I kept pace with him and watched when he turned the corner, moving toward the cul-de-sac where the highway cut through. I thought I might catch up with him and quiz him about the occupants of 401, but I worried the inquiry would get back to them. My mailperson is a friendly gal with whom I chat from time to time. If someone came skulking around with questions about me, she’d not only stonewall the stranger, she’d tattle the first chance she had. If I wanted to know the names of the persons receiving mail at 401 Trace, all I had to do was look. I glanced at the house. No one peered out from behind the drapes and no one emerged to collect the mail, so I took the liberty of lowering the flap. I removed the mail and sorted through the collection as though I had every right to do so.

Geraldine Satterfield was the addressee on a number of bills, Southern California Edison, AT&T, and Nordstrom among them. None of the envelopes was rimmed in red, so I assumed her accounts were current. A Pauline Fawbush had received her copy of People magazine, but that was the extent of the mail in her name. Impossible to know if it had been Geraldine or Pauline who’d answered the phone. The catalogs were for Occupant or Current Resident. Nothing for Christian, but he’d only been a free man for a short while, assuming he was there at all. I didn’t picture him on anybody’s mailing list. I closed the box and moved on.

On the far side of the street, I spotted two houses with For Rent signs in the yards. One sign in small print said DO NOT DISTURB TENANTS, which suggested someone was still in residence. The house two doors to the right looked more promising. There were cardboard boxes piled up on the curb along with four bulging black plastic bags. There were also assorted discards: a chair with a spring poking up through the seat and a swing-arm lamp with a missing locking nut and springs. This fairly cried out for further investigation. I lifted my gaze and did a casual survey. No dogs barked. I didn’t pick up any cooking smells or the whine of a leaf blower being operated nearby.

I traversed the street at an angle and walked up the short driveway, circling the house to the scruffy yard in the rear. I climbed two steps to the back porch and peered in through the glass-paned window in the kitchen door. The place was a mess. These people were never going to get their cleaning deposit back. The four-burner stove was spattered with grease. The counters were littered with open containers that ants were raiding in a feverish display of industry. In the center of the room, there was a garbage can filled to the brim. Even through the glass, the rotting foodstuffs smelled like they’d been sitting for a week.

I tried the knob and the kitchen door swung open with the sort of creak reserved for horror movies. Technically speaking, this wasn’t breaking and entering since I hadn’t broken anything. I made a few “yoo-hoo” noises just to satisfy myself that I was the only one on the premises. I’d seen this same floor plan in countless California cottages. Kitchen, living room, dining area, and two bedrooms with a bathroom between. I moved down the hall to the living room and looked out the front window toward the house at 401, which was hard to my right. I couldn’t see much. I unlocked the dead bolt on the front door and stuck my head out. The front porch was small, surrounded on three sides by a half wall, bisected by a short flight of steps. White latticework trellises extended from the top of the low porch wall to the roofline. The vines that had originally climbed up the trellises were long since dead, and the brown leaves created a cozy retreat. The angle of the view was sharp, but it did encompass Geraldine Satterfield’s front door and part of the driveway to the left.