Lake is a small, mountainous county a hundred miles or so northeast of San Francisco. A resort county: vacation tourism is its main industry, far outdistancing pears, walnuts, grapes, and other agricultural crops. Clear Lake dominates it — geographically, demographically, and economically. With more than a hundred miles of shoreline, it’s the largest natural lake in the state, Tahoe being bigger but partially in Nevada. Lakeport, on the west shore, is the county seat and largest town with some fifteen thousand year-round residents. The population of the entire county is only slightly more than fifty thousand, so the standard map I had provided complete street guides not only to Lakeport but to all the other towns and villages of any size.
I checked the listing of Lakeport streets. Then I tried Lucerne, a little resort community on the northeast shore; nothing for me there either. Nice? Nice was a kind of sister hamlet to Lucerne, a few miles away and a bit smaller.
And there it was.
In Nice, high up off Lakeview Drive, was a short street that had the shape of a dog’s leg on the map — a street called Thornapple Way.
I toyed with the idea of driving up to Lake County tonight, but it was a long way and the Cahill situation had left me physically and emotionally drained. Better to get as much rest as I could tonight and head out fresh in the morning.
So I took myself home. And there was a message from Kerry on the machine.
It was brief and it didn’t say much: “Hi, babe. I’m sorry I haven’t called. I wanted to see you today but I have to go out again about two. Call me if you get in before that. Or tonight after six. We need to talk.” I played it back three times. She sounded subdued but not grim or portentous. The “hi, babe” was a good sign; the “we need to talk” could be good or bad.
Six-fifteen now. I tapped out her number, but she wasn’t home yet; her machine answered. After the beep I said, “Just returning your call. I’m in for the evening — call or come on over.” I hesitated, thought, What the hell, and said, “Love you,” before I disconnected.
I opened a can of minestrone, dumped in some grated Parmesan cheese, and cooked it up and ate it with a handful of crackers. It didn’t set well, just seemed to lie simmering in my gullet while I sprawled out on the couch and listened to an old blues record. Bad choice of record, though: Bessie Smith singing such cheerful ballads as “Down Hearted Blues” and “Down in the Dumps” and “Baby Have Pity on Me.” I put a Pete Fountain tape on instead.
Seven o’clock.
I couldn’t get my mind off Kerry. Memories... so damned many memories. The first time we’d made love, after she’d done most of the seducing. “Ask me if I want to go to bed,” she’d said, and I’d said, “Do you want to go to bed?” And she’d said, “I thought you’d never ask,” and took my hand and led me like a kid into my own bedroom. The way she’d looked and the way she’d cried when I showed up at her door after the Deer Run nightmare. An afternoon we’d spent wandering among tide pools near Carmel. A night in a fancy motel in the Napa Valley, the two of us splashing like kids in one of those big in-room Jacuzzi tubs.
Other memories, too, not nearly so pleasant. Kerry saying, “I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while,” and then walking out of my old office on Drumm Street — the first time I thought I was losing her. And Kerry lying crumpled and bloody on the floor of my closet, not so long ago, beaten unconscious by a man who was after me...
Seven-thirty.
I got up and paced around, thinking: What a wreck I am. An old derelict floundering in heavy seas, looking for steerage back into a safe harbor.
The image that little metaphor conjured up made me laugh out loud. At myself, sardonically. An old derelict? A more apt description was of something darting around underwater, not floundering on top of it, something small and bright and silly: one of Walter Merchant’s clownflsh.
Eight o’clock, and eight-thirty, and nine.
I went in and took a hot bath. That usually starts the phone ringing off its hook, but not tonight. Out with Blessing again — where the hell else would she be? Driving me crazy. Down in the dumps. Baby, have pity on me.
But she didn’t.
The phone stayed silent.
Chapter 20
Tag end of summer in Lake County: hot, dry, the hills all brown and dusty and crawling with rattlesnakes, the hordes of vacationers and summer residents and beer-swilling youths thinning as the new school year approached — though at night they would still swarm as thickly as the mosquitoes and gnats. Lakeport and the other resort communities come alive in late May, thrive from mid-June to mid-September, and are done blooming by the first of October. The rest of the year — except for bass-fishing season, and year-round activities at Konocti Harbor Inn on the south shore — they’re pretty much the domain of retirees, small business services, and vacation-industry people making preparations for next summer’s influx.
I came in on Highway 20 from Ukiah, past Blue Lake and along the northern rim of Clear Lake. Even though it was Monday, traffic was heavy on the two-lane highway — slowed and clogged by cars and campers and behemoth motor homes and pickups towing boats. The midday heat was intense; I was simmering in my own sweat by the time I rolled into Nice.
At one time I’d driven up here once or twice a year, mostly by myself, to fish for bass and catfish at Rodman Slough, midway between Nice and Lakeport. I remembered the last trip, four or five years ago. Eberhardt had come along and we’d rented a lakeside cabin in Lucerne. He’d caught two fat white cats the first morning, six pounders, and I’d caught some channel cats and a bullhead; we’d had fish fries three nights running, and drunk a couple of cases of beer each, and taken the rented boat all the way down to Jago Bay at the southern tip. We’d had a fine time... or at least I had. But when I’d suggested going back the following year, Eberhardt had backed out without much explanation.
Now, maybe, I knew why.
Damn the way things work out sometimes.
Nice hadn’t changed much; I would have been surprised if it had. Lake County isn’t affluent, and with the exception of small, upscale new communities at Soda Bay and Konocti Harbor, its resorts cater to young party animals and down-home middle-class adults who don’t need fancy golf courses, tennis courts, and nightclubs to enjoy their summer vacations. Give them a small boat, a funky old tourist cabin, a good cheap restaurant, and a bar that has dancing to live country and western bands on weekends, and they’re content. From what I knew of Nedra Merchant, she didn’t fit into that down-home category — but then you never know about people. Maybe she had enough sophistication in the city and came up here for the change. Or maybe she hadn’t come here of her own volition, back in May. Or maybe she’d never come here at all...
The village had the same unassuming, countrified look and feel that it had had forty years ago, the first time I’d visited here, and that it had probably had for decades before that. All that had been added recently were a few more houses on the steep folded hills rising inland from the lakeshore, at least one new restaurant and some junk shops masquerading as purveyors of antiques. If I’d been in a different mood, without so much weighing on my mind, I would have felt good coming back here. As it was, what I felt was relief that the long, hot trip was over.
Lakeview Drive hooked up off the main road; I turned there, wound my way along the lower reaches of the dry brown hills until I came to a sign that said Thornapple Way. It wasn’t much of a street, just a two-block extension of asphalt that ran steeply up one side of a broad humpback. There were three houses on it, two down close to Lakeview Drive and the other atop the dogleg at the upper end, built into a notch in the hillside.