Neither had I.
In my old job, the first thing you learn is not to jump. You ask questions and write down the answers.
The HOA posts its annual reports in a shared folder nobody reads. I read them. The snow removal line first showed up in 2021, the year Grant became president, at $13,500. Before that there was no snow line at all, because for twenty-five years the HOA had gotten it free and never asked why.
Then I went to the Secretary of State’s website and typed in Kessler Snow & Ice.
It was a real company. Registered in 2020. The registered agent was a man named Lance Kessler, with a mailing address at a UPS Store in Monticello, forty minutes south.
I didn’t know any Lance Kessler.
But I did know where I’d seen the name Kessler. On a framed wedding invitation in Gina Halvorsen’s front hall, the one time I’d been inside, for their housewarming. Gina Kessler and Grant Halvorsen. I remembered it because it had a lighthouse on it, and we live in Minnesota.
