I didn't like it. She was right about that too.
The next morning a letter from the Kestrel Run HOA board appeared in my mailbox. It wasn't stamped; someone had walked it over. It informed me that, "in light of the serious allegations and ongoing police investigation," the Board had voted in emergency session to revoke the conditional architectural approval of my exterior camera system, and that I was directed to remove all exterior cameras within seventy-two hours or face fines of one hundred dollars per day. It further informed me that a hearing would be held at the Kestrel Run clubhouse the following Wednesday to consider additional sanctions, "up to and including the suspension of amenity privileges and a recommendation to the membership regarding the Owner's continued fitness for residence in the community."
I read it in my driveway twice. Then I photographed it and texted it to Rhoda.
Her reply came back in under a minute.
She wants the cameras down. Interesting. Don't touch them. I'm sending a preservation letter today. Also, there's no such thing as "fitness for residence." She's making it up.
Then, a second text: Also, Detective Quist called me back. She's been assigned. She's out at a training until next Monday, and she says she'll come to you Tuesday afternoon to review the full system in person. That's a week. Can you hold on for a week?
I looked across the side yard. Sheryl's kitchen blinds were still down. On the far side of the fence, the New Dawn roses were dropping the last of their petals onto her mother's old lawn, which was now my lawn, pale pink on green.
Yes, I wrote back.
Eight days is a long time to do nothing. I recommend it to nobody.
On the first day, Rhoda came over at seven in the morning with a laptop, two brand-new external drives still in their shrink-wrap, and a young man named Pascal from a digital forensics firm in Raleigh who wore a cardigan and spoke almost entirely in acronyms. They sat in my hall closet for three hours. Pascal pulled the full-resolution recordings from all six cameras for the entire night in question, plus the previous thirty days, plus the recorder's own system logs, which show every time anyone has logged in, exported anything, or changed a setting. He pulled the SD card from the trail camera on the shed and imaged that too. He ran something that produced long strings of letters and numbers for every file, which he called hashes and explained were fingerprints: change one pixel in one frame and the fingerprint changes. He wrote them all on a form. Rhoda signed it. I signed it. Pascal signed it. One drive went into Rhoda's briefcase. One went into a padded envelope addressed to Detective Alondra Quist of the Pender Mill Police Department.
"That's that," Rhoda said, snapping her briefcase shut. "Now you wait."
On the second day, somebody left a full package of wooden clothespins on my front porch with a sticky note on it that said FOR YOUR COLLECTION. I took a picture of it for Rhoda and then, because I am who I am, I used them to hang Pippa's art on a string across the kitchen.