She smiled then, and it was a good smile, warm and practiced. "Then we'll get along fine."
For most of a year, we did. I went to the quarterly meetings. I volunteered for the landscaping committee and spent a summer arguing about mulch. I learned that Candace ran the HOA the way some people run a small country: personally, tirelessly, and with an eye on property values that bordered on the devotional. She knew every home sale in Heron Bend for the past decade and what it closed at. She sent out a monthly email called "Curb Appeal Corner." She had once, I was told, fined a man for a basketball hoop that cast a shadow on the sidewalk.
Then, at the annual budget meeting in April, I asked a question.
It wasn't even a hard question. The pool was supposed to have been resurfaced the previous fall. The money had been budgeted out of the reserve fund; I'd seen it in the minutes. But the pool still had the same cracked plaster and the same rust bloom around the main drain, and in March we'd gotten a notice of a special assessment of three hundred and fifty dollars per household for "unanticipated capital repairs." I had worked in hospital administration long enough to know what it looks like when money has gone somewhere it wasn't supposed to go, and I raised my hand during the open forum and asked if we could see the reserve account statements for the past two years, along with the most recent reserve study.
Candace smiled at me the whole time I was speaking. When I was done, she said the reserve study was being updated, that the pool contractor had backed out and the funds were being held for a new bid, and that owners could make a written records request to the management company per Section 12.3 of the bylaws, which would be fulfilled within the statutory period. Then she moved on to the Halloween decorating contest.
I made the written request the next week. In June I got a two-page summary from Crestline Community Management with a lot of round numbers on it. In July, when the board announced that two seats, including treasurer, would be up for election at the annual meeting in November, I filed my nomination form. Thad Mize, the current treasurer, a soft-spoken retired actuary who had been on the board for eleven years, wasn't running again. I figured somebody ought to read the statements who actually wanted to.
Nominations closed September 30. To be eligible, according to Section 4.2 of the bylaws, a candidate had to be an owner "in good standing," meaning no assessments or fines more than thirty days delinquent as of the close of nominations.
I didn't think about that clause at all, at the time. Why would I? I'd never been late on anything in my life.
The first letter came eleven days after I filed.
III.
The second one appeared four days later, on the strip of common lawn between the sidewalk and the retention pond, right next to the bench with the brass plaque dedicated to some long-gone developer's mother. The letter appeared on my storm door the same morning: $250, second offense, see Appendix C.