I hit *Stop Recording*, a slow, wicked smile spreading across my face.
Through the glass, I watched Brenda—my HOA-dictator neighbor—sprint back to her property, smoothing her brown blazer as if she hadn’t just committed a crime. She thought she was a genius.
For months, she’d been trying to force me out of the neighborhood. With my house hitting the market tomorrow, she figured dumping fifty pounds of quick-setting industrial concrete into my pool would destroy the $30,000 filtration system, flood the yard, and tank my appraisal.
I tapped my screen, immediately uploading the crystal-clear video to the cloud. Then, I dialed 911.
But I wasn’t calling to report vandalism.
You see, last night I saw Brenda hide a heavy black garbage bag in her unlocked garden shed. Curious, I took a peek. It wasn’t concrete. It was her deadbeat husband’s very secret, very illegal stash of uncut cocaine—easily half a million dollars’ worth of cartel product.
I didn’t touch it. I didn’t swap it. I just let her grab it this morning in her blind, petty rage, mistaking it for the pool-destroyer she’d hidden next to it.
Outside, the white powder wasn’t hardening in the water. It was dissolving.
Right on cue, two heavily tinted SUVs screeched to a halt in Brenda’s driveway next door. Four unsmiling men stepped out, marching straight toward her front door. They were here for their product.
Simultaneously, police sirens began wailing in the distance, responding to my anonymous tip about a “massive narcotic dumping incident.”
Brenda wanted to ruin my open house. Instead, she just filmed herself destroying a kingpin’s fortune while inviting a DEA raid to her front porch.
I poured a glass of iced tea, pulled up a chair, and waited for the show.