The Stroke of Winter, page 25
But then, she knew it hadn’t been some kind of hysterical reaction. Some kind of trick. She had felt what she’d felt. Seen what she had seen. Heard the ghastly things she had heard. She had fainted, and it was all captured on Grant’s various electronic devices.
In the drawing room, she saw her father had the safe open and was taking the paintings out of it, one by one.
He seemed determined, but more than that, almost manic to get them out of the safe.
“Just as I thought, just as I thought,” Indigo murmured to himself.
“Dad?” Tess said.
Indigo whipped his head around, startled, as though he didn’t imagine she would be there. “Honey, I’m just taking a better look at these.”
“But why? Why come all of this way? You and Mom never come back to Wharton in the winter anymore. I sent you the photos, didn’t I?”
But Indigo was busy lining up the paintings in order, end to end. When they were all out of the safe, leaning against the wall, he took a deep breath and stepped closer to get a better look.
“Dad, what—”
But Jill’s hand on Tess’s arm told her to stop talking. Tess got it, then, or thought she did. This was about Indigo, seeing his father’s paintings for the first time. If anything could pry him away from his golf clubs, their cabin cruiser, and the swanky country club in Florida, it would be this. She should be quiet and let him experience it.
Jill slipped an arm around Tess’s waist and pulled her close. Tess laid her head on her mother’s shoulder—a much-needed respite after the day she’d just had—as both of them watched Indigo study his father’s paintings.
He turned to them, then. “Now I need to go up into the studio,” he said. He started out of the room when Tess took his arm.
“Dad, I’ve been trying to get ahold of you guys all day,” she said. “Before you go upstairs into the studio, we have to talk. There are things you don’t know.”
This stopped Indigo short. He squinted at her. “What things?”
“Let’s go back into the kitchen, and we’ll talk. And then, after you know what’s going on, we’ll go up into the studio.”
A flash of anger on Indigo’s face just then. But it faded as quickly as it had come.
“Indy,” Jill said. “Let’s hear Tess out. She’s the one who has been here, after all. She’s done all the heavy lifting in regard to the paintings and opening up the studio and all of that. Here—” she said, bending down and picking up one of the paintings, “let’s put these back in the safe and go on into the kitchen with Tess. Then we’ll go up and see the studio before hitting the hay. I’m exhausted, and I’m sure you are, too. Okay?”
Indigo looked from one to the other, a small grin appearing on his face. “A man knows when he is outnumbered,” he said. He helped Jill put the paintings back into the wall safe and shut it tight. “I could do with another Scotch anyway.”
Back in the kitchen, her parents settled into the armchairs by the fire as Tess perched on the footstool between them.
“Dad, remember the other day when I asked if this house was haunted?” Tess began.
Indigo shooed the comment away with a swipe of his hand. “Not that again,” he said. “I grew up in this house.”
She looked to her mother for support, but Jill just shrugged. “I’m with your dad on this one, Tess,” she said. “All the years we’ve been coming here for vacations—our whole marriage!—there’s never been a single thing that went bump in the night.”
“Well, there is now,” Tess said, with a note of finality. “It started even before I opened up the studio. And tonight—”
Indigo held up his hand to stop her words. “Tess, forgive me. But your mother and I are exhausted. I’m going up to take my first look into my father’s studio in decades, and then we’re going to bed.”
“But, Dad, there’s something you need to know about the studio—”
Again he stopped her words. “Not now, Tess.”
He pushed himself up from his chair and held a hand out to Jill. She took it, and they headed up the back stairs. Tess followed.
Indigo hurried down the hall but stopped short before going through the studio doorway. Tess watched as her mother put a hand on her husband’s back and he turned to her, enveloping her into a hug. The sweetness of the gesture brought tears to Tess’s eyes. She had never seen an ounce of vulnerability in her father. He had always been such a tower of strength, a man who radiated confidence. She wasn’t sure if this was a welcome sight or not.
Then he stepped over the threshold. Jill and Tess followed.
Indigo Bell held his breath as he gazed upon his father’s studio. To Tess, it seemed as though the room were holding its breath, too. He walked slowly to the table, his footsteps reverberating throughout the space. He ran his hand along the whole length of it.
“He used to let us play under here while he was working,” Indigo said. “Grey and me.”
But then his eyes strayed to the reddish slash on the wall, and he turned to Tess, his brow furrowed. “What’s that?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Dad,” Tess said. “I wanted to say this gently, but you’re forcing me to blurt it out by stopping me from talking all the time. This studio is a crime scene. Or was.”
Indio turned around slowly, his mouth agape. “What do you mean, a crime scene?”
“Come on,” Tess said, leading her father to the bathroom. They peered into it. “This is where I found the paintings,” she said. “And all of this? The splatters on the walls and the floor and in the tub and even on those rags? That’s blood, Dad. Initially, I thought it was paint, but when the police came—”
Indigo whipped his head around. “Police? Why on earth—”
“If you’d just listen to me, I’d tell you,” Tess said, the age-old communication problems she had always had with her father bubbling to the surface once again. Some things never changed, even though she was a grown woman with an adult son of her own. “That’s the problem. You never listen. But this time, I’ve got something to say, and you need to hear it.”
