Orange Grove Betrayal

(Comments at the end of the story)

Chapter 1 -- The Alarm Bell Rings

I looked at the caller ID before I answered the phone. It was odd enough to get a call on Sunday afternoon, a time my wife Claire and I set aside for family, but even more odd that it was my attorney in Vero Beach, Florida.

"Hey Pete! What's going on?"

"Hi, Dave. Look, I'm really sorry about calling you on a Sunday, but I heard something that I wanted to check out with you.

"I was out golfing this morning with my usual crew, including George; you remember my buddy George, don't you?"

"Sure. Nice guy, terrible golfer."

"Yeah him. These days, he works in real estate in town, especially ag properties. He told me that your grove had been sold to some developer.

"I told him that I hadn't heard anything like that from you, and I thought that you would have told me if you were making a major move like that."

I listened to Pete and was so shocked by what he had just told me that it took me a few moments to recover my wits.

"No, we most certainly have not sold the grove! You know we were thinking of developing it ourselves when the time came."

"That's what I thought. Listen, maybe George got it wrong. I'll do a little more checking tomorrow when everyone's back at work."

"I appreciate that Pete, but I think I'll grab a flight down to check it out. I haven't been down there for three months, which is longer than usual. No matter what, I should go there anyway, just to keep an eye on things."

I didn't know why, but I had a bad gut feeling about this.

We said our goodbyes, and I called out to Claire,

"Claire, do you want to come with me to Vero? Pete heard a rumor that I need to check out."

We got the kids off to stay with the parental units (mine — Clair's still lived in California) for an as-of-yet undetermined amount of time. They didn't mind. They got to spend time out on the ranch with their grandparents, who spoiled them rotten!

Two hours later we had tickets to Orlando and were packing our bags.

~**~

We flew into Orlando the next morning and I picked up a rental car to drive down to Vero.

I had tried to call our grove manager, Bruce McWilliams, to send someone to pick us up, but he hadn't answered his cell phone. That wasn't that unusual; he was a big deep-sea fisherman (as was I) and might be out of cell range for a couple days if they had gone to one of the islands. Maybe he just forgot to recharge it.

Before I left, the night before, I did get on-line and checked out the bank accounts. The smaller account that Bruce had complete access to had been cleared out and only had $50 bucks left in it -- the minimum that would keep the account open and not trigger an automatic message to me. But we only kept $25 grand that account for day-to-day operations, unless there was a specific need. Our larger account, where we usually kept about $100,000, Bruce didn't have access to. I locked all the money in that account up so that no withdrawals could be made. Just in case. If this turned out to be a 'much ado about nothing,' I could remove the hold without anyone (except the bank) being any wiser for it.

As I drove down I95 past Cape Canaveral, Melbourne, to Vero, I thought back on my early life there on the Florida east coast.

My Grandfather had originally bought the grove property in the 40s. The land was cheap (he bought it during one of the 'bust' periods in Florida real estate, notorious for its 'boom and bust' cycles) and he bought a section — a square mile — of land about five miles inland from the Indian River lagoon. He built a typical sprawling Florida concrete block house (to fend off the termites) and planted the grove.

By the time I came along, Gramps and Grammy had moved to one of the new retirement villages, and our family moved into "the ranch house," as we called it.

The grove itself was about half grapefruit and half orange varieties. We had white, pink and red marsh seedless grapefruit, and Hamlin, Temples, Pineapples (yeah — a variety of oranges called 'pineapple'!) as well as the usual Red Navel, and Valencia oranges. We had a couple of rows of mandarin oranges, and a couple of Duncan seedy grapefruit as well, but those were just for local consumption. The varieties we grew meant that we had product from September (the Hamlins) to June (Valencias.)

I didn't pay too much attention to things when I was growing up, like most kids, so I didn't follow my elders learning the details of how to grow the citrus. I guess I absorbed a lot of it thru osmosis anyway.

Vero was a great place to grow up at the time: sandy beaches, sunny skies, plenty of tourist girls in brief swimsuits and lots of mischief to get into.

