"If you want to share those notices with the board," I said, "I'll help you arrange them by date. But don't do it for me. Do it only if you're comfortable putting your name on the record."
He looked at the letters for a long moment. "They kept telling me I was the only one causing trouble," he said. "Maybe it's time I find out whether that's true."
On Wednesday evening, Mrs. Alvarez invited Emily upstairs to collect a few sprigs of rosemary. I went along with the excuse of helping carry a heavy planter away from a railing that needed repair. She served coffee in cups that looked as though they had belonged to her mother and listened quietly when Emily mentioned the conduct notice. Mrs. Alvarez shook her head before Emily had finished.
"Linda did something like that when Mateo came with groceries," she said. "He parked by the entrance for five minutes because the elevator was being repaired. She threatened to have the truck towed while he was carrying my bags."
"Was he blocking access?" I asked.
"He pulled aside so people could pass. If she had asked him to move sooner, he would have done it. But she told me that people who thought rules were optional would eventually learn consequences."
Mrs. Alvarez brought out a small folder of her own. Inside were notices about flower planters that had stood in the same place for years, a warning about a welcome mat that supposedly extended too far into the walkway, and an email telling her to remove a wind chime after a complaint about noise. Individually, each item might have been enforceable under a properly applied rule. What concerned me was the timing: all three warnings arrived within two weeks of the parking dispute.
"Perhaps she always planned to inspect my patio," Mrs. Alvarez said. "I cannot know what's in somebody's head. But I know nobody mentioned those planters for six years until I told her she was wrong about my son."
Emily reached across the table and held her hand. "That's how I'm feeling now," she said. "Like the next ordinary thing I do might become evidence of my bad character."
Mrs. Alvarez gave a sad smile. "Honey, you've got enough trouble with the wedding planning. You should not have to be afraid of your own doorstep."
The three of us talked for another hour. Mrs. Alvarez remembered that Linda had once stayed with her when a pipe burst in the upstairs hallway, helping carry towels and call the emergency contractor. She said she had been grateful, and I believed her. That history mattered because the issue was not whether Linda had ever been helpful. The issue was whether doing good work for the community entitled her to punish residents who disagreed with her later.
By Friday I had spoken with five neighbors who described similar sequences. I did not gather gossip indiscriminately, and I avoided questions about anyone's finances, family issues, or other private matters. I asked a narrow question: had a disagreement with a board representative been followed by additional enforcement that seemed unusual? Some people said no, and I wrote that down too. A pattern should not be manufactured by ignoring responses that fail to support it.