Orange Grove Betrayal

Pete agreed. "Yeah, I suspect that he has figured out that his scam with the bank has been blown."

Pete looked at me quizzically then. "Just out of curiosity, what were you going to do if you caught him?"

I thought for a second. "I'd hold him here while you called the cops and had him arrested."

"You understand," Pete replied, "that at this point, we don't have anything that you could charge him with. He was entitled to withdraw the money from the operational account, and his other potential crimes that we know of are based on hearsay. Anyway, he still outweighs you by 50 pounds. He also has a reputation locally as a brawler. You could end up hurt if you tried to physically restrain him."

I looked at Pete and smiled. "I guess you have a point there."

Right then, Pete's phone rang, with its distinctive 'Perry Mason" theme ring.

He turned to Hank and I and asked to be excused.

While he took the phone call, I said my goodbyes to Hank and waited for Pete to get off the phone.

Pete hung up and turned back to me.

"That was George. He told me which real estate agency and which agent 'sold' your grove, as well as who bought it."

"It was Andy Lopez and Associates agency, and Andy's daughter, Estella, who was the agent of record. And take a guess at who the buyer was?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Land Developers of Indian River. Jake Sterns."

"Son-of-a-bitch! He's approached us, what, three times in the last two years?"

"Four times, actually," Pete corrected me.

"So, what's the plan now?" I asked.

"I think that I should go back to my office and start writing some letters. First, a letter that will be sent certified mail, as well as emailed to Bruce, removing him from managing the grove. Then a letter to Andy Lopez informing him that the land sale of the grove was being done under fraudulent auspices, demand that it stop immediately and that they cancel all related activities, and then a third letter that we can hand out/send to anyone else who should be notified that Bruce is no long authorized to act on the grove's behalf. I'm thinking the payroll company, your employees, and so forth.

"YOU need to get back to your place and make sure all of the credit cards are cancelled — although he's probably maxed them out already — and deal with the employee payrolls."

"Okay, Pete. Call me later to let me know about any new info you pick up."

"Gottcha."

Chapter 2. Heading things off at the pass

Getting the crew on the grove paid wasn't that difficult. There were only five permanent employees: Bubba, two other men who did a variety of grove maintenance functions and two ladies who tracked the financial and production accounting, i.e. how many boxes of fruit we sold and to whom, how much did we pay the temporary crews who worked the groves, and the like.

I called up the payroll service people and transferred the money that was needed from an out of state account, and they would take care of the rest. I knew I had to do this quickly, since most ag workers tended to be living paycheck to paycheck. Our people were better off than most, but they needed their steady cash flow. I made sure they were taken care of, and they, in turn, had a surprising loyalty to us.

I opened up my laptop and saw that Pete had sent me drafts of the letters he was going to send out for approval. I signed off on them and Pete sent them out, officially severing our relations with Bruce McWilliam's grove management firm and letting the real estate people know that they had to shut the fraudulent sale down. The final letter, stating our position, could be sent out to all interested parties who had previously delt with Bruce, letting them know (if they were creditors) that they would be paid, and if they were customers, that they would still be sending their checks to our grove address.

We only had one grove credit card, and as Pete had predicted, it was maxed out. I stopped any additional charges from being made, but that was a case of closing the barn door after the horse was out. Luckily, the card had a limited credit amount, as well as a daily maximum that could be taken out as cash. I might be able to retrieve something out of it.

The immediate things that needed to be done, were completed.

Clair had left me a message that she was going out to dinner with several of her friends from the club, and that I was on my own for dinner.

Since I had a couple of hours by myself, I got a glass, put in a large cube of ice, and went to the liquor cabinet and poured myself a shot of Scapa — a single-malt Scotch from the far north of Scotland, in the Orkney Islands that was so light the flavor burst in my mouth, setting off all my taste buds. It always seemed to inspire my thought processes.

Sitting down in my recliner, I leaned it back, and reflected on Bruce and me growing up together.

