by Lee Goldberg
You can tell a lot about a family by what they stick on their refrigerator. For example, there’s nothing on Monk’s. It’s so clean and shiny that you can use it like a mirror.
I found a bottle of honey in the fridge, put a dollop of it in the tea, then set the cup on the counter with a spoon and the sugar bowl.
Carol came down the hall in a bathrobe and slippers and took a seat on one of the bar stools. She wrapped her hands around the cup of tea, blew on it, and took a sip.
She didn’t say anything and I didn’t try to make conversation. What was there to talk about? Carol seemed lost in her mourning or, as Stottlemeyer suspected, she was in shock. Who could blame her?
I looked outside again and saw Monk squatting on the patio, picking up something with tweezers and putting it in the palm of his other hand.
I went outside on the pretense of seeing what Monk was up to, not that I explained myself to her. It was just the motivation behind my performance as I left the kitchen. The truth was I felt awkward standing there watching Carol drink her tea in misery and needed to escape.
I looked down at him. “What are you doing?”
“I thought I’d help Carol out by cleaning up this big mess.”
All I saw were a few blades of cut grass and some white fertilizer pellets.
“If that’s your idea of a big mess, then I’m never letting you in my house again.”
“Do you have a Baggie?” he asked.
I reached into my purse and gave him one of the tiny plastic bags I carry with me for his used wipes or any evidence that he collects.
He emptied his hand into the bag and then stood up, nodding to himself.
“This will take some of the pressure off of her,” he said, sealing the bag. “One less thing for her to worry about.”
I took the Baggie from him and handed him a wipe before he could ask.
Stottlemeyer, the Mill Valley cops, and the coroner broke their huddle like a football team ready to make their play. Stottlemeyer came over to us and the others left.
“The coroner says it looks like Bill banged the back of his head on the coping when he jumped into the pool,” Stottlemeyer said. “He was probably out cold when he hit the water.”
“At least he didn’t suffer,” I said.
The captain nodded and looked back at Carol. “Maybe this is a blessing.”
“How?” I asked.
“I’d rather die than lose my mind in front of my kids,” Stottlemeyer said. “Bill wouldn’t have wanted to end up in his daughter’s kitchen, serving imaginary drinks and calling cops with tips on crimes that happened ten years ago. Maybe he had a rare moment of clarity and decided to put an end to his torment and hers while he still could.”
“You’re projecting. You were uncomfortable watching him replay scenes from his old life but that doesn’t mean that he was suffering,” I said. “He seemed happy to me.”
“If I end up sitting at a card table in my son’s garage believing that I’m in my office, running Homicide again, you have my permission to shoot me.” Stottlemeyer looked back at Carol, sitting at the counter in the kitchen. “I’d better go talk to her. Get some rest, Monk. You look like you need it.”
Monk nodded and we left through the side yard, following a path through a vegetable garden.
I was tired, too. It was a lot of death for one day and it was only the early afternoon.
The first thing I did when we got to Monk’s place was to take that rolling file drawer and wheel it out the door to the Lexus.
“Where are you going with that?” he exclaimed, chasing after me to the street.
“I’m taking it home,” I said.
“But the day isn’t over yet.”
“It is for you,” I said, opening the lift-back on the SUV. “You worked all night, so you get to take the rest of the day off.”
“I don’t want to take the rest of the day off.”
“Too bad,” I said. “You’re going to. You’ll thank me later.”
I collapsed the legs and slid the file drawer right into the car. That rolling drawer was handy. I thought about getting myself one for bringing groceries into the house. Instead of three trips to the car, I could do it in one.
“What about you?” Monk asked.
“What about me?”
“You didn’t work all night,” he said.
I stopped and turned to face him. “I think I deserve an afternoon off, too.”
“Why?”
“On general principle,” I said. “What do you care? Technically, you aren’t the one paying me anymore.”
He did a little double take. “I’m not?”
“Intertect is paying me,” I said.
He smiled. I did, too. I think that was the first moment that he realized how great this job was. So I decided to drive the point home.
“Not only that, Mr. Monk, but they are paying for Dr. Bell, too.”
“So, I could see him four days a week and it would be absolutely free.”
“For you, yes. Not for Slade. But I’m sure he’d consider it a small price to pay for keeping you happy and productive.”
Monk’s smile got bigger. “I know how to spend the rest of the day.”
I groaned. I didn’t have to be a deductive genius to see what he had in mind.
“What makes you think Dr. Bell has any openings today?”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll just sit in his office and catch him between sessions.”
“He’s going to love that,” I said.
“I know,” Monk said.
I dropped Monk off at Dr. Bell’s office, told him to call me when he was ready to be picked up, and I sped off before he could think of a reason for me to spend the afternoon with him in the waiting room.
I went home, left the file drawer in the back of the Lexus, and caught up on some very important loafing around.
You’d think I’d be inured to death after all the years I’d spent working for Monk. And I was, to a degree. I didn’t turn away anymore from the victims of violent death. I could study a corpse alongside Monk, Stottlemeyer, and Disher without flinching or feeling sick. But after seeing a particularly bloody murder and a tragic drowning death I needed to decompress.
