“Can you bring it down to the station?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Now?”

“First thing tomorrow will do,” he said. “Good-bye.”

Rats! I was hoping he’d say that no, he wanted it now. Not that I was very keen on driving into Caerphilly just now, but I wanted to know that the chief felt a sense of urgency about it.

“I can drop it off on my way to the college,” Michael said.

I handed over the thumb drive to Michael.

“Don’t trust me to do it?” I asked.

“You’ll be busy with Timmy,” he said. “And I’m going that way anyway, remember. You coming up?”

“As soon as I finish fixing Kiki,” I said.

Though after he left the office, I found myself frowning at the directory in which I’d copied the files from the thumb drive. No doubt the police would figure out how to open them, but fat chance they’d tell us anything. I opened my e-mail program and sent the entire file collection to Jack Ransom, with a message to call me if he could figure out what the files were.

Down in the laundry room, I moved Kiki from the washer into the dryer, and had a sudden inspiration. We had several old socks in the rag bag, and if that wasn’t enough, a shelf over the washer and dryer contained, among other things, the Lonely Socks Club, a basket where we stowed all the unmatched socks on the off chance their mates would eventually turn up. I fetched my scissors and began shredding some of the nicest, softest cotton socks. By the time Kiki emerged from the dryer, I was all prepared to restuff her and sew her back up.

Timmy looked deceptively angelic when I slipped Kiki in beside him. And he would be up early tomorrow, I told myself, so I should probably get to bed. It was already . . . ten o’clock.

Michael had already fallen asleep. I wasn’t sure I liked what having children was going to do to our love life. But I had no energy to stay awake and worry about it.

Twenty-Six

Apparently I slept through Timmy’s early morning incursion into our bed. When I woke up, I was alone, except for Blanky, who had no doubt been left behind in the excitement of Timmy’s reunion with Kiki.

Blanky could use a trip through the washer, I decided, so I threw him on top of the contents of the hamper, added the discarded clothing from Timmy’s room, and dragged the pile downstairs.

The kitchen was empty—of people, at least; there was a pot of reasonably fresh coffee on the counter and a still-warm bowl of oatmeal on the table. I took the hamper down into the basement and nodded with approval to see that I once more had the laundry area to myself. The snakes were gone.

Back up in the kitchen, I could see Dad’s truck in the driveway, its bed loaded with glass terrariums containing the snakes. Michael and Timmy were standing near the truck. Timmy was trying to climb into the truck bed with the snakes. Michael was holding him back while talking to Rose Noire, and he looked as if his patience was wearing rather thin. I grabbed my oatmeal and a spoon and strolled out to join them.