“I’m very sorry,” she murmured.
Nothing had shaped the course of his life more than that one single event, when he was just a boy of fourteen, and his older sister, Lizzie, was murdered. Lizzie had made him breakfast that January morning before they’d both left for school, and then he never saw her again. She turned up dead in a Brooklyn alley the next morning. Just like that. They never caught the guy who did it, and that thought still pained him so much, even to this day, that he barely ever let himself think about Lizzie now, except at Christmas and when he went to church to light a candle on her birthday every May. But Lizzie was why he’d devoted his entire adult life to investigating and solving murders.
Catherine’s face softened and she motioned for him to come sit down in the small kitchen. He took a seat at the round oak table, and he hated himself a little for using Lizzie in this way, for invoking her memory simply to get Catherine to open up to him.
“How’d it happen?” Catherine asked him now.
“She was strangled,” he said quietly.
Catherine shook her head. “That’s terrible.”
He nodded. He was leaving out so much, but he wasn’t here to talk to Catherine about Lizzie. He kind of wished he hadn’t brought her up at all. He started to sweat again, and Catherine stood to get him a glass of water. He thanked her and took a sip. “I was just a kid still, and her murder was never solved,” he said, trying to bring the conversation back around. “But if I’d had someone to blame… say, if a rich guy had run her over… even at the age of fourteen, I would’ve killed the son of a bitch myself.” It was a shocking thing to say out loud. Even more shocking to understand it was the God’s honest truth.
Catherine sat across the table from him, closed her eyes for a moment, and exhaled. “So that’s why you’re here. I should’ve known you didn’t really want to pay your respects.” She shook her head. “Even if I was the murderer you think I am… aren’t you out of your jurisdiction for arrests?”
“I’m not trying to make any arrests here. I just want to know the truth, that’s all. Someone shot a man, point-blank, and from what I hear about your brother-in-law, I don’t know if he was capable.”
“Oh, George was very capable. He loved pistols, don’t you know? Pistols and cars.” Catherine’s voice was caustic, dripping in bitterness. She balled her hands into fists and shook her head. “Myrtle deserved better,” she said. “She deserved so much better.”
He wasn’t clear now whether she meant better than George, or better than what happened to her—her body being crushed out in the road, in the end. But all that was beside the point, and he didn’t ask. He suddenly hated himself for coming here, for picking at her raw wound with more questions. Even if she had shot Gatsby, he might have deserved it.
Catherine stared at him. Her eyes were defiant, a piercing shade of green, the color of the grass in Central Park at the height of summer. “You’re wasting your time coming all the way out here, Detective,” she said. “I didn’t kill Mr. Gatsby.” But her voice shook a little, betraying her.
Frank pulled the diamond hairpin out of his pocket and laid it in front of them on the oak table, following her eyes, watching for her reaction. Her mouth formed into the shape of an O. She put her hand to her lips.
“You recognize this, don’t you?” He kept his voice gentle, nonaccusatory.
“I… I…” She picked it up, traced the diamonds with her fingers, and he couldn’t help but notice how different her fingers looked than Daisy’s—her nails were short, her fingers stained and calloused from farm work. She was the kind of woman, rough enough around the edges, that maybe, just maybe, she had it in her to pick up a gun, kill a fellow point-blank. Especially if she knew that fellow had killed her sister. But then, she wasn’t the kind of woman who would own an expensive hairpin, was she? So why was she floundering now, looking at it like she was about to cry? “I don’t recognize it,” she finally said. She refused to meet his eyes again, and her fingers trembled as she held the pin.
She was lying. But he’d been sure Daisy was lying, too. He didn’t understand why they both would be lying.
“What about Daisy Buchanan?” he tried. “You ever see her wear this hairpin?”
She shook her head. “I… I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met Daisy Buchanan.” Her voice faltered a little, her eyes still on the hairpin.
“But you know of her?” he asked.
Catherine didn’t answer, and instead she trailed her fingers again slowly across the diamonds. “This looks like something a person with money would wear,” she finally said. “Look around you, Detective. Do you think I own any diamonds?” Her voice had turned cool, almost smug.
He couldn’t argue with her logic, so he shook his head and chose his words carefully. “Maybe it was a gift?” he said. He watched her as he spoke; her face turned instantly bloodless, making the freckles on her nose appear bolder, almost black. Like poppy seeds on a bagel. He was onto something.
He still didn’t know exactly how or what had happened, but there must be more to Mr. Gatsby running over Myrtle and leaving her there, in the street. What if Catherine understood more than she was letting on? What if her grief was compounded in some way now by her own connection to the man? “Maybe… and I’m just spitballing here,” he said, “but maybe Mr. Gatsby bought that for you?”
She laughed, but the laugh caught in her throat, coming out sounding more like a strangled cry. “That would be impossible.” Her voice verged on defiance now, too, and the color slowly returned to her cheeks. She handed him back the hairpin. “Like I told you, Detective, I never even met Jay Gatsby.”
Catherine 1920
NEW YORK CITY