It was late, and I needed to sleep, but I had to at least take a first look at Angie’s email or else I knew I’d never fall asleep. What if there was some threatening email from somebody sent right before the murder? All of our answers could possibly be right at my fingertips.
Harmony was right—entering Angie’s password for her HOA account was actually easy. Stormy.Badkitty.GMAI7.
A first scan showed Angie was keeping everything extremely professional. Her emails were polished, to the point, and generally helpful. I remembered she told me an HOA email account is subject to anybody in the HOA being able to read it, so her policy was never to say something in an email that you wouldn’t want posted on a community bulletin board, and then she joked that nobody thirty-five and under would even know what a community bulletin board even was.
I clicked on one email thread at random from about a month earlier.
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To: Angie Beech
From: Veronica Delgado
Subject: Water Feature
#
Hello Angie,
I live on Poppy Street, and my house is adjacent to the children’s playground. I know that the HOA has been working very hard on changing the landscaping to be less wasteful of water, a move that I heartily approve of.
I was at a friend’s house recently in Glendale, and adjacent to their children’s park was a huge water feature, and it occurred to me that this would be an amazing addition to our new landscaping. The sound of the water spilling over a rock, bubbling into a pool at the bottom is very relaxing, and it would bring great warmth to the starkness of the river rocks that are going in around the fence line.
Please let me know what you think!
#
Attached to the email was a photo of a very large waterfall made from natural-looking stone surrounded by expansive trees. It did look extremely welcoming. It also looked expensive.
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To: Veronica Delgado
From: Angie Beech
Subject: RE: Water Feature
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Hi Veronica,
Thank you so much for reaching out, and for your ideas for our landscaping!
While I, too, would love to have a waterfall in the neighborhood, something like this would cost a lot of money, and it would unfortunately not be in the theme of water savings in this new era of increasing drought in the Southwest.
We have been working very hard to balance the budget, upgrade our irrigation system, and change over to attractive but drought-friendly landscaping, and that does not leave us with a lot of money for one big feature in the neighborhood. In addition, I’m afraid a waterfall would be in opposition to our goal of saving water.
If you would like, though, I would encourage you to join the Landscaping Committee so that you can share your ideas with others who are working to beautify the neighborhood!
Thank you,
Angela
#
To: Angela Beech
From: Veronica Delgado
Subject: RE: RE: Water Feature
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Hey Angela,
I believe you have misunderstood about the water feature. What makes it so great is that it recycles the water. As water pours out from the top, it is collected at the bottom and, as I understand it, there is a pump that sends it back to the top. I asked, and it uses very little electricity for the pump.
When I was with my friend in Glendale, lots of children were playing in the water. It was very cooling, and it has the advantage of helping to teach kids about lots of scientific principles, such as gravity, and it provides a sensory experience for them. They can explore the tactile qualities of water, feeling its cool slipperyness and contrasting that with the warmth of the rocks.
Very sincerely,
Veronica Delgado
#
I laughed, thinking about Angie wondering about water’s cool slipperyness.
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From: Angie Beech
To: Veronica Delgado
Subject: RE: RE: RE: Water Feature
Hi Veronica,
Unfortunately, running water has a high evaporation rate, which means that a waterfall feature such as the one you have pictured would require constant addition of water, especially in the very hot days of the summer to come.
In addition, we simply don’t have money left over from this year’s budget to be able to afford a waterfall feature.
Sorry,
Angela
#
From: Veronica Delgado
To: Angela Beech
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Water Feature
I don’t know why this board is so insistent on turning our lovely community into a desert.
You are very rude, and I won’t be voting for you again.
Very Sincerely,
Veronica Delgado
#
I knew Angie well enough to know that she would have laughed at this exchange and moved on.
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I found another one that promised to be interesting, judging from its passive aggressive subject line.
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From: Lucas Thompson
To: Angela Beech
Subject: COMMUNICATION and the Lack of It
Miss Beach,
Apparently there was an annual meeting back in December that I was never notified of. In addition, the pool has been closed often for maintenance. I tried to email Miss Gransby, and she referred me to you. That’s the problem in this neighborhood. All of my neighbors and I can never figure what’s going on, when the pool will be closed, when there will be meetings, nothing!
