“Okay, it’s Daisy Erickson. I still don’t see . . .”
“Daisy Erickson and my uncle Grey were high school sweethearts,” Tess piped up. “She ended up marrying this Frank—it’s a long story—but apparently she was desperately unhappy.”
Nick furrowed his brow. “Joe told you all of this?”
Wyatt shook his head. “No,” he said. “He identified her, and also said she was a good friend of my mother’s. So, after we dropped him off back at his place, we called her. And she told us the rest of the story.”
Nick crossed his arms. “And what is the rest of the story?”
“Frank was abusive,” Wyatt said. “That’s what my mom said, but she also said everyone in town knew it.”
Nick nodded. “Sounds like Wharton. I’m sure the cops knew it, too.”
“My mom said as much,” Wyatt said. “Anyway, Daisy disappeared.”
Now Nick’s eyes grew wide. “Okay. Now we’re talking. Tell me more about that.”
“My mom, who was her closest friend, believes Frank killed her,” Wyatt said. “Either that, or she left town with Grey.”
“Grey?”
“He disappeared around the same time,” Tess said.
Nick took this in. She could almost see the wheels turning.
“But this woman, Daisy, had children, according to the paintings, right?” he said. “Would she have left them with an abusive man?”
“That’s the wild card,” Wyatt said. “My mother doesn’t think she would have done anything of the kind. If she was going to leave her husband, she said, she would’ve taken her kids with her.”
Nick sank down onto the sofa. “Maybe Frank killed them both.”
“That’s what the police thought, well, about Daisy, anyway,” Tess said, joining him on the couch. “They investigated, but didn’t find anything.”
“And where is this Frank now?”
Wyatt shrugged. “Nobody knows. He took the kids and left town shortly after she disappeared.”
Nick took his phone out of his pocket. “Frank Erickson,” he said. “I can make some inquiries. We have ways of finding people now.” He grinned. “Do we know any more about him? Like what he did for a living here in Wharton? That might point us in a direction.”
“My mom would probably know,” Wyatt said.
Nick pushed himself off the sofa and seemed ready to go. But then he turned back to Tess and Wyatt.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You found the paintings in the studio, which was covered in blood and sealed off years ago. The paintings are of a woman who went missing. Your uncle went missing. Prime suspect, Frank. Are you thinking that the blood in the studio is Daisy’s? Or Grey’s? Or both?”
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.