One of them asked, “What’s going on? Are we moving in or not?”
Brenda barked, “Take everything back to the apartment.”
Gary, the lead driver, stepped forward. “Hold up. You hired us to haul this out here, and now you want us to haul it back. That is standby time, round trip, and labor. Eight hundred dollars.”
Brenda nearly choked. “Eight hundred?”
Gary pulled out the contract and tapped the fine print. “Credit card or Zelle.”
Kyle tried to play tough, then immediately backed down when Gary asked if he planned to pay. Brenda reached into her emergency cash envelope with shaking hands and counted out eight hundred dollars as if each bill were a piece of her pride being torn away.
Gary took the cash. “Next time, don’t rent big trucks and pretend to be rich.”
The movers drove away, leaving the Petersons standing in exhaust fumes. But the show was not over.
Kyle walked toward his red Dodge Charger, which was still parked inside my courtyard. He got in, desperate for air conditioning, and hit the gas to back out. The car jerked violently and stopped. The rear end lifted slightly.
“What the hell?”
He looked out and saw the back of his Charger hooked to a tow truck. A driver in a neon vest handed him a notice. “Private property, unauthorized parking. Pay the drop fee now, or it goes to impound.”
Kyle looked up at the second-floor balcony, where I stood with my arms crossed. “Vicki, tell him to unhook my car.”
“Kyle,” I said, bored, “you parked illegally on private property. Pay the driver or pick up your car tomorrow.”
He patted his pockets. He had no money. Brenda had just spent her cash on the movers.
In panic, Kyle grabbed a landscaping brick from the garden bed and tried to break the towing chain. The brick bounced off and slammed into his own rear fender, leaving a deep dent and scraping the custom paint. He stared at the damage he had caused.
The tow driver laughed and pulled away with the damaged Charger.
Savannah screamed at Kyle. “You just ruined the car and let him take it.”
Kyle collapsed onto the driveway, burying his face in his hands. As dusk fell, Brenda looked at her son, the missing car, the empty mansion, and the darkening sky. For the first time, she seemed to understand they had walked into a snare.
Hours later, David arrived in an Uber. He stumbled out, furious and visibly unsteady. Seeing his family huddled outside the gate, he shouted, “How dare she treat my family like this?”
In his fury, he grabbed a metal bat from a nearby sports gear bag that Savannah had set on the ground earlier, and stormed toward the reinforced glass doors.
By then, I had turned on every exterior light through backup control. The estate glowed like a fortress.
David struck the security glass once. A loud crack of metal against reinforced glass rang out, but the door did not break.
“Vicki, come out here,” he shouted. “Face me.”
I stepped onto the second-floor balcony, holding up my phone. I was live on Instagram. Thousands were watching.