“How many?” Evan asked.
“Twenty-seven.”
Rachel's eyebrows rose.
“Twenty-seven?”
“Over the last six weeks.”
Martin looked grim.
“That's more than we knew.”
Denise nodded.
“Some residents ignored them. Some paid what they thought were administrative penalties.”
“How much?”
“Thirty-five dollars here. Seventy-five there. One resident paid three hundred.”
Evan leaned forward.
“Where did the money go?”
“We're still tracing it.”
Julia Chen spoke through the laptop.
“That's important. But the bigger concern is how they obtained resident information.”
Denise turned another page.
“They knew about architectural applications. Fence approvals. Landscaping complaints. Parking disputes.”
Maya frowned.
“So someone inside the HOA is leaking records.”
“Possibly,” Julia said.
“Or someone had access to old records.”
Evan remembered Karen's call.
“Karen said the community had authorized enforcement resources.”
Martin sighed.
“She has been asking for access to our compliance files for months.”
“Did you give it to her?”
“No.”
Denise hesitated.
“But she was once a board member.”
Maya looked at her.
“Once?”
“Yes.”
“So she shouldn't have current access.”
“Correct.”
Evan asked, “Who does?”
Denise named several people.
The management company.
Board members.
The architectural committee.
The accounting office.
The legal firm.
The community's software administrator.
“Karen isn't on that list,” Evan said.
“No.”
That should have been reassuring.
It wasn't.
Because when Maya looked at the notices again, she noticed something Evan had missed.
“Dad.”
She pointed to one line.
“Look at the wording.”
Evan read it.
Unauthorized exterior modification visible from a common roadway.
He looked at the approval email for his cabinet.
Then at another fake notice.
The language was nearly identical to the wording in the actual architectural guidelines.
Someone wasn't guessing.
Someone had copied internal language.
Julia Chen leaned closer to her camera.
“That's enough for me to recommend a formal preservation request.”
“What does that mean?” Rachel asked.
“We instruct everyone involved not to delete or alter potentially relevant records.”
Martin nodded.
“Do it.”
Julia continued.
“And I recommend contacting law enforcement.”
Evan had already done that informally.
This was different.
“This may involve impersonation,” she said. “Potential fraud. Unauthorized access to records. Depending on what happened with the payments, possibly more.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Maya asked the question everyone had avoided.
“Why Dad?”
Evan looked at her.
“I don't know.”
But he had a suspicion.
Karen didn't care about a cabinet.
She cared about control.
The next morning, Evan found a second notice taped to his door.
This one wasn't about the cabinet.
It accused him of “unauthorized vehicle storage.”
His work truck had been parked in his driveway.
Exactly where the covenants permitted it.
The notice demanded $250.
At the bottom:
FAILURE TO COMPLY MAY RESULT IN COMMUNITY-LEVEL CORRECTIVE ACTION.
Rachel read it.
“What does that even mean?”
Evan didn't answer.
Maya did.
“It means they're trying to scare us.”
Then she noticed something else.
There was a faint fingerprint smudge on the bottom corner.
She took a photograph.
Evan called Officer Ruiz.
This time, Ruiz sounded less casual.
“Do not throw anything away.”
“I haven't.”
“Good.”