"Do you feel better?" she asked before getting out.
I thought about it. "I feel like we're finally going to get answers. That's not the same as feeling better."
She nodded. "I'll settle for answers. For tonight."
The criminal case took much longer than the headlines suggested. Federal investigators obtained and compared institutional banking records, vendor documents, communications, and testimony from employees and contractors. The records found after the flood were useful leads and, where authenticated, relevant evidence, but they were not the entire case. Financial institutions, vendors, insurers, and people who had handled the association's books supplied material that could be evaluated independently of the papers the creek had delivered to my lawn.
Brantley became a focus of the investigation as well. His consulting work, related-party relationships, and signatures on technical opinions required close review, though his role was not identical to Cordelia's. He cooperated through counsel after prosecutors confronted him with records he could not easily explain. I knew better than to assume that being married to a wrongdoer automatically established criminal guilt, but I also knew that calling a spouse an independent consultant was not a reliable way to conceal shared business interests.
The insurer reviewed the claim involving the flood damage and rejected the suggestion that the event had been an unforeseeable structural failure. Its investigators relied on contractor records, photographs from before and after the demolition, expert analysis, and communications showing that Cordelia had anticipated certain types of damage. They also examined whether the association had properly disclosed the underlying dispute. The insurance issues had their own deadlines and legal complexities, none of which could be settled by shouting about an old dam on television.
Our civil proceedings moved alongside the criminal case. The contractor's insurers disputed portions of the damages, the HOA's remaining board sought independent representation, and Marlo pursued the people and entities whose decisions had led to the unauthorized destruction. We had to establish the property's rights, the condition of the structure, the costs of repair and mitigation, and the causal connection to specific losses. Having witnesses helped, but engineering evidence mattered just as much.
Several residents asked why the court did not simply order Cordelia to give everything back immediately. I understood the impatience, but recovered funds do not fall from a defendant's pockets directly into the nearest victim's hands. Property had to be identified, claims resolved, priorities established, and restitution calculated. The financial mess had been built over years; the lawful process of untangling it could not honestly be completed in an afternoon.
The HOA's surviving directors held a difficult meeting in which they suspended Cordelia's remaining authority, replaced compromised financial signatories, and authorized an independent audit. Two directors resigned, admitting they had approved expenditures without adequate review. A third stayed long enough to help establish a transition process before stepping down. The members elected interim leadership that included people Cordelia had once dismissed as troublemakers.