Sunday too.
Monday morning, bag number four arrived.
By Friday, it was six.
By the end of the second week, it was ten.
Always late at night.
Always during unexplained camera interruptions.
Sometimes the trash arrived in sealed bags.
Sometimes loose.
Once somebody emptied what looked like an entire kitchen garbage bin into the shallow end.
The homeowner stopped swimming.
He started photographing everything.
Date.
Time.
Contents.
Camera interruption.
Police report number.
He built a spreadsheet.
That was what he did when something stopped making sense.
He organized it.
The HOA President learned about the problem after the fifth incident.
At least, that was when she admitted knowing.
The homeowner encountered her beside the neighborhood mailbox pavilion.
She wore a bright pink floral satin robe, oversized sunglasses, and pearl earrings even though it was barely eight in the morning.
She smiled.
"I hear you're having pool trouble."
The homeowner stopped.
"Who told you?"
She adjusted her sunglasses.
"People talk."
"Police report isn't supposed to be neighborhood gossip."
She smiled again.
"Nothing stays private around here."
The homeowner studied her.
"Do you know anything about it?"
Her smile disappeared.
"Excuse me?"
"Somebody has been throwing garbage into my backyard."
"And you're asking me?"
"I'm asking everybody."
She folded her arms.
"Maybe somebody is trying to tell you something."
The homeowner went still.
"What?"
She shrugged.
"You've had a difficult relationship with community standards."
He stared at her.
"So garbage in my pool is a community message?"
"Don't twist my words."
"I didn't."
She stepped closer.
"You moved in and immediately challenged everything."
"Rules that didn't make sense."
"Rules apply whether you like them or not."
"That has nothing to do with my pool."
"Maybe not."
The homeowner noticed the phrasing.
Maybe not.
Not definitely not.
The President turned away.
Then stopped.
"You know, if you had installed an HOA-approved surveillance system, you might have better footage."
He looked at her.
"My cameras are commercially rated."
"Apparently not."
She walked away.
The homeowner remained beside the mailboxes.
That conversation bothered him for the rest of the day.
Not because she sounded guilty.
Because she sounded informed.
Two details especially.
She knew the police had been called.
And she knew the cameras had failed.
He had told nobody about the outages except the responding Officer.
That evening, the homeowner went through every HOA notice he had received.
Most were ordinary.
One caught his attention.
A security-system advisory sent three months earlier.
The HOA had contracted a technology company to upgrade gate access, neighborhood camera integration, and smart-home connectivity for residents who opted in.
The homeowner had declined.
He preferred keeping his home system independent.
But during the rollout, a technician had asked whether the association could temporarily access exterior Wi-Fi network data to test interference around shared devices.
The homeowner had refused.
He had forgotten about it.
Now he wondered whether his network was actually being attacked.
The next morning, he called the security company that installed his cameras.