“You could just leave it alone,” Quinn said. “It’s been five years. Maybe it might be better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“I’m for leaving it alone. Let this dog keep lying, like Quinn said,” Eli said. “Besides, we never found a second key when we sorted through all his stuff.”

“Well, if the safe-deposit box was secret, then he would have hidden the key, wouldn’t he?” I said. “And he wouldn’t have told anyone about it.”

“Apparently no one in the family. But he did tell Prescott Avery, it seems.” Eli fiddled with his mechanical pencil, spinning it like a dial in a board game or the hands of a clock gone crazy. There was an acid edge to his voice. He wasn’t enjoying this conversation. Eli liked stability. Order. Predictability. Leland had popped up in our lives again like a jack-in-the-box at the end of the music when you were sure the spring was broken and nothing would happen.

“I know you, Luce. You’re the one who did the DNA test and found out about David,” he went on. “Now you want to find this key. And if you do, then you want to check out the safe-deposit box. Am I right?”

I shrugged. “Now that I know about it, I suppose I do. I don’t want any of Leland’s ghosts to haunt me. Or any of us. Besides, Prescott seems to think … seemed to think … Leland might have left be a clue about the old cases of Madeira in that safe-deposit box.”

Eli’s face went blank. “What old cases of Madeira?”

Quinn and I exchanged looks. “Sorry,” I said. “That was thing number two. I should have told you about the Madeira first.”

“Told me what?”

When I was finished, my brother shook his head. “Look, if there was any booze lying around the house, especially something that valuable, you know as well as I do that Leland either drank it or sold it. Besides, where would it be that we haven’t already looked?”

“If there is a safe-deposit box and Leland left something—a clue or a letter—about the Madeira, it’s still there and it’s not going anywhere,” Quinn said. “You don’t have to do anything about it right this minute, Lucie. No one’s putting a gun to your head to find out … especially if it’s too upsetting right now.”

He meant too upsetting to Eli. And because of other stressful things like Prescott’s murder and the busyness of the upcoming holidays.

I started to protest when what he said about putting a gun to my head made a missing puzzle piece slot into place with a neat click.

“I know where the key might be.” My mouth felt dry. “Quinn just said something that made me realize where it might be hidden. Where I believe it is hidden.”