Mr. Monk on the Couch

by Lee Goldberg

  “Does that mean you’d be open to doing it again sometime?” he asked.

  “Very open,” I replied with a smile.

  “How does Friday night work for you? Or would that be moving too fast?”

  “Friday it is,” I said, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went inside.

  I felt ridiculously, childishly giddy about our first date. I really liked Jerry. I didn’t know where things would go, but I liked how things were starting out.

  I was heading to bed when I noticed that I’d left my laptop computer on. I went over to the table to turn it off and saw that I had a few new e-mails waiting for me. One of the e-mails was from the bike blogger. She’d heard from a Wheeler Wheels expert who’d identified the Dandelion Racer in my picture. It was made for Cantwells, a local, Northern California department store chain that went out of business in 1989.

  I Googled Cantwells and discovered that, in their heyday in the 1970s, their southernmost store was in San Jose, their northernmost store was in Redding, and most of their stores were clustered in the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.

  That would certainly help us narrow down where the photo was taken, unless, of course, they’d moved away from Northern California and had taken the bike with them.

  Even so, I was pleased to have made a small step forward in my investigation. The day had ended up being a good one all around for me. I e-mailed the information to Ambrose and Yuki and went to bed.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mr. Monk Has a Chat

  I was having my morning coffee and perusing the newspaper when I heard the sound of a motorcycle pulling into my driveway. I peeked out of my kitchen window and saw Yuki getting off her Harley.

  I opened the front door and waited there for her as she came up the front walk, her helmet under one arm, a messenger sack slung over the other.

  “What brings you out here?” I asked.

  “I was coming into the city for our midweek shopping run anyway, so Ambrose thought it would be a good idea if I briefed you personally on what we’ve learned.”

  “Come on in,” I said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  She walked past me into the living room. “That depends. Is it fresh ground or instant?”

  “Instant,” I said.

  “Perfect,” she said.

  “You prefer instant over fresh ground?”

  “I also prefer orange juice made from concentrate over fresh squeezed,” she said. “Does that make me a freak?”

  “It makes you far more likely to be satisfied with what I’ve got to offer guests. How do you like your coffee?”

  “Black,” she said. “I never sweeten anything.”

  She sat down at the kitchen table and set her pack and helmet on the seat beside her. I poured her a cup of coffee, refreshed my own, and sat down across the table from her.

  “Because you don’t like sugar?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t want to miss it if I can’t have it,” Yuki replied. “Besides, I think it’s a good idea to take things as they are and not try to cut the bitterness with something else. I take the bitter as it comes.”

  “You’re the first person I’ve ever met who takes a philosophical stand on coffee.”

  She sipped her coffee. “The truth is, I would have stopped by to see you anyway. I thought we should talk. Are you and I going to have any problems?”

  Yuki posed the question casually, without the slightest trace of confrontation.

  “Over what?” I asked, genuinely mystified.

  “Ambrose.”

  “Not as long as you don’t hurt him.”

  She smiled with relief. “I was afraid that maybe you disapproved of our relationship. Monk obviously does.”

  “Mr. Monk and I often have differing views about things,” I said. “He’ll come around eventually.”

  “Ambrose was more worried about you. He thought that maybe he’d broken your heart by hooking up with me.”

  “I adore Ambrose,” I said, “but not romantically.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said. “But I’m glad you left the door open for me.”

  “Speaking of open doors, isn’t it hard being involved with someone who won’t step out of the house?”

  “Since I’ve met Ambrose, I haven’t wanted to leave the house, either.” Yuki smiled coyly at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “Or the bed. He’s the most amazing lover I’ve ever had.”

  It was hard for me to believe that someone who was so awkward around people, and who had very little social contact with anyone, much less women, could be a great lover. Perhaps my skepticism showed on my face, because Yuki spoke up again.

  “Ambrose is attentive, sensitive, and he wrote the book on the female body,” she said. “Literally.”

  “He wrote a sex book?”

  “He wrote an anatomy book, sort of an owner’s manual for women,” she said. “I’m surprised you haven’t read it.”

  “He only gave me his manuals for DVD players, hair dryers, and toasters.”

  “That’s probably because he was afraid that you’d take it the wrong way.”

  “How did you take it?”

  “We’re going through it together, page by page,” she said. “I’m making him show me how my body works.”

  That was more than I wanted to know. Far more. “If I were you, I wouldn’t mention any of this to Mr. Monk.”

  “Is he a prude?”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said. Then again, until that moment, I would have said the same thing about Ambrose.

  Yuki reached into her messenger bag and pulled out an ultrathin laptop, which she set on the table and powered up.

  “We found out a lot about that photo. Your lead about the bike was one more piece that makes us believe that the picture was taken in the Bay Area, Contra Costa County to be exact, sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s.”

  “How did you zero in so fast on one particular county in the United States?”