Most of my friends were into surfing. I thought it was okay, but I wasn't big on it. I did love going out with the guys on boats from the Sabastian inlets, 10 or 20 miles out, deep sea fishing.

I grew up with a bunch of local boys who were pretty much like me, sons of families who owned citrus orchards.

We learned how to drive tractors, how to spray the trees with pesticides and fertilizers (these were the pre-organic days) and help our folks out during the harvest. That was not picking, we had crews that came in temporarily for that, but with forklifts we would pick up the 60/70 or 90 box crates and stack them up on semi-trailers to take the fruit to the processing plants (for juice) or to the packing plant where they were cleaned and boxed and shipped out as fresh fruit.

Bruce McWilliams and I were especially close. His dad didn't own a grove, but he managed several groves for absentee owners. Bruce was planning on going to the University of Florida in Gainesville to get his Ag degree.

Don't make fun of a modern Ag degree — it is half business, half chemistry and biology, half marketing, and half soils and animal husbandry. That's in addition to all the general ed classes. In other words, an ag degree covers a lot of material. The modern farmer is taking on a difficult, albeit rewarding, task.

Anyway, Bruce's family moved in when we were in 6th grade, and from then on, through high school, he and I were best friends. We did the beach; we discovered the highs and lows of too much to drink. We double dated to the proms and took our dates virginities the same night. We shared a lot of experiences.

Bruce was taller than I was by about four inches until our junior year. He'd reached his full height by the time we were freshmen, but in our Junior year, I caught up with him, and we were looking eye-to-eye.

He was not only taller in the early years, but he had more heft. I was lean and wiry; Bruce was stocky and heavily muscled. While I ran cross-country and track, Dave was played center on the football team and catcher on the baseball team. Bruce's activities made him one of the big men on campus. Mine, not so much.

Despite the differences, we remained close.

The third member of our little group, Pete Andrews, didn't join us until eighth grade. Pete, now my lawyer, was the quiet one of the team, a bit more studious than Bruce or me. Pete lived about half-a-mile away from us with his parents in a home closer to the beach. He was an only child, and all he ever wanted was to be like his dad, who was a lawyer. Pete was one of the geeks in chess club, but he and I met in band, where he played trumpet, and I played clarinet and sax.

He soon joined Bruce and me having fun and getting into the kind of troubles that would get you arrested today but were considered to be normal teenage mischief back then. The cops back then might bring us home for our parents to give us a good whooping, but they wouldn't criminally arrest us. Of course, we weren't robbing convenience stores or shooting at people either. Catching a small (like four foot long!) alligator and putting it into the pool in front of City Hall? Yeah, we might have been the perps on that one.

My time in Vero came to an end, though, at the end of our senior year.

The grove was developed and running smoothly, so the family hired Bruce's dad to manage the grove. Part of his compensation was that the McWilliams family lived rent free in the house on the grove. He continued to manage other groves as well, so he had a profitable little business going.

My mom and dad were still coming to town at least six or eight times a year for a week or more, keeping an eye on things, and they still enjoyed their friends and the area. In fact, they bought a beach house close by because they stayed there so often. Later on, I used the beach house when I was back in town. My wife and I came there after we got married, using it as a 'second home.' Claire loved it there and had her own circle of friends in town who she played tennis and socialized with at the country club when we were around.

As I was saying, after my senior year ended, we brought on Bruce's dad to manage the operations on the grove, while my dad (in partnership with my grandfather) bought another two sections of land, this time in middle Tennessee.

My dad's true specialty was raising certified Black and Red Angus cattle for beef. He and Mom moved up to Maury County, south of the county seat of Columbia, and set up their ranch.

Truthfully, Bruce, Pete and I wouldn't have stayed together anyway.

Bruce went off in the Fall to the University of Florida in Gainesville, Pete went to Duke in North Carolina, and I went to Vanderbilt, in Nashville. Bruce, of course, was an Ag major, Pete was doing political science as a pre-law, followed by his law degree from Wake Forest, and I took an econ degree, followed by my MBA. Vanderbilt doesn't have and undergrad business program, but the "Owen School," their business grad school, is highly ranked.

Nevertheless, we all stayed in touch.

