The first thing I heard was the side gate opening.
Not the doorbell. Not a knock. Just the familiar metallic click of the latch, followed by the long scrape of heavy wood moving across the stone pathway outside my house.
I was in the bathroom, halfway through drying myself after a shower, when I heard footsteps crossing the backyard. At first, I assumed the pool maintenance technician had arrived early. Then I heard a woman's voice.
“There you are, you disgusting little thing.”
I stopped moving.
The voice was sharp, furious, and unmistakably familiar.
I walked toward the bathroom window and pulled back the curtain just enough to see the lawn.
Standing beside my daughter's flower garden was Patricia Voss, the forty-eight-year-old president of the Mesa Verde Estates Homeowners Association.
She wore an expensive dusty-pink pantsuit, with a beautifully tailored blazer, matching trousers, and an ivory blouse buttoned neatly beneath her neck. Pearl earrings hung beside her perfectly straight blonde bob. Her makeup was flawless, her nails freshly polished, and her designer heels were sinking into the narrow strip of grass beside our patio.
She looked as though she'd just stepped out of a charity luncheon.
Except she was carrying a claw hammer.
I stared.
For several seconds, my brain refused to make sense of what I was seeing.
Patricia glanced over her shoulder toward the tall wooden fence. Then she crouched beside a small black irrigation sprinkler rising from the lawn near the brick border.
She raised the hammer.
And brought it down.
The metallic crack was so loud I heard it through the closed window.
I froze.
She struck the sprinkler again.
Plastic shattered.
Then a powerful jet of water erupted from the damaged irrigation head, shooting several feet into the air and spraying across the lawn, the shrubs, and the carefully arranged flower beds beyond.
Patricia stumbled backward as water splashed against her shoes.
For a moment, she looked startled.
Then she smiled.
It was a cold, satisfied expression.