The Case of the Fleeing Fuel

Everyone in town knew that to get the cheapest gas, you had to go to the Gus N’ Sip, a place run by a brawny man named Gus. And since everyone in town knew this, the line for the pumps was always so long that two Starbucks were built on either side of the station.

So it was quite a shock when I turned the corner in my ’98 Honda Civic to find the station as deserted as a kissing booth manned by Dick Cheney. As a trained detective, I quickly deduced the reason behind this mystery: Gus jacked up his prices by $5 a gallon! Out of habit, I pulled up to find Gus himself at the pump.

“Ace,” he said, nervously sweating. “You’re my first customer all day.”

“I can see why,” I said. “Your gas prices are so high, it’d be cheaper to mail my car. What gives?”

“I had to raise prices! It’s the only way I could afford my new employees.” He gestured to the other side of the pumps, where I spied two armed guards, a German shepherd and a stocky woman in a power suit.

“Who’s the suit?” I asked.

“She’s a small loans manager for those who want to gas up their SUVs.” Judging by the lack of SUVs or even Prii (that would be more than one Prius) at the station, I had to ask, “Why do you need all those people?”

“You see,” he said, “An employee of mine inadvertently changed the settings on a point-of-sale terminal at the gas pump so that it appeared that the credit card transaction was approved, when, in fact, the transaction never left the terminal. For six months, customers using Visa cards were never charged for their purchases, nor were there any signed receipts from which to collect monies due. In the end I lost more than $65,000!”

I suddenly felt so bad for Gus that I pulled out my wallet to buy gas. “I have Visa, MasterCard and American Express…which one do you take?”

“At these prices, you’re going to need all three.”

“Wait,” I said. “Did you report the loss to your insurance carrier?”

“Of course. They denied the claim under the ISO BOP Special Property Coverage Form, citing, ‘We will not pay for loss or damage to…property that has been transferred to a person or to a place outside the described premises on the basis of unauthorized instructions.’ How do you like them horse-apples, Ace?”

“I think we’re talking horse-apples and oranges here.”

What fruity idea was Ace biting into?