"I will," I said. "I already started."
"Good," Alice said. "And Tom, if you need me to say what I found, in writing, I will. I am the secretary. Keeping the record straight is my job, even when it is uncomfortable."
I thanked her again, and I hung up, and I felt both steadier and more uneasy at the same time. Steadier, because I knew I was right, and because Alice, who kept the records, had confirmed it. More uneasy, because Alice's warning had been so plain, and because a woman who keeps duplicate minutes at home, in case the official ones go missing, is a woman who has already learned something about the people she works with. I put Alice's words in the back of my mind, and I went to find a folder, and I put the notice and the fine letter and a copy of my letter to the board inside it, and I put the folder in the drawer of my study desk, where I keep important papers. It felt like a small act, but it felt like the right act, and I have learned to trust that feeling.
Then Carol came back.
She did not come with a smile this time, or with the pretence of a courtesy visit. She came walking up the driveway in the early evening, clipboard in hand, with Walter Hines trailing behind her, looking uncomfortable and important at the same time, the way a man looks when he has agreed to something he is not entirely sure about. Carol stopped at the edge of the driveway, looked at the Porsche, and then looked at me, and her voice, when she spoke, was loud enough for the neighbours to hear, which I suspect was the point.
"Tom," she said, "I see the vehicle is still here. I see my notice has been ignored."
"Carol," I said, stepping off the porch, "I wrote to the board today. I asked for the rule. I asked for the minutes. I have not received an answer, and until I do, I am not paying a fine for a rule I cannot find in the covenants."
Carol's face tightened. "The board does not need to justify its rules to every homeowner who decides to question them," she said. "The fine stands. And if the vehicle is not removed, the association will take further action."
Rachel came out of the house then, and she stood beside me, calm and straight-backed, the way she stands when she is dealing with a difficult customer at her office. "What further action?" she asked, polite but firm.
Carol looked at her, and then she looked at the car, and then she said the words that changed the whole week, and the whole summer after it, and she said them clearly, so there would be no mistake about what she meant.
"If that car is still in this driveway tomorrow morning," Carol said, "I will have it towed."
The tow truck came just after first light.
I was already awake, the way I usually am, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee gone a little cold in my hand and the morning paper folded beside me, not really reading it. The house was quiet. Rachel was still asleep in the back bedroom, the one that used to be hers when she was a girl, and the street outside was the kind of quiet you only get in late spring before the heat settles in, birds arguing in the live oaks and a sprinkler ticking somewhere down the lane. Then I heard it, low and heavy, a diesel engine turning into Harbor Pointe Estates and slowing down, and I knew before I looked out the window what it was. I stood up and went to the front door in my slippers, and there it was, easing to a stop at the end of my driveway, a big flatbed with Bayline Towing and Recovery painted down the side in clean white letters, its amber lights off but its engine running, the way a truck runs when the driver is taking a minute to look at the job in front of him.
Carol Beckett was already there. I do not know how long she had been waiting, or whether she had slept at all, but she was standing on the edge of my lawn in a pressed blouse and dark slacks, her clipboard tucked under one arm like a shield, watching the truck with the satisfied look of a woman who believed the morning was about to go her way. She had told us the day before that the car would be towed if it was still in my driveway, and she had said it in that flat, official voice she used when she wanted a threat to sound like a rule. Rachel had laughed it off at the kitchen table, not unkindly, just the way a grown daughter laughs when a parent worries too much, and I had tried to laugh with her, but I had not slept well. I had spent half the night turning over the fine letter and the rule Carol claimed to be enforcing, and the feeling that something about the whole business did not add up. Now, looking out at that truck, my stomach tightened in a way I had not felt since my days on the fire department, that old instinct that tells you to get outside and get between a problem and the people you love before anything can happen.