"Any account holder," Lamont said. "Or any authorized officer of the account holder?"
"I'd imagine the treasurer of an association would qualify."
He looked at me over his reading glasses for a long moment. Then he smiled, just a little, under the white mustache. It was the smile of a man who had spent forty years finding things in spreadsheets that people didn't want found.
"Well," he said. "I believe I'll make a phone call in the morning."
VII.
Rusty Ferrell called me himself on Saturday morning. He had the voice of a man who smoked for twenty years and quit for ten and still missed it.
"Ms. Sundquist," he said. "Deputy Quiroga came by my shop yesterday. I want you to know something, and I'll tell her the same and I'll tell a judge if it comes to that. Mrs. Ashworth told me the board had voted on this. She showed me a resolution with a board seal on it. She told me the notices had gone out by certified mail and the owner had been given thirty days to cure. If I'd known any of that wasn't true, I wouldn't have set foot in your yard."
"I appreciate you saying so."
"I can't release your things without the Association signing off or a court telling me to, because right now I've got two people telling me two different stories, and that's above my pay grade. But I wanted you to know, I'm sending my invoice back to the board, and I'm not charging you storage. Not a dime. And your freezer's plugged in."
I'd been bracing for the freezer. I sat down on the arm of my couch. "It is?"
"My guys unloaded it Wednesday afternoon, and I opened the lid to check it was empty, the way we always do, and there's all this deer meat in there with labels on it in somebody's handwriting. Backstrap, ground, stew. I hunt. I'm not about to let a doe go to waste because of some homeowners association. I had it plugged into the wall in my warehouse within the hour. Lid stayed shut. It ought to be fine."