Suddenly the finger I was using to pull out bits of stuffing hit something hard, stuffed into Kiki’s left hind leg. It took me a couple of minutes to tease it free. Michael came back into the kitchen while I was working on it.

“I checked all the stuff Karen left with Timmy, but there weren’t any other stuffed animals,” he said. “Your mother and father have gone back to the farmhouse and will let us know if your nieces and nephews have left any stuffed animals behind.”

“Unlikely,” I said. “Most of them had outgrown stuffed animals by the time Mother and Dad bought the farmhouse.”

“And I stopped Rob from taking the sofa apart for its stuffing. Rose Noire is driving back to her apartment—she thinks she might have a stuffed animal there. Do we—what’s that?”

I was holding my find up to the light to inspect it.

“I think it’s a thumb drive—you know, one of those tiny little computer storage things you can hang on your keychain.”

“Where’d you get it?”

I gestured at the disemboweled Kiki.

“Remember how Timmy kept saying that Kiki had a boo-boo?” I asked. “Maybe he wasn’t just doing it for attention. Maybe he was trying to tell us about this.”

“This could be important,” Michael said.

“Yes,” I said. “Why don’t you put Kiki in the washer—delicate cycle. I’m going to the office to see if I can figure out what’s on this thing.”

“Shouldn’t we turn it over to the police?” Michael asked, as he picked up Kiki. “A data storage device that could be directly connected to a murder and an embezzlement case?”

“We will,” I said. “But not before I’ve checked it out. After all, if the only thing it contains is a backup copy of Timmy’s favorite musical selections, there’s no sense running to Chief Burke with it, is there?”

He shook his head as if he didn’t quite buy it, but didn’t argue with me.

In the office, I booted up my laptop and attached the thumb drive to it. I was able to see the files on the thumb drive, but I could tell figuring out the contents wasn’t going to be easy. The file names were cryptic and apparently random strings of numbers and letters, and my computer stubbornly refused to open any of them.

I had just finished copying the contents of the thumb drive into a directory on my laptop when Michael joined me.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Clearly, this wasn’t intended to contain a top-secret message from Karen to us,” I said. “Because if it was, she’d have made at least some of the files in a format normal human beings could read.”

“Chief Burke can probably call on forensic computer analysts to unravel it.”

“No doubt,” I said. I could tell he was relieved when I picked up the phone and dialed the police station.

To my surprise, Chief Burke was still there. Caerphilly’s crime wave must still be going strong. And also to my surprise, he actually seemed interested in the thumb drive.