Mr. Monk on the Couch

by Lee Goldberg

  “We built the house in 1979,” she said. “It was one of the last empty lots in the development.”

  “So you must have known the O’Quinns.”

  “My God, you people never give up. I thought I’d seen the last of their bill collectors years ago.”

  “I’m not a bill collector. My name is Natalie Teeger. I’m a private investigator.” I surprised myself with that remark and hoped it didn’t show on my face. I was a PI now? “I’m trying to locate the family of a man who died in San Francisco a few days ago. He had this in his hand.”

  I held the photo out to her. She stared at it for a long moment. “That’s Stacey and Rose. We were putting in our landscaping at the same time, so this must have been taken in the fall of 1979. That station wagon was brand-new. They were so proud of it. You would have thought it was a Rolls-Royce the way they fawned over it.”

  I suddenly wished I’d had the forethought to bring along Jack Griffin’s fake ID to see if she could identify him as Walter O’Quinn. Some private eye I was.

  “May I ask you your name?” I asked.

  “Gloria Hayworth,” she replied.

  “Do you know where the O’Quinns went, Mrs. Hayworth?”

  She shook her head. “After Walter drowned, the poor woman was grief stricken. It’s bad enough to lose your husband, but then the bill collectors swooped down on her like a pack of wolves. It was relentless. They’d come at all hours of the day and night, pounding on her door, demanding money. They even went around to the neighbors, telling us all that Stacey was a deadbeat, hoping we’d shame her into writing them a check. My husband, a very peaceable man, got so upset that he slugged one of them.”

  “Good for him,” I said.

  “It’s the only time I ever saw Roger raise his hand to anybody. They were despicable people. I didn’t blame him for it and I certainly didn’t blame her for what she did.”

  “Did she hit one of them, too?”

  “No, but she finally cracked. One night, she and Rose ran off, leaving the front door unlocked and all of her keys, credit cards, and ID behind. I like to think she escaped to somewhere else and started fresh, though some people around believed that maybe she and Rose followed Walter into the sea.”

  “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

  “Open the newspaper, honey. People do horrible things every day. How many times have you read about mothers strapping their kids into their car seats, then driving off a cliff?”

  “But she was a nurse,” I said.

  “Makes no difference. Everybody has a breaking point.” Mrs. Hayworth said it like she had some personal experience to back her statement up, but it was none of my business and I didn’t pursue it.

  “So what happened after Stacey and Rose disappeared?”

  “The bank took the house and sold it. The bill collectors kept coming for a while, then finally gave up. Or maybe they found her somewhere and squeezed every last penny out of her. I don’t know.”

  “Has anyone else come looking for the O’Quinns lately?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed, but I’m not the neighborhood snoop.” Mrs. Hayworth pointed to a two-story house across the street that faced the opening of the cul-de-sac. “That’d be Beverly Lundeen. But I have to warn you, she’s two beers short of a six-pack.” Mrs. Hayworth waved at the house. “Hello, Bev—I see you.”

  The living room drapes fluttered as Beverly Lundeen slipped back into the shadows.

  “How long has Beverly lived here?” I asked.

  “She moved in a month or two before we did.” The dog started whining and tugging on Mrs. Hayworth’s leash. “I’d better go. Rufus wants his walk, and if he doesn’t get it soon, he’ll start humping my leg, or yours.”

  “We wouldn’t want that. Thank you so much for your help, Mrs. Hayworth. I really appreciate it.”

  “Good luck with your investigation. If you find Stacey, would you please do me a favor and ask her to send me a card? I’d love to know how she and Rose are doing.”

  “I will,” I said.

  Mrs. Hayworth wandered up Cochise Way, and I decided to pay a visit to Beverly Lundeen. I walked across the street and knocked on her door. She opened it almost instantly.

  Beverly was tall and thin with stringy blond hair, pale skin, and extraordinarily wide eyes that made her look perpetually startled. She wore a simple floral sundress and flip-flops.

  “Forgive me for disturbing you, but Mrs. Hayworth thought you might be able to help me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I was wondering if you’ve seen any dead men lately.”

  She gasped and her wide eyes grew even wider. I didn’t think that was humanly possible. She made E.T. look beady-eyed.

  “How—?” She took a step back from the door and, for a moment, I thought she might slam it in my face. “I haven’t told anyone what I saw.”

  “When did you see Walter O’Quinn?”

  She swallowed hard, and when she spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “It was after midnight, a week ago, under that streetlight.” She pointed with a shaky finger to the sidewalk where I’d been standing a moment ago. “He was there, wet and festooned with seaweed, raised from the cold, briny depths. He looked right at me and smiled, his teeth covered with barnacles.” She shuddered at the memory. “I hid under my sheets and told myself that it was a waking nightmare, that I’d imagined the whole thing.”

  “Only the part with the seaweed and barnacles,” I said. “He was really there.”

  “You’ve seen him, too?”

  I nodded. “But you don’t have to worry, Mrs. Lundeen. He won’t be returning from the briny depths ever again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mr. Monk Takes It Easy

  I went back home, got on the Internet, and pulled up all the articles I could find about Walter O’Quinn’s disappearance at sea. The newspaper accounts confirmed everything that Dr. Long had told me and filled in a few more details.

