Chapter 18
The next morning, Lang invited me to the county office. Not the clubhouse this time — a small conference room with a window that looked out on the parking lot.
She slid a folder across the table.
"Bank records," she said. "Three years of them. Take your time."
I opened it. The pages were dense with numbers, but Lang had flagged the important lines with yellow tabs. Regular deposits, every month, from a company I had never heard of — Hayes Property Services.
"Whose company is that?" I asked.
"Her nephew's," Lang said. "Adam Hayes. Twenty-nine years old. Registered the company two years ago. Its only client, as far as we can tell, is ClearView Development."
I flipped to the flagged pages. The deposits were all the same: four thousand dollars, once a month, like clockwork.
"Four thousand a month for what?"
"The memo line says 'neighborhood liaison consulting.'" Lang leaned back. "Have you ever consulted on anything for four thousand dollars a month, Scott?"
"No."
"Neither has Adam Hayes, as far as we can determine. The company has no website, no office, no employees. Just a bank account and a nephew."
I stared at the numbers. Four thousand a month. For two years. Ninety-six thousand dollars to be a neighborhood liaison.
"Where did the money go?" I asked.
"Some of it went to Gloria. Cash withdrawals, usually within a few days of each deposit. The rest —" Lang tapped another page. "The rest went to things like this."
She showed me a payment to a landscaping company. A payment to a handyman. Small invoices, paid in full, no questions asked.
"Repairs," I said slowly. "She was paying for repairs. On other people's houses?"
"On the three other older homes near the access route," Lang said. "The same three houses she filed complaints against. We think the pattern was this: Adam's company gets the monthly fee from ClearView. Gloria gets her cut in cash. And some of the money goes toward making the other houses look worse — a broken fence here, a clogged gutter there — small sabotage, paid for quietly, documented loudly in the next round of complaints."
I felt something cold settle in my stomach. "She paid people to damage her neighbors' homes."
"We're still building that part," Lang said. "The handyman is cooperating. He says Gloria hired him for 'maintenance' on two of the houses, then filed complaints about the very problems he'd been asked to create. He didn't know about the ClearView money. He thought she was just a difficult old woman with a committee title."
"And Adam?"
"Adam is twenty-nine and terrified." Lang almost smiled. "He's already talking. He says ClearView approached him, not the other way around. Derek Shaw told him they needed someone local, someone the neighborhood trusted, and that his aunt was perfect for it. The company was Shaw's idea — a clean channel for the payments. Adam got to keep a percentage for the trouble."
"How much trouble?"
"About fifteen percent." Lang's smile faded. "He's looking at conspiracy charges, Scott. He's cooperating, but he's not walking away clean. Nobody in this is walking away clean."
I closed the folder. The yellow tabs stuck out like little flags.
"Ninety-six thousand dollars," I said. "My house. My mother's house. That was the price."
"That was the retainer," Lang corrected. "The real price was whatever ClearView would have paid for your lot once you were desperate enough to sell. The consulting fee was just the cost of getting you there."
She stood up and walked to the window.
"There's one more thing in the folder," she said. "The last page. You should see it."
I turned to the back. It was a single sheet — a wire transfer confirmation. Fifty thousand dollars, from ClearView Development to Hayes Property Services, dated the week after the July morning. The memo line read: "Bonus — Miller lot resolution."
"Resolution," I said.
"They thought it was over," Lang said. "The hammer, the complaint, the inspection — they thought that morning was the end of it. They paid the bonus before they knew about your camera."
I looked at the number for a long time. Fifty thousand dollars for my house to overheat. For my mother to be used as a lever. For me to sleep through a July afternoon in a house with no air, not knowing why.
"Keep the folder," Lang said. "You'll need it for the civil case."
I took it home and put it on top of my mother's labeled folders. The stack was getting taller. And for the first time in months, every page in it was on my side.