Morning arrived, and I was only slightly surprised to find that the world hadn't ended after yesterday's revelations. First thing first, finish up my interrogation of Jane.

<>

I made a dignified entrance and gracefully approached the breakfast nook. That was where the coffee aroma was coming from. Just remember that for me in the mornings, "graceful" means that I didn't trip on the throw rugs more than three times on the way down the hall.

Once I'd had a few sips (all right, gulps) of coffee, I got started. "Jane. You told me last night that in addition to your high school work, you completed both a master's degree and a bachelor's, correct? If my memory serves, I had you for Hapkido practice three nights a week, and you went out with your friends at least once almost every weekend. Weren't you a bit pressed for time?"

Admire me. I was looking out the window as I oh-so-carefully tossed this into the conversation.

What I heard then was about the last thing I'd ever expected from Jane. What she said was: "Urk..."

I slowly turned my head around to look at her. By the time I could see her face, all I saw was a pleasant smile. Then she said, "It was a bit of a challenge, what with work and all, but I managed OK. I even got a fair amount of sleep on most weekends."

That's when I got truly terrified. She'd done a Wally right in front of me. And... Oh, what's a Wally? Guess I'd better backtrack a bit.

It happened just over 15 years ago, right before I found Jane.

-----------------------

His name was Wallace, according to the nametag.

"Miss, you do realize that you were going 73 in a 65 MPH zone? I'll need to see your license, registration, and proof of insurance."

Since I had none of those at the time, I realized that I was in just a little bit of trouble. I'd turned around and reached toward the glove compartment, just to give myself a few seconds to think, when I heard a noise behind me.

Yep, you guessed it! "Urk...." I turned around and looked at Wally. He had a puzzled look on his face and his eyes were sorta blank. Then he refocused on me.

"Right Miss, everything looks to be in order. Given that it's your first time, I'm gonna give you a bye, but don't EVER let me find out that you've been speeding like this again!"

"Sure Officer Wallace. You can be absolutely certain that I won't."

"Good girl. You take care now. Bye."

And just like that, he turned, strolled back to his car and drove off. The shakes lasted several minutes. I'd been in a world of hurt, and suddenly everything was just fine.

"What in the seven hells just happened?!" I shouted it at the sky but, as expected, there wasn't any answer. All I could do at the time was drive off and resolve to be a LOT more careful in the future.

Just when I'd about managed to convince myself that I'd imagined what had happened to Wally, I got fish-slapped with it again. It happened about a year before we moved to Fresno. I'd broken into some warehouse to recover an item that had been stolen from a client.

I have to admit that I was still lacking experience and had an excess of overconfidence then. Even so it wasn't really my fault that, while I was being really quiet and sneaky, I backed up into the security zombie. (He was at least 6' 5", weighed about 300 pounds, and grunted. That's close enough to a zombie for me.) I turned around real slow like -- not like I could do anything else with a gigantic ham of a hand on my shoulder showing me which way to turn. Next thing I knew he'd "Wally'd." (Yeah, I know, I have a way with words. It's a talent.)

Anyway, he went "Urk..." and froze with that vacant look in his eyes, so I did what was natural and ran. Fast!

No of course I didn't look back. I'd already made one mistake, and I wasn't going to chance looking back at him when I might run into a wall if I wasn't watching where I was going.

<

What're you laughing for? Huh? "Pot calling the kettle black?" I didn't know about her sideline till the night before and I'm accusing you being an idiot for not knowing that I had one? Ah, well, uh...moving right along.>>

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Anyway, I got up and strolled across the living room, down the hall, and into my bedroom. Then I went to the computer and started pulling up degree requirements and exam schedules for both the universities.

Half an hour later I felt worse than I had before. Even allowing for the fact that OSU and PSU have advanced placement testing, and OSU allows completion of some course material online, there was absolutely no way that she'd had anywhere near enough time to do all of it. And that didn't count the time needed for meeting the high school graduation requirements.

Not to mention that at least two of the final exams each year were scheduled for the exact same time and were in classrooms that were 60 miles apart. And you had to be physically present for the finals, even if you did the rest of the coursework online.

