Legacy

One never always knows about a neighbor, and this is a tale of some neighbors.  In a nice white bungalow lived Mary and David Johnson.  A middle age couple who were very nice and friendly.  Everyone in the neighborhood loved them.  They were very community active.

Next door to Mary and David lived one Dalton Smith, a middle age widower.  Dalton was also loved by his neighbors and community active as well. Dalton was an electronic genius and in his off time from his job he would tinker around in his basement trying to invent something unique yet useful.

His current project was a small electronic portable nose so to speak.  It could be dialed to check for a variety of substances at a fairly good distance and even through walls.  If it worked, Police Departments around the country would line up to buy one or several as they would be cheaper than a drug sniffing dog and required less training to use.  If it worked that is.  On paper he had it all worked out, theory seemed sound.  So he built a prototype.

It of course would need testing.  Now Dalton had found a couple of marijuana plants in the woods by accident and took a few leaves to dry out to help test his sniff detector.  He then destroyed the rest of the two odd plants like a good citizen should.

Dalton tried it on the few dried marijuana leaves at about fifteen feet and his device registered strongly.  Dalton was ecstatic about it Dalton put it in a shoebox and proceeded to leave the house to demonstrate it at a local Police Station.  Funny thing, Dalton in his excitement forgot to switch it off and when he reached his front porch the electronic sniffer went off dinging away the fact it had detected a large quantity of marijuana.  That got Daltons undivided attention real quick like.  As he moved it around and was pointing it towards Mary and Davis house; it really started registering of the charts almost.

Daltons mouth dropped open in disbelief,  he adjusted the dial for cocaine and the device went bananas telling him it was detecting a lot of that also, at Mary and Davis.  Dalton was pleased that his device appeared to work perfectly.  But the problem was he didn’t think it possible, not of Mary and David.

Dalton was reluctant to call the police without a visual confirmation of what his electronic nose was saying.  It might be a flawed reading.  Dalton knew he had to get in Mary and David’s house somehow to inspect the premises for anything illegal.  He didn’t want those good people to be embarrassed if he was wrong.

That would be hard to do as they never left the house together; one of them was always there. Dalton thought and thought about how to get them out.  He concluded that if they were truly bad drug dealers that they would also be greedy drug dealers.

Dalton recalled reading in the morning newspaper that someone had broken into a local Gold Buyers Store and made off with a number of gold bars that the Gold dealer had created by melting down old jewelry.  So Dalton went to the hard ware store and got a can of gold paint.  Then he went down into his basement workshop and cut up an old two by four piece of lumber into a number of brick shapes.  He painted them gold.

After the paint dried he took them up and made a pile on his kitchen table and took their picture.  Then he loaded the camera chip into his computer and printed out a picture. That picture he trimmed and stuck in his coat pocket.  Dalton then got an old pillow case. One that would show bulges real well.  He then put the painted pieces of wood into the pillow case and waited with it by his front door for Mary to come out for her morning flower watering routine,

Sure enough here came Mary out to water her flowers.  That was Daltons cue and he went out in plain sight of Mary. Dalton bent over and dragging the pillow case feigning great weight and muscle strain, opened his trunk lid on his car and made it look like it took great effort, heaved the pillow case into the trunk, deliberately dropping one phony gold bar in plain sight on the ground where Mary couldn’t miss seeing it.  Having given it about five seconds he grabbed the one he dropped and threw it in his car trunk quickly and then slammed the lid down.

Dalton looked around and then noticing Mary he nodded and said good morning.  Then Dalton took off slow headed in the direction of a well known country road.  The hook was set.

Sure enough as he checked his rear view mirror he noticed Mary and David’s van not to far behind.  After a few miles Dalton pulled alongside the road where there was a wood’s he was familiar with, including an abandoned well only a hundred feet in from the road.  Now that well wasn’t terribly deep, only about twenty feet and dry.  Dalton dragged the pillow case full of wooden gold bars over to the well.  He kept his back to the road and listened.

When he heard the van coming along slow he knew Mary and David would be gawking for all they were worth.  Then he heaved the pillow case into the well.  Of course Mary and David quickly sped on down the road to wait for Dalton to leave.

They figured that their nice neighbor Dalton was a burglar who had  stolen a lot of gold and they wanted it.

Dalton to complete setting the hook dropped the picture of the gold by the well.  Then he headed home knowing that Mary and David would inspect the site, see the picture and then go to a hardware store to get ropes and flashlights with an eye to grabbing the gold.  That of course would consume a couple of hours of Mary and David’s time, leaving Dalton plenty of time to inspect their premises.

Dalton slipped through their backdoor that they hadn’t bothered locking in their haste to follow Dalton.  Dalton on one hand was very disappointed in his neighbors when he found about two hundred pounds of marijuana and twenty pounds of cocaine.

He was however happy to know his device was very workable and even though it was in a shoebox when it first sounded off, it would be instrumental in providing a great public service by enhancing law enforcement abilities. Dalton also found near the drugs a pile of cash, about a three hundred thousand dollar pile of cash.  It accidentally left with Dalton who went home and called in an anonymous tip to the police.

By now Mary and David had been in the well and figured out they had been had, they weren’t totally stupid.  They headed home with great haste like scalded dogs.  As the got near the house they noticed all the police cars and immediately turned around to flee.  The police had anticipated that and two squad cars pulled across the road and blocked their escape.

Of course Mary and David never knew the three hundred thousand had gone south, but they were not sure of who turned them in.  They would have about thirty years to crab about it from separate prisons.

Yes, the three hundred thousand also performed a public service as it allowed Dalton the resources to start manufacturing the electronic drug detector.  Of course they were a big success and Dalton got filthy rich from it; but true to the fine fellow he really was, most of those riches went charitably back into the community.