“Tractor!” Timmy said, sounding happier.

Muriel tapped a few more keys and the deep growl of a tractor motor filled the cubicle.

“Oh, much better sound effects,” Jack said.

Timmy let go of my leg and took a couple of tentative steps toward the computer.

Muriel tapped a few more keys, and the view on the monitor pulled back to show that the tractor was in the middle of a kind of obstacle course littered with other mechanical objects.

His eyes glued to the monitor, Timmy walked over and leaned against Muriel, in what for him was a relatively subtle hint that he wanted her chair. A minute or so later, Timmy was installed in the desk chair with a mouse in his tiny hands and Muriel leaning over his shoulder pointing out things on the screen while Hal scribbled notes on a clipboard.

“That should keep him busy for a while,” Jack said. “And Hal’s been asking for some more kids to test the games on.”

“Great,” I said. “The baby-sitting service alone is worth whatever bribe I promised you. And if you have any information about Jasper Walker . . . ”

“I not only have information,” he said. “As promised, I have someone who used to work with Jasper. Someone who can’t stand him, which means we’ll hear all the dirt.”

“Great,” I said. “Though I might be more impressed if you’d found one of the very small number of people who actually like Jasper.”

We’d reached Jack’s office by that time. A slight young man with olive skin and a shaved head, who had been sitting in the guest chair, popped up like a jack-in-the-box the minute we entered.

“Meg, this is Ashok, from our User Experience Division,” Jack said. I was relieved; apparently Jack had finally broken the habit of calling it the Idiotproofing Division. “Ashok, Rob’s sister, Meg.”

“Great to meet you,” Ashok said. He was wide-eyed, and the hand I shook felt a bit damp. No doubt he was nervous, being called into Jack’s office to meet the CEO’s sister. He was probably a relatively new employee, which meant he’d barely met Rob. We’d figured out that the less contact the rank and file employees had with Rob, the easier it was to keep intact their belief in the corporate myth that Rob was a business mastermind and a computer genius.

“You know Jasper Walker?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I actually worked under him for a little while,” he said. “Not that many places in Caerphilly for programmers to work. It’s a small world.”

“A small, small world,” I said. And then I winced. Thanks to Timmy’s car tunes CD, I could barely keep myself from singing those words to the increasingly familiar tune.

“When I graduated, I got a job in the college’s systems support department,” Ashok went on. “Walker was my project leader. We were taking this COTS accounting software and trying to integrate it with all the legacy systems.”

“COTS means a commercial, off-the-shelf program,” Jack translated.