What's the error you're seeing when fetching the Production records?

This hit me too a few months ago. Total panic-tinged confusion.

Your answer made my day! I don't know how I missed that, especially since, as you suggest, I'm already tombstoning the CKRecordZone.ID in my local cache for deferred deletes. You wouldn't believe the circuitous solutions I've tried, the last of which worked (traversing the parent chain upwards to the root). This is wonderfully simple. In short, you rock, JimmyCricket—thanks!