by Hy Conrad
Just like that, we were all on our feet, crossing through the curves of the dining room, with Monk in the lead and at least two of us softly humming “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Monk slowed as we rounded another bend and a table for two came into view. He stopped and we stopped. So did the humming.
A very attractive young woman in a business suit sat in a wingback chair facing us. My first reaction was that she was in her late twenties with too much makeup and an unflattering hairdo. My second reaction was that she was my daughter in disguise. “Julie?” I whispered.
“Julie, your daughter?” said Daniela. Her eyes went wide. “Your daughter is our spy? I take back the apology.”
“Adrian?” I looked at him pleadingly. “What the hell does this mean? What is Julie doing here?”
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Yes, I trust you,” I said. “But …”
“No buts.”
Julie looked up from her iced tea, saw us, and allowed herself a smile. It was just a hint, but enough to make the person sitting opposite her stand up and turn.
It was Sue Suzanne Puskedra O’Brien, minus the open, warm smile and the infectious laugh. She did not look happy to see us.
“Sue?”
At first it seemed like she wanted to run. I could almost see the options going through her mind. How much danger was she actually in? What would be the consequences? And how fast could she go, given the maze of the restaurant and her four-inch heels?
“Her name is Claudia Collins,” Monk informed us. “She’s an investigator at West Bay. You know, the PI firm experienced in corporate espionage, the one too busy to consider your case? This is why they were too busy. They were working the other side.”
“You can prosecute if you like,” said Claudia/Sue/Suzanne, her voice even and cold. “But I’m not sure you want to, given the circumstances.”
“That’s not my call,” said Monk. “My job was to track you down. You’re down.”
“I’ve never seen her before in my life,” said Daniela. “How could she …”
“She was hired by the competition,” said Monk. “I have no idea what these telephone applications do. But someone cared enough to try to disrupt your stock going on sale.”
“My client’s identity is confidential,” said Claudia/Sue/Suzanne. Heck, I’ll just call her Claudia.
“Every secret has a weak link,” Monk explained. “And when Ms. Collins heard you were going to a commercial printer for your documents …”
“You mean … That’s why you were hanging out in front of the mini-mall,” I realized out loud. “It was Paisley Printing you were staring at, not Monk and Teeger.”
“You came outside and invited me in.” Claudia smiled, all teeth. “What was I going to say? I have a dozen business cards with aliases. I used the Sue O’Brien card and was lucky enough to remember Timothy from a divorce case we did for his firm six months ago. The fact that Timothy is gay and single didn’t seem to be a problem.”
“So you made it up? On the spur of the moment?” asked Julie. “All the stuff about the high-powered husband and the mistress?” My little girl sounded impressed.
“It wasn’t hard,” said Claudia, “especially when your target is sympathetic. Natalie practically did it for me. On my first visit, I checked for a Wi-Fi signal from the printing shop next door.”
“I warned you about those thin-walled hippies,” said Monk. “But no, you wouldn’t listen.”
“On my second visit, I got Natalie to leave me alone for half an hour. Altogether too trusting for someone who’s supposed to be a trained investigator.”
“You leave my mom out of this,” said Julie. “She’s twice the investigator you are.”
“She’s your mom?” Claudia looked back and forth between us and finally laughed. “Touché. I should have known by the fake name. Yamilla Applethorne, coming to me for a divorce. It beats the hell out of Sue Puskedra O’Brien.”
“I used to know a girl named Yamilla Applethorne,” Monk confided. “She looked quite a bit like Julie, just not as tall or thin or as attractive. She was also half-Hispanic.”
Julie couldn’t wait to tell her part of the story. “Adrian got in touch this morning and asked me to help. When I walked into West Bay about divorcing my husband, Trevor, I insisted they assign a woman to my case. I knew from the second I saw Claudia, she was the one. From your photo.”
“Photo?” asked Claudia.
“Security camera,” I explained to her. “From the pawnshop.”
“Of course.” Claudia shook her head. “I should have been more careful.”
