Paul Renshaw sat to her right, visibly uncomfortable beneath the attention.

I arrived with Naomi and sat in the back row rather than at the front.

Cecily attended as my counsel, but she made clear that she represented me and not the association as a whole.

Bettina opened by accusing unnamed residents of orchestrating a campaign of intimidation against volunteer leaders.

She then announced a proposed rule restricting direct contact with board members and imposing administrative charges for repeated information requests.

Several people began murmuring.

Evelyn stood and asked whether the board had authority to charge homeowners for requesting records they were entitled to inspect.

Bettina tried to rule the question out of order.

A younger resident named Luis Alvarez asked whether members could review the underlying contract before voting on any new restriction.

Bettina said the agreement was commercially sensitive.

Paul looked down at the table.

The room grew louder when another resident asked about the eighteen-thousand-dollar access program.

Bettina answered that improvements were underway.

Luis asked where the work could be inspected.

She said the board did not have time to respond to hostile questioning.

At that moment Paul raised his hand.

“We do need to answer,” he said.

Bettina turned sharply toward him.

He adjusted his glasses and addressed the room rather than her.

“I voted for the budget based on estimates, and I have not seen a reconciliation of the access program expenses.”

Several residents went silent.

Bettina insisted he was misunderstanding the accounting system.

Paul replied that he had asked for supporting invoices three times.

He did not accuse her of stealing anything, but his admission established that financial questions were coming from inside the board as well as from dissatisfied homeowners.

I watched Cody turn toward his mother.

For the first time that evening, he seemed to recognize that the adults on her side of the table were not all following the same script.

The meeting ended without a vote on the new restrictions.

Paul agreed to support a member-requested independent review of the association’s accounts.

Bettina declared the proposal unnecessary and walked out before residents finished asking questions.

Naomi squeezed my hand as the room began to empty.

“She thought she could make this about you,” she said.

“It was never only about me,” I answered.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SERGEANT’S REPORT

The independent supervisor interviewed me on Thursday afternoon in a plain conference room at the county administration building.

Captain Miriam Ellis came from a neighboring department and had no direct reporting relationship with me.