The specialist hesitated. "That depends on what the registration records show." Then he pulled out another sheet. At the bottom was a reference to an old Riverstone select breeding program, and beside it was an estimated commercial value: $286,000.
I stared at the number. Karen had dumped thousands of fish into my pond, charged me $4,800 for doing it, and now I was beginning to suspect that she had just put hundreds of thousands of dollars in my water.
But there was one problem: if those fish really were part of a registered breeding program, someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get them out of Silver Ridge. And I was about to find out why.
Because Daniel had just opened an old county file. Inside it was a document dated 1991, and across the top were the words: Private aquatic asset. Transfer requires owner consent.
Daniel looked at me. "Robert."
I leaned forward. "What?"
He turned the document around. "Silver Ridge never had permission to move these fish." Then he pointed to the signature at the bottom. It wasn't mine. It wasn't Karen's. It belonged to a company that, according to the county records, hadn't existed for nearly fifteen years.
And suddenly, the $4,800 bill wasn't the biggest problem anymore. Someone had transferred a potentially six-figure fish operation onto my property using paperwork that might not even be valid.
The next morning, Daniel arrived before sunrise. He didn't even take off his coat. He walked straight into my kitchen, placed a thick county file on the table, and said, "We have a problem."
I poured him coffee. "I thought the problem was the fish."
"The fish are the problem," he opened the file, "but they're also the evidence."
I sat down. Daniel pointed to the 1991 document we'd found the night before. "Remember the company listed here?"
"Yeah. Riverstone Fisheries."
"It's gone. Bankrupt. Dissolved." He slid another page across the table. "Twenty-four years ago."
I stared at the paperwork. "So how did they authorize a transfer?"
"They didn't."
That answer changed everything. Daniel had spent most of the night digging through county records. What he found was worse than either of us expected.
The fish weren't simply expensive breeding stock; they were part of a selective breeding program that had been operating in the region for decades. The program developed fish with unusually fast growth, strong survival rates, and resistance to several diseases common in commercial ponds. The fish were registered, tracked, and in some cases individually tagged. Their breeding records were valuable—very valuable.
But there was something else. Daniel turned to a map. "Look at this."
It showed Silver Ridge Estates, then the old Riverstone property, then my ranch. A blue line ran through all three.
"What is that?"
"Water transfer corridor."
I frowned. "Meaning?"
"Silver Ridge's stormwater system eventually connects to the old Riverstone drainage channel."
"So?"
Daniel tapped the map. "The original fish facility was downstream from the HOA's retention ponds." He paused. "After Silver Ridge expanded, they started having a problem."
"What problem?"
"Fish."