Bumper could help fend off rude awakening by police

There’s probably a better way to tell a working woman that you’ve found a bumper that might belong to her daughter’s car than to hammer on her door in the middle of the night. Actually, it was about 12:30 a.m. Friday when two CPD Blues visited Coeur d’Alene’s Kelly McAnally. She was in her underwear, still trying to shake off sleep, when she heard a voice demand something along the lines: “This is the police. Open up.” Kelly, an operating room nurse at Kootenai Medical Center, thought something might have happened to her son, Kenny, who’s serving in Germany after a stint in Iraq disarming IEDs (improvised explosive devices). Kenny, if you recall, was the young serviceman featured in a November Huckleberry who was helped by County Clerk Dan English to get a marriage license on the Veterans Day when the county recorder’s office was closed. Onward. Worried, and still in her underwear, Kelly opened the door to find the gendarmes outside, one with a night stick drawn. She listened in disbelief when the cops told her they’d found a bumper on the street and figured it belonged to the red Hyundai parked in her driveway. The car was missing a front bumper and belonged to Kelly’s daughter, Carlin. Kelly responded as you and I would at 12:30 in the morning: Hunh? Then: “Can I put my clothes on?” And then: “I’ll go get my daughter.” By then, Carlin was tromping up the stairs to investigate the commotion. And Kelly was wondering why the matter couldn’t wait until morning. Funny thing about all this? The bumper didn’t belong to Carlin’s car.