For a long while, we did everything together. We captured that 4-foot alligator and put it into the reflection pool in front of City Hall. Another time we added laundry detergent and some dye into a fountain in front of one of the high-end hotels out on the barrier island. Both places put up surveillance cameras after that, so that ended our fun with fountains.

We sometimes would sneak into a grove and fire up one of the tractors or other pieces of equipment and move it from where it had been to somewhere else on the grove. We never damaged them or took them off the grove, that would have been theft not just 'mischief,' so we drew a line there.

It was with Bruce that I had my first alcoholic drink, my first (and only) cigarette. I was with Bruce the first time I got drunk and the first time that I smoked a joint. I learned a few lessons from those first times. Having puked my guts out that night, only to have my father, the next day, drag me out of bed, and make me work out in the grove all day the next day, I kept my drinking limited after that. Smoking the joint left me feeling detached from myself and paranoid, both of which were uncomfortable for me, so I passed on Mary Jane after that.

To be clear, not everything that we did as kids was bad. We were both Cub Scouts, we went out deep sea fishing with our dads, when they would charter a boat with a professional captain. We both got good, if not stellar, grades. I usually did significantly better than Bruce, but I wasn't going to be the class valedictorian. We did extracurricular activities, Bruce playing football and other sports, me playing in the band, cross country and track.

On the whole, I never thought that our earlier lives were likely to lead us into criminal careers. Events like this issue of the attempted sale of the grove, made me look back at some things with a more critical eye.

As we got older, Bruce and I went further out on a limb, being more daring, but closer to the line of illegal and dangerous. And I confess, although Bruce would come up with the ideas, I was willing to go along with him. Bruce was bigger than I was, and slightly older, and I knew that he was doing riskier things without me when I wasn't with him. He always seemed to get away with things. He was my closest friend, and I guess that I was always unconsciously seeking his approval.

After our other friend. Pete, joined us, he was maybe wiser than I was, because he would refuse to get involved with some of Bruce's crazy ideas. He would tell us that his ambition was to be a lawyer, and that people, even juveniles, who had a criminal record, would have a tough time getting into a top ranked law school. We accepted that and didn't blame him. We did continue to invite him along on our 'adventures,' as we thought of them. Sometimes he came, other times not. I understood Pete's long-term thinking about his life goals, but even though he did it with a laugh, Bruce would call him a wimp or a pussy for avoiding the worst of our stupid stunts.

When we were in our mid-teens, there were a couple of times when we went down to the harbor and took some absentee owner's boat out deep-sea fishing, without permission. I don't know if he had friends in the marina, but he could get keys to open the locked gates intended to keep people away from the boats. Bruce always knew when the owners weren't around anywhere to notice that their boats were missing for a day, and we always kept them clean and immaculate after we brought them back. We'd also refill the fuel tanks to where they had been when we took the boat, so that someone would discover that a boat that they had left fully fueled suddenly only had a quarter of a tank left. Similarly, if they had left the boat with less than a full tank, Bruce would carefully refill it just to where it had been. That should have been a red flag to me that Bruce was thinking a lot about how to cover up what was, in reality, a crime. Perhaps not a huge crime, but a crime none-the-less.

Worse, as I reflected, there were times when Bruce would have things that I suspected might have come from boats at the harbor.

Once we were out on Bruce's father's boat, and Bruce suddenly had a pair of binocs that I had never seen before. They were clearly expensive 'marine' binocs, not new, seemingly used, but in great condition. Bruce, being Bruce, always had an explanation ready: one of the grove owners had taken Bruce out on his boat, and when Bruce complimented him about his binocs, the owner gave them to him. Well, what could I say? It could happen, even if it wasn't the most plausible explanation. When you hear hoofs, think horses, not zebras.

Another time, I witnessed Bruce selling a handgun that I had never seen before to a known low life from Fort Pierce. When I quizzed him about THAT transaction, he told me that he was just being an entrepreneur, that he knew someone who wanted to sell one of their guns, and he also knew that the guy from Fort Pierce wanted to buy one. He was just making a dime when he bought the gun at one price and sold it at a higher price.

