Deputy Cole wrote that down, word for word as best she could, and then she asked me to repeat the part about the contract, because she wanted to be sure she had it right. Rachel went to get a copy of the Bayline contract from her truck, and when she brought it back, Deputy Cole read the relevant pages carefully. She asked Rachel how long Bayline had held the association's tow contract, and Rachel told her since 2023, and that in all that time Bayline had never towed a car out of a private driveway in Harbor Pointe without the owner's signature, because that was the rule Bayline itself insisted on, and it was written into the contract for a reason.
Deputy Cole then asked about Carol's reaction. I told her Carol had denied it at first, and then she had called the Bayline office from the driveway, and the dispatcher had told her the same thing Marcus had told her, and Carol had still not backed down right away. I told her neighbours had filmed parts of it on their phones, George Raman and Helen Ortiz among them, and that nobody had raised a voice in anger except Carol, and that no one had been hurt, and the car had not been moved an inch. Deputy Cole nodded at that. She said it mattered that the record was calm, because calm records are harder to argue with later.
She asked Rachel for her own account, separately, while I made coffee in the other room, and then she asked me a few more questions about the fine letters and the board meeting. She asked whether Carol had threatened anything else, and I told her Carol had talked about daily fines and about further action, and that the second letter had followed soon after. She asked whether anyone else in the neighbourhood had received similar letters, and I told her I had heard talk, the kind of talk that goes around a street when people are worried but not yet sure they have a right to be worried. I mentioned George and Priya Raman, and Helen Ortiz, and Sam Whitfield, because those were names I knew well, and I said I thought there might be others, but I did not want to guess at names I was not sure of.
Before she left, Deputy Cole told us she was taking a formal statement, not making an arrest, and not promising any particular outcome. She said statements like ours helped build a file, and a file helped the solicitor's office decide what to do next. She gave us her card, and she told us to call her if anything else happened, if any more letters arrived, if anyone came to the house about the car, or if anyone tried to pressure us to drop the matter. Rachel walked her to the door, and I stood at the kitchen window and watched her car pull away, and I felt, for the first time since the tow truck morning, that what had happened on our driveway was now written down somewhere besides our own memories.
The audit began the following week, and it began quietly, the way most important things in a neighbourhood begin, with a letter. Olivia sent a formal records request to the board, listing what she wanted: the minutes for the past three years, the general ledger, the bank statements for the association's operating account and its reserve accounts, the tow contracts, and every towing invoice paid in the past three years. She sent it by certified mail, and she sent a copy to Alice Thornton as board secretary, because Alice was the person who was supposed to keep the minutes, and Olivia wanted there to be no confusion about who had received what.
For a few days, nothing happened. Then Walter Hines called Olivia's office and said the books were with the association's accountant, and the accountant was busy, and it would take some time to gather everything. Olivia told us that was not unusual, and that she would give them a reasonable time, but not an endless time. She set a date, two weeks out, and she put it in writing. She told me later that she had learned to put dates in writing, because dates in writing are harder to forget than dates spoken on the phone.
While we waited, Rachel started doing her own checking, the way a business owner checks her own books when something does not smell right. She went back to the Bayline office and asked her bookkeeper to pull every invoice Bayline had sent to Harbor Pointe Estates in the past three years, and every payment Bayline had received from the association in that same period. She did not tell the bookkeeper why, at first, only that she wanted a clean reconciliation. The bookkeeper, a steady woman named June who had been with Bayline since Rachel founded it, laid the two lists side by side on a long table in the back office, and Rachel sat with her for most of an afternoon, matching invoice numbers to payments, one by one.