Several days later, Sly was sitting at home watching TV. He was flipping through the channels, but he wasn't really paying a lot of attention to the TV. He was still thinking about... well, you know what he was thinking about. "Good thing nobody else knows about what was actually in that box... I'd be a laughingstock if somebody had discovered that all I found was a box full of old children's toys. Huh... wait... wasn't that..." Sly flipped back a few channels and realized to his surprise and horror that it WAS "that"... that box of toys that he had ditched in the alley.

A middle-aged dog in a suit was talking to a young fox. "Where did you find these toys?" "Somebody tossed them away in the alleyway near my apartment. The noise woke me, and I managed to catch a glimpse of whoever it was. I wouldn't be able to identify whoever it was since it was only a small glimpse, but whoever it was was carrying a cane with a hook-shaped head. When I went to see what it was that had made the noise, I found this box, and when I opened it, I found the toys in it. I thought I recognized a few of them from a book on antiques I'd borrowed from the library, and when I checked..." The fox started to chuckle and said, "You know, I started to chuckle just like this when I opened this box..."

It didn't sink in to Sly's head at first, as he was too relieved that the fox hadn't caught enough of a glimpse to identify him. "What a relief... wait... OH NO... there's one person who's going to put two-and-two together... and she'll definitely rub it in!" Sly had just realized that Inspector Carmelita would have a pretty good idea of who it was that had ditched the box in the alley... for obvious reasons. "Well, at least things can't get any worse."

A few moments later, Sly wished he hadn't said that. "Me and my big mouth..." The show on the channel was "Trash or Treasure?" It was a pretty popular TV show where antiques experts traveled around the world, and made free appraisals of various curiosities and knickknacks that people thought might be worth something. As it turned out, the toys were worth quite a lot... "Until now, only 5 of these dolls were known to still exist... the last one came up for auction 5 years ago and went for 9,000 dollars. However, all of the other toys are almost as rare... and as a collection there's no telling how much they'd go for at auction. My conservative estimate is that as a collection, these toys would bring around 40,000 to 50,000 dollars at auction." Sly turned off the TV and buried his head in his hands. "My father always told me that there would be days that would make it look like turning yourself in would be a smart move... and this is definitely one of them." Elsewhere, tears of laughter were streaming down the face of a certain fox... and it wasn't the one being shown on TV. "Ringtail, looks like the next we meet..." Carmelita burst into another round of laughter... "Finally the joke is on YOU, Cooper... the joke is finally on you!" Now Carmelita couldn't wait until the next time she met Cooper. He probably wouldn't be as annoying... and if he was, she could cut him down to size by telling him about this.