by Lee Goldberg
“Look at how they live, Lieutenant. Everything is clean, orderly, and tastefully organized. They are a remarkable family and I want them in my life.” Monk picked up a framed family photo from the coffee table. It showed a young couple on the beach, standing behind their two children and their two golden retrievers. The whole family was dressed in jeans and white shirts. “Look at them, so balanced and symmetrical. If more families followed their example, we’d have fewer divorces, a lower crime rate, and far less gum on the sidewalks.”
“It’s not going to happen,” I said.
“I don’t see why not,” he said.
Monk had an incredible eye for detail, but because he was clueless about the nuances of basic human interaction, there was still a lot that he missed, which was why he was lucky to have me around.
“Because those people are models,” I said.
“For all of us,” Monk said. “Everybody should follow their extraordinary example. They are true Americans.”
“What I mean, Mr. Monk, is that the family does not exist. They are professional models who were hired to pose for those pictures. This whole house is staged.”
Monk looked around, seeing everything anew. “You’re saying that this Realtor was perpetrating a massive fraud? How do you know?”
I started to reply, but Devlin cut me off, eager to take the opportunity to trump Monk.
“Because it’s too orderly, too clean. Everything is perfect,” she said. “It’s an idealized version of a home. Nobody actually lives like this.”
“I do,” Monk said.
“This was a spec home,” Stottlemeyer explained. “The owner bought it, remodeled it, then hired a company to dress it like a movie set to maximize its features, hide its shortcomings, and make it more attractive to buyers.”
Monk regarded the picture again, this time with sadness. “I wish they were my family.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “To make this house, and the idea of living in it, as alluring as possible on every level. What we buy is often based more on emotion than practical considerations anyway.”
“No wonder she was murdered,” Monk said. “Think of all the people she’s tricked with this elaborate ruse.”
“You’re the only one,” Devlin said. “Nobody is fooled by this. It’s like a commercial. We all know it’s fake.”
“But it could be real,” Monk said, “if everybody made just a little effort.”
“The only thing that’s real in this house is the dead body on the floor,” Devlin said.
“Speaking of which, could we please focus on the murder?” Stottlemeyer said. “Tell me you have something, Monk.”
Monk set the photo down on the coffee table. “Someone wants us to think that the murder happened exactly the way Lieutenant Devlin thinks it did, but it didn’t.”
“What makes you say that?” Devlin said.
“The murder weapon, a heavy object of some kind, is missing. And because everything is orderly and in place, it’s clearly not an object that was already here, within immediate reach, that was grabbed in the heat of the moment. Everything is where it is supposed to be.”
“Because he brought the weapon with him,” Devlin said. “And left with it, too.”
“Wouldn’t it be more likely that an assailant would bring a knife or a gun rather than a brick or a bat?”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t rule it out,” Devlin said. “Maybe clubbing women over the head and then molesting them when they are unconscious is his thing.”
“Then why was she bashed multiple times?” Monk asked. “And why didn’t the assailant complete the assault?”
“Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her and walked away because he’s not into necrophilia,” Devlin said. “Or maybe this is exactly how he gets his jollies, but he doesn’t complete the act with the victim.”
“Yuck,” I said.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Monk said to Devlin. “But where’s the blood? Her hair is thick with dried blood but there is only a little on the floor. Scalp wounds bleed a lot. There should be a large puddle of blood, not to mention some spatter on the walls from the force of those blows. But there isn’t any. The place is immaculate.”
“Because he’s seen CSI and cleaned up after himself,” Devlin said.
“I don’t smell any cleansers,” Monk said.
“Your nose could be wrong,” Devlin said.
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “There are bloodhounds that could take lessons from Monk.”
“She was definitely killed somewhere else and dumped here,” Monk said. “The murder is as staged as everything else in this house of lies.”
“Then we’d better go get ourselves some facts,” Stottlemeyer said.
2
Mr. Monk and the Five Stars
Five Star Realty occupied a storefront unit on the ground floor of a new, four-story office building on Geary, just west of Divisadero.
Inside, there was a curved reception desk in front of a wood-paneled partition adorned with a picture of the San Francisco skyline. The receptionist sitting there looked like she was anchoring the eleven o’clock news.
Behind the partition was a warren of about two dozen cubicles bordered by a half circle of five glass-windowed offices and a conference room, which was filled with a dozen shell-shocked Realtors who were comforting one another as we came in.
On one wall of the reception area were dozens of photos of various homes being offered for sale, including the one Baylin was killed in.
On the opposite wall were five framed photographs, each showing one of the Five Star partners sitting at his desk and holding his chin in one of those businesslike poses that photographers love but that nobody ever strikes on their own.
While Stottlemeyer and Devlin badged the receptionist and made their introductions, Monk drifted over to the row of photographs of the partners. He cocked his head from side to side, then began straightening each photo, until he got to the fifth, which he took off the wall and gave to the receptionist, a twentysomething woman in a too-tight minidress with hair so blond you needed sunglasses to look at her.