Lucas Thompson
#
From: Angela Beech
To: Lucas Thompson
Subject: Re: COMMUNICATION and the Lack of It
Hi Lucas,
I’m so sorry you’re having issues with communication. I checked, and you are, in fact, on the master distribution list. Emails were sent out in November about the Annual Meeting (which I’m resending to you right now so you can check to see if it went unnoticed by you), and emails about the pool, the tennis courts, common area watering schedules, and the schedule for the ice cream truck (starting up again in June!) go out on an as-needed basis.
Perhaps you should check your spam folder to make sure you just aren’t missing these emails?
All my best,
Angela
#
From: Lucas Thompson
To: Angela Beech
Subject: Re: Re: COMMUNICATION and the Lack of It
Angela,
You’ve just put your finger on the problem. We receive too many emails from the HOA. How are we supposed to open all of them? We have no way of knowing which ones are important! All of my neighbors agree, this is no way to conduct business.
Lucas
From: Angela Beech
To: Lucas Thompson
Subject: RE: Re: Re: COMMUNICATION and the Lack of It
Lucas,
Honestly, WHAT THE FUCK?
Angela
PRESS SEND TO SEND
The last reply was left unsent, and I laughed so hard tears literally came to my eyes.
Oh, Angie, you were a saint to take all of this on and do it with so much grace.
#
There were a LOT of boring emails. “We need to call a board meeting for this month. What is everybody’s schedule?”
The responses from the rest of the board were all over the place, and it seemed it constantly took at least 20 back and forth emails to find a good time for a real board meeting, which needed to be advertised to the homeowners at least a week ahead, per California law as I understood it.
There were a lot of emails between Angie and Felyne about bills. As manager, Felyne was in charge of paying bills and taking in homeowners’ dues. These emails were all pretty boring, with messages like, “The sprinkler repairman company charged us for two hours of time on that repair. Can you ask to see why it took them so long once the part came in?”
And
“We were double charged for this, can you contact them to see if we can get a credit?”
It was clear that Angie was double checking everything. Good for her. As a homeowner who paid monthly dues, I would hope my board was paying attention to the money in and money out.
There were also many emails about residents who were late paying their dues. Angie wanted to give them more time, but the board weighed in over email and said they had to add on the late fees, as required in the covenants.
Honestly, I didn’t know how Angie did it. I don’t think I could ever enforce a fine against a neighbor, and, shoot, I was a business owner! Getting paid was literally my how I made a living.
I scrolled through some more, but the wall of emails was intimidating, and I knew I’d never be able to read through them all.
I filtered for the word “Cynthia,” but as she was the Treasurer, there were still a ton of emails that included her. The very last one just set up the meeting on Sunday.
To: Angela Beech
From: Cynthia Barron
Subject: Meeting?
Ang, I’d love to see you this week. I’m super busy these days, but I could find some time on Saturday. How’s 9 am?
Thanks so much for all of your help!
Cyn
This tracked. Cynthia said she was going over to Angie’s both for HOA business and to get help with the forensic accountant.
Searching on “Felyne” only gave me a similar wall of emails, as she was cc’d on almost all of them. As with Cynthia, Angie had set up a meeting with Felyne on Saturday also.
I moved on to filtering for Beatrice. There were a slew of back-and-forths between them before the Annual Meeting last year in November. I clicked on a couple and saw arguments about how Angie was too late to have her name on the ballots sent by mail out to the homeowners, and Angie arguing that there had never been any published deadline for that. Both ladies kept it professional, and both remained firm in their positions.
I clicked on the latest to and from Beatrice, sent the Thursday before Angie’s death.
From: Angela Beech
To: Beatrice Gransby
Subject: Can we talk?
Bea,
I hope you don’t mind, but I was wondering if we could have a quick chat about prior HOA business. Nothing big, I just want to ask a couple of questions.
I have time at 12:30 on Saturday, if that works for you. If you could stop by the house, that would be great.
Ang
From: Beatrice Gransby
To: Angela Beech
Subject: RE: Can we talk?
