Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

  I knew what he meant. Was I ready to take over a crime scene, frame my hands in front of my face, and come up with some genius insight to kick things into high gear? “No,” I had to admit. “No one can take Mr. Monk’s place.”

  “Then I suggest you get him back in here.”

  “It won’t be easy. He knows by now you betrayed him. I mean, having a row of officers blocking the painting? That was a circus scene, right?”

  “Right. And Devlin was by the front door to body-block the guy’s business sign. ‘J. P. Tatters. Clown to the Stars. Dudley Smith, proprietor.’ I’m surprised Monk didn’t see either one of those and put it together.”

  “That’s because he trusted you.”

  “Okay,” growled the captain. “Tell him I’m sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “I didn’t think his clown thing was so bad. Isn’t it like number one hundred on his list?”

  “It used to be. Now it’s ninety-nine. Aardvarks is the new one hundred.”

  “Aardvarks? Shouldn’t that be at the top of the list?”

  “That’s what I keep saying.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mr. Monk’s Virtual Tour

  “Monk, I owe you an apology,” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Sooo …” Monk paused.

  “What are you doing?

  “Waiting for the apology.”

  “I just said it.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you owed me an apology. That’s like saying you owe me ten bucks. Just saying that you owe it to—”

  “You’re right. I apologize. I apologize.”

  “For what? For messing up your apology or for—”

  “For everything!” The captain was sounding less and less sorry.

  “Apology accepted,” I ordered them both. “Let’s move on.”

  The three of us sat in my Subaru, at the curb outside the clown’s apartment. Captain Stottlemeyer was in the back. Monk was riding shotgun with his seat belt on, even though we weren’t planning on moving.

  The car was our temporary headquarters, since it had just started raining and Monk absolutely refused to go any closer to the scene of the crime—and by crime, he meant the residence of a clown.

  In the half hour or so between Stottlemeyer’s offense and his apology, the body had been removed, along with the poisoned money. Devlin was inside, finishing up some paperwork and preparing for Monk’s upcoming inspection of the premises.

  “No one likes clowns,” said the captain. “They’re like fruitcakes. Everyone hates them, yet they exist. But to be actually scared of them? And they’re way down your list, number ninety-nine, so you can’t be that scared.”

  “That’s because they’re relatively rare. If there were as many clowns as there are germs, they’d be right at the top. Higher than the top.”

  “Did a clown scare you as a kid, huh?” He snorted. “Look who I’m talking to. Everything scared you as a kid.”

  “If you must know”—Monk turned to face the captain—“my mother used to sit Ambrose and me in front of the TV and make us watch Fellini movies.”

  Ambrose was Monk’s older brother. They’d been raised in a strange, sterile household, with a mother who withheld all affection and a father who went out for Chinese food one night and never came back. It was little wonder that Ambrose became an agoraphobe who never left his house and Monk became … well, Monk.

  “You watched Fellini?” asked the captain. “I don’t get it.”

  It took even me a few seconds to get it. “You mean the foreign films with those scary Italian clowns? What kind of mother … ?”

  “She wanted us to learn a language. Ambrose actually liked them. When he was twelve, he decided to become a mime. He didn’t speak for nearly a year. But I still get panic attacks when I hear Italian. It’s the language of clowns.”

  A second later, my phone rang. It was Devlin, in the bedroom, paperwork done, ready to roll.

  This was an emergency system that my daughter, Julie, had invented when she was acting as Monk’s temporary assistant during my absence in New Jersey.

  On one of their cases, Monk had refused to visit a crime scene on a high, uneven-numbered floor in an apartment building. This of course wasn’t his problem. It was everyone else’s. Julie’s solution was to have Lieutenant Devlin tour the apartment holding her phone’s camera out in front of her. On another smartphone, at ground level, Monk would take a virtual tour, with Devlin providing close-ups and a running commentary as she walked through.

  I wiped my phone thoroughly and handed it to Monk. He squinted at the image on the screen. “Should I start in the bedroom?” asked Devlin from the other end.

