Chapter 17: The Point of No Return

Wednesday morning, nine o’clock, and Judith Linden was in her usual place—on the living room sofa with a clear view through the big front window, cataloging the neighborhood like a botanist studying invasive weeds.

Michelle had already made her mailbox trip. As usual, she couldn’t wait until she was back inside to sort through her letters—she’d stood right there rifling through the envelopes, head bent, hair falling forward, oblivious to anyone watching. Sloppy. Undignified. Michelle was always sloppy.

Then there was Lorene, out again with a pair of pruning shears, snipping and trimming her dormant rose bushes as if that counted as gardening. Today she’d chosen an especially offensive display: tight capri pants and a top two sizes too small, her obviously fake breasts bouncing with every step. Judith’s lips pressed thin. No sense of decorum at all—what kind of example was that for children walking to school? Not that there were any walking to school now, but there had been a few hours ago.

Judith was about to rise for a refill of coffee when movement drew her gaze across the street. Lena Foxx, leash in hand, her ridiculously goofy golden retriever trotting at her side. At this hour. Not her normal walking time at all. Interesting. Judith leaned forward.

Instead of heading for the sidewalk, Lena crossed the street, walked in her directions for two houses, and then turned deliberately up the cops’ driveway. Without hesitation, without even looking around, she marched to their front door and rang the bell. Judith’s eyes narrowed as the door opened and Lena disappeared inside with the dog, like she belonged there.

It had been almost a week since Judith had last seen Lena visit that house—during the same afternoon the hippy woman had turned up early, of all things. Judith had made a point of “just happening” to cross paths with Lena the very next day at the community mailbox. Just a polite, neighborly observation—I noticed you went into the cops’ house yesterday, and then I noticed you driving off with Scott Dover and that hippy woman in his truck. What was that all about?

Lena had been downright rude in her reply. Said it was none of Judith’s business who she spent time with or where she went. And then, with that condescending tone, she’d informed Judith that the “hippy woman” was Scott Dover’s mother—a very nice lady who drove a genuine antique vehicle that was part of history. Supposedly that battered VW bus had taken Tom and Mary Kingsley to Woodstock in 1969.

Judith knew exactly who Tom and Mary Kingsley were—the parents of notorious Satan-worshiping, Heritage-born Jake Kingsley, and the grandparents of that obvious slut Caydee Kingsley. She’d recently caught her own daughter listening to Caydee’s filth, an outrage she still hadn’t quite recovered from. Family values? Hardly. The Kingsleys had never represented anything except degeneracy. And those outfits that girl wore on stage—should be illegal.

Judith sat back, fingers tightening on the stem of her wineglass even though it was still morning. Lena Foxx, slipping casually into the Dover house like it was her own. The same Lena who’d dared to be rude to her face at the mailbox. The same Lena whose choice of companions included aging hippies, devil-worshiping bloodlines, and cops who smelled of beer before breakfast.

Very interesting indeed.

Judith remained at her post, eyes sweeping the street for patterns, for meaning. Ten minutes ticked by. Then the Dover garage door rumbled open again.

Her spine stiffened. Both cops emerged—Scott and that lesbian woman, Maggie—walking shoulder to shoulder with Lena and Lena’s dog. Ranger, they called him, as if he were some noble beast instead of a drooling nuisance.

They strolled down the sidewalk together, the four of them, an odd parade that made Judith’s pulse quicken. When they reached the spot directly across from her house, they paused—waiting for a car to pass. Then, in unison, they crossed the street.

Judith’s lips pursed. Right up her driveway they came. Bold as brass. Like they had some kind of right.

She rose, smoothing her linen slacks, wondering what on earth this was about. Some kind of intimidation tactic? Did they really think they could just march up to her door without notice? The sheer presumption was offensive. At least it would give her a story to share with the other moms—something about how the neighborhood riffraff had come calling.

The doorbell chimed. Judith inhaled, composed herself, and opened the door.

“Scott. Maggie. Lena,” she said coolly, nodding at each in turn. She made a point of letting her gaze slide right past the dog, as if he were invisible. “What can I do for you?”

She kept her tone crisp, polite on the surface, but firm enough to remind them whose doorstep they stood upon.