He was over 21 at the time, so a personal transaction like that was legal in Florida, but I still had my suspicions that Bruce wasn't above taking a five-finger discount on things, if he thought he could get away with it.

Hanging around with Bruce had some other advantages for a young guy like me. As a star player on our football team, Bruce seemed to have his pick of a lot of women.

One afternoon, after a game against the team from Port St. Lucie where Bruce had scored three times, including the winning touchdown, he asked me if I wanted to get some pussy. I think that he suspected that I was still a virgin and wanted to introduce me to the world of sex.

I told him, "Sure, who wouldn't want some good gash?"

He asked if I could get some booze, Tequila, I think he asked for, and then bring it to one of the local parks.

I lifted a bottle from my parent's stash (they weren't big drinkers and never noticed that it was gone), and he showed up with a couple of women.

I had already realized that Bruce had a taste for the Latinas, so I wasn't surprised when the two women who were with him at the park, Connie Lopez (no relation to the real estate Lopez's) and a gal named Eva, whose last name escapes me. Both were Latinas. Connie's family had escaped from Cuba, and as I recall, Eva's family were of Mexican origin; her dad worked on a grove and her mother worked in one of the packing houses. Connie was pretty well known around town, since she was one of the Varsity Cheerleaders at Vero Beach HS. Eva didn't go to the same school — she may have gone to the Catholic school that served Vero as well as Fort Pierce. Maybe she worked and didn't go to school. I wasn't interested and didn't ask.

Bruce always claimed that Latinas were the best because they had big tits, they knew they had to suck cock, and take cocks up their culos if they want to go out with the popular men.

We sat on one of the benches in the park a long way from where anyone else was sitting or playing, and we started doing some Tequila shots; the classic, lime juice on your hand, dipped in a plate of salt, lick it off and take a shot of Tequila. Of course, this wasn't high class, great Tequila. It was the stuff that my parents would use for margaritas or other mixed drinks.

After we'd knocked back most of the bottle, we drove over to one of the somewhat sleezy hotels, away from the beach, and I got a room. I thought about that, too; most of the time I bought the booze and paid for the rooms. I guess that Bruce was taking financial advantage of me even then.

Once in the room, Bruce put on a salsa music station on the alarm/radio, and the girls started dancing and stripping for us. It WAS really sexy, and as a virgin at that time, I almost came in my pants just watching them. I just managed to avoid THAT particular embarrassment.

Bruce told Connie to 'take care' of me and show me the ropes, while he got right down to business with Eva.

Naked Connie, pulling down my Bermuda shorts and underwear to my ankles, had her mouth on my cock in seconds. She sucked once or twice, used her hand to jack me, and in about 20 seconds flat, I'd come in her mouth!

Embarrassed as I was, Connie didn't seem bothered by it. She just wiped the edges of her mouth with her finger and sucked it clean and said, "Well, we got that one out of the way, and you didn't taste too disgusting either. So now I can start teaching you! I LOVE teaching a virgin how I like sex.,"

The first thing she did was to teach me that if I expected a woman to suck my dick, then it was only fair for me to give them an oral orgasm as well. She confessed that most of the time just pumping your dick into a woman's 'concha' until the man came, was not going to give her an orgasm. And unless a woman came too, a guy would not have women coming back for seconds. I've appreciated what she taught me about oral sex ever since then, as have all the women I had sex with after her.

She taught me to do missionary, doggie and cowboy positions that day (periodically sucking me off in between), and by the time she was finished with me, I was done. Completely done. Oh god, to be 18 again!

Looking back on it, I was really stupid with Connie, but I was lucky. She told me that I didn't have to worry about birth control (meaning a rubber) because she was on the pill. That was true. She also told me, and I believed her, that she was 'clean', meaning no STDs. That was a little dicey, because she did have pretty frequent sex with a lot of guys (most of the football team, at one time or another). But that must have been true as well, because I never picked up any of those little gifts from her.

Meanwhile, on the other bed, Bruce was doing Eva royally, front, back, top to bottom, and she seemed to enjoy it all. I enjoyed getting a glimpse of them fucking every now and again, while Connie and I were doing the same.