  “No need. I’ll just review it in my mind.”

  “In your mind? You were only in the bedroom for a minute,” she protested. “Then you got distracted by clown shoes.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t see. Hold on.” Monk put the phone in his lap, closed his eyes, and held up his hands. I guess he was framing whatever was running through his mind.

  Stottlemeyer chuckled. “You just don’t want Devlin showing you the clown shoes again.”

  Monk ignored him. “There’s a wicker hamper under the window, which he never used. See it?”

  “How do you know he never used it?” Devlin asked.

  “Because ‘A,’ just look at the place. It’s a mess. And ‘B,’ he kept something on top of it. You can see a crease line in the wicker, eight and a half inches long. That’s a standard size for a picture frame. I assume it was a picture of a clown that you guys hid so I wouldn’t freak out.”

  “Um,” Devlin said. “That would be correct.”

  “Can you describe the picture?”

  “Hold on. I put it in a drawer.” A few seconds later, she was back on. Monk refused to look, so she described it in detail: a photo of the deceased, Dudley Smith, aka J. P. Tatters, dressed in full regalia at a children’s hospital.

  From her description, he was a cross between an Emmett Kelley hobo—dark, painted-on stubble, shabby suit, a hobo bindle over his shoulder—and a traditional Ronald McDonald—big red shoes, red fright wig. For Monk, it was the worst of both worlds. A hobo and a clown. I saw him turn white and thought he might even faint. But he didn’t. He didn’t even cover his ears.

  “Those poor children,” he moaned. “Was he responsible for putting them in the hospital?”

  “No, Monk,” Devlin said. “He was entertaining them. They’re laughing.”

  “Laughing with terror. Okay, on to the next.” He rolled his shoulders and refocused himself. “There’s a blue push pin on the rug as you walk in the room. Turn left. Five feet down. About three inches from the wall.”

  “I don’t see any … ,” said Devlin. “Oh, yeah, there it is.”

  “Good. On the wall above the push pin is a rectangular mirror. There are a ton of smudges on both sides, slightly below eye level. Thumbprints, I’m guessing, since they’re rounder than fingerprints. You can dust them but I’m sure they’re the victim’s.”

  Devlin’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “The vic’s prints. Gee, that’s great.”

  “That’s not my point. My point is he turned the mirror around a lot. Look on the other side.”

  We waited to hear her response. “It’s a corkboard.”

  Of course, when I tell it this way, his deduction seems obvious: push pin, mirror, thumbprints from turning it around. But no one else had noticed. “Let me see what’s on it,” he said.

  Monk picked up the phone and I glanced over his shoulder. In the corkboard’s center, held up by another blue push pin, was a key on a string. A gloved hand entered the frame and turned the key around. “Do Not Duplicate” was etched in large letters.

  “It’s a Canada post key design,” Monk said.

  “A post office box?” Stottlemeyer asked. “Why would you hide your post office box key?”

  Monk wriggled his nose and adjusted his seat belt, making sure it was still low and tight. “Well, that gives me a wo
rking theory.”

  “What’s your working theory?” I asked.

  “I’m working on it. Okay, let’s move on to the stain on the ceiling above the bed, which I pray to God is unimportant. Then to the new Sharper Image catalog on the left nightstand.”

  The tour went on like this for nearly an hour. By the time we made our way through the living room, the kitchen, the hallway, and the apartment’s only bathroom, my phone’s battery light was blinking and ready to give out.

  All of us focused on the details as Monk and Devlin went along. There was the manila envelope in the trash can, mailed to box 849 at the O’Farrell Street post office, a few blocks away. No name and no return address. There was the appointment book for the J. P. Tatters clown business. There were the ashes in the fireplace. There were the bookmarks on his Google homepage.

  I turned the ignition key to auxiliary power. “Mr. Monk, give me the phone so I can plug it in.”

  “No need,” he said, and handed it back. “I know what I need to know. The circus-loving police department can take it from here, what with their fiber reports and field work. It’s patently obvious.”

