I called Daniel after the fifth notice arrived.
"Don't pay a dime," Daniel instructed over the phone. "Log every letter. Save every envelope with its postmark date. Take high-resolution photos of the truck parked on the driveway every single morning with a newspaper showing the date. Let her dig her own grave."
For two weeks, I documented every single action. I installed a discreet, high-definition 4K security camera under the eaves of my roof, positioned specifically to monitor the truck and the entire front driveway.
The trap was set. It didn't take long for Karen to walk into it.
The Midnight Key and Checkmate
On a Thursday night around 1:30 a.m., my phone buzzed on my nightstand with a motion alert from the driveway camera. I opened the live feed immediately.
There, rendered in crisp night-vision detail, was Karen. She was wearing a dark windbreaker, holding a heavy brass key in her right hand. She walked up to the passenger side of my Ford, looked around to ensure the street was empty, and dragged the key across the custom paint job from the tail light all the way to the front fender. The metallic screech was picked up clearly by the microphone.
My heart pounded with anger, but I didn't run outside. I watched her walk back to her house with a twisted, satisfied grin, completely unaware that her entire walk had been recorded in high definition and saved to a cloud server.
At 8:00 a.m. the following morning, Daniel arrived at my house alongside two uniformed county sheriff deputies—not city police, but county officers dispatched directly through the state attorney's office.
We walked across the street and knocked on Karen's front door.
When she opened it, holding a mug of coffee, her smug expression lasted for about two seconds before she saw Daniel, the deputies, and the iPad in my hands.
"Can I help you?" she asked defensively.