"Actually, she's the one who needs to leave."
The woman in pink froze.
I turned toward the narrow side gate.
A second woman stepped into view.
She was in her late forties, with neatly styled dark hair, a navy-blue blazer, black trousers, and the controlled expression of someone who had just witnessed something unbelievable. She held a smartphone in one hand and a dark leather folder in the other.
I recognized her immediately.
She was my next-door neighbor.
And only six hours earlier, the newly elected board of our homeowners association had chosen her as its new president.
The woman in pink stared at her.
"What are you doing here?"
The new president lifted her phone.
"Recording you."
The former president's mouth fell open.
"Excuse me?"
"I watched you carry those bags into his backyard. I watched you throw them into his pool, and I watched you kick that trash bin over."
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then the former president forced a laugh.
"You have no authority to interfere with an emergency enforcement action."
The new president opened her folder.
"That's interesting, because the board removed your enforcement authority this morning."
The woman in pink went pale.
I looked between them.
The new president continued.
"You were notified that your term had ended. You were ordered to stop representing the association. And you were specifically instructed not to enter residents' property."
The former president glanced toward the floating garbage bags.
Then back at the phone.
Her lips trembled.
The new president stepped closer.
"And I haven't just recorded you dumping garbage. I've recorded you trying to create another cleanup charge using the company your brother owns."
The woman in pink stopped breathing for a moment.
I stared at the new president.
"What company?"
She looked toward me.
"The one that billed this neighborhood more than two hundred thousand dollars for emergency property cleanups last year."
Then she turned back toward the former president.
"And the one whose employees were supposed to arrive at this house in twenty minutes."
A long silence settled across my backyard.
The woman in pink looked toward the side gate.
For the first time, she appeared to understand that the person she'd been trying to intimidate wasn't the only one watching.
And the two bags of garbage floating in my pool were about to become evidence in an investigation that would eventually expose years of questionable fines, fabricated violations, and money diverted through businesses controlled by the same family.