“She discussed you.”
“How long?”
“Eleven minutes.”
That specific number made me smile.
“You timed it?”
“I was a librarian.”
“Of course.”
Evelyn looked uncomfortable.
“She said Andre thinks because he bought one of the older lots, he can live however he wants.”
I said nothing.
“Two board members laughed.”
“Who?”
“Greg and Lewis.”
I nodded.
Evelyn continued.
“I should have said something.”
“You don’t owe me that.”
“I think I did.”
She shifted the banana bread.
“Cynthia has a way of making disagreement feel like misconduct.”
That was one of the best descriptions of her I ever heard.
“Thank you for telling me.”
Evelyn handed over the pan.
Then left.
I sat on the back step eating banana bread straight from the foil.
The older lots.
That phrase bothered me.
Brier Glenn’s original forty-one parcels were not as polished as the second phase.
Houses varied more.
Lots were deeper.
Some fences were older.
Trees were bigger.
The expansion had stricter design rules.
Cynthia lived in the expansion.
Her house had stone trim.
Perfect boxwoods.
Approved bronze light fixtures.
Apparently, buying one of the original homes placed me in a category she had already created.
Someone who had entered under a lower standard.
That night I made one decision.
I would find out exactly what was in that shed before touching anything.
If the answer was nothing, I would remove it.
Pay the fines.
Repair the grass.
Move on.
Friday morning, I took a wire brush outside.
Thirty years of dirt had built up around the slab.
Along the rear edge, concrete extended beyond the siding by roughly fourteen inches.
I cleaned slowly.
Near the northeast corner, the brush hit metal.
A small rectangular plate had been embedded flush with the concrete.
Paint covered it.
I used mineral spirits.
Gray-green flakes lifted.
Letters appeared.
ARU.
Below that:
SURFACE NODE 14.
I sat back on my heels.
There it was.
Not proof.
But another piece.
I photographed the plate.
Tape measure in frame.
Then the conduit.
The seals.
Cabinet.
Ventilation louvers.
Steel gate.
I crawled behind the cabinet with a flashlight.
An old metal tag attached to one conduit carried another number.
ARU-N14-C.
I photographed that too.
My consulting work was light that afternoon.
Instead of going to a client office, I drove to the Asheford County recorder.
The clerk helped me find the original plat.
The subdivision had been agricultural land until the 1990s.
I found easement references.
Not enough detail.
Then I called Graham Bellamy.
Graham was a property attorney recommended by an old contractor friend.
He charged me two hundred dollars to start and sounded almost too happy when I described the problem.
“Old subdivision?”
“Yes.”
“Utility easement?”
“Yes.”
“Structure inside it?”
“Yes.”
“HOA ordering demolition?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful.”
“Not the word I would use.”
“For me, Andre.”
He laughed.
“For you, expensive and annoying.”
Graham requested title records.
I gave him everything.
Meanwhile, the HOA scheduled its monthly open meeting.
Forty people attended.
That was unusually high.