“Hold on to this,” Monk said.
She looked it over. “Is it broken?”
“It’s fifth,” Monk said.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
Devlin was about to speak up, but Stottlemeyer silenced her with a stern glance. He’d been through this kind of situation before, and so had I, and we’d both learned the hard way that it was better just to leave Monk alone.
“Five is an odd number,” Monk said. “One of the worst.”
“But we have five partners,” she said. “That’s why we’re called Five Star Realty.”
“You’ll want to change that, too. You can put that picture back up when you have a sixth partner and a new name.”
“The partners aren’t going to like this,” she said. “Those pictures have been up there since the day they opened this office two years ago.”
“They’ll thank me later,” he said.
A man strode out of the conference room and approached us. Women can get away with coloring their hair, but for some reason men just can’t seem to pull it off. This guy’s hair was a shade of brown not found in nature, much worse than the gray he was undoubtedly trying to hide. He had tasseled loafers, crisp slacks, and a tailored, monogrammed shirt. He’d cut his chiseled jaw shaving, which meant Monk wouldn’t be able to look at him.
“I’m Cameron Griswold, one of the partners here,” he said, offering Stottlemeyer his hand. “To be honest, we’re all in a state of shock. We can’t believe what’s happened to Becky.”
“I take it she was well liked,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Enormously. You can’t be a success in residential real estate if you aren’t a natural people person.” He looked past Stottlemeyer to the wall. “Why have you taken down my picture?”
“You’re fifth,” Monk said.
“Never mind him,” Devlin said to Griswold. �
��You can hang the picture up again when we leave. Was there any reason why someone would have wanted to do Rebecca any harm?”
“Not that I can think of,” he said. “Becky was a power seller, and not to belabor the point, but you don’t reach that level without making both buyers and sellers happy.”
“You can’t hang the photo back up,” Monk said, looking in Griswold’s general direction but not at him. “What you can do is bring in another partner and change the name of your company.”
“Monk, please,” Stottlemeyer said, then turned to Griswold. “What about the owners of the house? Was there any reason somebody would want to send them a threatening message?”
“The home was bought as an investment by a contractor who is highly respected in the community for his loving restoration of Victorian homes. He not only doesn’t have enemies, he has a fan club.”
“But that’s not the case with you, is it?” Monk said. “You’ve been getting angry letters, nasty phone calls, and countless visits from outraged individuals since the day you opened two years ago.”
“No, of course not,” Griswold said. “Where did you hear that?”
“I saw your sign,” Monk said, stepping up to him, but looking past him. “Five Star Realty. It’s an affront to the decency of all the people in this neighborhood and everyone who drives by. Why don’t you just spray obscenities all over the building?”
The Realtors in the conference room were all staring at us with bewilderment, probably because even though Monk was talking to Griswold, he was looking at them.
“Monk,” Stottlemeyer said sternly. “Mr. Griswold just learned that one of his associates was brutally murdered. This is not the time or the place to argue with him about his company’s name.”
“I beg to differ,” Monk said. “It vividly illustrates the evil and moral rot that permeates this office and that led directly to Rebecca Baylin’s horrible death.”
“That’s enough, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.
But then Monk did something astonishing. He cocked his head, rolled his shoulders, and smiled. It was his tell. I knew what it meant and so did Stottlemeyer, who squinted hard, as if he wasn’t sure that he’d actually seen it.
“You should have hired a sixth partner,” Monk said to Griswold while gazing at the conference room. “Was that what Rebecca wanted to be? Was that what got her killed?”
Four men emerged from the conference room and marched out to join Griswold. I recognized them as the other partners whose pictures were on the wall.
“Is there a problem, Cam?” one of the men asked. His hair was peppered with gray and he wasn’t trying to hide it.
“There was a huge one, but he’s just solved it for you.” Monk turned around and picked up the photo of Griswold that he’d given to the receptionist. “You can change your name to Four Star Realty now.”
Griswold looked at Devlin and Stottlemeyer. “What the hell is this lunatic talking about?”
“I have no idea,” Devlin said.
“This.” Monk handed her the photograph. “Read him his rights.”
“You can’t arrest a man for having five pictures on his wall,” Devlin said. “Or having an odd number in the name of his business.”
“Someday that will change,” Monk said. “But in the meantime, you can arrest him for murder.”
Devlin faced Stottlemeyer. “Captain, you tell him. He might listen to reason if it comes from you.”
“Monk’s right,” Stottlemeyer said.
She stared at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“If Monk says this man killed Rebecca Baylin, then he did,” Stottlemeyer said.
Griswold’s eyes went wide, but he wasn’t nearly as shocked as his partners.
“You think Cameron killed Becky because his picture was the fifth one on the wall?” asked the gray-haired man.
“Yes,” Monk said.
“Did you hear that, Captain?” Devlin said.
