"I don't want another stranger to hear the same threats," she said. "And I don't want you to promise you can fix what happened to me. I have lived too long with people promising me things they couldn't deliver." I told her I would make no such promise. All I could offer was a chance for her records to be heard beside mine. She nodded, and for the first time since we sat down, she took a bite of her lunch.
When I got up to leave, she caught my wrist lightly. "They photograph people," she warned. "They wait outside meetings and tell you they're only checking on your wellbeing. If they think you're collecting evidence, they make sure you know somebody is watching." I told her Greg had already begun. She closed her eyes for a moment, then gave me another name: Howard Finch, who had refused to sell his property in 2020 and might still have the original correspondence.
Howard was harder to reach. His phone number had changed and he did not respond to the first letter I mailed to the address on his public business listing. Three days later he called and asked how I had obtained his information. I explained the land record search, then offered to let him speak with Lena before telling me anything. He accepted that arrangement, and we met at the public library in the next county with my attorney present by video.
Howard was sixty-seven, tall and stooped, with a permanent grease stain on the side of one thumb. He had worked as an industrial electrician before retiring and treated every question as though it might conceal a trap. He showed us the receipt for a $19,000 payment made after Raymond threatened legal action. He had paid because he believed the first demand might be legitimate, but he stopped when the second arrived. Instead of signing anything else, he hired a lawyer, discovered his land was outside the HOA, and demanded the money back.
His lawyer negotiated a partial settlement that required confidentiality. Howard agreed because the expense of further litigation threatened to exceed what he could recover. He was not proud of that decision, he said, but at the time he needed the harassment to stop before his wife became seriously ill. He never sold the house. He simply stopped using the lake road because he could not bear another confrontation at the gate.
"People act like every victim should take a stand that costs forty thousand dollars," he said. "I had a wife to care for and a roof that needed replacing. Christine knew that. She talked about the roof every time she called." He pushed a folder toward Lena, then added that he had spent the years afterward tracing the company's land purchases. Some buyers had owned property for less than six months before selling at a loss, and the purchaser was often a company with little public history.
The records did not yet prove every transfer was fraudulent. People sell for many reasons, and we had no right to write their reasons for them. But the addresses, timing, and recurring company names warranted investigation. Howard had collected seven names, including Elena's and his own. The total in his private spreadsheet exceeded three hundred thousand dollars in claimed collections and discounted sales, although he was careful to label estimates as estimates.