Chapter 3
By Sunday afternoon, there were two more threads.
The first was a copy of the Nextdoor post pasted into a Facebook group called "Sunbelt Homeowners Watch" that had seventeen thousand members, most of them in other HOAs across three counties. The post title in that group was "HOA President Caught Approving Her Own Violation?" and it linked to a blurry screenshot of the television on the rolling cart.
The screenshot was not blurry by accident. Somebody in the room had taken it at an angle, from the back row, and had cropped it so only the television and the top of Pat Vance's head were visible. There was no timestamp readable. There was no mailbox number readable. The image showed a driveway and a fence and nothing that could be verified.
Under the screenshot, the caption read: "Her defense team will tell you this is a manipulated image. Ask yourself what the board is hiding."
Maggie read that one at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee she did not drink.
The second thread was on the neighborhood Facebook group itself, the one Pat Vance moderated, and it had been created by Pat's account at 2:14 p.m. Sunday.
"To the community: I want to address the events at the Saturday board hearing. There has been a great deal of confusion. The fine against 1427 Sandpiper Court was vacated at the hearing because the architectural review committee had previously approved a height exception for the property. The board takes its CC&R enforcement seriously and we will continue to do so fairly and consistently. I appreciate everyone's patience and I ask that we all be kind to each other as we move forward together. — Pat"
Maggie read it three times.
There was no apology. There was no mention of the second camera. There was no mention of page seventeen of the ledger or the fact that Pat had voted against her own fine in front of sixty witnesses. The post had eleven likes and two comments, both from the same three people who always commented on Pat's posts.
The Facebook group had two hundred and twelve members. Sixty had been at the meeting. The other one hundred and fifty-two had just read a post from the board president that made the whole thing sound like a clerical correction.
Maggie put her phone in her pocket and went outside.
She swept the pool deck. She checked the gate hinge. She scrubbed the plastic lounge chairs and stacked them against the fence. She did not check her phone again until four o'clock.
At four o'clock, Dave Pruitt called her.
"Ms. Ellison. Are you free to talk?"
"I'm by the pool."
"Somebody tried to access the camera system last night."
Maggie sat down on a lounge chair. "When?"
"Two-oh-four a.m. Failed login. It was the admin password reset request, three times, from a residential IP. Matched the IP of the Nextdoor account that went up Saturday. Same one that posted the screenshot to the home-owners group."
"Can you tell who it is?"
"No. The password request didn't go through. I have the system on two-factor and the code went to my phone. But I logged the attempt." He paused. "Ms. Ellison, the reason I'm calling is that I want you to know something before you hear it somewhere else. I got a call this morning from a lawyer."
"Whose lawyer?"
"Pat Vance's. Through her real estate broker. They want the footage pulled from the local drive and they want me to sign a statement that the camera system was offline for the entire month of April."
Maggie's hand tightened on the edge of the chair. "What did you say?"
"I said no. I said I'd answer any subpoena. And then I called my old captain at the sheriff's office and asked him what to do, and he said log it, print it, and don't talk to anybody who isn't on paper."
"Dave—"
"I've worked here eight years," he said. "I've had two board presidents tell me to delete footage before. I deleted it once, in 2021. I lost about eleven months of sleep over it and I told myself I wouldn't do it again."
Maggie sat in the sun and looked out at her own pool and the deck that was six inches shorter than Pat Vance's deck, and she felt something in her chest move — a heat she had not let herself feel in the four weeks since the violation notice had appeared on her door.
"Dave," she said. "I need you to do one more thing."
"Name it."
"Send me a copy of the login log. Not the logins — the failed attempts. The ones from that residential IP. And the metadata on that screenshot, if you can get it."
"I can't pull metadata off a screenshot from a Facebook group. That's on their end."
"I know. Just the login log."
"I'll have it to you tonight."
She thanked him and hung up and sat for a while longer, and then she went inside and opened her laptop and started writing an email.
To the county assessor's office. To the property records division. CC to Dana Reyes at the management company, and to her own attorney — a probate attorney she had used when her husband passed, who had said he would take a look if anything else came up.
The email was four paragraphs long. It attached the carbon copy, the March minutes reference number, the architectural review packet number, the timestamp of the second camera still, and the IP log from the Nextdoor account creation. It ended with one sentence:
"I am requesting that the county retain the original March 14 minutes and the camera system files pending the outcome of any investigation, because I believe an attempt was made on Saturday morning to use this community's public hearing as cover for a separate violation at 1439 Sandpiper Court."
She read it once, then hit send.
Then she sat back and thought about the empty chair at the head of the board table, and what she was going to do about it.
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