I am not listing those names to embarrass anybody, and I hope none of them would mind being remembered this way, because they did nothing wrong. They paid, or they partly paid, or they argued and then gave in, because they wanted to live quietly on a quiet street, and because a fine letter from your own association feels like something you are supposed to obey. Olivia counted them carefully, and when she had finished counting, with the Ramans and Helen and Sam included, there were thirteen households in all. Thirteen households that had been fined, or charged, or pressed for money, under rules that did not hold up when Olivia checked them against the covenants, or under charges that did not match the work that had actually been done.
Thirteen. I said the number aloud on the porch that night, to Rachel, and she nodded slowly. It was not a number that felt like an accident. An accident happens once. A mistake happens twice. Thirteen households, over several years, with similar letters, similar fine amounts, similar pressure to pay quickly and quietly, felt like a system, and systems have somebody running them. Olivia did not say that out loud yet, not in so many words, but I could see it in the way she was organising her files, putting the households in order, matching each fine to a date, and each date to a payment, and each payment to a gap in the books.
The gate-reserve transfer fit into that picture too, though Olivia was careful to keep the pieces separate until she could prove how they connected. The fifty-six thousand dollars had not gone to the gate. The duplicate towing payments, forty-three thousand dollars, had not gone to Bayline. The fines from thirteen households had gone into the association's accounts, and from there, some of the money seemed to have gone out again in ways that did not match any work anybody could point to. Olivia hired an independent accountant, a quiet man named Mr. Ellis, who had done audits for small towns and school districts and who did not get excited easily, to go through the association's books properly, line by line, and to tell her what the books actually showed, not what anybody said they showed.
Mr. Ellis started by asking for the same records Olivia had asked for, and that was when Walter Hines began to stall in earnest.
At first, Walter's stalling looked polite. He returned Olivia's calls, which was more than Carol did, and he spoke in a reasonable tone, the tone of a retired bank clerk who knows how to make a delay sound like a procedure. He said the books were with the association's accountant, and the accountant was preparing year-end work for other clients, and the association would have to wait its turn. Olivia thanked him, and she wrote down the accountant's name, and she called the accountant herself the next day, and the accountant told her, politely but plainly, that he had not seen the association's full books in months, and that what he had received most recently was a summary, not the underlying records. Olivia wrote that down too, with the date and the time of the call, because she wrote everything down with the date and the time.
When Olivia told Walter what the accountant had said, Walter changed his explanation. He said the books were not with the accountant after all, or not entirely, and that some of them were in boxes, in a storage unit, because the clubhouse office was small and there was not room for everything. He said he would need to go through the boxes himself, to make sure nothing private was included, before he handed anything over. Olivia asked which storage unit, and whether Mr. Ellis could go with him, to save time, and Walter said he would have to check with the board first, and that the board would need to vote on it, and that the next board meeting was not for several weeks. Olivia pointed out that the board could call a special meeting for a records request, and that it had called a special meeting very quickly indeed when it wanted to discuss my daughter's car. Walter did not answer that directly. He said he would look into it.
A week passed, and then another, and the records that arrived were still partial. A few more bank statements came, but they were summaries again, not full statements, and the pages that would have shown the transfers in detail were missing. A few more invoices came, but they were the same invoices we had already seen, copied again, a little fainter the second time. The minutes for March arrived, finally, and they did not mention a luxury vehicle rule at all, which was consistent with what Olivia had found before, and which made the twelfth of March date look thinner every time somebody looked at it. The minutes for the emergency board meeting arrived too, and they were short, and they did not record Alice Thornton's notes, or the discussion about the tow, in anything like the detail Alice remembered. Alice, when Olivia spoke to her quietly, said only that she kept her own record, and that her record was safe, and that she would know when the right time was to share it. Olivia did not press her. She told me later that a witness who is ready is worth ten witnesses who are rushed, and that Alice would speak when she was ready, and not before.