All that death was a heavy load, emotionally and visually, to carry around. It wasn’t just the dead bodies that got to me; it was everything that went along with it-like meeting a mobster in jail, facing an unrepentant murderer on her doorstep, and comforting the heartbroken, guilt-stricken loved ones of the dead.
Factor in the day-to-day, minute-to-minute aggravation of smoothing things out for Monk on top of all that and you can see why I just curled up on the couch with a bag of nacho cheese Doritos, a Diet Shasta root beer, and some unread issues of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly.
That’s the secret to keeping my svelte figure, by the way: generous amounts of junk food coupled with hours of sitting on my butt.
I engaged in that rigorous workout until Monk called around five for me to take him home.
I insisted on picking up Monk on the street because I didn’t want to face Dr. Bell, who was likely to be very angry with me for dropping Monk in his waiting room and then fleeing for the day.
Monk had an actual skip to his step as he came to the car. I found that pretty amazing given the fact that he hadn’t slept in a day and a half.
“How did it go with Dr. Bell?”
“I think he really enjoyed it,” Monk said. “He pretended to be irritated, but it was just a show for the other patients. He didn’t want them to know that I’m his favorite and that he was counting the minutes in their sessions until he could get back to me.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
“I usually am,” he said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mr. Monk Gets an Early Start
I sat on the beach at Paradise Island, letting Daniel Craig slather suntan lotion all over my bare back. The lotion smelled like coconuts and I coul
d feel some grains of sand gently scratching my skin as he applied the cool cream. His hands were rough, but he was using them softly, and I found hands were rough, but he was using them softly, and I found the contrast intoxicatingly exciting. It was all I could do not to purr like a cat. Or maybe I did, but it was drowned out by the sound of the ringing phone.
I grabbed the phone, fully intending to throw it into the ocean, but then I opened my eyes and saw that the beautiful, white sandy beach that stretched out into eternity was actually the pillow beside my head.
“Hello?” I said, my consciousness still half in San Francisco, half on the beach with Daniel Craig.
“I’m glad you’re still up,” Monk said. “I was thinking about those files.”
I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was two twenty-four a.m. I wasn’t in the Bahamas anymore.
“Go to bed, Mr. Monk,” I said.
“You know what would be fun? If you brought those files back to my apartment.”
“You want me to drive over to your house at two thirty in the morning and deliver a bunch of case files so you can work all night again?”
“You’re exaggerating,” Monk said. “It’s two twenty-six.”
“I’m going back to the beach,” I said, and hung up. I put my face in the warm spot on my pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to transport myself back to Paradise Island.
The phone rang again.
I opened my eyes, rolled over, reached behind the nightstand, and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. The phone was silenced. In my room but not the rest of the house.
A moment or two later my door flew open and Julie stood there in her nightgown, holding her portable phone.
“It’s Mr. Monk,” she said. “He wants me to drive to his apartment with some files.”
“Tell him no and turn off your phone,” I said, and put the pillow over my head.
“I’ll be glad to take the files to him,” she said. “If I can drive the Lexus.”
I tossed the pillow aside and sat up in bed. “Do you actually think that I’m going to let a seventeen-year-old girl drive alone in the city at two thirty in the morning?”
I heard some squawking from the phone, like one of those adult voices from a Charlie Brown cartoon. Julie held the phone up to her ear, listened for a few seconds, and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand.
“Mr. Monk says you could come, too. We can make toast and have a party.”
I motioned to her to bring me the phone. She handed it to me. I turned the phone off and gave it back to her.
“Good night,” I said.
“How am I supposed to get back to sleep now?” she whined.
“You can count Lexuses.”
I buried my face in my pillow and hoped that Daniel Craig was still waiting for me in the Bahamas.
He wasn’t. By the time I got back to dreamland, Daniel was gone and the Bahamas had washed away, too. I found myself in some postapocalypse hell, living in a subterranean bunker filled with Diaper Genies, Wet Ones, and evidence Baggies. All I had to eat were Wheat Thins and Sierra Springs bottled water.
I woke up after nine, sticky with sweat, my throat dry and my right arm numb from being crooked at an odd angle under my pillow.
Ah, what a glorious morning.
I dragged myself out of bed. Julie had gotten herself to school somehow and had kindly left her half-eaten bowl of cereal, crusts of toast, and an empty coffee cup on the table for me or a member of our household staff to clean up.
I guess I deserved that for being such a bad mother.
I wasn’t much of an assistant, either. I was late for work but I was in no hurry to make up for lost time. Monk had no one to blame but himself for my tardiness.
I refilled Julie’s cup of coffee with what she’d left simmering in the pot, put a frosted cinnamon Pop-Tart in the toaster for my breakfast, and sat down to browse the Chronicle, which Julie had thoughtfully left spread out all over the table.
When it comes to reading a newspaper, I’m kind of Monkish-I like all the sections folded and in order so I can start at the front page and work my way through. I gathered up all the sections and put them back together.
