Pearl white Lexus GX in the driveway. Guest house in the back where I could already hear a young man screaming at a video game. That would be Preston. 21 years old, 6'2, trust fund, no job, prime suspect on my case since day 71. Trail cam footage 2 miles away had caught a Range Rover Sport with a partial plate that led straight to his mother's LLC.
I closed the door, walked to my kitchen table, and opened my laptop, added a note to my case file, Holloway household priority, observation window opened, subject Preston confirmed in residence, mother Vivian confirmed HOA presidency, approach patient. Suspect underestimates neighbors. Then I made Cooper a grilled cheese because it was Saturday. Saturdays were still ours. Sunday morning I called the HOA main line and asked for a review of community camera footage from the night the fence was tagged.
The receptionist put me on hold for 8 minutes. When Vivian herself came on the line, her voice was smooth as poured cream. "Mr. Caldwell, I'm so sorry to inform you, but the community camera system suffered a technical malfunction Friday night. The vendor is coming out next week." That was the sixth time.
I've been keeping count. Six malfunctions in five months. Every single one on a night when property damage occurred on this side of the subdivision. I thanked her politely and hung up. Then I drove to the HOA office and asked to speak with Grant Holloway.
He was Vivian's husband, the vice president of Holloway development, the company his father-in-law had founded and Vivian had inherited influence over. Grant was sitting behind a mahogany desk in a room that smelled like lavender diffuser and cheap leather. He wouldn't look at me directly. He shuffled papers when I asked about the camera log. He mumbled something about vendor issues and IT contracts.
His hand shook when he reached for his coffee. I'd interviewed enough guilty men to know what that shake meant. Grant knew. Grant had always known. I drove home and installed four new trail cameras along my back fence line.
I made a point of doing it visibly in daylight. Climbed the ladder in a stained work shirt, dropped the drill twice, wiped sweat off my forehead like a man who didn't know what he was doing. Two of the cameras I mounted where anyone looking would see them. The other two I hid inside a bluebird house I'd built with Cooper the previous spring. Cooper watched from the deck.
"Dad, why are you taping cameras to trees like a nature show?" "Something like that, buddy." From the guest house window across the property line, I could feel Preston watching me. A few minutes later, my phone pinged with a Google alert I'd set up on his social media. His Instagram story was live.
"Bro, widdle work-cop wannabe next door is putting up nanny cams." "This dude thinks he's Batman. Look at him drop the drill again." He'd zoomed in on my backyard. He was filming me from his bathroom window.
I made a mental note. Add invasion of privacy to the file. That night, Vivian organized what she called an emergency HOA meeting. Subject line of the email, managing aesthetic deterioration from new residents. She didn't send me the invite.
She sent it to the other 40 homeowners on our block. I showed up anyway. The clubhouse smelled like burned drip coffee and floor cleaner. Vivian stood at the podium in a peach cashmere sweater, projecting slides from a laptop. Slide three was a photograph of my spray-painted fence with the caption, grief-driven vandalism attracts copycats, across the top in Comic Sans.
Her proposal fine me an additional $500 per week until I repainted the fence in a color approved by the aesthetic committee. I raised my hand from the back row. She saw me. Her jaw tightened for exactly half a second, then relaxed into a smile. "Mr. Caldwell, would you like to say something?"