Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

“Shoot,” I said, inspecting the little oval stain decorating the side of my favorite DK messenger bag.

  “A Glock 22?” he guessed. And before I could ask how … “I know that’s what Devlin carries as her personal firearm. You would have asked her for advice. And she would’ve forgotten to tell you about wiping down the area around the firing chamber.”

  I sighed with frustration, and not just about the bag. “Okay, Mr. Genius. What now?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Mr. Monk and What Happened Next

  It took us several minutes to figure out the next step.

  Our first thought was to scale the wall, like a couple of middle-aged commandos performing a rescue operation. But we had already forewarned Teresa and Damien, who would assume this would be our next step.

  Plus, it didn’t look easy. The wall was about twelve feet high, covered in a smooth stucco finish, with no trees or rocks nearby to give us some elevation. There was also, as Monk pointed out, the problem of cameras. Every twenty yards or so, a fish-eyed camera lens stuck out of the stucco near the top. Somewhere inside, in a security office, Teresa or Damien or a member of their team was on the alert, checking a dozen monitors. The welcoming Sanctuary of my first visit, the refuge with the open gates, had been an illusion.

  While Monk was in a verbal loop, musing about ladders and catapults and fifty-yard-long tunnels, I was doing what any modern girl would do to solve a problem. I was pressing buttons on my phone.

  “Natalie.” Monk shook his head in disgust. “The sheriff’s office isn’t going to help.”

  “I’m not calling the sheriff,” I said. “I’m checking Google Earth.”

  Monk had always ridiculed me for having so many apps. To him, the idea of a cell phone was still futuristic, something out of Buck Rogers. And the concept that you would use it to do more than make calls was indulgent to the point of crazy. “That’s what libraries are for,” he would tell me.

  “If we can’t get over the wall, we’ll go around it.”

  “I am not getting in a boat,” he replied. “Boats and I are not friends.”

  “No boat. On a coastal trail. If Miranda could jump on a ledge and make her way off the property, then we can make our way onto the property.”

  According to the largest version of the map I could find, there were hints of a foot trail leading from the edge of the property north to a secluded beach. Unless I was mistaken, this was the same beach I’d been on this morning, at the end of the trail below the Myrtle & Thyme.

  Monk was odd when it came to bravery. And by odd, I didn’t mean his usual, weird, inexplicable behavior. During one nasty murder case, he made me personally check his mail every day for bombs and anthrax. On the other hand, he could occasionally shine, like the time he stepped in front of a bullet meant for me. FYI, the gun jammed and no one got shot.

  If only I could find a way to bottle this determination of his and feed it back to him, an eyedropper at a time, when he had to face the horrors of everyday life, like an uneven checkout line at the store.

  In this case, Monk rolled up the car window, gritted his teeth and endured the bumpy dirt road leading down to the deserted beach and all of its sand.

  “Do you think this is the place?” I said as we got out of the Subaru. “I mean where he drove to and killed her?”

  “Probably,” Monk said. “I doubt there’s any physical evidence left, but you never know.” He was distracted, gazing north toward a narrow, rocky trail that wound its way up toward the craggy cliffs. “Let’s do it,” he said with a cough and a gulp.

  Like I said, inexplicable—except for the fact that Ellen was up there somewhere and probably needed him.

  I grabbed the binoculars and my DK messenger bag from the car, and we started up the trail—me in front, of course. You can’t expect miracles.

  We had gone around several bends, with the trail backtracking on itself, then leading out to a promontory. We lost sight of the deserted beach but were rewarded with an expansive view south to the cliff below the Sanctuary, the waves crashing their spray halfway to the top.

  Monk stopped in his tracks, and for a moment, I thought it might be vertigo or sand or the uneven rocks. “It’s Damien,” he said, and pointed.

  Through the spray, I could see a large, beefy man in a dark sweatshirt and sweatpants higher up on another part of the trail. I used the binoculars and saw that he was hefting a piece of driftwood in his right hand. I didn’t hand them to Monk because I knew the view might affect his vertigo, not to mention his anxiety.

  “He’s looking for something,” Monk said. Even at this distance, he could tell. “What’s he carrying?”

  “I don’t know,” I lied. “But we should try to avoid him.”

  We lost sight of Damien as the trail backtracked on us again.

  Monk’s determination was holding up, but I could tell that the height and narrowness of the trail were starting to wear on him. “Do you want to stop for a minute?” I asked.

  “If you really need to,” he said with obvious relief.

  “I do,” I said. There was a little cave, more like an alcove, carved out by centuries of wind and rain, about twenty yards ahead. “Why don’t we duck in there?”

  He couldn’t see, but I drew the Glock from my bag right before going into the dark hole. It was one of those feelings you get. And I released the safety.

  For Monk, walking into this cave was the lesser of two evils—to be precise, between claustrophobia (#11) and vertigo (#8). But he did his best, going in a full five feet before stopping in his tracks.

  “Adrian?”

  The voice, surprisingly, wasn’t mine. It was coming out of the blackness ahead. “Ellen?”

  “Natalie?” She was just a dozen feet in front of us, pressed up against the rock wall. “Thank God.” As she stepped out of the dark, we could see she was limping.

  I put down my gun and rushed forward. I wanted to hug her, but Monk beat me to it. He didn’t even hesitate. “Ellen,” he groaned happily, and burrowed himself into her. Then he pulled away. “What happened to you? You’re a mess.”

  It was true. Her white tank top was covered with yellow splotches of dirt. Her black yoga pants were torn at both knees. She was barefoot. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt. And, although Monk may not have noticed in all his excitement, she was limping. Badly.

  “How did you find me?” Ellen asked. “I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” she said, then hobbled back to an outcropping of rock and lowered herself gently.