  She brought the photo up on-screen. “Well, for one thing, you told us that the bike was sold by Cantwells, which had stores in Contra Costa County. That’s also where this house was built. Ambrose was able to determine this based on building codes, setbacks, sewer-grate placement, etcetera.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  “Save your amazement, I’m just getting started. The house was constructed by Dalander Homes, a tract-home developer that went under in the 1990s. The house is a modified version of their standard Inglenook model and was featured in tracts that they built in the late 1970s all over the western United States, including a dozen in Contra Costa County. This could be a corner house in any of those tracts.” Yuki took a folder out of her messenger bag and passed it across the table. “Here’s a list of all of the Dalander developments in the Bay Area. The nurse’s uniform was designed by Pablo Gallastegui in 1979 exclusively for Flax Uniforms of Cincinnati, Ohio. Hospitals all over the country used them, including four in the San Francisco Bay Area, two of which were in—”

  She held back on the rest to give me a chance to pipe in.

  “Contra Costa County,” I said.

  “Are you beginning to see a pattern here? Those hospitals are listed in the file, too.”

  “I can’t thank you and Ambrose enough for doing all of this work for me,” I said. “You’ve given me a lot to go on.”

  “It was fun,” Yuki said. “Ambrose and I really enjoy this kind of research. So consider us your legmen and keep it coming.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Yuki stuffed the laptop back into her messenger bag and grabbed her helmet. “I’ve got to run. I have a million errands to do.”

  “Stop by anytime,” I said.

  I walked her to the door and watched her speed off on her Harley before I realized I was going to be late getting to Monk’s. I stuffed her file into my bag, grabbed my car keys, and drove over to Monk’s place.

  I expected him to be waiting
in the entry hall so he could confront me about my tardiness the instant I walked through the door, but he was in the kitchen when I arrived, blissfully cleaning the countertops. There were two plates with eight Wheat Thins arrayed around the edges, two bottles of Fiji water, and two glasses set out on the center island.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

  “It’s okay. You had a long night.” Monk attempted to wink, an action that anyone else but me would have mistaken for a facial tic or perhaps a stroke.

  I gestured to the spread. “What’s the special occasion?”

  “It’s been a while since we just sat and had a nice chat.”

  “What do you want to chat about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about your date with Jerry, for instance?”

  “It was nice,” I said, and ate a Wheat Thin, just to be sociable.

  “So, in other words, I was right,” he said. “This is where you’re supposed to thank me.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Monk,” I said. “Satisfied? Now you can finally say that someone actually thanked you later.”

  “I want all the details.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” I said. “We had dinner. We talked. He took me home. End of story.”

  Monk opened a drawer, took out a legal pad and pen, and set them down in front of me.

  “I want a full statement. Don’t leave anything out. Penmanship counts.”

  He poured himself a glass of Fiji water, smelled the aroma, and then sipped it as if it were fine wine.

  “I’m not giving you a statement, Mr. Monk. What I do on my dates is personal.”

  “Did you throw yourself at him?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Big mistake. You should have. He’s a catch and you aren’t getting any younger.” He helped himself to a Wheat Thin, which seemed to spark a thought. “Or thinner.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You should get rid of all the unhealthy food in your house and start exercising. House cleaning is good exercise and, as a bonus, it also cleanses the mind and spirit. When are you seeing him again?”

  “Friday night,” I said.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Why in God’s name are you putting him off for so long?”

  “It’s the day after tomorrow.”

  Monk shook his head, dismayed. “Your cavalier attitude could cost you the best man to walk into your life since I’ve known you. Hopefully someone will die a messy death before Friday and I’ll have the opportunity to talk you up to him. Otherwise, he might lose interest and get lured away by the first young vixen that walks by.”

  “You’re going to clean with him again? I thought it was just a onetime thing.”

  “I liked it,” Monk said. “It was very relaxing.”

  “You can’t investigate murders and clean them up, too.”

  “Why not? It’s all the same thing as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Because time spent cleaning up the crime scene is time not spent investigating the homicide. And if you do both, you will exhaust yourself,” I said. “Besides, Captain Stottlemeyer is paying you and Jerry isn’t.”

  “I could ask Jerry to pay me, but I’m afraid if I do, he might refuse, and then it would be awkward if I showed up to clean anyway. I suppose if that happened, I could always pay him.”

  I stared at Monk, hoping he’d sense my incredulity and disapproval, but as attuned as he was to the minute details of his environment, he was blind when it came to human expression.

  “Why would you pay him so you can do the work that someone else is already paying him to do?” I asked.

  “So he won’t feel that he’s taking advantage of me by not paying me.”

  I shook my head, twisted the cap off the Fiji water, and drank out of the bottle. I was beginning to wish I had an Advil to wash down with it.

  “So you think it makes more sense for him to exploit you if you pay him to do it.”

  “Exactly,” Monk said.

  “No wonder you think I should be working for you for free,” I said.

  “Will you?”

  “No,” I said. “So what’s on our investigative schedule for today? Do you have any leads to pursue on the thrift store killing?”

  “Not yet,” he said, savoring another cracker.

