"Look at this paragraph," Daniel said, pointing to a line near the bottom. "They anticipated a possible trust claim. They specifically discussed whether moving the fish off the development site would reduce the need to address it during preliminary review."
I read the passage again. "So they knew the trust might object."
"They knew enough to identify the risk. I won't say they knew every right was enforceable until we've reviewed the documents. But they certainly didn't discover the issue three nights before Karen came to your pond."
A financial appendix gave the projected value of the expansion as $24.6 million. That figure represented an anticipated completed development, not a pile of money the association controlled. The model depended on permits, financing, access, construction costs, and buyers who might not materialize. Even so, I understood the pressure that a project of that scale could create when delays threatened it.
The other startling detail was a sentence describing the old aquatic corridor as effectively inactive. That might have been a fair description of some sections of the property, but it could not explain the modern tags on the fish, the trust's recent inventory, or the still-operating holding ponds Martin had described. Somebody had chosen a broad word that made specific problems easier to ignore.
Daniel wanted to know whether Karen had made that choice herself or whether the developer had given her language she repeated without understanding. I told him I didn't care which answer made her look less foolish. He reminded me that courts cared, and I stopped talking long enough to let him finish.
"If we're going to challenge what happened, Robert, we need to distinguish bad judgment from intentional misrepresentation. The paperwork may establish both, or it may not. We can't decide the conclusion first and then go looking for sentences that support it."
I knew he was right. It was a lesson Miriam had given our daughter in a different context when Claire brought home a science project that happened to confirm every theory she had started with. Miriam had made her repeat the experiment and record the results she disliked. I had laughed then; I was less amused now that I was the one being asked to wait for evidence.
Nancy Calder invited me to her house the following Saturday afternoon. She had arranged for three other Silver Ridge homeowners to join us, people who had served on committees or questioned the expansion proposal. I was reluctant at first because I did not want the dispute to become a neighborhood campaign against Karen. Daniel said I could listen as a property owner but should avoid discussing confidential strategy or suggesting anybody accuse her of a crime.
Nancy's living room looked out over one of the association's ornamental retention ponds. It was neat, shallow, and lined with decorative stone, the kind of water feature people admire from a patio without asking what feeds it. A man named George Bell, who had served as treasurer until the previous spring, was there with a folder of old meeting packets. So was Anita Brooks, a retired school administrator, and Judith Shaw, a current board member who had never met me before.