  I learned that Walter O’Quinn originally came from the Pacific Northwest and that his father ran a charter fishing-boat business. He met Stacey at the University of Washington in Seattle and they moved to California, where she went to nursing school.

  According to the articles, at the time of Walter’s disappearance, his bank was about to report him to law enforcement for writing bad checks on accounts he’d already emptied.

  His troubles had reached critical mass. It was easy to see why people assumed that he’d killed himself.

  “What I don’t get is why no one raised the possibility that he’d faked his death—at least not publicly,” Ambrose said, after I’d gotten both him and Yuki on the phone to fill them in on what I’d learned.

  “Because he had nothing to gain from it and neither did his family,” I said. “Everybody suffered.”

  “His family more than him,” Ambrose said.

  “But he did it anyway,” Yuki said.

  “He was a coward,” I said. “He didn’t have the backbone to take responsibility for the mistakes that he’d made, even if it meant that his family had to suffer for them in his place.”

  “You can’t run from yourself,” Yuki said. “That kind of cowardice would eat a man alive from the inside out.”

  “Maybe it did,” I said.

  “You think the guilt and shame caused his cancer?” Ambrose asked. “That’s highly unlikely.”

  “But it feels poetically right, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “That doesn’t make it so,” he said.

  “Stress can cause heart attacks and ulcers, so why not cancer, too?”

  “Stress can be a contributing factor, but it’s not the root cause,” Ambrose said. “The presence of high cholesterol in the blood and a helicobacter pylori bacterium infection in the digestive tract are far more indicative of the likelihood of heart attacks and ulcers, respectively, than unethical and immoral behavior.”

  I thought about O’Quinn, riddled with cancer, standing outs
ide his former home in the dead of night. Why had he dragged himself out there? He had to know his family was long gone. I could think of only one reason—to torture himself with the memories of what he’d lost and the pain that he’d caused.

  “Maybe so, but we now know that he was suffering from more than his cancer when he came back here,” I said. “I think he wanted to make amends with his family for what he’d done.”

  “Who cares what that spineless, selfish jerk wanted?” Yuki said. “Good riddance.”

  “That’s awfully cold,” I said.

  “Not as cold as what he did to his wife and daughter,” Yuki said. “Now that you know who he was and what he did, why do you care what he wanted? He’s been dead to his family for decades anyway. What difference would it make to them now whether he died then or last week? They are probably better off not knowing the truth.”

  “I’d want to know,” I said.

  “Is this about you or about them?” Yuki asked.

  I almost blurted out both, but I stopped myself.

  “Maybe they know already,” Ambrose said. “Perhaps O’Quinn was able to contact them before his death.”

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “Before I decide whether to drop this or not, I’d like to find Stacey and Rose. Will you help me do that?”

  “Of course,” Ambrose said, but Yuki was noticeably silent.

  “Yuki,” I said, “do you think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

  “I don’t think you know what you’re doing or why you are doing it. That’s the real mystery, but I can’t fault you for trying to figure yourself out. If finding the O’Quinns is what it’s going to take, then sure, I’ll help.”

  “Isn’t she wonderful?” Ambrose said.

  “You both are,” I said.

  “Now you’re just sucking up,” Yuki said.

  “I’d be a fool not to,” I said.

  “We’ll search local, state, and county databases and see what we can glean from property tax records, marriage licenses, and the like,” Ambrose said. “We’ll also take a peek at the University of Washington enrollment records. If we have Stacey O’Quinn’s maiden name, we can find the present location of any family she might have.”

  “Thank you, Ambrose, I appreciate that.”

  “But if Stacey O’Quinn went into hiding and reinvented herself to evade her creditors,” Yuki said, “knowing who she once was won’t be much help in figuring out who she is now.”

  “I think it will. You can change your name, but you can’t run away from who you are,” I said. “I’m sure that’s something Walter O’Quinn found out the hard way.”

  That’s when I was struck by the tragic irony of it all. When Walter O’Quinn faked his death and created a new identity for himself somewhere else, he unwittingly forced his wife and daughter to do the same. Perhaps it was having this in common, as well as the knowledge of their prior lives together, that gave him an edge in finding his family again.

  But what I still couldn’t see was how this would help me find them or, if Yuki was right, help me find myself.

  I was writing down everything I knew about the case on index cards, a trick I learned from Kinsey Millhone, when Monk called.

  “I thought of a great way for us to relax,” he said.

  “I am relaxed.”

  “I’ve made an appointment with Dr. Bell.”

  “Have a good time, but I don’t see what’s going to be relaxing about that for me, unless you emerge as a far less finicky person.”

  “You’re driving me there.”

  “What am I, your taxi service?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So where does my relaxation come in?”

  “You get to sit in his waiting room and read magazines,” Monk said. “Or you can go get a cup of coffee somewhere.”

  “I can read magazines and drink coffee at home without going to see Dr. Bell.”