A waiter tried to pass by with a tray full of salads and we all had to rearrange ourselves. Claudia settled back into her chair while the three of us spaced ourselves around the small circular table. On his way past us again, the waiter avoided us and wisely refrained from asking, “How is everything?”
Monk pulled a piece of scrap paper out of his jacket pocket. It was the page of cryptic codes he had rescued from my trash, the one I’d taped up beside Sue’s photo: 0-0, 1-2, A-B, etc. “You were trying out passwords to get into their system. Being shiftless, drugged-out hippies, they probably used something simple.”
Claudia smirked. “Their Wi-Fi signal was unprotected, and the password to their files was the most common in the world: “password.” It took me thirty seconds, even with a weak signal.”
“And a few days later,” said Monk, “when you found out they’d changed the documents, you couldn’t go back to Natalie. So you sent her on a wild-goose chase and walked right into the hippies’ lair.”
“While they were mocking up my newspaper ad, I was ten feet away, downloading the new version of the IPO.”
“Excuse me.” Julie raised a timid hand, like a student in a criminal law class. “Did you just admit to a crime?”
“Don’t get too excited. No one’s going to prosecute,” said Claudia.
“She’s right,” said Daniela. “Unfortunately.”
Claudia smiled. “Grace, Winters, and Weingart would be admitting their negligence. So would Joyful App. And my God, Monk and Teeger? For them to admit corporate spying under their own roof? If this hits the news, it would hurt them much more than it would hurt me or my client.”
“But that isn’t fair,” said Julie.
“Welcome to the world,” said Claudia, still smiling.
“No, Julie, this is good. We can mitigate the damage,” said Daniela. “As long as the leak is plugged, I can advise my client to proceed. The IPO isn’t until Wednesday.”
“No harm, no foul,” agreed Claudia, turning up her palms in surrender. “I tried my best.”
Julie couldn’t understand any of this. And I couldn’t have been prouder of her. “Wait. You’re the one who did something wrong. Adrian and my mother …”
“Adrian and your mother don’t have the first clue about running a business. No offense, Natalie. You’re a lovely person. But it’s not about being a sympathetic listener or working cheap on a police case. It’s about knowing how hard you can push things and getting results.”
“Well, that’s not how I want to do business,” I protested. “Even if we aren’t successful. Look, I broke our rule about divorce cases because I liked you. I cared.”
“We all gain people’s trust. Usually it’s a bad guy; sometimes a good guy. It’s the business we’re in, nothing personal. You can’t be ruled by emotion.” Claudia checked her watch, then wiped the corners of her mouth with her linen napkin. “Well, Ms. Yamilla Applethorne, since you don’t have a divorce, I should probably skip lunch and get back to work. You’re a good little actress. It’s been a pleasure.”
One thing about Claudia/Sue/Suzanne, she didn’t lack confidence. Or nerve. She took her time, pulling herself together and making her exit. She even pushed in her chair before adjusting her scarf and heading for the door.
“She didn’t leave money for the iced tea,” said Monk. “One criminal act after another.”
“I’ll pay
the bill,” said Daniela. “And I’ll pay your bill, Mr. Monk. Gladly.” The coral red corners of her mouth turned up in a grin. “How did you know?”
“I wasn’t trying to solve your problem,” Monk admitted. “I was solving Natalie’s. A woman plays a prank on our office and the office next door. What do these places have in common? A paper-thin wall, that’s it. What do they have of value? Nothing at Monk and Teeger. But over at the hippies’ …”
“I get it,” said Daniela. “Once again I underestimated you. I won’t do it again. Now, if you’ll excuse me …” She was looking out over my left shoulder when she groaned. “Elliot Brown has just walked in, kiddies. Looks like my fun is never done.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mr. Monk and the Very Last Man
So let this be a lesson to me. Adrian Monk is no man-child. He is not some idiot savant with just one special skill. He is a brilliant detective who was once a seminormal human being and could still be that man. The fact that he could solve this case and orchestrate a perfectly timed redemption in front of Daniela Grace proved it. There had been no great embarrassment, no OCD faltering. Even Monk’s use of Julie. Had I known what he was up to, I would have totally objected. But it worked.
