“My, you’re a far way from Flushing, Detective, aren’t you?” I finally said, laughing a little, nervousness catching in my throat. This was the second time he’d come to find me in the past few months, and that was after he’d questioned me relentlessly in the days after Jay Gatsby’s death. They felt like a haze now, those days, and who could even remember what I said then.
Every paper had reported that Jay Gatsby had been murdered by a grieving George Wilson, who’d then taken his own life. The case was officially closed. This detective’s continued morbid, pesky fascination with it, and me, made no sense. But I couldn’t help swallowing back the fear rising in my chest at his presence, nonetheless.
“I needed to talk to you again.” Detective Charles pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. He offered one to me, but I shook my head. We weren’t friends; I wasn’t about to share anything with him.
“Well, I’m very busy,” I said flatly. “In the middle of a tournament, as you can well see.”
“Let me buy you something to eat,” Detective Charles said. “I found a good little diner around the corner. Nothing fancy. We can talk.”
“Why, Detective, are you asking me on a date?” I said flippantly.
He held out his left hand, showing his thick gold wedding band. “I’m a happily married man, Miss Baker. It’ll be twenty years this summer.”
* * *
I SAT IN a shiny red booth across from the detective and tried to be patient as he deliberated over the menu and finally ordered only a piece of cherry pie. “Miss Baker?” he said.
“Nothing for me,” I told the waitress. What I really needed was a G&T. But I couldn’t order one here. Anyway, I hadn’t touched the stuff since the summer, and I wasn’t going to start again now, in the middle of a tournament. Now that I’d clawed my way back, I wouldn’t let anything stop me. I’d gotten sidetracked the past few years by love and friendship and gin. And my true love, my true life, was golf.
“She’ll take a piece of the pie, too,” Detective Charles said.
“How do you know I even like pie?” I asked when the waitress walked away.
“Everyone likes pie, Miss Baker.”
I put my hands on the table and sighed. “All right, I suppose I’ll eat the goddamned pie. Now, the suspense is killing me. Why are we here?”
He reached into his jacket pocket, put the diamond hairpin he’d bothered me about last fall back on the table. I closed my eyes for a second. It had been in my hair that morning when I’d gotten tangled up in the bushes by Jay’s pool. I’d gotten rid of the gun, staged everything perfectly, and then there was one little detail I hadn’t thought about. It wasn’t until hours later, when I went in for a much-needed bath at Aunt Sigourney’s, that I’d realized the diamond pin was gone.
Here I was months and thousands of miles away from West Egg, and sometimes still, even now, I awoke in a sweaty tangle of sheets in the middle of the night, caught up in a never-ending nightmare filled with gunshots and Jay Gatsby’s threats. Maybe it would all haunt me for the rest of my life. Detective Charles, too.
“I already told you,” I finally said, “that’s not mine.”
“Half-truths have served you pretty well this past year, haven’t they, Miss Baker?”
“I’m the most honest woman I know.” I managed to say this with a straight face. The waitress plunked our pie slices down on the table and I dug into mine aggressively with my fork.
“Here’s what I think,” Detective Charles said. “I’ve done a little digging, spoken extensively with Mr. Carraway. Even telephoned down to Nashville, talked to your old roommate from the golf tour.”
“Mary Margaret.” Her name escaped my lips in a whisper. I hadn’t said it out loud in so long, it didn’t even feel real. She didn’t even feel real. I dropped my fork and held my hands together to keep them from shaking. She was a married woman now, and there wasn’t any way she’d told the detective what had really happened between us.
“I learned some interesting things. For one thing, you weren’t on the golf tour at all last summer even though you told everyone you were. You didn’t play in any matches. They’d asked you to leave. I guess you really did cheat, huh?”
I shook my head. “I simply took a little break,” I snapped. “I’m back now, aren’t I?”
“And for another thing, this may be Daisy’s hairpin, but she gave it to you to wear. Nick Carraway said you had it in your hair all last summer.”