  “But then I wouldn’t be able to see him. So this is a winwin for both of us.”

  “I thought this was my day off,” I said.

  “It is,” he said. “This is a perk.”

  I wasn’t sure how to proceed with my investigation anyway, so I set aside my index cards, picked up Monk, and took him to see Dr. Bell. On the way, Monk didn’t ask me how I’d spent my morning and I didn’t volunteer anything. We’d reached the point in our relationship where we were as comfortable in our silences as an old married couple.

  While Monk had his appointment, I flipped through Vanity Fair, Esquire, People, Entertainment Weekly, and Psychology Today , all of which had articles about the latest young female reality-show star and her emotional struggles with sex, substance abuse, plastic surgery, fame, wealth, and her own line of clothing or cosmetics.

  My life seemed ridiculously simple and uneventful by comparison, even when I factored in all the homicide investigations.

  Monk’s session went by in no time, and Dr. Bell escorted him out of the office.

  “How’s your investigation going?” Dr. Bell asked.

  I considered evading the question with a simple “Just fine,” but something about the way he asked compelled me to take advantage of the opportunity.

  “Do you have a couple minutes free?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I mean free as in ‘no charge,’”I said.

  “You think you need psychoanalysis?”

  “She definitely does,” Monk said.

  “It has been suggested that there’s a possibility that this case has more to do with me than the mystery I’m trying to solve,” I explained.

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Dr. Bell said. “But that would be perfectly normal. Everything we do is motivated by our own needs, even things we do that appear to be entirely altruistic.”

  I thought about asking Dr. Bell if we could speak in private, but that would really make it a session, and he’d be justified in charging me for it. I wanted to avoid sharing the details of the case in front of Monk out of fear that he’d solve it out from under me.

  But then I realized that I’d solved most of the mystery already and that the questions that remained couldn’t be answered just by deduction or by observing something that was uneven, out of place, or asymmetrical. The answer would come from understanding how Walter felt, and I was pretty sure I had the edge on Monk in that department. Besides, what I wanted from Dr. Bell wasn’t insight into the case but into me.

  So I decided to take my chances and lay the situation out for Dr. Bell in front of Monk.

  I told him everything I knew about Jack Griffin, aka Walter O’Quinn, and the family that he’d left behind. I even threw in Yuki’s arguments against me continuing to pursue the investigation.

  Dr. Bell nodded through my whole story and continued to nod after I was done, crossing his arms under his chest. “It’s a fascinating case.”

  “I think it’s a snooze,” Monk said.

  “Walter O’Quinn was seeking closure, if not forgiveness, before he died,” Dr. Bell said. “That much is obvious.”

  “Painfully,” Monk said.

  “Closure is something we all seek even though it’s often impossible to attain,” Dr. Bell said. “We want things tied up, explained, balanced. It’s why you solve murders, Adrian.”

  “It’s a good thing these insights are free,” Monk said. “Because charging for them would be a crime.”

  Dr. Bell ignored the dig. “It’s also one of the reasons you are pursuing this case, Natalie, despite the fact that you don’t sympathize with Walter at all and he might have already achieved the closure and forgiveness that he sought. You want to know how it turned out. I’m curious about it myself, though that doesn’t mean either one of us has a right to know.”

  “What are the other reasons?” I asked.

  Dr. Bell glanced at Monk, then back at me. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to discuss this privately?”

  No, I wasn’t. But I also didn’t want to impose on his kindness or get stuck with th
e bill if he decided not to be kind.

  Monk sighed with impatience. “She needs to know whether she’s any good as a detective and if she is, whether it’s something she actually wants to pursue, or if she’s only doing it so she doesn’t feel entirely useless around me.”

  I looked at Monk, knowing he was right, and astonished that he could be so perceptive. Or maybe my motivations were so incredibly obvious that anyone could have told me the same thing.

  “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, and certainly not as harshly, but essentially, Adrian is correct,” Dr. Bell said. “You’re not figuring out who Jack Griffin was and why he was here as much as you’re investigating who you are and who you want to be.”

  I wish I could say that this was a revelation to me, or that it helped me see the case in a new light, but all it really did was make me feel more confused and lost than I did before.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  He shrugged. “You could end up causing Stacey O’Quinn and her daughter unnecessary pain merely so you can satisfy your own curiosity about something that’s none of your business and prove something to yourself. Or you might bring these two women a priceless gift, giving them the closure they never thought they’d get. Or the result could be something neither one of us can anticipate. Life is messy.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Monk said. “But I am doing my best to correct that.”

  Dr. Bell hadn’t made things any easier for me. “So do you have any advice on what I should do next?”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” Monk said. “He just asks questions.”

  Dr. Bell smiled. “Isn’t that how you solve mysteries, Adrian?”

  “See? Another question,” Monk said. “What did I tell you? He’s no help at all. You have to handle your own problems around here.”

  “Isn’t being able to do that one of the ultimate goals of therapy?”

  “See? He’s doing it again,” Monk said. “He can’t stop himself. He’s incapable of having a simple conversation.”

  “Thank you for your help, Dr. Bell,” I said.