Chapter 5: The Call She Shouldn't Have Made
Patricia called me the next morning before I'd finished my first cup of coffee.
"I heard from a colleague last night," she said.
"Audrey contacted the city planning office and filed a complaint claiming your fence line encroaches on her property."
I set my cup down.
"My fence has been in the same place for twenty-six years."
"I know.
I pulled the survey records this morning.
Your boundary is exactly where it should be.
The fence is two inches inside your own property line."
"Then why did they take the complaint?"
"They take everything.
It doesn't mean it goes anywhere.
But she's clearly trying to create a counter-record — make it look like you're the difficult neighbor, not her."
I sat with that for a moment.
"She's trying to muddy the water."
"That's my read, yes.
It won't work.
The survey is clear.
But I want you to know she's playing this actively now."
After I hung up, I walked out to the fence.
I stood beside it and looked at the line of posts running along the property edge, the same posts my husband and his brother had set one long August weekend years ago.
I remembered handing them tools, bringing out lemonade, laughing at something I couldn't recall anymore.
The fence was fine.
It had always been fine.
I went back inside and called my neighbor Gerald.
He picked up on the second ring.
"I saw what happened on your porch last week," he said, before I could explain why I was calling.
"I heard most of it."
"I know.
I saw you."
"She's not a good person, that one," he said simply.
"I've watched her run off two sets of neighbors on the other side already.
They just gave up and moved."
"I'm not moving."
"No," he said.
"I didn't think you were."
I asked if he'd be willing to write down what he'd witnessed — the confrontation on the porch, the things Audrey had said.
Not for court, necessarily.
Just as a written account.
"I'll do better than that," he said.
"I've got a security camera on my garage.
Covers most of the street.
I put it up after someone took my son's bicycle two summers ago."
I went very still.
"Does it cover my driveway?"
"The edge of it.
Enough to see cars coming and going."
"Gerald," I said carefully, "do you still have the footage from Thursday evening?"
A pause.
"I keep thirty days.
Let me check."
He called back twenty minutes later.
"There's a car on the footage," he said.
"Pulls up slow, stops in front of your driveway for about forty seconds, then moves on.
I can't see the driver clearly.
But I can see the plate."
My hand tightened on the phone.
"Can you send me a copy?"
"Already saving it," he said.
"I'll bring it over this afternoon on a drive."
I thanked him and sat down at the kitchen table.
Audrey had filed a false complaint with the city.
My car had been scratched.
And now there was footage of a vehicle that had stopped at my driveway the evening the damage appeared.
The folder on my desk was no longer just documentation.
It was becoming something else entirely.
I called Patricia back.
"The camera footage changes things," she said.
"If the plate comes back to someone connected to Audrey, we're no longer talking about a parking dispute."
"What are we talking about?"
"Potentially criminal mischief.
Possibly harassment.
That's a different conversation with a different set of consequences."
I looked out the window at my driveway.
May you like
At the scratch I could see even from inside, catching the afternoon light.
"Run the plate," I said.
