“There’s guns, too. Antiques. His gun safe’s in the basement. And”—Mrs. Murphy fished a ring of keys from an ashtray on the desk and fingered through it—“there’s this.” She removed a key and handed it to Becca. Becca passed it to Emily. On the key, written in flaking red nail polish, was the number 217.

“I think it’s to a storage unit,” Mrs. Murphy said. “He must have paid a year in advance. The first bill I saw was this.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. Her hands trembled as she unfolded it and held it out. “It came weeks ago.”

Emily tucked the key into an inside pocket of her gear bag. “May I?” she asked, aiming her cell-phone camera at the bill. Mrs. Murphy nodded, and Emily took a picture. The bill was dated June and the amount due was for twelve months. It was from Inner Peace Storage. Emily was familiar with the outfit. They rented self-storage units in a nearby industrial park on the river and ran annoying radio ads.

“You paid the bill?” Emily asked.

“I did. Solved the mystery of what the key was for. Thank goodness I hadn’t thrown it away.”

“Do you know what he’d been storing there?” Becca asked.

“No idea whatsoever.”

“We’ll need to see what’s in there before we can give you an accurate idea of what it will take to sort it out.” Sort. Becca had been drilling Emily on using less offensive terms like sort and straighten instead of clean or clear. Even declutter could sound upsetting to someone who thrived in clutter, or someone like Mrs. Murphy for whom the clutter itself was freighted with emotional memories. “Do you want to come with us when we check this out?”

“I’d rather not, if it’s all the same with you. I’m curious about what’s in there, but I don’t need to see for myself. You’ll tell me, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course. We’ll check it out and then put together an estimate for you. We can have that done by . . .” Becca paused, waiting for Emily to fill in the blank.

“In a week?” Emily said.

“A week?” Mrs. Murphy moaned. “Can’t you do it sooner than that? It took me forever to get up the nerve to call you. If I wait, I’m afraid I’ll get cold feet.”

“As soon as possible,” Becca said, taking out her cell phone and thumbing through her calendar. “Let’s see . . . Wednesday?”

Mrs. Murphy kneaded her hands together. “Couldn’t you do it any sooner?”

Emily didn’t think it would take that long to come up with an estimate that factored in what was in storage. “Sure. Assuming we’re able to get into the storage unit, we’ll try to email you an estimate Monday.”

Mrs. Murphy beamed.

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