Clare turned toward Margaret. "This is an interrogation, not a meeting."
"No," David said quietly. "It's a sequence. What happened first changes what the next thing means."
He reached slowly into his jacket. Several people shifted in their chairs before he had even withdrawn his hand, and he noticed each movement. All he removed was a small flash drive. He placed it on the table in front of Margaret.
"The security system on my property recorded the encounter continuously," he said. "I brought the original twenty-three-minute recording and the camera's time information. You have watched the images Ms. Whitmore selected. I would like you to watch what she left out."
The room became so quiet David could hear the ventilation system above the chandelier. Margaret suggested that the board review the footage privately, but David looked around at the people who had already heard the allegations in public and declined. If the neighborhood could question his character before an audience, he believed that same audience deserved the complete context. Margaret hesitated, then allowed the evidence to be shown.
As David walked toward the computer, Helen Carter raised one hand toward her mouth. She remembered exactly where she had stood that morning and what the camera would show. Clare shook her head and said the video was unnecessary, but her voice no longer sounded like the soft, composed voice of her presentation. David inserted the drive, selected the saved file, and stepped aside.
The projection screen filled with Saturday sunlight. A red Ferrari stood in a driveway beside movers carrying boxes into an open house. David, in his brown jacket and work boots, was calmly closing the trunk. Eight seconds later Clare entered the frame with her finger pointed toward him, and twenty-seven adults leaned forward to see how the story they had been told really began.
The recording did not begin with an argument. That was the first thing the room had to confront. The camera showed a moving truck, workers carrying cartons, David lifting a grocery-sized box from the Ferrari's trunk, and a harmless exchange with Raymond about where to put a reading lamp. Nobody appeared afraid. Nobody hurried or concealed anything. The clock in the corner of the screen moved forward steadily, documenting an ordinary morning before one person decided it ought to be something else.
Then Clare's voice filled the clubhouse. "Step away from that Ferrari."
A murmur passed between the first two rows. David stood beside the projector without speaking, allowing the recording to do what his repeated explanations on Saturday had been unable to do. They watched Clare enter the driveway, inspect David's clothes, laugh at the idea that he owned the house, and insist that he justify the Ferrari sitting on his own property. When he offered registration, the camera showed his hand lifting the keys; Clare's attention moved to the brass compass.
"Did you take that, too?" her recorded voice demanded.