“Okay, darling. I’m sorry. Go on, please.”
“Wyatt and I were out walking the dogs, and as we came up the road, I saw that the lights were on in the studio. I hadn’t left them on. I saw, we saw, a figure in the window.”
Indigo furrowed his brow and caught his wife’s eye. Jill put a protective hand on Tess’s arm. “Thank God you weren’t in the house.”
“Jim saw the person in the window, too. In fact, he called me before we even got to the house to ask if I had a houseguest, because he could clearly see someone moving around in the studio. If I hadn’t called the police, he would have.”
Indigo ran a hand through his hair. “This is what I was afraid of,” he said.
Tess shook her head. “No, Dad. The police came right away but couldn’t find any evidence of a break-in. And they didn’t find a person, either.”
“So, you thought you saw someone,” Indigo said. “But it turned out to be nothing?”
“Not exactly nothing. No, they didn’t find an intruder, but when the police were searching the house and the studio, they found this.” She waved her hand at the stains. “They did some testing. It’s dried blood.”
Indigo shook his head, slowly. “No, no, no,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”
“That’s what the police believe,” Tess said. “I couldn’t even spend the night here last night. A forensics team was here.”
“I had a bad feeling about this, and I should’ve listened to it,” Indigo said. “You have no idea what you have unearthed.”
Tess crossed her arms. “Well, I think I have some idea,” she said. “For one thing, the paintings show an obsession with a woman here in Wharton. They’re really disturbing, if you didn’t notice it. Sebastian was stalking her, or at least that’s what the paintings depicted. He stood outside of her house and painted what he saw! He followed her down the street and painted that, too! And then the portrait. Did you notice the look on her face? It was like she was almost afraid. That, coupled with the blood—it looks really bad, Dad. It’s like Sebastian Bell was a stalker, obsessed with this woman. We know who she was! Daisy Erickson! And she disappeared, so he might have been the one who killed her. This might be her blood all over this studio. It’s like those paintings were his confession.”
Indigo Bell’s face was ashen, as if his daughter’s words had sucked the blood right out of him. Tears welled up in his eyes. He brushed back a strand of his white hair and sighed.
“My father wasn’t the one who painted those paintings,” he said, his voice soft. Defeated. Deflated. “It was Grey.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Tess just stood there in stunned silence.
“When you told your mom and me that you had found the paintings, I was overjoyed, but at the same time, I had my suspicions,” Indigo said.
“You did?” Tess asked.
“Indeed,” he said. “You never knew my father, of course, so you couldn’t have known how in love he was with his own work. The ego on that man . . .”
Tess knew something about fathers with enormous egos.
“I held open the possibility that he was preparing for an opening where he would display those new works, but the idea that my mother would’ve shut those paintings away, kept them from the world after he died, just didn’t ring true,” Indigo said. “Remember, it wasn’t just art. It was income for our family.”
Tess nodded. “That never occurred to me.”
“Oh yes,” Indigo continued. “And when she started the foundation, she certainly would’ve sold those paintings to help fund it. Can you imagine what the last-ever works by Sebastian Bell would be worth?”
“That did occur to me,” Tess said.
“I was holding out hope . . . until I got a look at the photos you sent. Then, I knew.”
“How did you know?”
“Daisy, for one,” Indigo said. “My father didn’t like her. She and Grey had been sweethearts since they were children. They were one of those couples. Destined to be together. But when she married that odious Frank Erickson, Sebastian wrote her off. My mother did, too. They were furious. And Grey was heartbroken.”
“So, he wouldn’t have painted her portrait?”
“Dear God, no,” Indigo said. “He never painted portraits, much less of someone he despised. Don’t you see—all of his depictions of people are captured from the side, or from the back. He never painted a traditional portrait in his life.”
Tess thought back to all the paintings by Sebastian Bell that she had seen—she knew every one. Indigo was right. There were no traditional portraits.
“I never knew Grey was a painter,” Tess said.
“He was. Quite a good one, as you saw. His style was much like my father’s, but darker. Much darker. But then again, that was Grey. He was always brooding.”
Tess thought about the obsession the paintings implied. “Grey was the one obsessed with Daisy?” she said.
And as soon as she got the words out, they made perfect sense to her. Of course he was. She had married another man. That alone could turn love into obsession. But to know she was desperately unhappy? That would stoke the fire even more.
Of course a spurned lover would have been the one peering into her windows and following her down the street. Not his father. The very thought of it being Sebastian Bell sounded ridiculous to Tess now.
“So, what happened here?” she pressed on. “Grandma closed off this studio. There’s blood all over the place. Who died, Dad? Was Daisy murdered here? Who did it? And, Grey disappeared. Did they run away together or . . . I mean the blood suggests they didn’t, right?”
Indigo let out a great sigh. “The truth is, honey, I don’t know. I was away at college. You know Grey was a few years older than me. He went missing around the same time that my dad died. Your grandmother had already closed up the studio by the time I got home, and that was that.”
