I put it in a clean cooler in the back of my garage. If Hadley Lockwood wanted to play a slow game, I would play a slower one. The next month, Hadley parked her Mercedes across the foot of my driveway. Not in it, not blocking it, across the foot. Wheels barely touching the curb.
The long pearl white side of the GLE running exactly along the property line where my driveway met the cul-de-sac. She did it the first Tuesday morning at 7:00. She did it again Thursday. She did it again the Tuesday after. When I asked her about it, polite, on the sidewalk, in jeans and my UGA cap, she smiled and said, "Sterling, I'm just visiting our neighbor across the street."
"You're not blocked in. I checked."
She had. The Mercedes was parked exactly the way a closer parks, legally, visibly, just close enough to remind me she was there. The fifth violation arrived two days later. Notice of HOA garage inspection pursuant to community section 8.4 B. Inspection scheduled Friday at 11:00 a.m. Inspector Briarwood Glen Community Standards Committee.
There is no provision in Georgia law that allows an HOA to enter a private garage without consent or a court order. There is in fact a long line of Georgia case law that says the opposite. I'd cited it in a deposition in 2014. I knew it cold. Friday at 11:00, three men walked up my driveway in matching navy polos.
The first one was Hadley's husband's brother-in-law. I'd looked him up the day before. The second one was a day laborer who'd been picked up at the Home Depot on Highway 20. The third one was carrying a clipboard and a digital camera. None of them had a Georgia inspector's license.
None of them had a uniform. None of them had identification beyond a name tag printed at home. I stood at the closed garage door with my coffee. "Gentlemen, good morning." "We're with the Briarwood Glen Community Standards Committee, sir. Here to do your scheduled inspection."
"Are any of you licensed inspectors in the state of Georgia?" The clipboard guy blinked. "I'm with the committee, sir." "Do any of you have a court order?" The three of them looked at each other.
"Sir, the HOA bylaws authorize..." "The HOA bylaws cannot authorize what state law forbids. I'm declining the inspection. Have a fine day." I closed the garage door.
I went inside. I made a note in my phone. I called my deputy chief and asked him to quietly run a name check on the three men. Two had Georgia warrants for unrelated misdemeanors. One had an active arrest order out of DeKalb County.
I didn't tell Hadley. Two days later, a friend at the Cederville Country Club called me. He told me Hadley had been telling people at her wine night that Sterling Halloran was a sad case, and that the poor widower had clearly been hitting the bottle since his wife died. She'd said it twice. She'd said it loud enough that two members at the next table had stood up and left. I thanked my friend.
I drank a glass of unsweetened iced tea. That same week, my son Tate came home from his summer job at the Publix on Atlanta Highway and walked into the kitchen wearing his uniform polo and a look I hadn't seen on his face since he was 13. "Dad, I just punched a kid at the pool." I set my book down. He hadn't actually punched anyone.
He'd been at the community pool and a board member, a man named Whit Lockwood's golf buddy whose name I didn't know yet, had walked up to him at the snack bar and said, in front of three other teenagers, that Tate's father was the talk of the neighborhood for the wrong reasons, and that maybe Tate could be the one to help his old man let go of the past. Tate had set down his Gatorade. He had looked the man in the eye. He had said, "Sir, my father is doing fine. My mother is doing better than fine, and you should ask yourself if you're proud of what just came out of your mouth."
Then he had walked away. I told him he had handled it better than I would have at his age. I didn't tell him what I was about to do. The next move was the abandoned vehicle claim.
It arrived on October 4th in a registered envelope. Briarwood Glen Estates Homeowners Association versus Sterling Halloran. Notice of abandoned and non-operational vehicle on residential property. The HOA was citing Georgia Code Section 40-11-2, abandoned motor vehicles, and threatening to refer my Mustang to the city for impoundment in 30 days unless I provided proof of current operational status and active road insurance. The Mustang has been on a Hagerty classic car policy since 2018.