As we showered and put our clothes back on to leave, Connie held me back until after Bruce and Eva had left. Then she told me the sad reality.

"Dave, I want you to call me next week and find a time when we can fuck again. Now, listen to me carefully: do not 'fall in love' with me. A lot of men think that they are in love with the first woman who they have sex with. It isn't love, it is lust. And you will have sex with a lot of women, Dave. You are smart, handsome, well off, and I'll teach you how to have good sex. You don't want to be thinking that we are in love. I don't love you, and we have an expiration date. I like sex a lot, and I like to have sex with different men. So keep that in mind, and don't be butt hurt when we are done. I like you a lot, you're a good guy. Better than Bruce. Don't be insulted when I tell you it's over. Just find yourself a new piece to screw and enjoy being young and free!"

She was right, of course. We went out every weekend for about six weeks, and then she told me that she had taught me everything she could. We were done.

"You know, Dave, I'm really fond of you, and if I weren't such a puta, I would want to marry you. You always treated me like a lady. We went out on real dates, not like the cabrons I usually date. I would have been happy to just fuck.

"But let me remind you: I warned you that we had a limit on our time together.

"You won't have a hard time getting other women who want to try you out for size. I've been talking you up to the girls at school. Believe me, there are quite a few who want to try out your tongue and your cock. Don't be surprised if some of them approach YOU."

She laughed at that.

"Now, let me tell you something that you don't want to hear.

"Bruce is not really your friend. Maybe in the past he was, but Bruce is a user, and eventually, he will use you too. I'm not saying drop him — he can be fun to hang with, but don't trust him completely. If he wants something badly enough, he won't hesitate to stab you in the back."

I stayed in touch with Connie until I left for college, but we never 'dated' again.

Still, those words were ringing in my ears in light of what seemed to be happening.

Over time, I forgot about Connie's warnings about Bruce. I never noticed Bruce doing anything to me. And after a while, the trust rebuilds. I had no reason to distrust him. Plus, shortly after Connie talked to me, Bruce, Pete and I split up to go to college, and we only saw each other during our summers off. We all had jobs for the summers, so that limited our time even more.

Even after Bruce took over the grove management firm from his dad, everything seemed to be going smoothly. Either my dad or me was down checking on the grove on a frequent basis, and we had no idea what Bruce was doing on the other groves he managed.

~~**~~

Rather than go out and find a place to eat, I just ordered in a pizza.

It was still before 9:00 when Clair arrived back at the house. As she walked around, putting her purse and keys away, I asked her how her day went, where she went to dinner, who she saw — all of the normal things we would talk about towards the end of the day.

"Pizza? I think that my dinner was more exciting!" she told me, with a laugh. I was sure she was right.

Then she came and sat on the couch us close to me and asked the key question: "Well?"

I hesitated for just a moment before I answered her.

"I think that Bruce may find himself in jail this time."

My wife Clair was not originally from the Vero Beach area. She was originally from Southern California, south of LA, in Orange County.

Clair had no desire to go back to SoCal to live. Too many crazy laws, regulations, taxes were too high, all of those combined to make California a much less attractive state. It is still a beautiful state (once you get out of the cities), with great beaches and great wines, mountains to ski and hike in, and several wonderful National Parks. In short, a nice place to visit, but not a place you want to live anymore. Middle Tennessee fit her to a tee.

I guess that I was stuck with her! (My good fortune.)

She had come to Vandy for college, we met, started dating, fell in love and eventually got married, but she didn't know all the people who I had grown up with. She knew Bruce and his wife from our frequent trips to Vero.

"What has he done to get arrested?" she asked.

"That's the curious thing. I think that he has stolen around $25 thousand from the grove operations account and converted it to his own purpose. I think that is what they call 'larceny,' but that is complicated, in that he did have legal access to those monies, so long as it was for use in the groves.

"Something that it seems that he has done — and we should know within a couple of days for sure — is that he has sold farm equipment from the grove to buddies of his who own other groves. We think. But maybe, they can claim that he just lent the equipment to them for some legitimate reason. The Sheriff's department is on that now.