The Battery Camera Showed His Saw Above My Dry Tanks

"Please send that instruction in writing," I said.

Leland let out a thin breath.

"You don't have permission to film residents."

"The board approved a leak camera aimed at my tanks. You signed the approval."

"That was before you flooded the basement."

He hung up.

I wrote the time and his words on the back of an envelope. Then I sent him an email asking whether I had understood his demand correctly. He did not answer.

At the aquarium, we never erased a bad water reading because the next one looked better. We kept both and worked out what had changed.

I made two copies of the card. One went into a sealed envelope. I uploaded another copy to my private storage account, along with the camera settings and purchase receipt.

Then I watched.

The image showed both tanks, my metal rack, and the common supply pipe overhead. Past the rack, an open service door framed part of the old storage room.

At 7:08, a man in gray work clothes wheeled cedar panels through that door. I recognized him. Leland had called him our emergency contractor.

At 7:12, Leland came in behind him.

The camera recorded no sound. I did not need sound to see the saw.

Leland climbed a two-step stool, pushed aside a loose strip of insulation, and worked the blade against the copper line. Water flashed white across his sleeve.

He climbed down fast.

The contractor came back. Both men stood under the pipe. Leland pointed toward the main shutoff, then toward the side door. They left the frame.

For four minutes, a narrow stream struck the floor behind my rack.

At 7:17, the split opened wider.

My tanks stood beneath their lids, calm as two lit windows. The water outside them rose.

I called Rosa.

"Can you come upstairs?"

"Did you find something?"

"I found the beginning."

She arrived with a notebook and her reading glasses. We watched the full file, from before the men arrived until she appeared to shut the main valve.

"Pause it there," she said.

The blade sat against the pipe.

"That's the shared cold supply. He probably meant to cut the dead branch beside it. Probably isn't a finding. What I can say is his blade touched the line that failed."

"Could my tanks have done that?"

She looked at me over her glasses.

"Only if your fish learned plumbing."

I laughed once. It came out wrong.

Rosa set her notebook down.

"We'll write it so nobody needs to trust either of us. Measurements. Photos. Times."

She had taken pictures before replacing the pipe. Its cut had bright teeth marks. She had saved the section in a parts bag, signed the seal, and entered it in her service log.

"He asked for it," she said.

"The pipe?"

"Said he'd take care of disposal. I told him scrap stayed with my job record until the bill was settled."

Her bill was $1,360. He had not paid it.

We watched the gray-clothed man again.

"Niles Venn," Rosa said. "He installs saunas."

I looked toward the floor, as if I could see through it.

The storage room beneath Leland's first-floor unit had been closed for six weeks. He said mold treatment required privacy. A new door connected it to the stairs inside his unit.

"Does a sauna need water?" I asked.

"Some don't. That one has a shower in the plans he showed me. He wanted me to add a supply. I asked for board approval and permits. He stopped calling."

That gave us a reason to ask more questions. It did not give us all the answers.

I pulled up my phone's tank-maintenance videos. I used a fixed stand to film feed response and gill movement when a fish seemed ill. The frame included the service door.

Three Thursdays earlier, while I checked a wrasse for rapid breathing, Niles had crossed behind me carrying cedar benches.

Leland met him at the door and handed him an envelope.

On its front, in thick black print, were the words BREAKWATER EMERGENCY FUND.

"That proves an envelope," Rosa said. "We need the money trail."

I was grateful she said it. Fury made a person skip steps.

I put blue tape on three folders: WATER, WORK, MONEY.

We listed what each one held and what each one still needed.

At nine the next morning, I sent the board a formal request for account records, meeting minutes, contractor bills, and my assessment file. I attached one still picture of the intact tanks during the flood.

By noon, someone slid a notice under my door.

It charged me $250 for an unauthorized surveillance device and ordered the camera surrendered to Leland by five.