$14,200. Six instances of unauthorized expenditure, each one documented. The vendor: Croft Outdoor Services. Owner: Beverly's nephew. Operating under a contract that was never put to a board vote because the meeting minutes authorizing it did not exist.
He asked Beverly to identify the board minutes approving each expenditure. She could not, because they didn't exist.
Floyd Tench put his face in his hands.
The board member who had been quietly texting Corrine Vallejo throughout every emergency meeting for three weeks made a motion to censure the board president and freeze all HOA expenditures pending a full independent audit. It passed 4 to 1.
Then Petra read the bylaw provision on officer removal: two-thirds of members present. She called for the motion. Tad made it; Corrine seconded it. The vote was by show of hands. They went up around the room without drama: one after another, steadily. Thirty-one hands; two-thirds required twenty-five.
Beverly Croft was removed as HOA president by the neighbors she'd governed by intimidation for six years.
She stood. She said something—I'm leaving that deliberately vague because whatever it was, it didn't land; nobody wrote it down. She left. The Escalade pulled out of the reserved spot.
In the back row, Odessa Blanchard closed her legal pad. She had a front page. She looked across the room at me and gave one small, deliberate nod. I nodded back.