Karen made a little impatient motion with her free hand. "The community had an environmental concern. We addressed it before it became more serious. You should be grateful the association acted quickly."
"Grateful." I repeated the word slowly, not because I had misunderstood it but because I wanted to be certain she heard how ridiculous it sounded. "Karen, I live behind that gate. I own this water and the land around it. You didn't call, you didn't write, and you certainly didn't ask whether the pond could support another fish."
"You weren't available," she replied.
"I was here Tuesday. I was here Wednesday. I've been here every night since I bought the place."
Her expression tightened. "Robert, I do not have time for an argument about scheduling. The transfer has already happened. We can either make the best of the situation or create a completely unnecessary legal dispute."
I lowered my eyes to the invoice. It listed three transport trips and a labor charge, but no species count, no source-water measurements, no veterinarian's certification, and no receiving-site approval that I could see. There was a line for customer authorization. Someone had entered the initials R.H. in block letters that looked nothing like my handwriting.
"Who signed this?" I asked.
Karen glanced at it and looked away. "The paperwork was handled by our management company."
"That wasn't my question."
"Your pond was the closest suitable water source. It was an emergency."
"What kind of fish did you bring me?"
"Fish from the community ponds."
"Trout? Bass? Hatchery stock? How many?"
She gave me the same flat smile. "You have seven days to pay the management fee. After that, Silver Ridge will consider additional action."
I folded the invoice once and slipped it inside my jacket. "Then you'd better tell your board to keep every record connected to this move. Every email, every invoice, every delivery ticket. I want to know precisely what was done to my pond."
"Do not make this difficult," she said.
"You made it difficult when you opened my gate."
She turned on her heel and walked back toward the SUV. At the driver's door she stopped, looking over her shoulder as though she had one final instruction to give a hired hand. "You might want to think carefully before challenging the association on environmental matters, Robert. You don't have the resources we do."
I watched her drive away until the white vehicle disappeared behind the pines. Then I walked back to the water, where thousands of fish were still churning against one another in the shallows. I had thought the worst part of the morning was the surprise bill. That was before a large trout turned near the dock and showed me a small metal tag secured beside its dorsal fin.
The tag caught a blade of sunlight. There were numbers stamped into it, tiny and precise. A second fish carried one too, and a third had a colored plastic marker at the base of its fin. They were not random scratches or bits of fishing tackle. Somebody had identified these fish individually, and that meant somebody had once considered them important enough to keep records on.