The Stroke of Winter(42)



Tess could almost see his thought coalesce into a tangible play in front of her eyes. “What if,” she said, “my grandmother found those paintings and shut up the room to keep them from the world? That would certainly explain the studio’s state of disarray. She did it in a hurry and didn’t even take the time to clean up.”

“That sounds right to me,” Wyatt said. “Not that I know anything. But as someone just hearing it for the first time, it sounds sensible. She found the paintings, realized what they were—a confession—and locked everything up tight to make sure that confession never saw the light of day.”

“She couldn’t have the world knowing her husband, the great Sebastian Bell, was a stalker. Or worse.”

Wyatt sighed. “If all of that is true, you have a decision to make.”

Tess’s stomach knotted up. “What do you mean, exactly?”

“Given that your grandmother went to all of that trouble to make sure the world didn’t ever see these paintings—she didn’t destroy them, she couldn’t bear to, it seems to me—but she made sure they stayed hidden.”

“Yes, she did,” Tess said, her mind flying in many directions at once.

“Are you going to show them to the world in defiance of those wishes?”

Those words wrapped around Tess and constricted. She hadn’t considered that. “You’ve already seen them,” Tess said, weakly.

“I’m not exactly the town gossip,” Wyatt said. “If you decide you want to permanently shut that door again with the paintings inside, I won’t say anything to anyone. It’s not my place. This is your family’s decision.”

Tess thought about this. Somehow, she believed Wyatt. He was a good man. A man of his word, it seemed to her. If he said he was going to keep quiet about something, she trusted him to keep quiet. It made her wonder what other types of secrets, whose secrets, he might be keeping, but she was sure she’d never know.

Tess’s train of thought seemed to have hit a snag. If she wasn’t prepared to share all this with the world, should she call the police about a possible murder, even if that murder had taken place decades earlier?

But then, she thought back to her conversation with Wyatt at lunch. And just like that, the light bulb went on above her head.

His family had been in Wharton since before there was a town. They would know about a decades-old murder, if indeed there had been one.

“Wyatt,” she began. “It seems to me your family knows Wharton’s history better than most people.”

“I’d say that’s true,” Wyatt said. “My parents and grandparents for sure.”

“I’m sorry if this sounds indelicate, which it will for sure, but . . . are they still alive?”

“And kicking,” he said. “My parents go to Arizona every winter for a few months. My grandma passed about a decade ago, but my grandpa is still with us. He’s in the assisted-living complex in Salmon Bay.”

Tess’s thought caught in her throat. “Can we go see him?” she asked. “Tomorrow?”



Tess didn’t get much sleep that night. She tossed and turned, and when she did nod off, her dreams were wild and unhinged and violent. And she heard the scratching, but when morning finally came, she wondered if she had dreamed it.

She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to ask Wyatt’s grandfather when they met. But one thing was for certain, the man would know Wharton’s history. He had lived at the time of Sebastian Bell’s heyday. They probably knew each other. And if there had been any disappearances or murders or scandals back then, he would know about them. Getting him to talk about it would be the difficult part.

The clock said it was six thirty-five. After trying in vain to will herself back to sleep, Tess gave up the effort. She pulled on jeans and a sweater, and bundling up in her down coat and mukluks, she snapped on Storm’s leash. Together they set out into the predawn darkness.

Jim and Jane’s lights were on. Tess figured Jim was up early to open the store. But most other houses in the neighborhood were dark. Sensible people, sleeping until the sun touched the sky. As she walked through Wharton’s dark, deserted streets, she couldn’t help conjuring up the images in those paintings. Her grandfather, or someone, had walked these same streets. They had left La Belle Vie just as she had, closed the door behind them just as she had, and had set off into the darkness.

What compelled you? What were you looking for? What made you long to observe people without them knowing it?

As an artist, her grandfather had painted moments in time. Captured those moments on canvas, interpreted through his eyes. He needed to be a keen observer, whether it was taking in an idyllic scene of his own family at the lakeshore having a picnic, or the second before tension erupted into violence in a house occupied by his neighbors.

Tess knew her mind was going in all kinds of hypothetical directions at once, but she wondered—if domestic violence had occurred, had Sebastian watched it? Had he seen what was happening in the household? Did he feed off it? Or was he repelled by it? Did he help the woman? Whether or not he felt it was for art, Tess couldn’t shake how wrong it was, watching from the shadows.

Tess sat on a bench by the lakeshore, watching the frozen lake, imagining the deep, dark water below. She was so entranced by it that she didn’t hear Jim come up behind her.

Wendy Webb's Books