Sketch Expected Today of Man Who Shot Executive : Investigation: Newport Beach police still seek motive in point-blank attack. Neighborhood is tense but quiet as residents keep an eye out for unfamiliar vehicles.

NEWPORT BEACH —  Police expect to release a composite sketch today of the man who shot and wounded an executive in her Mercedes-Benz as she prepared to go to work, but investigators still had no motive for the crime that has shaken a quiet neighborhood.

*

On Wednesday, detectives met with frightened residents of Port Sheffield Place to craft a sketch of the man and his maroon Pontiac. Residents in the Harbor View neighborhood had seen him lurking on the street for several weeks before he shot Wienerschnitzel executive Beverly J. Blake point-blank in her car.

“We have got to get consensus from these different people on what he looks like,” said Sgt. Andy Gonis, who declined to release further information on the investigation.

Blake, a 48-year-old vice president of marketing for the fast-food chain, was at a local hospital Wednesday with a gunshot wound on her upper left side, police said. She reportedly was in guarded condition but is expected to survive.

As they pieced together a better picture of the heavy-set man who fired once into Blake’s car at 8:20 a.m. Tuesday, police also stepped up patrols in a neighborhood of half-million-dollar homes long thought to be among Newport’s safest.

“Hopefully, this will allow them to sleep a little easier at night,” Gonis said. “At this point were not overly concerned that this is something that is going to repeat.”

On Port Sheffield, glass from the shattered driver’s side window of Blake’s car had been swept away, and the neighborhood was eerily quiet Wednesday. Neighbors who did come and go followed police advice and kept a watchful eye for cars they didn’t recognize.

Police have visited some of the neighbors, one said, inquiring about when and where residents saw the suspect in the weeks leading to the shooting.

At Blake’s house Wednesday, the housekeeper, Mirna Castro, said she and her husband were not allowed to visit Blake at the hospital Tuesday, apparently as a security precaution. But she heard Blake was doing well.

Blake lives in the rented home with her 5-year-old daughter, Taylor, a roommate and the live-in housekeeper.

Neighbors said Blake’s roommate is also an executive for a local company. She was so shaken by the shooting that she has decided to stay elsewhere for now and stopped home only briefly Tuesday night to pick up some clothes.

Police described the assailant as a 6-foot black, in his late 30s or early 40s with salt-and-pepper hair and weighing about 250 pounds. He drives a dark-colored 1990s Pontiac, possibly a maroon Grand Am.

About two months ago, a neighbor called police regarding a man sitting in a car matching that description and facing Blake’s house. In the past two weeks, neighbors up and down the tiny street said they thought they had seen the man sitting in his car or strolling down the road.

One neighbor said someone fitting the gunman’s description was sitting in a car for about three hours in the evening one day last week.

“He was parked there reading his newspaper,” the neighbor said. “I’m really suspicious of everyone. But then I thought, ‘Maybe he’s a private investigator.’ ”

Just minutes before the shooting, neighbors saw him walking past Blake’s house and another neighbor almost backed into the man in his car as the neighbor left for work.