»>>I can't give any clues on error messages, because this
is part of a cfc on the back end of an ajax call.
No errors show up in firebug or elsewhere.

This is a problem with Ajax calls.
If the template called by Ajax throws an error, the text returned by the CF server is not compatible with Ajax and it causes an Ajax error. This error will not help, what one is intersted in is the error in the CF error.

I've developped my own Ajax call function, and in case of error, it will open a new window with the whole text returned in it. Generally, it is the error generated by CF.
This one is for POST method, but I have the equivalent for GET:
If there is anything wrong, the function calls displayError to displat the text actually received.

function ajaxPOST (url, sendText)
   {
   var XMLHttp = null;
     if (window.XMLHttpRequest)XMLHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
     // code for MSIE
     else if (window.ActiveXObject)XMLHttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHttp");
   if(XMLHttp)
     {
     XMLHttp.open("POST", url, false);
     XMLHttp.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=iso-8859-1");
     XMLHttp.send(sendText);
     if (XMLHttp.status == 200)return XMLHttp.responseText;
     displayError("<H2>" + XMLHttp.statusText + "</H2><P>" + XMLHttp.responseText)
     return null;
     }
     else return null;
   }
function displayError(text)
     {
     var errorWin = open ("","Error","scrollbars=yes,resizable,width=900,height=600");
     errorWin.document.open();
     errorWin.document.write(text);
     errorWin.document.close();
   errorWin.focus()
     }


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