Celia was seventy-one, sharp-eyed, and irritated by people who mistook age for confusion.
She said Patricia had asked residents to leave their living rooms while volunteers tested smoke detectors.
At Celia’s house, the volunteers had brought a new digital picture frame as a supposed safety-awareness gift.
Celia refused it because she did not want another device connected to her wireless network.
Patricia became unusually insistent and said the frame was already registered to the association.
Celia had kept the packaging because the label showed a vendor she did not recognize.
She placed a photograph of the box on the table between us.
The supplier was a small electronics distributor called Harbor Signal Systems.
Simone recognized the name from an invoice attached to Patricia’s lawsuit.
Patricia had described the destroyed camera as a specialized home-monitoring device supplied by Harbor Signal.
The invoice claimed the device cost nearly four thousand dollars.
Celia said she had worked with surveillance equipment claims during her career and had never seen a household camera priced that way without substantial additional hardware.
She also remembered a serial number on the picture frame’s packaging.
Simone asked her to preserve the photograph and write down everything she recalled without discussing possible explanations with other witnesses.
Celia agreed, but she wanted one condition.
She asked me to stop treating every older neighbor as a potential ally of Patricia.
She said most of them had been too polite to challenge a woman who made every disagreement feel like a personal insult.
I apologized, because she was right.
When Celia left, Simone studied the supplier’s address.
Harbor Signal operated from a commercial building leased by a holding company associated with Northstar’s managing partner.
The discovery did not prove who installed my camera, but it made the invoice look less like an ordinary repair bill.
Chapter 16: The Price of a Broken Clock
Patricia’s lawsuit demanded compensation for the device, the destroyed clock, emotional distress, and legal fees.
I could not understand why she was claiming the clock belonged to her when it had hung in my parents’ house for decades.
Simone explained that the complaint treated the camera and clock as one modified piece of equipment.
Patricia’s attorney argued that I had consented to the installation by allowing the inspection team into my home.
The argument depended on a document I had never seen.
During discovery, Patricia produced a scanned authorization form bearing my name and a signature that resembled mine.
The form included a paragraph about temporary monitoring devices used to evaluate residential safety.
I stared at the signature until my eyes watered.
The last stroke was wrong, and the date placed me at home on a morning when I had been presenting plans at a city meeting.
