He shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said. “But I do know one thing. There is not a chance in hell a person could’ve gotten out of here past the dogs.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Downstairs in the kitchen, Tess put on the tea kettle with shaking hands. Her heart was still racing. Wyatt had snapped off his dogs’ leashes, and the three of them—Maya, Luna, and Storm—were curled up by the fire. So different from the snarling three-headed Cerberus they had been moments before.
“I guess we shouldn’t have wondered if these three would get along,” Wyatt said. “It’s like they’re family already.”
Tess managed a smile. “Comrades in arms.”
Wyatt raised his eyebrows. “That’s right. They were battling something. The question is, What?”
Nick came through the kitchen door to join them.
“Okay,” the chief said, pulling out a chair and sinking into it. “My guys are looking around the place. I don’t think any of us has any idea what was making that noise.”
Tess shook her head, looking from Nick to Wyatt and back again. “What do you think it was?”
Neither man spoke. Nobody knew quite what to say.
“How about we start at the beginning?” Nick said, finally. “When did you leave the house today?”
Tess winced. “That’s not really the beginning,” she said.
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
All at once, Tess wasn’t sure how much to tell the chief of police. Should she mention the paintings? It seemed to her that something wholly otherworldly was happening, but . . . what if it wasn’t? What if a real person was creeping around inside the studio? There could be only one reason. The paintings. And there were only two people in Wharton, other than Wyatt, who could potentially know about them. Hunter and Grant.
Should she say all that? Should she cast those doubts on these men who were, in all likelihood, guilty of nothing but helping her with some demolition?
She looked at Wyatt, trying to somehow project her thoughts into his.
He nodded, as if reading them. “It started a couple of days ago when Tess asked me to help open up the back room of the house, which we now know is the studio, which we were just in.”
“Open it up?” Nick asked. “Why? It was locked, and no key?”
Tess shook her head. “Not exactly. It was locked, yes, but my grandmother had shut off that part of the house a long time ago. There wasn’t even a knob on the door. So, it had to be opened by force, so to speak.”
Nick looked at her and then cast his eyes up, as if remembering the room. “Why did she shut it off?”
“That’s unclear,” Tess said. “She always said it was because the whole house was too expensive to heat, but that never really made a lot of sense to me.”
“Okay,” he said. “And you wanted it open now because . . . ?”
“Because I’m renovating the house into a bed-and-breakfast,” she said. “And I thought of turning that area into an owner’s suite. A sort of living room–bedroom–bathroom arrangement, even eventually putting in back stairs going outside, so I could stay out of the guests’ way.”
Nick nodded. “Got it. Then what?”
Wyatt picked up the ball from there. “I had two of my buddies, Grant and Hunter, help me open up the door.”
Nick nodded. “I know those two clowns,” he said, grinning. “They’re good folk. Help a lot of people here in town.”
“Hunter was included, actually, because Tess had heard some . . .” Wyatt’s words evaporated.
“Some what?”
Tess picked up where he left off. “I had been hearing noises coming from that room,” she said. “Loud scratching. At night. I thought an animal had somehow gotten in there.”
“What kind of scratching?” Nick asked.
Tess shrugged. “I don’t know. But it was really loud. As though something was trying to claw its way out. So that’s why Wyatt called Hunter. He specializes in getting animals out of houses, I guess.”
“Did he find one?”
“No,” Tess said. “There was no animal. And no place for it to have gotten in or out.”
“So, what was causing the scratching?” Nick asked.
“We don’t know,” Tess said. “We haven’t been able to figure that out. But according to Hunter, it wasn’t an animal.”
“Okay, this just keeps getting weirder,” Nick said. “Not that I haven’t done ‘Wharton weird’ before. Trust me. I have.”