[topcat]

I was noticed an old Keychain file was missing and finally found it in a directory named Recovered at the root level. At first I could not open it, but after fixing its permissions it opened just fine. But my question is how did it wind up there in the first place? It was the only thing in the directory.

[absmiths]

That sounds reminiscent of the Recovered Items folder from Mac OS 8/9. Is it possible that file was recovered while you were in Mac OS 9? I wonder if Classic still does this?

That would certainly explain the permissions being wrong.