Two fingers folded.
Thumb crossed.
Tap.
Tap.
Malcolm watched carefully.
Across the street, a gray SUV immediately started its engine.
Malcolm turned.
The vehicle had been parked near the curb beneath a tree.
He had barely noticed it.
Now it pulled away.
Slowly.
Diane followed his eyes.
For the first time, she looked worried.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“You signaled that SUV.”
Diane grabbed the empty paint bucket.
“You’re paranoid.”
Malcolm stepped onto the porch.
“You came to my house in a floral bathrobe and dumped paint on my Mercedes. I think we passed paranoid five minutes ago.”
Diane pointed toward him.
“You should have paid the fines.”
“You should have read the bylaws.”
Diane turned and hurried toward her home three houses away.
Malcolm did not follow.
He photographed the paint.
He photographed the bucket.
Then he called the police.
Officer Marissa Cole arrived twenty-two minutes later.
She was initially skeptical when Malcolm described the strange hand signal.
Then he showed her the doorbell footage.
Diane could be seen clearly.
So could the gray SUV.
Officer Cole replayed the video twice.
“Do you recognize the vehicle?”
“No.”
“License plate visible?”
“Partially.”
Malcolm enlarged the frame.
The image was imperfect.
But the final four characters could be read.
Cole wrote them down.
“You said you’ve seen private security around here?”
“Yes.”
“Same vehicle?”
“No. Their security car is white.”
Officer Cole walked toward the Mercedes.
The paint was still wet.
“This isn’t house paint.”
Malcolm looked at her.
“What is it?”
“Looks like marking paint mixed with something thicker.”
“For what?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
Cole photographed a spot where a small amount had fallen onto the driveway.
Then she noticed something near the front tire.
A bright orange mark had been sprayed onto the concrete.
It was shaped like a short line with two dots beneath it.
Malcolm frowned.
“That wasn’t there yesterday.”
Cole crouched.
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
The officer stood.
“Don’t remove it yet.”
By noon, photographs of Diane’s confrontation had already circulated through Briarwood’s private Facebook group.
The reaction surprised Malcolm.
Several neighbors contacted him privately.
Not because of the paint.
Because of the hand sign.
Janice Bell, a retired teacher who lived near the lake, called first.
“Malcolm, I’ve seen her do that.”
“When?”
“The morning they towed my daughter’s car.”
Malcolm sat forward.
“What?”
Janice explained.
Her daughter had visited from Raleigh six months earlier.
The vehicle had been parked legally in Janice’s driveway.
At 5:40 the next morning, a tow truck removed it.
Janice ran outside screaming that it was private property.
Diane stood across the street.
According to Janice, Diane made the exact hand gesture Malcolm had recorded.
Minutes later, the tow truck drove away.
The HOA later claimed Janice’s daughter had violated overnight parking restrictions.
No such restriction applied to private driveways.
Malcolm wrote everything down.
Then another neighbor called.
Then another.
By evening, Malcolm had heard seven stories.
The details differed.
The hand signal did not.
One homeowner had seen Diane make it before a landscaping crew cut down shrubs along his property line.
Another remembered it moments before an HOA security officer photographed the inside of her open garage.
A third said Diane used it while standing near a contractor who later placed temporary stakes across part of his backyard.