  “What’s obvious?” came Devlin’s annoyed, disembodied voice.

  “Monk, I hate to say this. Again.” Stottlemeyer spoke slowly. He was trying to avoid doing his slow burn, partly because he knew it amused me. “But the reason we pay you is so you can tell us what’s obvious.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Monk said graciously. “But you realize our clown is a blackmailer.”

  Stottlemeyer wriggled his mustache. I could see him mentally piecing it together: the secret post office box, the lack of names on the envelope, the cash in the mail. “Damn it, you’re right.”

  Dudley Smith, we knew, did much of his business at children’s parties. That was clear from his appointment records. And the “Clown to the Stars” had an impressive roster of clients. It struck me as rather ironic that San Francisco’s wealthiest would hire a hobo clown for their impressionable children.

  “Of course the key is significant,” Monk added.

  “The P.O. box key,” I emphasized.

  “No, I was thinking of the car key.”

  Stottlemeyer checked his notes. “What car key? Devlin, did you see a car key?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Precisely,” said Monk. “Dudley Smith didn’t own a car. At least we found no indication. So he took public transportation or taxis, at least some of the time. And that means he had to change into his clown regalia at the client’s home.”

  From this deduction, Monk’s theory was fairly straightforward. While changing, Dudley had found something in one of his clients’ homes, something worth blackmailing for. He said nothing at the time. Whatever the secret was, he thought he could get away with an anonymous blackmail system, hence the P.O. box key and the envelope without an addressee name.

  “He probably used a disposable phone to contact his victim and changed his voice. Clowns are tricky—one might say diabolical. I’m sure he had some elaborate setup to retrieve the money at the post office. That’s what I would do.

  “When the blackmailee started being threatened, he or she had no idea it was the clown who had showed up for Jimmy’s party last month. Their way of dealing with this unknown blackmailer? Send him poisoned money.”

  “Why didn’t the victim send poisoned scraps of paper instead?” asked Stottlemeyer. “It would be a damn lot cheaper.”

  Good question. Tough question. I let Monk answer it. “Smith had to touch the bills in order for the poison to work. If it was me, I would have sent only half the requested amount. That would have ensured that Smith count the money over and over and get the atropine into his system fast.”

  “So, saving blackmail money wasn’t the point of this murder,” said Stottlemeyer.

  “The point was to kill the blackmailer and make the problem go away.”

  “What about the ashes in the fireplace?” Stottlemeyer asked. “Did he burn some crucial evidence?”

  “It was a Presto-Log,” Monk said. “I recognized the texture.”

  “Right,” said the captain with an embarrassed cough. “We’ve had some chilly nights.”

  “Should we keep this out of the public record?” I asked. “I mean, if the killer didn’t know who his blackmailer was, why should we tell him?”

  “Good thinking,” Stottlemeyer agreed. “I’ll call the DA’s office and try to keep it out of the papers. See what develops.”

  A rear door opened and Devlin joined the captain in the backseat. She remained quiet, nursing a very serious scowl.

  “If I were you, I’d find out when Smith rented his box,” Monk advised. “That will narrow down your suspects to a manageable few. Then all you have to do is connect one of them to the envelope or the poison or the money. Or maybe you can uncover the scandal behind the blackmail. That’s not really my problem.” He frowned. “You lost me at ‘clown.’ I’m quitting this one.”

  “What? You can’t refuse to work on a case. Natalie?”

  Stottlemeyer was looking at me to intercede, but I couldn’t. “If he doesn’t want to, you can’t force him. That’s the beauty of being a consultant.”

  “No, that’s not how it works. You guys are under retainer. We retain you to work on the cases we choose, not the ones you choose.”

  “All right,” said Monk. “I’ll work on the case but I won’t solve it.”

  “Won’t solve it?” the captain scoffed. “What is this, a strike?”

  “You can’t force me to work on a case that would harm my health. The very least you have to do is offer me hazard pay.”