“You didn’t even—”
“Tess,” her mother interjected. “You need to remember something. When Indy was away at school, his brother disappeared, and his father died. His whole world—our whole world, because I was a part of it by then—had been turned upside down. Serena was inconsolable. You can’t imagine the grief in this house. I’m surprised all of that emotion isn’t still here, filling up the cracks in the foundation and the holes in the ceiling.”
Maybe it was, Tess thought. Maybe it was.
Tess hurried downstairs to retrieve her parents’ bags. They were exhausted by everything they had been through that day, the trip, the discovery of the studio, all of it. She wasn’t going to press her father for more information before he got a good night’s sleep.
While they were getting settled in their guest room, Tess made a tray with two snifters of cognac—her father’s traditional nightcap—a pitcher of water and two glasses, and some chocolates. Back in their room, she found them both in bed, propped up against their pillows, a book in her mother’s lap. Tess set the tray on their dresser’s marble top and brought their glasses to their respective nightstands. Then she lit a fire in their fireplace.
“Darling, you’re too good to us,” Jill said, taking a sip of her cognac.
“A perfect innkeeper,” Indigo said, smiling weakly. “You have found your calling.”
Tess smiled at him. What a kind thing for him to say. But, then again, her parents, for all their faults and eccentricities, had always been supportive of anything she had ever wanted to do.
And in a way, she could understand Sebastian and Serena’s disdain for Daisy when she had spurned their son, because she knew her own parents felt the same about Matt.
Curled up in bed in his (no doubt, designer) pajamas, Indigo looked small. Vulnerable. Not the giant of a man Tess had grown up with. She thought of Joe in his assisted-living apartment, having to sign in and out, and hoped it would be many years before her own parents needed that kind of care.
After hugging and kissing them both, Tess retreated to her room and started to shut her door, but then decided to leave it open a crack. Just in case her parents woke in the middle of the night and needed anything. She lit a fire, brushed her teeth, washed the day off her face, and put on her pajamas. After slipping into bed, she grabbed her phone, which she had set on her nightstand earlier with the intention of plugging it in for the night. When she glanced down at it, she saw she had two messages.
One was from Wyatt. Good night. I hope you can get some sleep, considering. If you need anything, if anything happens in the middle of the night, any scratching or . . . whatever, call me. I’m leaving my phone by my bed. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning with this guy. He attached a photo of Storm sleeping on Wyatt’s bed.
The other was from Jane. Hey, I didn’t want to say this in front of your parents, but did you notice how the energy changed when they came into the house? It all just shifted. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble with the spirits tonight. If you do, call me. I’m keeping my phone by the bed. Tess smiled. Both of them, so concerned. But those spirits aren’t gone. I’ll come over tomorrow, and we’ll try to get some answers.
That had to be good enough for now. After everything that had happened that day, she was exhausted. Ghosts or no ghosts, she had to get some sleep. Tess plugged her phone into the charger and turned out the light. She drifted off, watching the flames in the fireplace dance and sway, comforted her parents were right down the hall.
But her dreams were sinister and foreboding. It was as though the world had become one of those paintings, with dark swirls and eddies in the sky. She felt a sort of manic obsession, a frantic need, a hunger. So she walked the streets of Wharton, in search of it.
Tess jolted awake, her sheets damp with sweat. The fire was out. She glanced at the clock—5:00 a.m. She groaned. Just enough sleep to be fully awake hours before she really had to get up.
She lay there for a few moments, eyes closed, trying to will herself back to sleep, when she heard her parents’ voices.
“Come back to bed, Indy,” her mother said, her voice a harsh whisper. “Before you wake Tess.”
“No,” her father said, “I have to do this. Now.”
Tess pushed back the covers and slipped out of bed. She walked into the hallway, and somehow she just knew she would find them in the studio.
She poked her head in and saw her mother at the door to the little bathroom.
“Mom?” Tess said. “What’s going on?”
Jill turned around and pleaded with her daughter with her eyes. “He’s in there cleaning.”
Tess rushed across the studio and into the bathroom, where she found her father holding a bucket of soapy water and a sponge.
“I need to get this blood off the walls, girls,” he said. “We can’t have that here.”
“Dad? Come on now. You’re not going to get it cleaned up after all of this time. We’ll have to paint over it.”
He held the sponge over the bucket and squeezed it. The soapy water dripped back down into the bucket from where it had come.
“Don’t you see? This is a bloodbath. Get it? A bathroom. Covered in blood. A bloodbath.” He laughed, then. A terrible laugh. Just like she had heard in this room hours before.
That was when Tess noticed his eyes. They had a wildness behind them, a quality that was definitely not of her cultured father.
Tess flipped on the light. “Dad!” she shouted. “Wake up!” She strode across the room and grabbed him by the arms. The bucket fell to the floor and spilled on its side.
He just kept laughing. It was as though he didn’t hear her at all. Or wasn’t there.
This was not her father.
