But their disappearance had created inconvenience, extra expense, and frustration.
Multiply that experience by dozens of households, and the harm became much larger than any one stolen parcel.
My wife placed the pencils back into the box.
Then she looked at me.
"Can I tell you what bothers me most?"
I nodded.
"She kept saying the neighborhood needed her protection."
I waited.
My wife continued.
"But the thing people needed protection from may have been the program she controlled."
I looked toward the window.
The rain was falling steadily over the front lawn.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then she said, "I don't want our son to remember this house as the place where somebody kept stealing from us."
I turned toward her.
She smiled sadly.
"I want him to remember birthdays, backyard games, and all the ordinary things we bought this house for."
I took her hand.
"Then that's what we need to get back to."
She nodded.
And for the first time in weeks, we started talking about something other than packages.
A weekend trip.
A family barbecue.
And whether our son would ever stop leaving half-finished model cars on the dining table.
The decisive evidence emerged from the vendor's own records.
The president's niece had initially defended the business, claiming it purchased unwanted merchandise through a legitimate surplus arrangement. But when investigators began comparing the physical inventory with the homeowners' delivery reports, the discrepancies became impossible to ignore.
The niece eventually provided additional records and communications.
The details of those discussions were handled through the investigation, but their significance became public later during the legal proceedings.
The records showed that the HOA president had instructed staff to accelerate the classification of certain items as unclaimed.
In several cases, that happened before the program's stated notification period had expired.
Some owners hadn't received any notice at all.
Other records contained return acknowledgments that couldn't be matched to genuine signatures or verified pickups.
The financial documents also showed that the vendor had received fees for processing those same items.
Then, when certain products were sold, proceeds were deposited into business accounts connected to the resale operation.
Investigators examined where those funds went and whether the people authorizing the transfers had undisclosed financial interests.
The niece had not created every record.
She had not personally collected every package.
But she possessed information that helped establish how the system operated.
And several communications showed that the HOA president had been more involved than she admitted.
One message particularly stood out.
It concerned a homeowner who had repeatedly questioned the parcel program and refused to subscribe.
The president had written that the household needed to be taught the importance of following community procedures.