“What did I just say?” Quinn said. “Where’s the key?”

“What was the one place that Leland made absolutely sure was off-limits to all of us?”

Eli’s eyes widened. “His gun cabinet.”

My father’s gun cabinet was a beautiful hand-carved piece of furniture, not a utilitarian box where he kept his weapons. He was a collector as well as a hunter and he had supervised every detail of the work done by the Amish cabinetmakers that built it. It sat in his former office—now the library—and, though I am neither a hunter nor a collector, I had left it where it was.

“You think the key’s there?” Quinn asked.

“Why not?” I said. “It could be behind something, attached to the top of a drawer or the back of the cabinet itself.”

“We never found a key there before now,” Eli said.

“Because we weren’t looking for one. Especially one that was probably deliberately hidden.”

“I suppose you want to check it out,” he said. “Like right now.”

“I do. You want to come?”

“You know I do. If you’re going to look for it, I’m not sitting here on my hands.”

I caught Quinn’s eye. There was a glint of excitement in his.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

THERE WAS NO SECRET about where Leland kept the key to the gun cabinet itself. On the top of the ledge of the door to the library. Too high for the fingers of a child—Eli, Mia, and me when we were little, and now Hope and Zach—to reach. As for the ammunition drawers, they could only be unlocked with a special code on a built-in dial. I had found the code with the original bill from the woodworking company. Fortunately Leland had never changed it.

Eli got the key to the gun cabinet. Quinn brought a bottle of red—a Pomerol—and three wineglasses from the dining room. Once the cabinet and the ammunition drawers were unlocked, the three of us started to examine every surface.

“Do you think it’s behind the gun rack?” Quinn said. “Do we need to take out all of the rifles and long guns?”

“If we do, Leland had to do it as well,” I said. “I don’t think he would make this hiding place so complicated or inaccessible.”

“If he hid it here,” Eli said. “And if he was still using that safe-deposit box when he died.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” I said. “Seek and ye shall find. Believe and it shall happen.”

“Shut. Up.”

“I found it.”

“You did not.”

“I did.” I held up a small envelope and opened the Velcro fastening, sliding out two keys with long notched shanks. The number 57 was stamped into them. “These are safe-deposit box keys, all right.”

“Where was the little envelope?” Quinn asked.

“Here.”