Ask Martha - The Shoplifter

Written by Robbie Cutler, Published on 1/15/2010

Crusher Davis finished his milkshake in one long slurping gulp. Since at 6 foot 6 and 265 pounds he was still growing, he had taken the habit of leaving the Chronicle office for his morning snack at the Temptee Diner. Sometimes, he thought, these milkshakes were the highight of the whole morning.

But that was not the case this morning. For he had received a number of emails to his Ask Martha personal column in the newspaper. He was getting something of a fan club, it seemed. Or rather, Martha was. The readers liked interaction, he had found. So he didn’t just wait for inquiries to come to him, people asking for advice. Sometimes he wrote a column in which asked a question, and his readers would unburden themselves to his email address.

That’s what he had done on Tuesday, and now on Thursday morning, there was a series of replies. He had just said, in his column, that everyone has faults, and we all have to deal with that. Maybe the experiences of some readers who have wrestled with a personal problem would help others who were now also going through a difficult time. Just tell your story, and what you did about it or didn’t do, and that experience plus Martha’s comment might help other readers in the same fix.

The first email was from Jimmy Bean. Crusher knew that the names given him in these emails were not real. That was all right with him. He also disguised in his column what he was told somewhat, in order not to embarrass people. That was just playing the game. The important thing was the advice and helping people.

Well, Jimmy’s girlfriend had returned a present that he had bought at Craft’s Jewelry Store for her birthday. It was a nice broach, the first jewelry he had ever bought, and it had cost him $20 on sale. Jimmy was really upset. The broach that she had worn at their last date was a swan, actually very nice. Jimmy had seen it at the same jewelry store and decided not to buy it. He remembered it had cost $40 when he had gone birthday shopping for her. He asked her what had happened and she got all red and then admitted that she had returned the other broach and gotten a credit for it, which really was almost as good as Jimmy buying this one in the first place. She even showed him the receipt.

“My foot!” Davis said. “That’s so inconsiderate. If he sticks with her, some divorce lawyer is going to collect some serious money in not too many years, that’s for sure.” He made some notes for his column and then turned to the second email.

This was from Linda, and she had a different problem. Her boyfriend forgot about her birthday entirely. He had made it worse by pretending that he had remembered it all the time. They had met for lunch and she was not a happy camper. He figured out why she was sad before she blurted it out, Linda gave him that. He then gave her this big line that she wanted to believe about his leaving her present on the counter of Mason’s Department Store. Just excuse him for a minute or two, and he’d make matters right. He could certainly talk nicely when he wanted to, Linda wrote, which was usually when he was in trouble. Maybe he was good at sweet-talking because he so often needed to be! Anyway, it wasn’t ten minutes before he returned with a package in a bag from Mason’s Department Store. And inside the bag was a very nice bathing suit - the wrong size!

Crusher Davis grinned. “He’s hopeless, that’s for sure. She’ll have some hard times with him. But maybe it’ll be worth it in the long run. He did after all try to correct his blunder, even if he told her a white lie while doing so.”

The third email was from a fellow named Walt that Davis was sure he knew, since he wrote that he worked as a ticket seller at the Acme Movie Complex. It seems that when Walt came on duty, after the bargain late afternoon movie, he had found a bag in the ticket seller’s booth. He asked Sam, ticket seller at the bargain movie, about it. One of Sam’s duties was to clean up the theater after each performance, a chore Sam hated. You were always getting a handful of used chewing gum, for one thing. Sam told him that a pretty girl he knew only slightly from high school had been so caught up in the movie that when she left the theater, she had left a paper bag on her seat. Sam had put it in the booth for safekeeping while he cleaned up the theater.

Well, Walt wrote that the bag contained eight DVDs - they were unmarked, but probably came from the Jones Movie Rental Shop, since it was the only one in town. He didn’t know if they had been stolen or not, and he didn’t want to get this girl into trouble. Neither did he want to help a thief. What should he do?

“Well, Sam, you’re probably the one in trouble now,” Davis thought. ”You should have returned them to her immediately. That is, if you saw her with the package when she came into the theater. Or if you weren’t sure, you should have returned them to the Jones Movie Rental Ship and let them handle it. Be decisive, man!”

The fourth email was from Lester, and he also had problems. His girlfriend was color-blind and wouldn’t admit it. Not that there was anything wrong in that, but she had gotten him a sweater that was the most awful shade of deep orange he had ever seen. She liked it and said that the salesgirl had assured her that the present would make a big hit. But Lester hated it. He could just imagine the kidding the other guys were going to give him when he wore the sweater, if he had to do so. She said she had thrown away the receipt. Lester thought she said this because she clearly didn’t want him to return the sweater. What did Martha think - could he return it?

“Well, you either turn in the girl friend or the sweater, my friend,” Davis thought. Then he began to think harder about the problems. Who was really involved here? It was a small town, and he knew everybody. Part time coaching at Centerville High made that a sure thing. Let’s take stock. Well, for one thing, there was only one color-blind girl at Centerville High, and that was Martha Hampden. The smooth talker that Linda was dating had to be Steve Kravitz. Jimmy Bean was writing about Jane Croydon, for sure. She was always looking over her shoulder for a better date. He could just picture her at the jewelry store swapping the broach.

He thought of Walt’s email. Davis couldn’t imagine whom Sam had in mind, the girl at the movie. But Sam was Johnny Martin. He was a loner, hard to approach. In fact, Davis had been at the bargain late afternoon movie, which was very lightly attended and had seen him on duty. In fact, Johnny Martin had sold him his ticket.

Davis was jotting a few notes when his friend Inspector Samuels came into the Tastee Diner. “Thought I’d see you here, Crusher. I wonder if you could give me a hand with this problem of shoplifting. There’s been a regular outbreak recently, and I spent most of the morning talking with businessmen on Main Street. Also it’s quite touchy, since nobody wants to make a false accusation, and ruin some youngster’s reputation.”

“Sure, Inspector. What do they tell you?”

“Well, at Craft’s Jewelry Store, they are missing a nice broach, that had been on sale. The last sales records show that Jane Croydon had brought in a broach last week, a different one, but they remember that she had looked closely at the missing one. It just seemed suspicious at the time. The trouble was that the sales clerk is new and doesn’t always get the sales receipts done properly.

“Then at Mason’s Department Store, there has been a problem with their on sale counter. It is close to the door, and not all of those for sale items have security tags on them - you know, those devices that go off whenever someone tries to sneak an item out the front door. The routine is for customers to take their items across the aisle, where a clerk will bag the purchase and write up the sale. But that doesn’t always happen as it should.

“And over at the Jones Movie Rental Shop, some employee has been ripping off the company, stealing DVDs and removing the sleeve identification that shows where they come from. They are pretty sure whom it is, but they don’t know who has been taking the DVDs out of the store.

“All that sounds like quite a crime wave for Centerville, Inspector. But I can tell you one thing. Once I tell you what I’ve learned as Ask Martha, one shoplifting at least will be solved.”