Lucky sped down some back Ozark back roads.  I like the beauty of the Ozarks.  Nothing was easy about riding with Lucky at the wheel.  She’d fly like a Formula I driver around turns at the edge of deep ravines with icy streams.  I hate that.  Water is terrifying. Height-induced vertigo also sucks. Why not?  In my kittyhood, Roberta has often tried to drown me and always protests she is just ‘cleaning’ me.  Sure, and the guillotine was just “trimming” Marie Antoinette’s long hair. Indeed, her hair was shorter once her head dropped into a frothy basket of her own blood.

Before long, I realised Lucky had again begun to reconnoitre Wolverine’s estate.  Once again, she took me to a secluded stretch of a stone fence.  She stopped her S-class MB.

We got out of the car.  As we did, I noticed she pulled a 1911 from the glovebox.

“Are we expecting company?” I asked.  “Oh, this?  It’s a precaution, dearest.  Beaucoup mean varmints wander the Ozarks.”  I also spotted a phosphorous grenade at her feet.

“Vagabond varmints that you need a phosphorous grenade to deal with?” I asked.

She purred, “You can’t be too careful, sweetie.”

She surveyed the place with care.  She shoved her 1911 in the belt of her jumpsuit, got a small notebook from a zippered pocket. Then she sketched the area on several pages.  Done drawing, she asked me to hop the fence.

My skin crawled and went gooseflesh.  “Do you remember ordering me never to go over that fence unless you came with me?”

She shot back, “Don’t be such a pansy.  I’m right here.  Go up that sycamore over there once you’re in.  I’ll cover you.  You just stay up in its branches until I tell you to come back to me.”

In these frightening circumstances, “cover” was an alarming word.

If I didn’t have that picture in my mind’s eye of battered Cornpone to spur me, I’d have told her to shove it.  Alas, knowing how she dealt with dissenters, I was up whatever she called that tree in no time.

Up in the tree, I could see over the fence.  Lucky had returned to her car.  From the car, she came back to the fence with a small grey camera.  She placed it on the fence, and then she dropped beneath the fence’s top.  She now had a photographic view of my side of the fence.  And she, unlike me,  watched from the safety of an invisible perch behind the stone fence.

In a bit, I heard what I knew from video experiences was a bot’s approach.  Sure enough, one of Wolverine’s Mr Cleans had arrived.  

Once Mr Clean arrived, Lucky began taking notes. All was silent, save the bot and nature as her compact camera sent her its feed.  

The bot investigated the area for about 15-minutes.  After finding nothing that needed killing, Mr Clean departed.  

Lucky then called me back, She made a fuss of me. “What a good, brave boy you are.”  She was a patronising bitch for a woman who had just used me as bait. 

Once we had returned to her lavish digs, she went to her study.  I followed her. I climbed up on her lap.  As she began clattering away on her iMac, I memorised a complicated password.  It turned out her iMac was overflowed with info on Cornpone, on Waynesville, and on and on it went.  When it came to people, it was a Who’s Who of the rich, powerful, and famed in Missouri.  I noticed bios on an impressive range of executives, politicos, military brass and intelligence officers.  She had piled details on every detail. Her computer brimmed with police reports that came her way via Cornpone.  Over and over, I also noticed her meticulous notes on a huge range of topics.  Take restaurants.  She had complete floorplans, menus, staff names, parking, exists, and names of anybody in her list of Persons of Interest (POIs).  Lesser persons also flashed on her screen if they had dirt on any of her POIs.  She had a massive file on Wolverine that told me things even I didn’t know about him. What a naughty boy he could be!  And she had a collection of maps of all kinds and photos of Wolverine’s estate and house, not to mention his bots

Once I saw Lucky was so OCD in her approach, I was unsurprised that she was still alive.  She knew her work.

As weeks passed, Lucky also adjusted to my pose of skittishness.  I vanished regularly.  In time, she stopped beating Cornpon when I disappeared. She kept believing a handsome house guest would have repelled me less.  In truth, I preferred Cornpone to stay at Lucky’s. When he was at Lucky’s, I could go over and rummage through his records and diaries.  It wasn’t long before, more often than not, I’d then head home to Webster Groves.  When in Webster I liked going to Webster U to watch Polgar’s chess team play games. Susan Polgar, a mad Hungarian Grandmaster and erstwhile girlfriend of the late and loony Bobby Fisher, had recruited an astonishing number of Grandmasters and International Masters to come to Webster to play chess.   I often wondered what these brains could have done if they had studied maths, engineering, physics and such.  Instead, they spend their days calculating how to move their 16 pieces to victory over their opponent’s 16 pieces on a 64-square board. That’s chess.  At least with baseball players, you knew when they were playing ball, they were doing the only thing they could do well.  Nobody lost giants of science to baseball teams.  However, Webster came in way ahead of wandering about Lucky’s place observing Cornpone smoke, drink and fart. I think he had a good heart, but what a wreck of a man.

Watching chess at Webster was a life lesson.  To study chess as an amateur is to study the Mastery of Life.  Watching those geniuses at Webster at the chessboard, I came to master tactics, strategy, and patience.  Chess is one of the secrets of my longevity. Cats have 9 lives because we have tactics and strategy.  And above all, the inattentive and impatient don’t last long.