By Anon4

Murderer on Clay

            The Bay Area is a very large, diverse region.  People of all backgrounds, talents and personalities call the Bay Area home.  But what is even more important is the powerful tennis circuit that is present in this region.  There are many Division I universities in the surrounding area and many smaller tennis clubs and junior colleges.  In the Bay Area and in Northern California there is only one producer of tennis balls, called Penn & Wilson, named after Penn and Wilson Ball themselves.  These two brothers joined forces to create the biggest monopoly on the west coast. 

            Their tennis ball company is the only company in the Bay Area and Northern California for that matter, so they supply all the balls for every university, college, junior college, and tennis club.  They are able to charge pretty steep prices because they are the only producers of tennis balls.  For one can of balls, Penn & Wilson charges $4.35 which is equal to their marginal revenue.  This price exceeds their marginal cost of making the tennis balls.  On the east coast, where there are many different tennis ball companies, the average price for a can of balls is about $3.25, lower than the monopoly price. 

            Penn and Wilson Ball are living lives of luxury.  They both have clay tennis courts in each of their own backyards.  They don’t mind living these lives of luxury, because they know that their monopoly will not disappear.  In California, their company possesses almost all of the resources/materials for making tennis balls, and they are the only company that has the special dye for making the balls green.  This dye is very hard to find. 

            But on one late summer night, Penn, the younger of the two brothers, was found dead on his clay court while he had apparently been sweeping it after having just played.  Wilson arrived shortly after the police did, and it was concluded that someone murdered him.  About four different men were detained within a five-mile radius from Penn’s home.  Some men were under heavy suspicion.  They were all brought down to the police station for questioning. 

            The first man questioned was from a radical extremist group called “Citizens Against Deadweight Loss.”  He had long shaggy hair, and a fowl stench spewing from his clothes.  When questioned, he just rambled on and on about how much he hated that there was a deadweight loss from the tennis ball company because of their high price and low quantity.  The monopoly, to him, is not socially efficient, and this angers him and his affiliates.  When asked what he was doing around the area, he said that he was walking home from picketing near the Penn & Wilson Company headquarters, which happens to be near Penn’s home. 

            The second man questioned by the police was a man by the name of Walter Slazenger.  He had been out walking his pug dog, Spunky.  Walter, strangely enough, is also the creative mind behind a new, upcoming product that is very similar to the tennis ball that Penn & Wilson produce.  Walter created his own version of the tennis ball that will have more air in it for more height and bounce out on the court.  It will also be a different color ball, because Penn & Wilson own all the dye that is used to make them green.  Because his product is a close substitute to Penn & Wilson’s product, and it could possibly take away a lot of their sales, Wilson (Penn’s older brother) heavily suspects Walter as the murderer.

            Third, there was a pair of brothers named Mike and Bobby Bryan who were brought in for questioning.  They were from the nicer area of Los Alto Hills and were affiliated with the Stanford University tennis courts.  Their willingness to play tennis was very high as they were dedicated doubles partners.  (On the contrary, someone from a poorer neighborhood who uses park courts to play on has a lower willingness to play tennis because they don’t care to practice as much.)  Thus, Penn & Wilson had chosen to price discriminate and charge a higher price to the more enthusiastic players and a lower price to the less enthusiastic players.  Mike and Bobby Bryan, were passionate people, and were known around the area for being angry about having to pay a high price for their cans of balls.  So, they too were under suspicion and thus brought in as murder suspects. 

            After all the questioning was done by the police, Wilson, Penn’s brother came in to the police department.  He told the police that he found foot prints on the clay court near his brother’s deceased body.  After the police took samples of the prints, they matched them to one of the suspects.  The foot prints found on the clay court matched the shoes of Walter Slazenger, the man who was creating a similar substitute to Penn & Wilson’s tennis balls. 

            Walter, after being proven guilty, confessed that he was trying to destroy the Penn & Wilson Company by killing both brothers.  He wanted his own tennis ball corporation to have a monopoly; he did not want to exist alongside Penn & Wilson and have to compete with them.  So Walter did kill Penn and he was going to kill Wilson next.  By seeing the footprints left on the clay court, Wilson saved his own life.        

            Walter was put in jail under a lifetime sentence.  Wilson continued on in his family business, and changed the company name to Wilson.  That is how the tennis ball company Wilson came to get its name to this day.