Lena’s voice was calm, polite, but carried a lawyerly precision Judith didn’t care for. “We’re here on official Holly Creek HOA business. You are the person of record currently in the position of President of the HOA, correct?”

Judith’s ears pricked at the word currently. A little barb, slipped in under the silk. As if Lena thought her reign was temporary. Offensive.

“Yes,” Judith said, her chin lifting a notch. “I am the president.”

Maggie stepped forward, her expression steady, deliberate. “Did you receive our requests for copies of the minutes and the financial reports?”

“I did not,” Judith replied smoothly. “No such correspondence ever reached the HOA.”

“Who picks up the mail?” Maggie asked.

“I do,” Judith said. “Personally. Every delivery. There’s no possibility of error.” She gave a thin smile. “Perhaps you misaddressed them?”

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “Both of us? I wrote five letters—one to each of the board members and not including the two I wrote to you before that. Lena wrote five letters as well. That’s a total of twelve letters that have been sent requesting this information. And we managed to misaddress every single one?”

Judith kept her tone serene. “It’s possible you read the post office box wrong.”

Maggie rattled it off without hesitation, every digit in place. Then she fixed Judith with that flat, professional stare. “So does it really seem likely that a total of twelve letters were all addressed to the wrong PO Box?”

“That would be an epic blunder, wouldn’t it?” Scott cut in from the side, his phone in his left hand. “You’re not very good at this, Judith.”

Maggie gave a dry half-smile. “Not as bad at it as Scott’s buddy Jo Smeth, but only about one league higher.”

Judith blinked, momentarily thrown. The cadence. The way they spoke. Not like neighbors. Not like homeowners. They were talking to her the way police talked to suspects. And they were practically calling her a liar! The nerve!

Heat crept up her neck. It made her angry—furious, in fact. But beneath the anger was something worse. A twist of unease. The sense that her explanation, her perfectly reasonable explanation, was being dismissed outright. Like she was guilty of something.

She didn’t like that feeling. She didn’t like it at all.

Scott’s voice cut across the silence, calm and deliberate. “We’re going on the record at this point.” He tapped his screen and raised his phone, the red dot glowing as the camera captured her face.

Judith’s composure cracked. “Put that away,” she snapped. “You’re on private property. I do not give consent to record my actions.”

Scott didn’t even blink. “That’s too bad. This is a public place when you’re visible from outside. And this is official Holly Creek HOA business we’re discussing. We’re members of the HOA in question and pay a hundred and forty-six dollars a month to be members. We’ve requested documents that you are legally required to provide us, and you’ve ignored us while claiming you never received the twelve letters.”

Judith forced her voice into calmness. “I didn’t receive them,” she said again. Then, unable to stop herself, she added, “You can’t prove otherwise.”

And then Lena stepped forward, the crisp white envelope in her hand.

“That is why we are personally delivering the request,” she said, her tone cool, deliberate. “We’ll also be able to walk identical requests over to the other four board members. The nice thing about only one hundred and seventeen homes in the HOA is that they’re all within easy walking distance.”

Judith’s eyes flicked to the envelope. To Scott’s phone recording every word. To Maggie’s steady gaze, to Lena’s calm assurance. They were looking at her the way cops looked at suspects—like she was already caught, and the only question left was whether she’d admit it.

Her pulse spiked. Her palms itched. And for the first time since she’d clawed her way to the presidency, Judith Linden felt cornered.

Lena extended the envelope. For a moment Judith considered refusing it, but the camera was still pointed at her face. She forced a smile and took it between two fingers as though it might be dirty.

“This is all a misunderstanding,” she said smoothly. “I’ll get you the information you’re requesting within the required time period.”

“That’s not fast enough,” Lena said. Her voice didn’t rise, didn’t harden—it was just steady, unyielding. “We want the information tomorrow, by close of business hours.”

Scott added, “Hand delivering it to me and Winslow’s house would be acceptable.”

Judith stiffened. “The CC&Rs clearly state I have thirty days to respond to written requests. I am well within that timeframe.”

“That’s not acceptable,” Lena replied at once. “You’ve already had more than a month since Ms. Winslow sent the first request. If you don’t have that information to us by tomorrow, we start going legal on your ass.” She glanced at Scott. “Did I say that right?”

He gave a small smile and an okay gesture with his right hand. “Perfect.”