With Bruce, keeping in touch was easy, since his dad had taken over managing our grove. Any time that we came down to check on things, which was fairly frequently, the odds were that I would see Bruce.

Eventually, Bruce's father retired, and Bruce took over the business. He was a respected grove manager, a seeming rarity in the world of scoundrels that made up the Florida citrus industry.

Pete and I didn't see each other, but we communicated often and would see each other when school was off. After law school, Pete returned to Vero and became our lawyer. Mostly we saw him for social events; he promised not to charge for those.

When we reached Vero, I dropped Clair off, where she would unload our luggage (not much, since we kept clothes and sundries in both houses) and start arranging get-togethers with her local friends.

I continued driving to a local chain restaurant, where I had arranged to meet with Pete.

Pete was already seated when I arrived. He waved to me as I came in and I walked over and sat down.

"Well, I haven't spoken directly to George this morning, but the word is amongst the real estate folks is that one of the development companies has purchased the grove."

"Oh, shit! Well, we will put a stop to that today. The salesperson probably hasn't even submitted the paperwork yet."

"And by-the-way, Pete, the grove operations account was cleaned out to the minimum allowed last Friday. I put a lock on all the other accounts when I went on-line to check on the status."

"Good. I would have suggested it myself, if you hadn't done it already. But a quick stop at the bank might be in order, as well as the real estate company," Pete replied thoughtfully.

Right then, if the morning wasn't already in full crisis mode, in walked 'Big Bubba" Smith. He spotted us and began walking, with great purpose, towards us.

"Hey, boss man, what in the hell is going on?"

I knew that I wasn't going to like what I was going to hear.

Bubba, as he was known, had grown up in Fort Pierce, just down the road from Vero. He was a tall, spare, chain-smoking black man, who had run grove operations in our neck of the woods for twenty years. He picked up the nickname 'Bubba' because people thought that his face looked like old the pro-football player 'Bubba' Smith. Anyway, about half the big guys in the South are nicknamed 'Bubba.' I think that his real first name was 'Dwaine,' but once someone called him 'Bubba,' the name stuck.

Bruce originally hired Bubba, because in addition to knowing how to run a grove and grow citrus, he was a great tractor and equipment mechanic. He could fix almost anything: he could weld broken parts, a very common need with farm equipment, and have us back up and running PDQ.

I stood up, took Bubba's hand and shook it before we sat down. I motioned the waitress to bring another cup of coffee, which showed up almost immediately.

"So, Bubba, why don't you tell ME what the hell is going on."

"Well, first off, Bruce told me you were thinking of selling the grove but told me not to say anything to anyone because it was still up in the air. But more important to the grove operations, he sold three of the tractors and left us with only the old Deitz to use. And worse, last Friday came and went and no paychecks showed up."

"Shit," I said.

Pete added, "No kidding."

Bubba just sat there nodding his head.

I took me a minute to think things through.

"Okay, Bubba. I'll go to the bank and get pay checks for you and the crew. I need to go there anyway. Bruce is lying through his teeth if he told you we were selling the grove.

"Do you know who he sold the tractors to?" I asked.

"I'm pretty sure I do. I think it was to a couple of his buddies, and there was another guy who came by who must have been looking over the third tractor," he replied.

"Good. Then why don't you call the grove theft unit at the Sheriff's department (yes, there is a dedicated unit to deal with grove and farm theft), and we can file a complaint. Tell them what you told me about Bruce 'selling' the equipment, and that you were suspicious and checked with me and discovered that he was stealing and selling grove equipment without authorization. Tell them that they can call me for confirmation, and I'll be happy to sign off on the complaint."

"Glad to, boss. Damn, that John Deere only had about 20 hours on the engine! Practically new."

He tossed down the rest of his coffee and got up to get the ball rolling.

Now I had another problem: getting paychecks for our crew. I would have to call up our payroll service (luckily a local firm) and get them the money to write the checks, with all of the correct deductions and taxes withheld. I could take of that later in the day. First, I had to stop at the bank.

When Pete and I arrived at the bank, I asked for the manager. Hank (Henry) Wright was another local guy — not in our class, just a few years behind us. We all knew him.

