They pulled my tags two days later. I came out on Friday morning at seven with my camera and walked to the triangle and found a neat little divot where WH-1 had been, as if someone had used a garden trowel. The tag at the pin oak was gone, and the one at the redbud — on Ruth's own property, which Ruth pointed out to me with considerable heat — and the four along the greenway and at the clubhouse and the hickory. Seven divots. Seven little graves. The landscaping crew, Ruth told me later, had been given a work order with my stakes marked on a map. The map had been drawn by hand.
The violation notice arrived in my own mailbox the following Monday. Unauthorized Encroachment on Common Area, Section 4.1. Removal costs billed to my account: $350. And a second paragraph, which I read three times standing at the end of my driveway:
It has also come to the Board's attention that you have engaged in a pattern of photographing other residents' homes and persons without their consent. Such conduct may constitute a nuisance under Section 6.9 of the Declaration. The Board reserves all rights, including referral to appropriate authorities.
"She's building a file on you," Priya said that night. "She's getting ahead of you. If you ever make a complaint, she wants to be able to say you're a disgruntled resident with a grudge who got fined for spying on people."
"I'm not spying on people."
"I know. But that's not the point." Priya leaned back in her chair. "Do you have your GPS coordinates for the tags?"
"Every frame has them. Down to about three meters."
"And you took a reference photo of each tag when you set it?"
"Of course." I'd photographed each tag with my boot beside it and a compass in the frame, the way Tamsin's protocol asked. Old field-trip habit too; you never trust a kid to remember where the quadrat was.
"Then keep shooting," Priya said. "Stand where the tags were. Same bearing, same time. Don't stop. Every picture you take from here on is a picture with a date on a university server she can't touch." She paused. "And Nell — maybe bring Gus. Don't go out alone at dawn with a camera for a while."
So I kept shooting. I re-found my points with the GPS and the reference photos and the stumps of old Bradford pears, and I stood in the same places and I took the same pictures, and nothing changed except that now every morning I felt Karen's white Lexus somewhere behind me, idling at the end of a street.