“Leland hid them. We found the envelope in his gun cabinet last night. Taped to the top of the drawer where he kept his cleaning tools.”

“We?”

“Quinn, Eli, and me.”

He steepled his fingers. “What do you want to know, Lucie?”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it? Especially after Leland died. I was executrix of his estate.”

“I was waiting for you to come to me and ask,” he said. “Your father was adamant that no one was to know about the existence of this box unless he himself had told them.”

“He was dead. When did you think he was going to tell me? Maybe communicate through Thelma Johnson’s Ouija board? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Seth shook his head. “His instructions were clear. I honored them. He said no one. After he passed—which was a shock, as I don’t need to tell you—I was in a bit of a quandary. Lee was dead and I promised him I’d keep his secret. So what was I doing to do?”

He shrugged and answered his own question. “I decided to wait and see if you came forward with the keys. After about eighteen months when you didn’t appear to know anything about the safe-deposit box, I had someone drill it open. Then I emptied it and removed the signature card and paperwork from the files that showed your father as the sole owner.”

He sat back and folded his hands together in his lap. I wondered how many bank regulations he had violated by taking matters into his own hands.

“In other words you did what you did so none of your employees, or perhaps an auditor, would be able to find any record to prove Leland’s safe-deposit box existed.”

He flushed but he said in a steady voice, “That is correct. There were no other signatories on that card, Lucie. None. Only your father.”

“Did you destroy the contents of the box?”

“Good God, of course not. That would have been wrong.”

Unlike opening someone’s safe-deposit box without notifying their next of kin.

“So obviously you know what was in that box,” I said. “It wouldn’t happen to be some very old bottles of Madeira, would it? Or information about where they might be located?”

“What—Madeira? Lord, no, there were no bottles of anything.” He looked genuinely surprised. “As for information about their location, I couldn’t say.”

The Madeira itself wasn’t here. What a letdown. Though I think I would have been surprised if it had been. Prescott said there were cases, not bottles. That still didn’t mean Leland hadn’t left information about where they were hidden.

“What was in it, then?” I asked.

“Papers. Documents, I presume.”

“You presume?”