The front-page section was the last one that I came to, and when I did, I got an unpleasant surprise.
The Judge Carnegie story had made the front page. This is how it began:
Police arrested Rhonda Carnegie, the wife of Judge Alan Carnegie, and charged her with the murder yesterday of her husband and the gangland-style execution of Judge Clarence Stanton in Golden Gate Park earlier this week. Judge Carnegie was gunned down half a block from his home while walking his dog and Judge Stanton was shot multiple times the day before while jogging. Sources within the department tell the Chronicle that the investigation, led by Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, was focused on reputed mob boss Salvatore Lucarelli, who was facing trial this week before Judge Stanton. After that jurist’s murder, Judge Carnegie was slated to take his place at the bench. A new trial date has not been set. The crucial break in the investigation came from famed detective Adrian Monk, who was a consultant to the police department until his contract was suddenly dropped a few days ago. Monk was immediately hired by Intertect, a San Francisco-based private detective agency. “Mr. Monk was deeply shocked by this attack on our judiciary system and took an immediate interest in the case, but his assistance was spurned by the police,” said Nicholas Slade, president and founder of Intertect. “Undeterred, and with the full support of our experienced professionals, he pursued the case and found compelling evidence that the police missed in their blind zeal to prosecute Mr. Lucarelli.” Capt. Stottlemeyer confirmed that Monk’s participation in the investigation “played a decisive role” and led to Mrs. Carnegie’s arrest at her home, a short distance from the scene of her husband’s murder a few hours earlier. She is being held without bail pending trial. Capt. Stottlemeyer refused to comment any further or divulge any additional details regarding the investigation or the nature of the evidence against Mrs. Carnegie. The captain was criticized on the opening day of the Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives this week at the Dorchester Hotel for his division’s reliance on Adrian Monk and their poor case-closure rate if the consultant’s contributions are factored out of their annual statistics.
I couldn’t read any more of the article. It was too painful.
If that was Slade’s idea of going easy on Stottlemeyer and sparing him embarrassment, I shuddered to think what his comments would have been like if he hadn’t held back.
While I was angry with Slade for what he’d done, I had to admire the way he spun the story to make Intertect appear efficient and community-minded and to cast Lucarelli as a victim.
I wondered why Slade chose not to disclose that Lucarelli had hired Intertect to prove he was innocent of the murders of the judges.
Perhaps Slade was worried that it would taint Monk’s success if people knew he was not motivated by outrage at the heinous crime but rather that he’d been paid by Lucarelli to clear him of the killings.
It was a testament to Stottlemeyer’s devotion to Monk, even at his own expense, that he didn’t challenge Slade’s version of events. Then again, perhaps that had less to do with sparing Monk than it did with protecting his case against Mrs. Carnegie from being muddied by any doubt. After all, both Slade and Stottlemeyer agreed that Monk was right and neither one of them wanted Mrs. Carnegie to walk.
After reading that article, I was glad I’d forgotten to watch the news the previous night. They’d probably lambasted Captain Stottlemeyer on all the local channels.
I ate my Pop-Tart (and told myself it was healthy because it was made of flour and cinnamon, both of which are found in nature and not created in a test tube), took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed over to Monk’s place.
I kept the file drawer in my car, took four bulging files from it, and carried them with me. My plan was to carefully dole the cases out to him in small batches.
So you c
an imagine my surprise and anger when I walked in the door around ten thirty and saw Monk at his dining room table, another rolling file drawer at his side, papers and crime scene photos spread out in front of him. Danielle was sitting at the table, too, facing her laptop computer and typing away.
Monk was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day before. But that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t changed clothes since I’d last seen him. He bought his clothes in bulk specifically so he could wear the same thing every day if he wanted to. His clothes weren’t wrinkled either but he never allowed his clothes to wrinkle.
Even so, I was convinced that he hadn’t slept and hadn’t changed. He was going on two days without sleep and that couldn’t be good.
“Good morning, everyone,” I said with intentionally false cheer.
“Good morning, Natalie,” Danielle said, so perky and energetic that I wanted to smother her with one of Monk’s two identical square throw pillows. But that wasn’t the only motive behind my totally justifiable desire to kill her. There was the matter of that second file drawer.
“It’s about time you got here,” Monk said without looking up from his work. “I thought you’d gone on vacation.”
“You’d know if I were on vacation, Mr. Monk, because you’d be there, too, and people would be dropping dead all around us.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t a smart-ass remark. It was the truth. I’m probably the only tourist to Hawaii, Germany, and France whose vacation scrapbook includes crime scene photos. Murder follows Monk like an obsessed fan. We could take a trip to an uninhabitable ice floe in the North Pole and we’d probably stumble on the Abominable Snowman with a dagger in his back.
“Did you hear the news?” Danielle said. “The police found a gun in Mrs. Carnegie’s house and ballistics positively identified it as the murder weapon. They also found the bicycle and the hooded jacket there. She took a big risk keeping all of that.”
