Let the devil sleep. If that quote was taken from a story Kim’s father had told her in her childhood, as she claimed, then the admonition must have been meant for her. It would have special meaning only for her. Why whisper it to Gurney?

Could the intruder have believed that it was Kim who had fallen down the stairs?

Such an error seemed nearly impossible. When Dave fell, the first thing he heard was Kim’s voice in the little passageway at the top of the stairs—screaming, calling to him frantically—then the sound of her footsteps running for the flashlight. It was only after that, lying on the basement floor, that he heard, quite close to him, the ominously hushed voice—the voice of someone who at that point must have known he wasn’t talking to Kim.

But if he knew the person on the floor wasn’t Kim, then why …?

The answer struck Gurney like a slap in the face.

More accurately, it struck him like a crystal-clear melody from a Vivaldi violin concerto.

He drove back up to the house in such a hurry that he bottomed out the frame of the car twice on groundhog holes.

He went straight to his musical birthday card, looked at the back, and saw what he hoped to see—a company name and website: KustomKardz.com.

A minute later he was looking at the website on his laptop. Kustom Kardz was in the business of providing just that—individualized greeting cards bearing an embedded battery-driven digital playback device “with your choice of over a hundred different melodies from the world’s best-loved classical compositions and traditional folk tunes.”

In addition to the e-mail link on the “Contact Us” site page, there was an 800 number, which Gurney called. To start with, he had one key question for the customer-service representative. Rather than customizing the playback chip with a piece of music, could it be customized with spoken words?

The answer was yes, certainly. It would just be a matter of recording the message—which could be done over the phone—putting it in the proper audio format, and downloading it to the device.

He had two more questions, if she didn’t mind. What were the options for triggering the playback if such a device were used in something other than a greeting card? And how much of a delay between the triggering and the playback could be built into the device?

She explained that triggering could be done in a number of ways—by pressure, by release of pressure, even by sound, like those light switches that respond to clapped hands. Other possibilities could be explored with Mr. Emtar Gumadin, their tech guru.

One final question. Someone he knew had received an interesting talking card that said, “Let the devil sleep.” Had Kustom Kardz by any chance processed that particular message onto one of their sound chips?