None of those explanations accounted for the fine. None accounted for a neighbor reporting me as a trespasser on my own property. And none accounted for the fresh turkey in a refrigerator that had been running on my newly transferred electricity account. A temporary favor becomes something else when the person receiving it has started punishing the owner for wanting it back.
I went through the rest of the house more carefully after that. The living room was empty except for my boxes. The upstairs bedrooms were empty, too, and the crawl space showed only ordinary dust and old insulation. The backyard gate had a latch I did not recognize, and a flattened strip of grass led from the neighboring fence toward the garage wall. I noticed impressions in the soil where something heavy had once stood. I made a note to look into it later.
At four that afternoon, I heard my garage door opening.
I was in the kitchen unpacking a set of plates, and for a second I thought the sound came from a television outside. Then the motor caught its familiar rattling rhythm, and I watched from the front window as the door finished lifting. A man in his sixties stood at the opening wearing cargo shorts, brown sandals, and a faded baseball cap. He had a small gray remote in his right hand and a set of keys hanging from his belt.
He walked into my garage without hesitation, climbed into the golf cart, and turned the ignition. I went outside while he was reversing toward the driveway. He looked up, smiled, and raised a hand as though I had been waiting there to see him off.
"Afternoon," he called. "You the new caretaker?"
I had spent the entire morning arranging words in precise legal categories. That question emptied every category from my mind for a second. "No," I said. "I'm the owner."
He took the information in with an agreeable nod. "Well, good to meet you. I'm Dale. Trish handles the calendar, but I usually take the cart on Thursdays. Needed it a little early this week."
"Dale, why do you have a remote to my garage?"
He looked down at the gray plastic device as though noticing it for the first time. "Trish gave everybody one. Well, not everybody, but most of us. The garage belongs to the association. Has for years."
"No," I said. "It doesn't."
He studied my face and seemed to notice that I was not joking. Then he glanced toward Patricia's house next door, and I watched the first trace of uncertainty pass through him. The golf cart engine was running. He had both hands on the wheel, and the small remote rested in his palm.
"You might want to talk to her," he said.
"I intend to. But first I'd like to know whether you were told this was an association-owned building."
"That's what Trish said." He frowned. "I never had any reason to think different."
There is a moment in almost every dispute when someone tells you something that will matter later and has no idea he has done it. Dale had just told me that Patricia was not merely using my garage without permission. She had represented it to the neighbors as property owned by someone other than the people whose names were on the deed.