It was totally, completely impossible. But, if Jane said that two more degrees were going to be handed out, then they would be handed out. She never lies about anything, ever.

I spent the next 20 minutes or so with head in my hands, trying to figure it out. Finally I realized that there was only one thing I could do, so I gave up and rejoined the outside world. Went down the hall and knocked on Jane's door. Eased my way in. Question time.

"Do you have any plans for this next week?"

"Actually I do Mama, or to be precise, we do."

"Huh?" (Notice my witty reply -- I'm so proud of me sometimes.)

"We're going on vacation, to our favorite site up past Detroit Lake. I'm gonna spend the next six days fishing, and you're going to paint, and we're gonna turn off our cell phones. I've already arranged it with work, for both of us."

She was rubbing her hands together and hopping up and down in excitement.

"Right. Sure. Why not? Say, I have a question for you. How'd you manage final exams for all your classes? Surely the timing was pretty tight now and then."

"Urk....." Damn! She'd Wally'd on me AGAIN. The same puzzled face, and blank stare. Then she came back to me and said. "Oh, it was pretty hard at times, and I may have been driving a bit fast once or twice, but it all worked out, didn't it? I'm really looking forward to seeing how much you cry at these next two graduations."

After that she nattered along about nothing of any real consequence until we separated to raid our respective hobby/work rooms and packed up the car. Then we set up the automatic feeders for the cats, and made sure that they had free access to their playroom. One of Jane's friends would check on them every day. Finally we locked up the house, went to the Union station at Kuebler and Commercial, gassed up the car, and headed east on Highway 22 toward Detroit Lake.

When Mama "casually" strolled into my room before I told her about our vacation plans, I knew she was up to something. She's really very good at being sneaky and covert and all that sort of thing, but I've lived with her for 15 years now and I know all her tricks...at least so I thought..

After we talked, and she'd left to get ready for our trip, I had no idea what she'd been fishing for. I only knew that she had been. She really is much sneakier than I am.

-------------------------

I don't have to tell you how scared I was. (OK, I'm writing this so I guess I do.) The only times anyone had Wally'd on me was when I was in danger. So what was so dangerous about Jane and her education? I just couldn't make the connection. So I did what I usually do. I let it go. If it was all that important, I knew that whatever it was would pop its head up again eventually.

So there we were, heading out to our favorite spot, between the North Santiam River and Duffy Lake. I felt all the stress just sort of relax its way out of my shoulders. I didn't even feel all that worried about Jane's degrees any more.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Jane's degrees... There was something...

Why would I be worried about those? I was really proud of her. What's to worry about?

All of a sudden I realized that I did have something to worry about. I was about to kill somebody.

As we headed east, Jane alternated between looking at the scenery and looking at the inside of her purse. The incessant snapping sound of her opening and closing the clasp was making me want to shriek. Either that or I was about to hurt someone. Since the only one in range was quite capable of hurting me back, I went for the calm approach.

"Stop it already. You're driving me crazy! What is so interesting in your purse that's more important than the scenery? Which, I might add, is spectacular today."

"Pull over for a minute Mama, and I'll show you."

"Right, pulling over... OK, now give."

Jane extracted a business card from one of her purse's pockets and passed it to me. First thing I noticed was the exceptional craftsmanship. Maybe you don't think of that with business cards, but that just means that you've never seen one done by an expert.

This was full color, with a deep, almost indigo blue, metallic background. In the upper left corner was a moon that was exactly at half full. The lettering was in a silvery ink and said "Half Moon, LLC. Karla Knight, Executive Director." It also had a phone number I'd never seen before.

I just stared at it for a while and admired it. After a minute Jane started to fidget. "Mama, say something."

"What do you want me to say? After everything else you've battered me with in the past 24 hours, what's a company that I've never heard of that I seem to be managing?"

"It's supposed to represent both of us, the moon that is. I'm the tall, blond, busty, gregarious one who works in the light. You're the short, dark, skinny, flat-chested, black-haired, sneaky one who operates in darkness. Fits us perfectly, right?"

