The Stroke of Winter(67)

Tess let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. We don’t know. There are so many moving parts, it’s hard to keep track of it all. But we do know a couple of things. Daisy is the woman in the paintings. She went missing. And now, thanks to you, we know there’s blood all over the studio.”

Nick nodded. “Go on.”

“We also know that my grandfather may have been standing outside Daisy’s window—lurking—and painted a couple of scenes as though he had been . . . watching her and her family. He may have followed her down the street. That’s what the paintings show, anyway. He might have imagined it. But we know for sure that he painted her portrait in the studio that was then shut up with no good explanation as to why.”

“And we know there was some unholy terror going on in there last night,” Wyatt said. “Let’s not forget that.”

“But what we don’t know is, how are they connected?”

“I hate to even say this out loud,” Tess said. “But why would my grandfather have been stalking Daisy? Why would he have painted those paintings unless . . .”

Nick nodded his head. “I see where you’re going with this. Unless he was, for some reason, obsessed with her.”

Tess’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s a difficult thought, but . . .” Her voice was faltering.

Nick shook his head and sighed. “Oh, the tangled webs Wharton weaves,” he said.



Later, after Nick had gone, Wyatt and Tess were back in their kitchen armchairs. They had started a fire, and both had their stockinged feet up on an ottoman between them. It was nearing noon.

“I sort of wish we hadn’t gotten Nick involved in this,” Tess said.

Wyatt leaned forward and squeezed her foot. “You can’t second-guess that. We both saw, plain as day, the figure in the studio. We had to call the police. It would have been foolish not to. You said it yourself—those paintings are worth millions. It very well could have been somebody there to take them. And hurt you in the process. Maybe worse.”

Wyatt was right, of course, Tess thought. But why did she feel like she was betraying her family? Airing long-buried secrets? Her grandmother had gone so far as to seal off that room to make sure they didn’t see the light of day. And now Tess had blundered into doing exactly what her grandmother had gone to extremes to prevent.

“They found the blood, which turned the studio into a crime scene,” Tess said. “We couldn’t stop them then, even if we had tried. ‘Oh, no, no, no, officer! I know it’s blood, but it’s really a family matter. You can go now.’”

“They try that on Law & Order all the time,” Wyatt said. “Never works. So now this mystery of ours has grown wings. But was it really ours to keep?”

“What do you mean?”

“If Daisy was murdered, doesn’t that deserve to be known? Her kids are still out there somewhere, presumably. Wouldn’t they like to know their mother didn’t abandon them? This is bigger than just your family now.”

“But it is also my family we’re talking about. My grandfather’s legacy. I have no idea why or how he would’ve gotten into the middle of a triangle between Daisy, Frank, and Grey, but the fact is, he painted those paintings in a studio that was splattered with blood. He very well could’ve killed them. If that comes out, what will it do to my family?”

“Which is probably the real reason your grandmother sealed off the studio,” Wyatt said. “I hate to say it, but it makes a horrible kind of sense.”

Tess laid her head on the back of the chair, closed her eyes, and sighed. But she opened them again when a thought ran through her mind. “We didn’t tell him everything,” she said.

Wyatt furrowed his brow. “What did we leave out?”

“We left out the story about the paintings somehow getting out of the safe, remember? We thought somebody had broken in and searched the house.”

“That’s right. Does he need to know it, do you think?”

Tess shrugged. “And there’s something else. When I first got here, I was having these weird dreams that I was the one walking around Wharton at night. And then finding the paintings . . .”

She hadn’t intended to bring that up, but it just came out before she could stop it.

Wyatt thought about this for a moment, looking into Tess’s eyes. “You know what it seems like to me? It seems like someone has gone through a whole lot of trouble to make sure this does see the light of day.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re being haunted.”

“The question is, By whom? Who is haunting La Belle Vie?”

“Aren’t you supposed to call Jane today?” Wyatt asked, his eyebrows raised. “Maybe she and her ghost-hunting buddies can tell us that.”

Tess smiled. In all the commotion, she had forgotten. She pushed herself out of her chair with a groan.

“I’ll just pop across the driveway and go talk to her. Will you wait for me?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE



Tess pulled on her jacket but didn’t bother to zip it, nor did she put on boots. She just scuffed across the driveway in her slippers and knocked on her neighbor’s side door.