Chapter 4 : The woman on the phone was named Tanisha McElroy and she was the permit clerk for the county office, and she was not in the mood for a long conversation.

"Lot 6, Sunridge Estates," she said. "You're the owner?"

"No. I'm the owner of Lot 41. I'm asking about Lot 6."

"Why are you asking about Lot 6?"

"Because the structure has been listed as pending in the community's management company file for eight months and the board is trying to close out its minutes."

There was a pause. I could hear her typing.

"Lot 6 has an unpermitted accessory structure," she said. "One thousand one hundred and forty square feet under roof, two-story, wet bar, covered structure, attached to a deck that does not have a permit either. That's the cabana you're describing?"

"Ten by sixteen."

"Ten by sixteen was the first application in 2022," she said. "It was denied because it was inside the setback. The applicant then filed a second application under a different description and it's been sitting at intake since August. There's no active permit."

"So the structure is unpermitted."

"The structure is unpermitted, and it appears to be occupied as a covered entertainment space, which triggers the setback issue. We have a tag on the file. The tag has been open for two hundred and thirty-four days."

Two hundred and thirty-four days. That was longer than the eight months on Marcus's spreadsheet. That meant the tag predated the first pool light cycle. That meant Pat had been sitting on this problem longer than she had been running her after-hours pool parties, and that the board's "minor item" at the August meeting had been the third or fourth time she had walked that line.

"Would somebody from the county normally follow up on a tag like that?" I asked.

"We do a courtesy call at ninety days and a written notice at one hundred and eighty," Tanisha said. "Then we wait on the applicant."

"You're waiting on the applicant."