"WHO THE HELL IS FLAT CHESTED?!!" I think I even managed to shake the car a bit with that explosion.

Jane, being Jane, sat there and let the gale flow around her, then she pretended that I hadn't almost blown out the windows and asked plaintively, "Now that I'm out of school, you do want us to work together, don't you?"

I'd never thought of it before, I'd been too busy worrying about getting caught by the Child Welfare people. Now that that was no longer a factor in our lives, I really should have done some constructive thinking.

"Actually, blending your security work with my 'sneaky' work should turn out pretty well. Especially when I get through reviewing your little funds appropriation sideline." I tried glaring at her, but I knew it hadn't worked when she just clapped her hands and laughed at me.

I gave in a bit sooner than I'd intended. What was irritating was that it was obvious that she knew it too.

"All right I give. When you're right, you're right. I suppose that it'll be easier to coordinate the fishing and painting trips we take when we need to hide what we're really doing."

-----------

After that, Jane reverted to her usual behavior. That is, she sat there and enjoyed the scenery, up until we got within about a half mile of our usual camp. Then she pulled out her laptop and started working.

When you frequent a particular site over and over it's possible that unfriendlies know about it, and it's prudent to take a few precautions. Jane was checking her wireless sensor net, seeing which units had ceased working, checking the recorded movement patterns of other visitors, that sort of thing. In the last couple hundred yards she had me pull over a few times so she could replace sensors that had malfunctioned.

After we arrived, I set up camp while she set up shop and reviewed all the data that had been recorded since our last visit.

When we'd both finished, I asked, "Jane honey, doesn't it seem that your lust for security has gone just a TAD overboard? I mean you have a complete sensor network way out here in the woods, and you keep it active all year."

"Look who's talking. Who is it that patrols the house and checks the scan records twice every night lately?"

I just assumed my most lofty expression and didn't deign to answer her, at least until the implications of what we'd both just said sank in.

That's when we started comparing notes, which made me even more nervous. Seems that we'd both gradually ramped up our security measures starting about 6 months earlier.

Paranoid you say? Seeing things that weren't there? Well, yes, that was exactly the problem. We'd never said a single word to each other about it, but over those past several months the security measures we'd added would do just fine for Fort Knox much less an ordinary looking, though rather large, home sitting on 15 acres at the edge of a moderate-sized city.

Not only that, but Jane had had her hackers sifting for even the slightest sign of threat to her organization, and I'd been doing something similar through my contacts.

And why had we done it? The problem was that neither of us had even the slightest idea. Even so, neither of us was willing to reduce our efforts to protect ourselves against whomever or whatever was looking for us.

It was the chance that it might be the latter that scared both of us the most.

When we finished our mutual paranoia session, there was still a fair amount of light left. There weren't any more precautions that we knew how to take, so we figured that we might as well have some fun before bedtime. Jane slipped into the stream with her rod and flies, and I set up my easel and started work on a sunset view of a nearby ridge.

Later, when it got too dark for either of us to continue, we had dinner and sat and talked about nothing in particular for an hour or so, just enjoying each others' company. Then I asked the other question I had. You know, the one I'd forgotten to ask her the day she graduated.

"So, uh, sweetie, what was it about your name and your birthday that you didn't want to tell me?"

She started to chuckle. It sorta just burbled at first then turned into a full-blown laugh fest, complete with a choking episode at the end.

"Well I guess I'd better start with the day you found me. The truth is that I hadn't been abandoned by my parents, I'd escaped."

"WTF?"

<>

"It was like this. They were both con artists, and there were also the drugs that they sold on the side. I'm not sure which ones. I may be unusually smart, but I was only 4 years old, and I didn't know much back then.

"Anway, I heard them talking about selling me as soon as they got to Flagstaff. That's when I decided I'd better get away. So when they stopped at Amboy for a joint, I snuck out of the car and hid around the corner of the building. Since they were both stoned, I figured that they wouldn't notice for at least a couple hours, especially as I usually hid under some blankets in the back of the car when we were traveling.

