The Black homeowner had been in the pool less than ten minutes when someone began forcing open the locked gate.
At first, he thought it was the wind.
The wooden fence around his backyard stood six feet tall and ran almost the full width of the property, separating his home from the narrow common strip behind the neighboring houses. The gate beside the patio had a steel latch, a keyed deadbolt, and a magnetic sensor tied into the home-security system.
Wind could rattle it.
Wind could not lift the latch.
He stopped halfway through a slow lap.
The bright summer sun reflected across the clear blue surface around him. He wore simple black swim trunks and had left his white terry-cloth bathrobe hanging over the back of a lounge chair near the patio.
The gate rattled again.
Harder.
Then he heard metal scrape against wood.
He pushed himself toward the shallow end.
“Hello?”
No answer.
The gate moved inward half an inch.
Stopped.
Then something struck the lock from the other side.
The homeowner reached the steps.
Water ran from his shoulders as he climbed out.
He grabbed his robe and pulled it around himself without bothering to tie it properly.
The gate suddenly jerked open.
A blonde white woman in her early sixties stepped into his backyard carrying a large gray utility bucket.
The homeowner froze.
Of all the people he might have expected to force their way through his locked gate, the HOA president was somehow both the least surprising and the most alarming.
She wore a bright orange sleeveless blouse, a matching orange skirt, beige flats, and pale disposable gloves.
Her carefully styled blonde bob had begun sticking to her forehead from the heat.
The gray bucket she carried looked heavy.
Something dark sloshed inside.
A smell reached him before she took three steps.
His face tightened.
It was foul.
Not ordinary stagnant water.
Not mulch runoff.
Something worse.
Something that smelled unmistakably like sewage.
The HOA president had not expected him.
He saw that immediately.
Her eyes widened.
Then went toward the pool.
Then his robe.
Then back to his face.
“You’re home.”
The homeowner stared.
“That’s your first sentence?”
She recovered.
“I thought you were at work.”
His expression changed.
“How would you know where I was supposed to be?”
The HOA president’s mouth tightened.