Angie,
I’m sorry if I’ve made things awkward. I think you’re doing a great job as President, and you seem to have a lot more time for it than I ever did.
Saturday at 12:30 sounds good.
Bea
What made Angie reach out to Beatrice? And that is quite a turnaround in attitude from Beatrice. It could be fake, though, couldn’t it? If Beatrice was mad enough to murder Angie, she wouldn’t show her hand by being nasty before they met up.
I leaned back and yawned, rubbing my eyes. It had been a long day, and I wasn’t at my best, but I wanted to at least finish reading the emails from the people who had been at Angie’s on Saturday.
I needed a diversion, so I opened Reddit and saw a new post in the forensic genetic genealogy forum. These were always interesting to me because so many cold cases were being solved now.
The latest case was from the 1970’s in a small town outside of Seattle. At the time, there hadn’t been much crime in that town until a woman, JoAnne, was found assaulted and killed in her own apartment. The police investigated every lead they had available at the time—interviewing neighbors, asking if anybody heard anything, interviewing old boyfriends, but nobody raised any red flags in the investigation. In reading about the case, I thought it sounded a lot like the city of Palm Hills, especially in the early days right after I moved here.
In that case, the woman had scratched her assailant with her fingernails, evidence that was catalogued and properly stored. In the early 2000’s, investigators reopened her case and had the fingernail evidence DNA tested, but unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough of it to get a good sample to enter into CODIS, the FBI’s national database of DNA for convicted felons as well as victims. There was enough DNA to rule out some suspects, but not enough to say for sure who had committed this horrible crime.
Then, in 2019, after the Golden State Killer had been found using a revolutionary DNA process, investigators submitted her fingernail evidence for a different kind of DNA testing, where they create something called an SNP profile that could be compared against DNA in commercial DNA databases to find relatives of the suspect.
In this case, the genetic path led straight to a handyman who had been interviewed by law enforcement and who swore up and down that he had never met the victim and had never been inside her apartment.
Almost 50 years later, the handyman confessed to not just killing JoAnne, but many more women, closing several cold cases around the state of Washington. He had seemed happy to be caught finally, as though it was a relief that the truth was out.
I thought about how, back then, a simple security camera would have solved that case.
If only we could find some DNA that would point to Angie’s killer. But if it’s one of the four who visited Angie on Sunday, there’ll be a good innocent explanation for their DNA to be there.
There’s still plenty of evidence to collect. This case is solvable. I swear to you, Angie, if the police can’t do it, I will solve this case!
Steeled with determination, I searched the emails for my final suspect for the night: Brady Strong.
From: Angela Beech
To: Brady Strong
Subject: Thanks for Meeting With Me
Mr. Strong,
I appreciate your time last week helping me understand the invoices for our extermination contract. I still have a couple of questions that are best answered in person. Is there any chance we could meet this week?
Angela Beech
Sunhaven HOA President
From: Brady Strong
To: Angela Beech
Subject: RE: Thanks for Meeting With Me
Hi Angie, I’m pretty tied up this week with sales and extermination calls. The best I could do would be to meet on Saturday. Would that be okay w/ you?
Brady Strong
Bugged Out Rep
I read as Angie and Brady settled on meeting Saturday at 2 PM.
It seemed to me that Angie was stacking her meetings all on Saturday for a reason. First Cynthia, then Beatrice, Brady, and finally, Felyne. This felt intentional.
What were you up to, Angie?
I crawled into bed with more questions than answers, pulled my pillows all around me, and tried to quiet my mind.
Mr. Tuttles took his usual spot at my feet, first digging into the comforter, then doing exactly two spins, and laying down with a gentle sigh. I found I missed Stormy at my head, even though she’d only joined us two days ago. She was most likely all cuddled up with Harmony.
I closed my eyes and tried to reenact Angie’s murder, wishing I could see whose face was on the person that killed her. Just as I was drifting off to sleep without any answers, I heard the very soft patter of tiny feet and felt a slight pressure on the mattress. Stormy had returned to her spot next to my head.
Finally content, Stormy let us all sleep through the night.