IIRC, he was having a legal dispute with the owner of that house which was under construction.
thanks, Hildy - yes. My intuition says it’s somehow important that the only person Wheeler asked for a ride to his home, was his old-time pharmacist friend, who offered to call him a cab instead.
Wheeler didn’t want to leave the pharmacy in a cab. Why? If he needed to get home, why did he care how he got there? Why would he ask the pharmacist for a ride anyway if he thought his car was in a parking garage 7 miles away? Why was it pharmacist or nobody? Wheeler went intentionally looking for that pharmacist on Dec 29th at 6pm, not wandering aimlessly.
Did Wheeler tell the pharmacist he had been robbed, or was he robbed after leaving the pharmacy, but before the parking garage at 7pm? If he was robbed after the pharmacy, why didn’t he return to the pharmacy? If he was robbed prior to the parking garage, why did he tell people the next day he had plenty of money and how did he get money to buy a cup of coffee? How did he make 7 miles in less than one hour between the pharmacy and the parking garage at night in rough weather?
Perhaps the pharmacist entered the cabby’s number into Wheeler’s phone so Wheeler could call a cab if he changed his mind later?? (not unusual for cabbies to leave cards in pharms for rx deliveries and such, and, if a leased cab, it would not be unusual to have a direct cell number for the cab since he’s paying a flat lease fee, not per call) or did Wheeler get the cabby’s number from the DuPont hotel?
OTOH, if Wheeler dropped his phone as he was planting rat traps across the street from his house before he left his house on the 24th to go to NYC, how could he have used that same phone to post to his alumni thread on the 28th or to call his attorney on the 27th or to email his friend at Atlantic Magazine on the 29th?
What could NCAA also stand for? or ‘absolute football’ ? Have they found Wheeler’s briefcase? a robber would just toss it into the nearest dumpster if nothing of value was inside...
and, finally, according to this link, the cab driver who’s phone number was in Wheeler’s phone said he saw Wheeler at least twice at the Hotel du Pont, where Wheeler alleged he was staying.http://www.examiner.com/criminal-profiles-in-national/john-p-wheeler-timeline-update-labored-but-lucid