"There was just one itty-bitty problem. I'd sorta not thought about what to do after I got away. It was a good thing that you came along, or I'd have been a mummy within a day or two. I had no idea that the gas station had been closed."

"They were going to SELL YOU!" I think I may have been foaming at the mouth about then. I do know that I sprayed spit over a fairly wide area.

"Yep. Figured to get enough for a new stake. They'd decided to go into drugs full time. They did pretty well for a few years -- until I was 17 actually."

"How'd you know that? Never mind, stupid question given what you've told me about your network. Go on with your story."

She gave me that little pixie grin that she'd been practicing since she was six. I still fall for it. "I would if you'd stop interrupting me."

I sat up straight, put my hands in my lap and managed, somehow, to look a lot more composed than I felt. At least I think I did. Seems it was good enough, because she started her story again.

"OK. When I was 16 I had my hackers start looking for them. We found them a few weeks later, and I started tracking them off and on, watching what they did to people. I had no way to stop them...unfortunately. But, what I could do was make sure that somehow, just somehow, the police always found out about what they were doing. They always got out of town just ahead of the cops, usually with almost nothing. It seems that someone tipped them off a few minutes before the cops got there, every single time. I can't imagine who it might have been."

Jane put her hands behind her back, tilted her head sideways, and whistled innocently for a few seconds.

I had a bit of trouble not sputtering again, but I masterfully held it in.

"I imagine that it drove them crazy after spending weeks to months setting up their next major score. After about a year, they quit the drug idea and went back to scamming people. That's when I got them.

"They'd cleaned out a family from Costa Rica that had recently arrived in the US. Took them for everything. I did a background check on the family and learned something very interesting.

"By the way, did you ever see the movie 'Nine to Five', Mama?"

"Oh my God! Jane, get on with the story. Now isn't the time to talk about movies!"

"Actually it is Mama. Have you seen it?"

"Yes, I've seen it, several times. It's a great movie about what sneaky women can do to an arrogant boss. So what?"

"It got me to thinking is what. Turns out that their latest victims still had relatives in Costa Rica, so that was all I needed to wrap things up."

"HUH?" (Once again my great vocabulary manifested itself. What can I say?)

"This time I got the local sheriff and the FBI after them. As usual, I warned them, but only after I'd had some information planted in the lobby of the motel where they were staying. Specifically some brochures on the wonders of traveling on cargo ships rather than on the cruise lines. Seems that a number have cabins that they rent out to tourists who want to travel but don't like the cruise ship atmosphere.

"The only way out of town for them was through the harbor. The Feds had blocked everything else off -- airport, bus lines, and such. The local cops were checking every car that left town that looked anything like my parents'.

"Soooo, my parents took passage on one of the smaller "tourist" freighters that had a shallow enough draft to fit in the local harbor. It was heading for Costa Rica. Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

Given that coincidences were as likely in Jane's life as an asteroid strike on New York City was tomorrow, my antennae were suddenly all aquiver.

"And you know, somehow it turned out that the uncle of that couple who had been scammed owned the freighter.

"Do you remember what happened to Dabney Coleman's character at the end of Nine to Five?"

" Of course I do. He got captured by Amazons and taken off to be their slave for the rest of his li... `Oh my freaking god! You didn't!?"

"Of course not, I didn't do anything. It was the victim's uncle who did it.

"Right now my parents are seven miles from the nearest village, working on a banana plantation. It's quite primitive you know. No running water, an outhouse, lots of mosquitos and biting flies. Must not be very pleasant. Somehow I suspect that they'll be spending the rest of their miserable lives there."

OK. Now I really, for the first time, truly understood what ROFLMAO means. I found myself rolling on the ground howling. When I finally got it under control, Jane spoke to me, very softly, and with tears in her eyes.

"Your hatred of my parents has been eating you alive for 15 years now. Are you ready to let it go?"

I looked inside myself for a bit and realized that a knot in my stomach that I hadn't realized was there was making itself obvious by its absence.

"Yes honey, I think I am. Thank you."

There was no way that there could be an encore to that, so we had a hug then crawled into our tent and went to sleep.