And how many more problems would appear when they learned it was not true? I met Susan Miller three days later, though neither of us had planned it that way. She came to the ranch in a blue sedan with a bag of grocery-store cookies and introduced herself through the closed gate. Her husband had owned a small electrical business before retiring, and she had spent twenty years keeping books for local contractors. She lived in Northridge, paid her assessments on time, and was tired of hearing that every question she asked at board meetings was an attack on progress.
"Are you the person who left papers here?" I asked.
"No," she said. "But I know who might have, and I don't want to put them in an awkward position. I came because the board keeps saying you've demanded a ridiculous payment. I thought I ought to ask the man they keep talking about."
"I haven't demanded a dollar."
She nodded slowly, as though the answer confirmed something she had hoped was false. "Margaret said you wanted several million. At the last meeting she said your refusal was personal and that our legal team had already done the necessary work."
"Then ask her to show you the right she says she's acquired," I said. "I asked three times. All I got was a document describing land that isn't mine."
I opened the gate and invited Susan to the kitchen. We sat with coffee and the two sets of maps spread across the table. She studied the legal descriptions carefully, asked Robert's name and license number, and copied the recording references into her notebook. Then she took out a small folder of her own.
"I don't think the homeowners understand the money," she said. "The HOA isn't building the whole facility from ordinary dues. The developer is handling construction, but the association approved guarantees and a special infrastructure contribution tied to future service revenue. If the site doesn't come online, that contribution may become our liability without the revenue that was supposed to pay for it."
"How much?"
"I don't know the exposure yet. That's one of the questions Margaret refuses to answer. They advertise a nine-million-dollar infrastructure project like the size of it proves its wisdom. It might be a good project. But that's not a substitute for checking the contracts."
That distinction interested me. I was not against computers, power lines, or the jobs the project might bring. My niece in Dallas worked with technology people whose salaries probably exceeded the annual net profit of my ranch. I used digital maps, automatic water monitors, and weather data myself. I had no desire to make the county freeze in time just because the land I lived on had been bought in 1958.
"You think they can make it work somewhere else?" Susan asked.
"That's their engineering question. If they wanted to negotiate with me, they should have asked before breaking ground. But even a fair offer might not solve the water and access problems on this ranch."
She was quiet for a moment. "Margaret has been telling residents the utility route was always part of a recorded corridor. When I asked for the recording number, she said private counsel had verified it. I started wondering why something so certain was so hard to show."