Given Julie’s little adventure with playacting, I’d thought she’d be ecstatic, like the times when I’d accidentally given her too much sugar before bedtime. Giddy and bouncing off the walls. But she was relatively subdued. I took it as a sign she was growing up.
After Claudia Collins walked out and Daniela left us in order to deal with Elliot Brown, we had the table to ourselves. I dragged over a wingback chair. Monk arranged it evenly with the other two, and we all sat down to celebrate with an expensive lunch. Two iced teas, two Cobb salads, and, since they refused to allow Monk to go back and inspect the food preparation area, no matter how nicely we asked, one bottle of Fiji Water, opened at the table.
I don’t recall everything we said. But Julie re-created her meeting at West Bay and how she talked Claudia into going out to lunch. Monk talked about our landlord and how he should be criminally prosecuted for the thin walls. And I reveled quietly in my great good luck. And by saying “quietly,” I include the ringing in my ears. Almost gone. I had to focus to notice it at all.
“How is the captain?” Julie asked at one point.
My sense of well-being faded. “Physically, he’s fine,” I said. “He should be released anytime, although he’ll have trouble sitting until his tailbone heals.”
“Why did you say ‘physically’?”
“Someone’s tried to kill him three times. Other people were injured, one was killed. All collateral damage. I have no idea how this is all affecting him.”
“Plus, it’s escalating,” said Monk between sips of his Fiji. “The last attack was just hours after he left home. Whatever the note said about already having waited seven years, someone’s in an awful hurry to kill him.”
Nothing puts a pall over a celebration like a death threat to one of your best friends. Even after Daniela dropped by our table to thank us again and pick up the tab, we were all sobered by the reality of the situation. This wasn’t over.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” asked Julie.
“No, absolutely not.” I’m glad Monk said it before I had to.
“Good. I mean …” My daughter blushed. “To be honest, I’m not so sure I want to be a private eye after all. No offense.”
“Oh.” This was a surprise. After so many months of hounding me … “What changed your mind, honey? Was it seeing how Claudia worked?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. Look, I can’t pretend I’m upset by your change of heart. It’s a tough business. And not everyone in it is moral or ethical, at least not all the time.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I still respect what you do. I just think it may not be right for me.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Actually, I was a tad disappointed. I don’t know why.
“You can still be an unpaid intern,” Monk suggested.
“No, she can’t,” I said. “How about an internship at a law office? That will help prepare you for law school. Daniela Grace was very impressed by your ability today, I must say.”
“She was?”
“Absolutely. The way you went in there. Your confidence and initiative. I’m proud of you.”
“She thought I was convincing?”
“Of course you were convincing. I barely recognized you myself.”
“So, you’re saying I could be a good actress.”
“An actress? Heavens no. That’s not what I’m saying at all.”
“You don’t want me to be an actress?”
“It’s even worse than being a PI.”
“Well …” Julie squinted and pursed her lips. “I’ll just have to give it more thought.”
A few minutes later, Adrian and I were on the street, watching as my daughter, in her grown-up disguise, walked south on Powell toward the nearest BART station. “She takes after you,” Monk said as Julie faded into the crowd.
“Was that meant as an insult or a compliment?”
“An observation,” said Monk. “But I’ll say compliment if that makes you feel better.”
“Good,” I said. “Now let’s go see the captain.”
Monk was silent, all the way from the Fairmont parking garage to the hospital parking garage. He emitted no loud warnings for me to yield at every intersection, no constant reminders about my speed, like a speedometer with audio. This should have been a nice change, but it wasn’t. I knew what he was thinking. How could we be so clueless for so long on this case? We didn’t have any suspects left. And we certainly didn’t have a motive, which was probably the most puzzling part.
