“I know.”
For the first time since the entire mess began, I felt something colder than anger.
Not irritation.
Not annoyance.
Violation.
Denise had used my dead uncle as cover.
Curtis continued.
“And there’s something else.”
“Of course there is.”
“She’s billing the HOA.”
“For what?”
“Supplemental pool and landscape water.”
I looked at him.
“How much?”
“Three-fifty a month, according to Lisa.”
“For water?”
“For water.”
“She’s charging the neighborhood for the water she steals from me?”
“Looks that way.”
I sat on the bottom rail of the fence.
Curtis rested both arms across the top.
“Two years,” he said. “Do the math.”
I didn’t need to.
Eight thousand four hundred dollars.
Before electricity.
Before the cost of the water itself.
Before damage to my equipment.
Before anything she had done to other people.
“Other people?” I asked.
Curtis frowned.
“What?”
“You said something like this happened elsewhere?”
He nodded slowly.
“Dolores Fuentes.”
I knew her.
Eighty-two.
Lived north of the development on an older tract.
“Last summer, her well pump started running constantly. She thought it was failing. Paid nearly eight hundred dollars for a company to inspect the system.”
“What was wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I already knew what came next.
“Her grandson found a hose.”
Curtis nodded.
“Running where?”
“Silver Creek community garden.”
I rubbed my forehead.
“And?”
“Denise said it was temporary irrigation.”
“Did she reimburse Dolores?”
“No.”
“Anybody else?”
“The Whitfields.”
I looked at him.
“Barn spigot?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You heard?”
“I’m guessing.”
“Beverly caught somebody connecting there. Denise promised reimbursement. Never happened.”
For several seconds neither of us spoke.
The scope of it changed everything.
Until then, Denise had been my problem.
Now she looked more like a pattern.
I started talking to people.
Carefully.
No rumors.
No accusations I could not support.
Dolores invited me inside and brought out the invoice from the well company.
She was embarrassed.
“That bill hurt,” she said.
“Why embarrassed?”
“Because I thought I was stupid. I kept telling my grandson, ‘Something is wrong with the well.’ They checked everything.”
“You weren’t stupid.”
She folded the invoice.