Category:

The Mitchells' place is just down the hill from ours. When my wife, Mel, and I first moved into the neighborhood, their house had been a real eyesore. That was one of the reasons our house had been so affordable. Bayside Road, our street, is hilly. The blue tarp covering the leaky roof of the house next door had been fully visible from our living room windows. In the Pacific Northwest, tarp-covered houses are often vacant and generally regarded as teardowns. The problem is, this one was occupied by a whole slew of people with random vehicles coming and going at odd hours.

Mel happens to be the chief of police in Bellingham, Washington. From a law enforcement standpoint, that kind of activity is typical of drug houses inhabited by squatters up to no good. Before Mel had a chance to have anyone look into it, however, the residence became the subject of a police investigation when someone called in an anonymous tip asking for a welfare check on Lorraine Mitchell, the elderly woman who lived there.

By the time uniformed officers arrived on the scene, they found Lorraine, age ninety-four, deceased in her bed, apparently from natural causes. She had been gone for at least a week before the cops showed up. No one else was found at the residence, including Lorraine's supposed caretaker, and the place had been stripped clean of anything of value except for a derelict 1966 Shelby Mustang found rotting away in the garage. The vehicle probably would have been worth some money on the open market, but there's a good chance none of the lowlifes hanging around the place had bothered to steal it because they had no idea how to drive a standard transmission.

Within a matter of weeks, the tarp disappeared and decades of accumulated trash was carted away. The house was gutted down to the studs in preparation for a total rehab. And that's when and how I first met Hank, the new owner who, as it turned out, had a lifetime connection by marriage to Lorraine and had a personal interest in the place. He was a retired contractor. Rather than wielding a hammer himself, with Mr. Bean at his side, he was happy to serve as a sidewalk supervisor and observe the construction project from afar.

Hank is a couple of years younger than I am. When we first met, I was not yet a dog-person, so I wasn't exactly charmed by the obnoxious presence of Mr. Bean, but over time Hank and I became friends. While the remodel on their place continued, my life changed when an enormous Irish wolfhound named Lucy, my first dog ever, came into my life. She and Mr. Bean soon became fast friends. The same holds true of Sarah, Irish wolfhound number two. In the meantime, Hank's and my friendship has continued to flourish.

Growing up I had school pals, of course. In college I developed a network of drinking buddies, some of whom became holdovers in my new life once I became a cop. After that my friends were mostly LEOs, law enforcement officers of one stripe or another. When I went through rehab and sobered up, I became friends with any number of people in recovery, but Hank Mitchell is my first ever friend who also happens to be a next-door neighbor.

On our walks, by mutual agreement, we avoid discussing the news. It's all bad, anyway, so why bother? Instead, as we stroll along, we share the stories of our lives, and that's how I learned about Hank's somewhat challenging connection to our now deceased neighbor. It turned out Lorraine Mitchell had not only been Hank's father's first wife; she'd also been a very troublesome one.

As a teenager in the early forties, Lorraine Harding had been hot stuff at Bellingham High. Despite the fact that she had been two years older than Henry, the couple had been high school sweethearts. They married shortly after Henry graduated and days before he shipped out to serve his country during World War II. Lorraine didn't exactly sign up to be Rosie the Riveter in his absence, building up an unsavory reputation around town for playing the field while he was off serving his country. When word of her escapades got back to Daniel Mitchell, Hank's grandfather, a local attorney with a family reputation to uphold, the old man had been less than pleased.

Hank's father spent his time in the service in the Army Corps of Engineers. When he came home, he joined his uncle's construction business and built the place on Bayside expecting it to be his and Lorraine's forever home. Once he found out about her extramarital exploits, he tried to divorce her, but by then Lorraine had her eye fixed firmly on the prize, the Mitchell family's considerable fortune, and she refused to leave quietly, if at all.

Henry could easily have gotten a divorce by going to court and charging her with adultery, but in small-town Bellingham the resulting scandal would have been devastating. So his father, the attorney, worked out a deal. Since no children were involved, there was no question of child support. Instead, Lorraine was offered a generous amount of alimony. She was also allowed to stay in the house until such time as she should marry. At that time, the alimony would cease and the home on Bayside would revert either to her former husband or to his estate.

Henry Sr. remarried shortly after the divorce became final, and Hank, an only child, was the result of that second marriage. In the meantime, Lorraine, the cast-off first wife, remained a fly in the ointment for the remainder of Henry's life. She refused to remarry and didn't die. Instead, she engaged in one scandalous romantic entanglement after another, always making sure none of them ended up at the altar. As a consequence, she continued receiving alimony checks until Henry Sr.'s death in the early nineties.