I drove up to the one in the notch: start at the top. No cars were parked at any of the three; the upper one had a garage, but it was closed and windowless. Nobody answered the bell there, or at either of the lower two. The middle one had its shutters up already, which no doubt meant the owners had closed it up and gone home. There were no names on mailboxes or anywhere else on the three properties.
Only one of the nearby houses on Lakeview Drive was occupied, by a thin middle-aged woman who didn’t want to be bothered by somebody she didn’t know on an errand she had no interest in. She had no idea who owned any of the houses on Thornapple Way, she said, which may or may not have been the truth. Ditto her claim, when I showed her the photo of Nedra Merchant, that she’d never seen the woman before. She minded her own business, she said, which was more than she could say for some people. Whereupon she shut her door in my face.
Friendly folk in the country. Or more likely, she was a city transplant who hadn’t yet learned country ways and country manners and probably never would.
Lakeport had not changed much either. More people lived there — about a quarter of the county’s population now — and its outskirts had expanded, in particular toward Kelseyville to the south. But its downtown area, along the lakefront, still had a pleasant old-fashioned atmosphere despite the noisy, garishly dressed and undressed summer people who clotted its streets, sidewalks, municipal park, and boat landing.
The hundred-year-old courthouse in the town square had been turned into a museum; the new courthouse, much larger and institutional-modern in design, rose up on the block behind it. I parked on Forbes Street and went into the new one. The county assessor’s office was on the second floor. The woman clerk in there was polite and helpful; for a small fee she punched up the ownership records for the three houses on Thornapple Way.
Two of the names meant nothing to me. The third was Nedra Adams Merchant. She’d owned the property at number eight Thornapple Way a little less than two years, having had full title deeded over to her by the former owner. The purchase price had been twenty-five thousand dollars, a ridiculously low sum considering that the property’s assessed value was five times that amount. The price didn’t surprise me any more than the former owner’s name.
The Liar, Dean Purchase.
So now I had confirmation that Purchase had been mixed up big-time with Nedra Merchant. But the fact that he’d lied to me about that didn’t necessarily mean he’d had anything to do with her disappearance. Or had any knowledge of the reasons behind it.
Was he involved or not? Had she come up here in May or not? Been living in her summer home all or part or none of the past three and a half months? Written and mailed those postcards to Dr. Muncon and Annette Olroyd? Was she here now, alive or dead?
I drove fast back around the northern rim of the lake. The answers to at least some of those questions were waiting for me at number eight Thornapple Way.
Number eight was the uppermost of the street’s three houses, the one built into the notch atop the dogleg. It was a smallish place, narrow and two-storied, of a contemporary modular style that didn’t blend in too well with the oaks and madrone and redbuds that flanked it. Its best feature was a terrace-size cedar deck that extended all along the ground-floor front and partway around on the far side. From out there you had a panoramic view: all of Clear Lake, silvery blue under the hot midday sun and loaded with boats and water skiers; the Mayacamas Mountains to the west and the ragged jut of Cobb Mountain to the south. The two-car garage was set apart from the house and slightly above it. Past the garage and farther up the hillside, a path led to a private picnic area shaded by huge heritage oaks.
I parked where I had earlier, in the short driveway that connected the garage to the street. It was quiet up here, a thick midday hush broken only by a squalling jay and the faint drifting whine of powerboats down on the lake. Heat hammered at me, driving more sweat out of my pores. The summer smells of dust, dry grass, tree spice, and lake water were so strong they made my nostrils itch — and gave me a rush of childhood nostalgia that was as powerful as a drug.
Over to the house first, to ring the bell again. Empty echoes and no response. There was a rumpled screen door that opened outward; I opened it and laid a hand on the inner door’s knob. It didn’t yield when I turned it. I shut the screen, moved over to the nearest window. Yellow twill drapes were pulled tight together inside. I wandered around to the deck area on the south side. A pair of sliding glass doors, another set of tight-drawn drapes. Near the window was a Weber that hadn’t been used in some time: when I lifted the hood-shaped lid I found a rusted grill and lots of spider silk. The rest of that section of deck was barren. So was the long front part except for a couple of molded plastic chairs.
I returned to the garage. It had a pair of manually operated pull-up doors; both were secure. I circled the building. No other doors and no windows. But it had been built of pine boards that had begun to weather, and on the back side a gap had warped open between two of the planks. On one, in the middle of the gap, was a loose pine knot. I went and got the flashlight out of the car. Back behind the garage, I used my Swiss Army knife to pry out the loose knot and widen the gap. Then I laid the flashlight’s lens at an angle next to the opening, switched it on, and leaned close to squint one-eyed inside.
One car in there, an ice-blue color. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, couldn’t see any of the license plate. I fiddled around with the light and my angle of vision until more of the front end — and all of the hood ornament — came into view.
Mercedes. Fairly new, too, probably last year’s model.
Nedra Merchant’s car.
I might have been able to pick one of the garage door locks, but it would have taken time and my chances of finding answers were better inside the house. The front door behind the screen had a dead-bolt lock on it; forget that. The adjacent window, also screened, had a simple catch lock, but the frame was down tight against the sill and there was no way I could wiggle a knife blade underneath to slip the catch. When I took a look at the sliding glass doors I saw that I couldn’t get in through there either. Catch-locked, and judging from one door’s refusal to budge even a little when I tugged on it, it was also fitted with a roller-bolt security lock at the bottom.
On the side nearest the garage were kitchen windows, at a level too high for me to see into. The sliding variety, screened on the outside. I stood for a few seconds, cleaning sweat off my face, scanning the area. A car drifted past on Lakeview Drive and disappeared; out of sight the other way, somebody began using a noisy leaf blower or chain saw. Otherwise, I seemed to have this portion of the hillside to myself. Dusty oaks and limp-looking redbuds grew densely on the far side of Thornapple Way — an effective screen between me and the houses beyond. Higher up, there was nothing except power lines and a long crease where two ground folds met that was choked with brush and deadfall, a fire hazard that ought to have been cleaned out.
Some cordwood was stacked against the garage wall. I poked among it until I found a thick, unsplit chunk about two feet long. Back to the house, where I wedged the log down under the kitchen windows. When I climbed up on top of it I could rest my arms on the narrow sill and look inside past frilly yellow-and-white curtains. Not that there was anything to see except a standard bare-bones kitchen.
I gave my attention to the windows. They were locked, but the catch didn’t look like much: the weakest security point in a high percentage of homes, old and new, is the kitchen windows. The screen popped out with one tug; I lifted it down. Then I went to work on the window catch with my knife and brute force.