As always, there was an armed officer in a chair outside the door. As usual, A.J. Thurman was at the captain’s bedside. The three main differences, on this particular visit, were the absence of Trudy Stottlemeyer, the absence of a heart monitor, and the position of the man in the bed. Leland was facedown, his upper chest resting on a pillow, his head resting on his folded hands.
“That’s a very unnatural position,” said Monk.
“Good afternoon, Monk,” said Leland without looking up. “It’s actually quite comfortable. I can also rest on my side. And with my inflatable doughnut, I can manage lying on my back. Want to help me with my doughnut?” Monk shivered audibly and the captain chuckled. “Ow, don’t make me laugh. Natalie, are you there?”
“I’m here,” I said. “How is Trudy holding up?”
Stottlemeyer lifted his hands, a helpless gesture. “Even with the poison and the bullet and the fractured tailbone, I think this damn assassin’s doing more harm to my marriage than to me. Anyway, Trudy will be sorry she missed you. The lieutenant persuaded her to go home a few minutes ago.”
“You don’t need more than two or three babysitters,” said A.J. He was in Trudy’s usual chair, with a pair of crutches leaned up against the wall, one for each injured leg.
“How’s your dad?” I asked. Between the captain and the retired captain, A.J. must have been spending half his life looking down at sickbeds.
“Not good.” A.J. bit his lower lip. “It might be as soon as tonight. That’s what the doctor says.”
“Shouldn’t you be with him?” I asked. It seemed like a reasonable question.
“I love my dad, okay? I just needed to take a break.”
“Not much of a break,” said Stottlemeyer.
“At least you’re going to live,” said the lieutenant. “That beats a deathbed vigil.”
“Don’t make me feel more guilty, okay?” Captain Stottlemeyer grunted and managed to turn over on his side. “People have paid the price for me being alive. A twenty-five-year-old boy paid the price.”
“Sorry, Captain.” A.J. lowered his eyes and rubbed his outstretched legs. “I’m just trying to deal with it.”
“I’ll get out of here today,” promised the captain. “The
n we’ll all go over and see your dad.”
“Thanks. Dad would like that.” A second later, his phone rang and he picked up instantly. “What’s up?” He paused. “Good, good.” A hand over the receiver. “It’s Rebecca. He’s still with us.” Back on the phone. “No, I’m not alone. Monk, Natalie. The captain, of course.”
“Hello, Rebecca,” I said in the phone’s direction.
“I’ll get there when I get there,” A.J. told his sister. “Damn it, Becky, I’m doing my best.”
• • •
“Why do I always feel so awkward around him?” I asked. It was less than five minutes later. After the call from A.J.’s sister, Monk and I had cut our visit short, promising to visit the captain at home, as soon as he was released. We were in the hospital stairwell, getting our exercise and avoiding the horrors of the elevator.
“You feel awkward?” said Monk. “Good. I thought it was just me.”
“Well, it is you. You feel awkward around everyone. But A.J.’s a special case.”
We emerged from the stairwell into the lobby just in time to see Randy Disher and Bethany Oberlin come in through the automatic doors. We all saw one another at the same moment and joined up by the elevator bank. Three out of four of us hugged.
“I came by your house to say good-bye,” said Bethany. “Randy was there. I’m so glad I ran into you like this.”
“I had my phone off,” I explained. “You’re leaving?”
“Back to Thailand, through Tokyo. It’s about a twenty-four-hour flight.”
“I don’t envy you that. How was the second funeral?”
“Uneventful,” said Bethany with a sad smile. “Thanks for asking. It might have been a blessing for the first one to be such a mess. It got me more used to the idea of him being gone.”
“We thought we’d drop by and see the captain,” explained Randy.
“He and my dad knew each other forever, and it just seemed right to stop by.” Bethany’s right index finger was just settling on the up button.
“What do you mean by forever?” Monk asked. He shrugged his shoulders and cricked his neck. This seemed to be one of his long-shot hunches. “How long is forever?”
