The Stroke of Winter(38)

But she turned to him and saw it was too late.

“Are these telling the story of . . .” He caught her eye, but somehow he couldn’t say the words aloud.

“A predator,” she whispered.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



Tess’s body was vibrating with dread. Now that she had seen it, she couldn’t unsee it. These paintings, her grandfather’s paintings, were telling the story of a predator who stalked the streets of Wharton, looking into windows, following women down lonely streets. Convincing one of those women to pose in his studio.

And then what? What did that red gash behind her on the wall mean? The paintings were obviously a series that told a story. But was it fiction? Or fact?

Who was the predator?

Was it Sebastian Bell?

No, no, dear God, no, Tess thought. A gnarling took hold in the pit of her stomach. He wasn’t just her grandfather. The thought of him potentially being a stalker, or worse, would be bad enough. But Sebastian Bell was a favorite son of Wharton. Beloved locally, respected and admired worldwide. What would her father say if he knew?

As she stood there in abject horror, Wyatt moved closer to the paintings. He slipped a pair of glasses out of his pocket to get a better look.

After a long, horrible moment, he turned to Tess. “Am I crazy? Come closer, and look at this.” He pointed to the painting of the woman on the street, then to the one in the studio.

“They’re obviously the same woman, right?” he asked. “At least it appears they are. But are we sure?”

Tess looked more carefully. The image of the woman on the street was painted from behind. She had the same hair as the woman in the studio. It certainly looked like they were the same person. Didn’t it?

Then, Wyatt pointed to the other paintings, the ones depicting scenes of families, as if seen from outside, through their windows.

“All of these feature women,” he said, his voice low.

“They all look sort of similar, don’t they?” Tess said, realizing it for the first time.

She focused on one of the family-life scenes. The woman crying at the stove as she made dinner while her angry husband sat with a drink in the living room, staring off with a stony expression on his face.

Something about that painting made her skin crawl. It seemed to be the moment before an argument, even a violent one. She could almost feel the tension in the air in that house, the moment before it all ignited. Was this the calm before a woman was beaten by her husband? Was that what the painter was trying to depict?

Why in the world would her grandfather have devoted so much time to painting such ghastly scenes? It was as though all of them had a common theme running through them.

Impending doom.

“These are really disturbing,” Tess said, finally. She shook her head. “I have no idea why he would’ve painted these subjects.”

The two of them just stood there for a moment, staring at the dark and disturbing images.

“Will you help me get them back into the safe?” Tess said.

Together, they gathered up the canvases and placed them into the enormous wall safe one by one. Tess closed the door and heard it click shut. She tried the combination her dad had given her earlier in the day, plugging the numbers in to the keypad. The handle didn’t budge. Her father had already changed the combination, as she thought he might.

Safe and sound. For the moment.

“I really think we should call Nick Stone,” Wyatt tried again.

But Tess shook her head. Even though the paintings were back in the safe, something in her gut told her to keep quiet about them.

“Only if we find evidence of a break-in,” she said. “If the front door was forcibly opened, or if any windows are broken. That kind of thing.”

“Okay,” Wyatt said, but Tess could tell he wasn’t happy about it. “Let’s go check the house.”

He agreed to split up, but only if Tess would take Storm with her. She’d check the main floor of the house while he went upstairs to the bedrooms.

“Open closets, look under stuff,” he said. “And especially down here, look for any sort of evidence of a break-in.”

“Got it,” Tess said, and she made her way, Storm at her heels, to the front of the house, walking from room to room, noticing if any windows were opened or broken—although she’d have felt the cold air if they had been—opening closets, glancing under furniture, looking for anything amiss.

In the dining room, she saw all her grandparents’ china still stacked neatly in the ancient hutch. The crystal chandelier hung silently, undisturbed. Her study was just as she had left it, not a book out of place.

She stepped into the living room and heard the soft hiss of the radiator and saw the lights of the street streaming in through the windows.

She glanced at the bay window with its curved seat at the front of the house, looking out onto the street below. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Finally, she ended up at the old, heavy wooden front door, which had always reminded her of something out of Middle Earth. It stood fast and strong, the windows beside it intact.

All was peaceful and quiet. The house was tight as a drum. Not one thing was out of place, apart from the scene in the drawing room.

Tess opened the front door and peered outside onto the snowy porch. No footprints there. She decided to check for prints around the outside of the house—good luck covering your tracks if you’re trying to break into a house in Wharton during the winter, she said to herself. She opened the closet door and pulled out her boots and, forgoing a jacket, stepped out into the cool air.