“You’re telling me there’s no way an animal could’ve gotten in or out?” she said, finally.
“No,” he said, drawing out the word. “I’m not saying definitively a mouse couldn’t have found its way in here. All old houses have mice. That’s just something we all live with. I’d need to look more carefully in the light, but right now, I’m not seeing any holes or cracks or any way anything bigger than that could’ve gotten in.”
He walked over to the fireplace, bent down, and shone his flashlight up into the chimney. “The flue is closed,” he said. “Even if a squirrel or another animal managed to get in, it’s not like they’re closing it up behind them. To my eyes, this flue is the only way into this room, and it’s shut up tight.”
“Are you sure?” Tess asked him. “All of these nooks and crannies? Nothing could’ve gotten in or out? I’ve been hearing something behind this door. Did Wyatt tell you about that? Scratching. At night. There was definitely something in here.”
Hunter shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I’ll take a more careful look around, for sure, but you can see for yourself that this room hasn’t really been disturbed. Yes, things are in a bit of . . .”—he chose his words carefully—“disarray. But I’m telling you, if a squirrel or raccoon were in here, there would be a lot more damage. These sheets would be torn up, to make nests, for one thing. There would be an access point. A hole that we could readily see.”
“What about bats?” Tess said, cringing.
Hunter shook his head. “We don’t have a lot of bats in Wharton, and those that are here hibernate during the winter. If you had bats hibernating in the house, there wouldn’t be just one, but a lot of them. And we’d have seen them right away. And smelled them.”
She cringed at the thought of it. She and Hunter locked eyes for a moment, and her imaginings of her grandfather fell to the ground in a heap. She had other things, more real and tangible, to worry about. The look on this man’s face said it all.
A tingling worked its way up Tess’s spine. If that were true, if there had been nothing in this room all this time, what had been doing the scratching?
CHAPTER EIGHT
All at once, Tess wanted everyone out of this part of the house. She didn’t want to talk about animal intruders. She didn’t want to talk about the scratching, much less think about what she—and Storm—had heard.
In addition to that, Tess was overtaken by the uneasy feeling that these men, these strangers, were standing in Sebastian Bell’s studio. Hallowed ground for most of the art world. Her stomach gnarled at the haphazard way it had been left. Paints open, spills long since dried up. Easel on its side. Wine bottles everywhere. It wasn’t as though her grandmother had cleaned it up after Sebastian had died. It seemed to Tess that it was just the opposite. The room had been shut up quickly. To not even take the wine bottles to the trash? To not have tidied up just the least little bit before closing the door forever? Why?
“I’ll bet you guys could use a beer right about now,” she said, her voice shaky. She walked toward the doorway, trying to get on more stable footing. “Let’s reconvene in the kitchen.”
With that, she made her way into the hall and toward the back stairs, her heart beating in her throat.
In the kitchen, she crossed the room to the fridge, grabbed a bottle, and held it aloft. “Any takers?”
“Twist my arm,” Grant said, with the first smile she had seen from him since he had gotten there.
“Just to be sociable,” Hunter chuckled, pulling a chair out from the table and sinking down into it.
“I can’t let them drink alone,” Wyatt said, joining Hunter at the table. “That’s just not right.”
Tess handed beers all around and poured a glass of wine for herself. She took a sip with shaking hands.
“Thanks for all of the help, guys,” she said, glancing from one to the other.
Wyatt took a sip of his beer, considering the job’s postmortem. “It really wasn’t too much trouble getting the door open,” he said. “Once we got the hinges off, a couple of good bangs did the trick.”
Grant eyed Hunter and gave him a small smile. “It was this guy who was responsible for all of the theatrics, with his heavy gloves and his trap—”
“He was ready for a tiger to pounce out of there,” Wyatt said.
“And if one had, you’d have been mighty glad I was prepared, smart guy,” Hunter said, laughter in his voice.