out here has gotten so crazy, even Lydia was thinking of selling.”
We both stopped walking, shocked at what he just said. Peck looked over at me. “That’s impossible.”
Now it was Hamilton’s turn to look surprised. “What? Of course not. We both were talking about selling. The real estate market out here has gone wild. Houses that only a few years ago were five hundred thousand are now five million. We were going to sell these two places—we thought we might get more if we sold them together, you see. And then we planned to move to Greece. Or some days it was Morocco. Then for a while we thought of Fiji, but neither of us had been there. We called it cashing in our 401(k)s.”
Peck shook her head, refusing to believe him. “Lydia would never have cashed in on Fool’s House. She loved this place.”
“We may not have actually done it,” Hamilton said as we started to walk again. “But it was highly amusing to talk about it. Now I don’t know. Greece and Morocco don’t sound as much fun without her.” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “I’ll probably just stay and complain bitterly while some young couple tears Fool’s House down and puts up another of the
se monstrosities too big for its lot.” He shuddered dramatically as we turned into our neighbors’ driveway and their house came into view. “How could anyone build such an ugly thing?” he asked gleefully.
“My sister said the same thing about Miles Noble’s house,” Peck reported in the manner of a journalist who can’t believe there are actually people in the world who can’t see clearly, that is, the way she does. “But his is huge.”
He tilted his head toward me conspiratorially. “More to go wrong, then.”
The front door to the Samuelses’ house was propped open and we followed two women in beach cover-ups through it. “Oh, it’s worse than I imagined,” Hamilton whispered happily as we stepped into the living room, where a riot of mismatched blue-and-white patterns caused him to recoil slightly. “Look at the toile!”
Peck admonished him with a grin. “You’re so bitchy.”
“I wouldn’t be,” he protested, “if I didn’t know they spent a bloody fortune doing this up with that leech Emmet Leary. I think he picked these fabrics with his eyes closed and then laughed his little self all the way to the bank.”
There were several rows of sandals and flip-flops lined up near the front door, next to a basket of patterned Chinese slippers in assorted sizes. A hand-lettered sign indicated that we were to take off our shoes and don a pair of the slippers before entering.
“Is the woman mad?” Hamilton looked to me. “I’m absolutely not taking off my shoes. What a repulsive thought.”
“Me neither,” Peck crowed, lifting her heel to show off a dainty sandal. “This is disgusting.”
I hesitated, then slipped off my sandals.
“My sister is so obedient,” Peck pointed out. “She can’t help herself. She’s like a schoolgirl, isn’t she? Afraid Headmistress is going to come looking for her.”
There must have been fifteen women in Bethany Samuels’s coral dining room—“More toile!” Hamilton exclaimed—where ropes of diamonds and pavé bracelets and huge cocktail rings were laid out on velvet trays. The chatter was loud and excited as the women fluttered around the table, draping themselves in expensive baubles and admiring their reflections in conveniently placed hand mirrors. There was something frenetic about the way they picked at the shiny pieces before them, like birds nervously preparing their nests.
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