  “Well, they won’t come to you sitting here.”

  “I’m waiting for something to break. The manager, Casey Grover, was killed by a professional. This is one instance where the police are better able to flush out possible suspects and motives than I am. Once they do, I can come in, spot the inconsistencies in the suspects’ stories, and reveal who the killer is.”

  I studied him, sitting there eating his crackers and sipping his water. He seemed pretty smug and pleased with himself to me.

  “So what you’re saying is that you’ll let the police do all the scut work and then you’ll stroll in and take the glory.”

  “Sounds like a good plan to me,” Monk said.

  “I can see why Lieutenant Devlin resents you.”

  “How’s your little mystery going?”

  “Do you have to be so condescending?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  “You called it a little mystery,” I said.

  “Because it is. The man died of natural causes. All you want to know is why he died here in San Francisco instead of Mexico. So how’s that coming along?”

  “I’m not telling you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll probably solve it. This one is mine.”

  “That didn’t stop you from sharing the details with Ambrose and his homicidal biker chick.”

  “Because I know they won’t solve it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  I wanted to say because I had a hunch that solving this mystery would require an understanding of human nature, something that Ambrose didn’t have. But after what I’d learned from Yuki that morning, I was beginning rethink all of my long-held assumptions about him.

  “Call it instinct,” I said.

  My cell phone rang and my instincts told me something else. Somebody in San Francisco had met a violent end.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mr. Monk and the Couch

  The crime scene was a narrow, four-story Victorian home, one of six nearly identical houses that were crammed side by side and staggered in height along the steep, southwestern side of Castro Street.

  It was only a few blocks away from the Noe Valley neighborhood where I lived, so I’d driven by and admired those homes a thousand times before, but I’d never imagined that someday I’d visit one of them to look at a corpse.

  The victim’s house was the same shade of yellow as the crime scene tape that cordoned off the property. The first floor was taken up by the tight, street-level garage and steps that led to the second-floor porch, the front door, and a bay window. The third floor had a matching bay window and a deck, while the fourth floor was essentially a windowed attic under a sharply arched roof. Both the third- and fourthfloor windows had nearly unobstructed views of the hilly neighborhoods to the west. The deck, porch, and cornices were adorned with flamboyant, white-painted fretwork.

  I saw Lieutenant Devlin on the street, talking to an attractive young woman sitting in the back of an ambulance, a blanket wrapped around her. The woman had bloodshot eyes, pale skin, and tear-streaked cheeks, and clutched a bottle of Gatorade to her bosom as if it were a lifeline. It wasn’t hard to deduce that she’d found the body and was in shock. Getting straight answers out of her wouldn’t be easy.

  Devlin acknowledged us with a quick glance and kept her attention focused on questioning the woman. We went inside the house. The entry hall was cramped, the ceiling was low, and the place was packed with forensic investigators and photographers. I immediately felt claustrophobic

  The first thing I noticed was that the place had been ransacked. Books, dishes, and artwork were scattered all over the floor. Even the re
frigerator had been emptied, the food and drinks thrown everywhere.

  Between the mess on the floor, and all the forensic investigators crammed inside the house, it was hard to move without brushing up against someone.

  Monk drew himself inward as much as he could and tried to flatten himself against the wall as others passed, but he still couldn’t completely escape bodily contact.

  Captain Stottlemeyer came down the stairs and immediately noticed Monk’s discomfort.

  “Can we please clear the house for ten minutes?” he called out, his voice booming in the close quarters. “Everyone out except Monk and Natalie.”

  We stepped back outside onto the porch while everyone filed out, Monk gasping for breath as if he’d just been saved from drowning.

  “Don’t breathe so fast, you’ll hyperventilate,” I said, handing him a half dozen wipes before he could ask for them.

  He immediately started swabbing his hands, face, and neck with the wipes. I held out a baggie for him and he dropped the used wipes inside.

  Stottlemeyer joined us outside. “Sorry about that, Monk. The victim is upstairs in the second-floor bedroom. We’ll go up whenever you are ready.”

  Monk nodded, still breathing hard. “What do we know about the victim?”

  “His name is Mark Costa, he’s twenty-nine years old, and he’s a real estate appraiser who works out of his home.” Stottlemeyer gestured to the woman who Devlin was talking to. “That’s Mrs. Rachael Nunn. She had a ten a.m. appointment with Costa.”

  “The door was unlocked?” I asked.

  “It was, but she also had a key. She and Costa were having an affair. She went upstairs to the bedroom expecting to have their usual morning tryst and she discovered his body. Her big concern now is keeping all of this from her husband.”

  “Maybe he already knows,” I said. “Maybe he did the killing.”

  “It’s possible. We’re checking into his whereabouts right now,” Stottlemeyer said, then glanced at Monk. “You ready?”

  Monk nodded. The captain led us inside and up the stairs in silence, giving Monk a chance to detect in peace.

  Now that we had the place to ourselves, I noticed the décor, which usually can tell you a lot about a person’s life or personality.