In the third season episode Brother Can You Spare A Crime, McCormick reproaches Hardcastle when he discovers to his great surprise that the Judge has a brother, because at one time he asked Hardcastle that very question: “Remember that night when the power went out and you and I sat around all night with a bottle of tequila talking about when we were kids, and I asked you whether there were any more at home like you: any sisters or brothers?” So…they sat around all night with a bottle of tequila, did they?

This story represents my first stab at a stand-alone Hardcastle & McCormick story rather than an epilogue to a broadcast episode or a story-starter challenge response. As I recall it was inspired by my real-life, belated realization that there are organic limes and regular limes, and my subsequent attempt to pay the grocery store the difference.

Fans of Hardcastle & McCormick frequently lament that the program ran for just three seasons, but some of the fanfic writers who participated in the show’s Yahoo Groups forum agreed to contribute stand-alone stories for a hypothetical fourth season. In one of the third season episodes, McCormick is chagrined about vacationing with Hardcastle in the mountains of Oregon. When their misadventure is over Hardcastle swears that next year they’ll go to Hawaii. Well, here it is the fourth season, and here they are in Hawaii.