Judith’s throat tightened. She clutched the envelope like it might burn her fingers, the words legal on your ass echoing in her ears. She had built this presidency, carved it out of gossip and grit, and now these three thought they could waltz up her driveway and dictate terms? Tomorrow? It was unthinkable.

And yet, with that red recording dot steady in Scott’s hand, with Maggie’s eyes on her like a hawk, with Lena’s calm precision slicing through every defense, Judith couldn’t think of a single safe response.

Lena’s eyes didn’t waver. “And just so we’re clear on what going legal on your ass entails—our lawyer specializes in HOA disputes. He works for free if he thinks there’s a good case that will result in a large settlement. And he’s absolutely drooling about this one, Judith. Just waiting for me to take the leash off and let him go on the attack. He thinks we could get twenty to thirty grand just in a settlement offer alone. All that just because you want to play games with correspondence?”

Judith’s stomach dropped. A shiver shot through her chest, cold and sharp. Her vision tunneled, breath going shallow—she could feel the beginnings of a panic attack clawing at the edges of her composure. Twenty to thirty grand? A lawsuit? Her?

“I...” She swallowed, forcing words past the dryness in her throat. “I will hand-deliver the documents to you right after I take the children to school tomorrow.”

Lena inclined her head. “That will be acceptable. Thank you.”

“What ... what do you want that information for though? I mean ... I can help you narrow down what you’re looking for if I knew what you were looking for.”

“We don’t need to tell you what we’re looking for, Judith,” Lena said. “There is nothing in that CC&R that says we have to explain ourselves. We have a right to that information and we’re exercising that right. That’s what makes America great. You don’t get democracy like this in Iran, where my parents grew up. In Tehran, the HOA’s are all run by the fundamentalists. No checks and balances. They rule all with an iron hand.”

Judith thought that maybe Iran wasn’t so bad after all. Too bad they were the enemy of America.

Scott lowered the phone, his voice dropping into that flat, unmistakable cop cadence. “You have a nice day now, Ms. Linden.”

Maggie’s gaze flicked up, just once, at the ceiling trim. “I love what you’ve done with the crown molding in the entryway,” she said.

“Th-thank you,” Judith managed.

And then, as smoothly as they had arrived, they turned and left as a group—three against one, leaving her clutching the damning envelope like evidence of her own crime.

At the bottom of the driveway, they paused. Lena said something to the golden retriever. He whuffed in agreement. And then ... Judith’s jaw dropped in horror as Ranger squatted on her perfect lawn, tail arched. A steaming pile hit the grass with obscene finality.

Lena glanced back, one hand still on the leash. “We’ve got more HOA business to take care of right now, Judith,” she said lightly. “I’ll pick that up when we come home.” She shrugged. “If I remember.”

They continued down the street together, calm, unhurried, leaving Judith frozen in her doorway—her authority trampled, her composure shattered, and her pristine lawn desecrated by a pile of dogshit still steaming in the morning sun.

They didn’t bother hitting any of the other board members’ houses. Just one lap around the block, Ranger prancing along like he’d won a prize fight.

Maggie was still grinning when they turned the corner back toward their street. “We made that bitch crumble. Did you see it? She almost pissed herself. It was beautiful.”

Lena gave a little laugh, shaking her head. “I thought she was going to faint. I almost felt sorry for her.”

“Don’t,” Maggie said. “That woman has earned every ounce of misery coming her way.”

Scott gave Lena a sideways look. “You would’ve made a good cop. The way you pulled that HOA lawyer bullshit out of your ass was premo.”

“Up the ass premo,” Maggie echoed, smirking.

Lena blinked at the word choice, still not entirely accustomed to their profanity-laced shorthand. She’d been raised in polite, upper-class circles where the harshest thing people said was damn. But she didn’t bristle at their language. Quite the opposite. It fascinated her—like she’d been dropped into a foreign culture and given permission to observe it up close. And if she was being honest, there was something hot about the way they both did it. Rough, profane, unapologetic.

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, smiling faintly. “I don’t even know if there are such things as HOA lawyers. Could one really make a living doing that?”

Maggie snorted. “In California? Fuck yeah. People sue their HOA’s all the time. It’s like a cottage industry. That part wasn’t bullshit.”