  “Hazard pay?” Stottlemeyer snorted. “For one thing, you’re a homicide consultant, so it’s always hazardous. That’s the job. And … it’s a clown, for God’s sake. A clown!”

  “Don’t say that!” Monk shuddered and sank away.

  “Yelling ‘clown’ is not going to make things easier,” I said, trying to restore some civility.

  Devlin opened her mouth, about to say something—something scathing, no doubt. She closed it, then opened it again. “They found the body.”

  “There’s a second body?” Monk was aghast. “How could you miss a second body? Was it under the bed with the clown shoes?” He shivered. “Was it under the bed wearing the clown shoes? This keeps getting worse.”

  “There was no second body.”

  “You just said there was.”

  Devlin looked me straight in the eye, though I could see she didn’t want to. “Miranda Bigley. The call came in. Her body washed ashore. Here in town.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mr. Monk Cleans a Cup Holder

  Fort Funston Park is technically part of San Francisco, at the southern edge where the city blends into San Mateo County. A rugged, gorgeous seaside park. As far as I know, the only time it was ever really used as a fort was during World War Two, when they installed some huge cannons overlooking the Pacific Ocean, just in case the Japanese decided to invade the West Coast.

  The sandy bluffs are similar to the ones at Half Moon Bay, which is only about fifteen miles south, as the crow flies or the fish swims. The cliffs and the steady breezes make the park a perfect setting for hang-gliding. And, in fact, it was a hang-gliding instructor who had called in the sighting.

  He had been up there with a terrified, overweight novice who had come to cash in a gift certificate from her son and celebrate her sixty-fifth birthday with a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. They were strapped in side by side, instructor and novice, the instructor trying hard to compensate for the lopsided weight.

  The woman was the first to see the yellow dot bobbing among the rocks and wondered aloud if this could be an oddly colored dolphin. She had only been convinced to go up in this kite because her son had promised her a dolphin sighting. The instructor saw it, too. He did several low passes over the yellow dot, then pulled out his cell phone and dialed 911. From this high up, he got remarkably good reception.

 
; The trails from the cliff to the beach were treacherous. Narrow and rocky and steep, they wound back on one another until finally spilling out onto a narrow strip of sand. If you’re wondering how in the world Monk could have made this trek, he didn’t. He was back up in my car in the Skyline Boulevard parking lot, polishing one of my dusty cup holders.

  The instructor was there when we stepped out onto the beach, along with the crew of the coast guard cutter that had responded to the call and pulled Miranda Bigley out of the water. These were probably the same men, I thought, who had been in their wet suits yesterday, searching for her fifteen miles down the shoreline.

  Since the body had been found in San Francisco waters, it was brought ashore for a preliminary exam before being shipped to San Mateo County. Stottlemeyer took charge as soon as we arrived and Devlin took notes. I felt uneasy not having Monk there to raise his hands and do his thing. But in reality, the captain and the lieutenant had done this hundreds of times. It seemed fairly straightforward.

  They noted the location, tidal information, broken bones, head trauma, and, in their professional opinion, probable cause of death. I tried to stay away during all this, preferring to remember the way Miranda looked in life. She had always been so alive that it seemed like a sacrilege to see her dead.

  “Natalie, did you know her well enough to make an ID?” Devlin had come back to where I was standing. “I mean, I know what she looks like from the infomercials. But you knew her in person.”

  “Do I have to?”

  I have never known Amy Devlin to be warm and fuzzy. Usually she goes out of her way to be hard-nosed, the total cop. But something made her soften. “You don’t. But she’s only been in a day, so it’s not bad. Not much bloating. No fish nibbling to speak of.”

  “Please, stop.” The image almost made me vomit.

  “Is that my wife?” The voice startled us and we turned to see Damien Bigley, approaching us from the rocky trail end.

  “Mr. Bigley, we didn’t expect you so soon.” She held out her hand and Damien shook it. “I’m Detective Lieutenant Devlin. SFPD.”