Practice to Deceive

a very long time.
    First, Jim and Patti bought a much bigger, more expensive house. They put it on the market a few years later and bought a large motor home with all the bells and whistles anyone could ask for. They embarked on a dream that many people have, but few can afford. They quit their jobs and took long, luxurious road trips back and forth across America.
    When Jim and Patti came back to Whidbey Island between trips, they reunited with their friends for great get-togethers. It seemed that Jim Huden had everything a man might want—a good wife, a lot of money, and the freedom to enjoy a life of retirement when he wasn’t yet forty.
    Eventually—when they had seen every corner of the country that they wanted—he and Patti sold the motor home and bought a lavish house on a golf course near Orlando, Florida. The idyllic weather was a far cry from the wind-whipped storms that often scoured Whidbey Island. The couple had seen most of the country and picked the spot that seemed to be the perfect place to live.
    In early 1991, Jim called Lloyd Jackson and invited him to Florida for a visit. Lloyd accepted and he found Jim and Patti gracious hosts. They did everything they could to make his time with them memorable.
    “They took me to Walt Disney’s theme park at Epcot,” Jackson recalled. “We went racing mini Indy race cars, golfing, and we watched Super Bowl XXV when the New York Giants played the Buffalo Bills.”
    Jim and Patti seemed happy together, but they had lived far too lavishly. They were running out of big money. Within a year, they took jobs as managers of the Chevy Chase golf course, just outside of Port Townsend, Washington. As one of the perks of the job, they lived in quarters above the pro shop. It was a definite step down from their plush lifestyle.
    After a few years, the Hudens were able to move back to Florida. Jim’s expertise with computers inspired them to start a new company. It went well at first; Jim was even voted businessman of the year in Punta Gorda. The couple returned to Whidbey Island sporadically to hook up with their longtime friends.
    Lloyd Jackson got a shocking phone call from Jim Huden in 1994. Jim told him that he was having an affair and that he and Patti were breaking up. He asked Jackson to fly to Florida, and drive Patti and their Chevy Blazer back to Washington State.
    “I liked Patti—I was close to her,” Jackson recalled. “But I was involved in a new relationship and had too much on my plate at the time to take a week off to bring Patti home. I felt bad because she apparently got the idea that I was taking Jim’s side. I wasn’t—I avoided taking either side. I didn’t even know who Jim was having an affair with, really didn’t care to know. It could have been his next wife—Jean—or it could have been someone else.”
    Jean, who was born in Orange, New Jersey, was a tall, slender, rather plain woman. When his divorce from Patti was final, Jim Huden married Jean. They remained in Florida for a number of years. Jim continued to visit Whidbey Island occasionally, always drawn back to where he grew up and the memories he shared with his old friends. Sometimes he brought Jean with him.
    One of his old friends said that he liked Jean, she seemed “nice enough,” but that they’d all felt much closer to Patti. It was difficult to picture their longtime friend with anyone but his first wife.
    * * *
    T HE JIM WHO HAD become a “high roller” after his financial bonanza from the software program he sold to Microsoft had changed. As far as any of his friends knew, he hadn’t cheated on Patti until near the end of the almost fifteen years they were married. By the time he married Jean, he was middle-aged, drank more—Crown Royal, in particular—and they were concerned that he might also be doing drugs. Jean Huden used drugs. Moreover, Jim had begun to notice women outside his second marriage, but he didn’t elaborate on that side of his life with his island buddies.
    Huden’s high life couldn’t last forever. Like all advances in the brave new world of technology, Jim’s software program had run its course and was rapidly becoming obsolete.
    Jim Huden was lean but muscular, and now he wore his hair pulled back in a ponytail. Not truly handsome, he was what most women would call “hot.” Jim resembled actor Mickey Rourke ( before Rourke’s disastrous boxing injuries and bad plastic surgery). On the outside at least, Huden had become a “bad