Chapter 1

Bellingham, Washington

Friday, February 14, 2020

Valentine’s Day 2020 dawned clear and cold in Bellingham, Washington. For most people in the area that was a welcome change

from several weeks of mixed rain and snow—definitely not suitable for walking. But with the twenty-four-hour news cycle consumed

with the looming Covid pandemic, outside was exactly where I wanted to be. So I called Hank Mitchell, my next-door neighbor,

and asked if he and his black-and-tan Chihuahua, Mr. Bean, aka Beanie, would like to join my Irish wolfhound, Sarah, and me

for a walk along our street, Bayside Road. I’m sure passersby find us an interesting foursome—two old guys accompanied by

a stately Irish wolfhound with a bouncy, noisy Chihuahua yapping at her ankles.

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.

Over the years, as the value of her monthly alimony checks had dwindled, Lorraine had been forced to supplement her income by working as a bartender. Once the checks stopped altogether, she began taking in lodgers to make ends meet, including the parade of very dodgy-looking lowlifes Mel and I had seen coming and going from her house.

At some point after Henry Sr.’s death, Hank, the son from that second marriage and a widower himself by then, became aware

that Lorraine had stopped paying taxes on the property. To keep the house from going into foreclosure, he had brought the

taxes up-to-date and kept them current with the idea that at some point he’d turn the property on Bayside Road into a retirement

dream house for him and his relatively new wife, Ellen.

Their relationship is similar to Mel’s and mine in that Hank’s retired from the construction business now while Ellen is still

employed full-time. That’s another reason we don’t discuss the news. With Covid bearing down, we were both worried about how

that would impact both of our still-working wives—Mel is at Bellingham PD and Ellen is a 911 supervisor at What-Comm, Whatcom

County’s emergency communications center.

“What are you and Mel doing for Valentine’s Day?” Hank asked.

“I scored a reservation at Dirty Dan’s,” I told him. In my opinion, Dirty Dan’s is Fairhaven’s premier fine dining establishment.

“What about you?”

“Ellen’s working tonight. We’ll be doing our Valentine’s celebration on Sunday, her next day off.”

When we reached our driveway, Sarah and I peeled away and walked down to the house where I spotted an unfamiliar vehicle—an older-model Honda Accord—parked next to the garage. As we approached the car, the driver’s door swung open and a long drink of water climbed out. It took a moment for me to recognize my grandson, Kyle Cartwright.

Because Kyle and his parents—my daughter Kelly and her husband, Jeremy—had spent the previous Christmas with Jeremy’s folks

in Southern California, the last time I had seen the boy—make that the young man—in the flesh had been during a family excursion

to Cannon Beach the previous summer. He seemed to have shot up half a foot since then and was now a good two inches taller

than I am.

“Hey, Kyle,” I said, grabbing him into a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see you is all, I guess,” he muttered noncommittally into my shoulder, accepting the hug but not exactly returning

it.

His terse response didn’t sound as though he was overjoyed to see me, and the lack of useful information in his reply got

my attention, causing me to begin putting together the logistical aspects of this unexpected, early-afternoon visit.

At the moment it was just after two o’clock in the afternoon. My daughter’s family lives in Ashland, a few miles north of

the Oregon/California border. Their place is a good nine-hour drive from ours. As far as I knew, this was a school day, so

not only was Kyle missing school, he would have had to leave home in the wee hours of the morning to turn up so far north

at this time of day.

As he backed away from me, I glanced at his car. It seemed to be loaded to the gills. In the back seat, I caught sight of

what looked like the top rim of a bass drum. Mel and I had given Kyle his first drum set as a Christmas present several years

earlier while he was still in junior high. If he had left home with his drum set in tow, this was not a good sign. Something

was definitely up.

At that point, Sarah stepped up to give him a brief sniff before honoring him with a welcoming wag of her tail. Kyle had no idea, but knowing the dog as I do, I understood Kyle had just been granted my Irish wolfhound’s instant stamp of approval.

“It’s cold out here,” I suggested. “How about we go inside? Are you hungry?”

“Not really.”

Whoever heard of an eighteen-year-old kid who wasn’t hungry? I took that as another bad sign. Something serious was going

on here, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.