Hank came charging out from his office up to Pete and me.

"Hello Pete, hello Dave. Boy, am I glad to see you, Dave! I've been trying to call you all morning."

"Let me guess, you are wondering about the lock down I put on the accounts?"

"Sure am. But let's go into my office to talk. No need for everyone in the world to know your business."

"Agreed."

Pete and I followed Hank into his office, and he closed the door behind us. His office had glass windows looking out onto the parking lot on one side and looking inwardly into the bank on the other two. The wall behind him was solid block. No one sneaking up on Hank.

Hank first offered us something to drink, water, coffee, or a soft drink. We told him we had just come from eating and were still good.

"Is it all right for me to talk to you about you accounts in front of Pete?" Hank asked, for confirmation.

"Yeah, sure. He is our lawyer here in town, and he is helping me to get a handle on the situation."

"Okay.

"To start, Bruce came in last Friday and took all but the minimum needed to keep the account open for your operations account. He is a signatory on that account and is entitled to do that. I asked the teller after he'd made the withdrawal whether he had said anything about what he was using the money for, just out of curiosity, not because I was concerned or anything. She told me he hadn't said anything about it, but he was friendly as usual, but said he seemed like he was in a hurry.

"Then this morning he came in with a Power of Attorney, signed by you, and wanted to make another large withdrawal from your main account — where he is not an authorized signature. June, the same teller he'd seen on Friday, told him she didn't have authorization to make the withdrawal, and she asked me to handle it.

"I looked up the account and saw that you had put a lock on it last night. But I didn't mention that to Bruce.

"Instead, I asked to see the power of attorney document. He didn't blink an eye; he gave me a notarized copy of what he said was a POA giving him the authority to access the account. He told me that you and he were doing some preliminary evaluation towards developing your grove to sell to a home builder, and that it would require outside consultants and testing to see if it met state and county requirements. If so, then, he implied, you would start getting water and electrical lines extended to the property.

"I mean, his explanation wasn't unrealistic. But I knew that you had accessed the accounts and locked them down. I told him that I would need to make a couple of copies of the POA. He seemed a little hesitant about that, but I told him I couldn't move on unless I had the copy. I would give him the original back as soon as the copies were made. He turned it over to me, and I asked June to make a couple of copies, and after she was finished, I gave him back the original.

"I guess he expected that would be all and he could make an immediate withdrawal. I explained to him, that just like the teller, I wasn't sure of how to do the transaction based on a POA, and I would need to call the home office and get someone there to explain the details to me. Then, I said, he could come back this afternoon to complete the transaction.

"By then I was rather suspicious, and after he left, I pulled out the signature cards that I had seen you sign myself. When I compared your signature on the card there were two things that struck me: the signature on the supposed POA looked like someone had traced it from another document. You know we get a little training on how to spot phony signatures, and this had the hallmarks of one. The letters weren't done in long smooth lines, and there were little places where the letters didn't line up correctly — like someone had copied one letter at a time. The real kicker, though, was something that I recalled after I looked at the original signature card: your signature included your middle name, and this document only had your first and last names on it.

"You're right, Hank. And quite observant. I always used my middle name on legal documents. Isn't that right, Pete?"

My middle name was "Wellborne", after an old family surname on my mother's side of the family. I never used it for anything EXCEPT legal documents, so outside of Pete and my family, not many people knew that.

Right then, I looked to my left, out the window and to the parking lot, and saw what I was fairly sure was Bruce's truck. He had a two-year old Chevy 2500, 4X4, with a special silver metallic paintjob, that made it easy to identify. He seemed to slow down in the parking lot, until he arrived behind Pete's car, and seeing Pete's vanity plate "LAWPITBULL", he took off like a rabbit.

I stood suddenly, "Son of a bitch, that was Bruce, just now in the parking lot!"

I ran out of Hank's office and through the front doors into the parking lot, followed closely behind by both Pete and Hank, but all we could see was a fleeting glimpse of the back of Bruce's truck as he fled.

"Well," I turned to Hank and said, "the good news is that I don't think he will be back any time soon."