“I did,” Stottlemeyer said.
“And you still want me to arrest Griswold?”
“I do,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Well, I’m not going to do it,” Devlin said. “Not until I hear something rational that remotely resembles grounds for arrest.”
“Finally, a voice of reason,” Griswold said.
“The picture of you at your desk has been the fifth one on the wall for two years,” Monk said.
“That’s right, since the day we opened,” Griswold said. “And as far as I know, that’s not a crime.”
“You cut your chin shaving this morning,” Monk said.
“Are you going to tell me that’s a crime, too?”
“It’s disgusting and it proves you replaced the photo on the wall today. Your chin is cut in that picture, too.”
Stottlemeyer and I moved closer to Devlin and looked at the photo in her hand. It was hard to see, but it was there. Griswold’s chin was cut in the same place.
Devlin looked up at Monk. “How did he see that?”
“It’s a gaping wound,” Monk said.
“It’s a speck,” she said.
“It’s a gaping speck,” he said.
“I have a prominent chin. I often cut it shaving,” Griswold said. “That’s true now and it was true two years ago, not that it makes any difference.”
“But it must, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of re-creating the scene, clothes and all, and taking a new picture, which you swapped with the old one this morning before anyone else came in,” Monk said. “You didn’t want us to see that there was something in your office that isn’t there anymore.”
“It’s been two years,” Griswold said. “A lot of things aren’t in my office that were back then.”
“Except the murder weapon.” Monk gestured to the four photos of the partners on the wall. “You all have matching desk sets. But in your picture, Mr. Griswold, the marble pen stand is missing.”
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
The gray-haired partner came over to us and squinted at the picture. “Not only that, Cameron, but two years ago your hair didn’t look like you were coloring it with horse crap.”
“The sun has yellowed the photo, Merle,” Griswold said. “It’s the same picture that’s always been there.”
“Your office will prove otherwise. Bloodstains are notoriously difficult to clean up,” Monk said. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t still there. I have no doubt that a forensics team will find stains all over your office from the fight you had with Rebecca Baylin last night.”
“You’ll need a search warrant for that,” Griswold said. “And no judge anywhere in this country would give you one based on that photograph. You should be out there looking for the rapist who killed Becky, not wasting time rummaging through our office.”
“We don’t need the photo to get a warrant,” I said. “We have your voluntary confession.”
“Now you’re trying to put words in my mouth, but it won’t work,” Griswold said. “Look around. There are a dozen witnesses here who have heard every word.”
I smiled. “That’s great. They can corroborate that you said Rebecca Baylin’s killer was a rapist.”
“So what?” Griswold said.
Devlin spoke up, taking out her handcuffs. “We never mentioned that the killer staged the scene to make it appear that she’d been sexually assaulted. So how did you know about it?”
Griswold was nailed and he knew it.
“Put your hands behind your back.” She read him his rights as she cuffed him. When she was done, Monk wagged a finger in his face, though he looked at the stunned Realtors in the room as he spoke.
“Let this be a lesson to you. This is what happens when you willfully ignore odd numbers,” Monk said. “Everything goes to hell.”
3
Mr. Monk and the Big Favor
The way I see it, the top motives for murder are usually money or sex, and in Rebecca Baylin’s case, it was
a combination of the two.
We found that out because Stottlemeyer was able to crack Cameron Griswold after only thirty minutes of questioning in one of the interrogation rooms at the police station.
Baylin was Five Star’s biggest seller, and Griswold’s occasional lover. The previous night, she’d threatened to leave the business and take all of its best clients with her unless she was made a partner and received a substantial retroactive payment reflecting a higher percentage of what she’d already earned for the company. Not only that, she told Griswold that he could forget about any more after-hours hanky-panky with her at the office or anywhere else. She’d found a new, much younger lover.
They argued, Griswold’s temper got out of hand, and he walloped her with his marble pen stand.
To cover up his crime, he took her body to the house that she intended to show on Saturday and made it appear as if she’d been sexually assaulted. Then he tossed the pen stand into a gutter and went back to clean up his office. He was on his way out again when he saw the photograph on the wall, which, to his guilty conscience, seemed to highlight the murder weapon in neon.
So he ran home, hurriedly shaved off his stubble, dressed himself in the same clothes he wore in the photograph, grabbed his digital camera, and went back to the office to restage the photo on the wall.
Griswold took a picture of himself, printed it out on glossy paper, and replaced the old photograph, which he shredded. He got only a couple of hours’ sleep before returning to the office the next morning.
He thought that he’d committed the perfect crime, a pretty spectacular achievement, considering he’d done it entirely on the fly.
But then the police showed up, and Adrian Monk went straight to the photographs like a laser-guided missile. Griswold couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In fact, he still couldn’t understand how he’d been caught so quickly.
Devlin was having a hard time adjusting to it, too.
She sat at her desk, glowering at us as she pounded out her report on the case on her computer. It looked like she was typing with her fists.