  “Is it a sprain?” Monk asked. “It looks like a sprain.”

  “I think so. I can walk on it, barely, so it’s not broken.”

  “I assume you found the right spot on the cliff and you jumped, just to try it out,” said Monk, shaking his head. “Why did you do that?”

  “I had some encouragement,” said Ellen, and lowered her voice to a whisper.

  We listened as she went over the details of her adventure: from the climb across to the balcony, to finding the necklace, to the loss of her iPhone, to the leap from the cliff, to the loss of her red backup phone somewhere along the way.

  “I didn’t realize it was even gone until I crawled in here and tried to call.” She sighed. “So much for having a backup.”

  “At least you got the necklace,” Monk said, eyeing the glistening pearls on a nearby rock. Somehow Ellen had managed to keep it with her and in one piece.

  “I knew it was important,” she said. “I could tell by how desperate he was to get it back.”

  “It could convict him of murder,” Monk said, then gave her the abbreviated version of what he’d already told me, the “here’s what happened.” As he talked, I could see Ellen going through the same reactions I went through less than an hour before.

  Monk continued. “Damien was set to dump her in the ocean. But he got too greedy. He didn’t want to risk having the necklace t
orn lose before the body could be recovered. His plan was to hold on to it, then sell it on the black market.”

  Monk was right about the conviction part. I don’t know how any defense attorney could invent an innocent explanation for how the pearls had gone from around Miranda’s neck into her husband’s sock drawer.

  “So we have him,” I said, clapping my hands.

  “Or he has us,” said Ellen, massaging her ankle. “Damien is still out there, and I can’t go much further.”

  I wasn’t too worried about that possibility. True, the killer was large and desperate. But there were three of us. And his weapon was a piece of driftwood, while we had the element of surprise and a brand-new Glock 22.

  I had literally just thought of that, honestly, when a noise at the mouth of the cave made me turn.

  It was Damien Bigley, pointing my gun at us, with the safety conveniently off, thanks to my negligence. Damn. I really did need to take that firearms course.

  “Ellen, you’re a tough lady to find.” If he was surprised to see the two of us with her, he didn’t let it show. “Officer Teeger.” He stared at Monk. “And you. You were at the Sanctuary that day.”

  “The day you killed your wife,” Monk said. It wasn’t much of an introduction. But no one was interested in exchanging names and shaking hands.

  Damien nodded, a sad little smile on his cute George Clooney mouth. “Yes. The ledge under the cliff. The necklace. That would seem the logical conclusion, wouldn’t it?”

  It’s always bad when a killer is holding a gun and being perfectly honest with you. That’s been my experience. “I’m going to have to ask for the necklace now,” he said.

  “You made another mistake,” said Monk. He was showing more confidence than I expected. “The throwaway phone.”

  “I corrected that mistake,” said Damien, still holding out his hand for the pearls.

  Monk turned to me to explain. “Remember that discrepancy? The one you thought was so important?”

  “The phone they found on Miranda’s body wasn’t hers.”

  “Correct. Miranda needed an untraceable way to communicate with him in case of emergency. At least she thought she did. Once she left the cliff, any call from her phone would have raised a red flag. But a cheap prepaid phone wouldn’t leave that trail.”

  “You’re saying I shouldn’t have left it in Miranda’s pocket.” Damien shrugged. “Maybe. But the phone was returned to me, along with her body. I disposed of it.”

  “But it was still a mistake,” Monk said. “Natalie picked up on it. Didn’t you, Natalie? You saw.”

  “Yes, I did.” I had no idea where Monk was going, but I played along.

  “Using a prepaid phone is easy. Every cheap criminal and detective uses a disposable phone. You see them all over. An amateur move.”

  What the hell was he doing? It wasn’t like him to goad an armed killer like this. Maybe he was playing for time, I thought. But why? Damien had all the time in the world. No one was coming to our rescue. No one even knew we were here.

  “Every dumb poop thinks it’s a great idea. Right, Ellen? Every dumb poop.”

  Damien frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “They’re everywhere you look. Little red cell phones.”

  Okay, I got it now. I didn’t see it. But I got it.

  “Every poop has a prepaid cell phone lying around.”

  Got it! I shot Monk a glare, meaning, “Enough.” It had taken me just a second to figure out what he wanted me to do with this information. After so many years of facing down bad guys together, we often came up with the same ideas.

  “I don’t get your point,” Damien said. “But if you’ll hand me the pearls …”

  I turned toward the necklace on my right, but not to pick it up. I did it to hide my right hand going into my right pocket.

  Monk saw this and smiled. He continued with the distracting patter. “Why don’t you just shoot us?” he asked with a casual shirk.

  “If I had three guns and three hands, I might,” said Damien. “But let’s take it one step at a time.”

  My hand was on my phone now. Monk hadn’t been hinting for me to call for help. The idea was ludicrous. No, his comment about poopy people and red cell phones could only mean one thing.

  Monk continued with his distraction. “You’re going to try to push us off the cliff, aren’t you?”

  “That’s one possibility,” Damien acknowledged. “But kind of risky. Whose gun is this, by the way?”

  “Mine,” I said, raising my left hand. My right was still fumbling in my pocket.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It makes things a lot easier.” Damien was thinking out loud now, with my Glock still trained on Monk. “It’ll be a few days before someone else takes this trail. So that gives me time …”

  I pushed a speed-dial button, waited a second, then gave Monk a slight nod. He nodded back.

  Ellen’s cherry red clamshell must have been lying near the entrance to the cave, just a few feet behind Damien. I don’t know how Monk had seen it, but he had. When it erupted in a tinny, merry “La Cucaracha,” Damien’s eyes went wide with surprise.

  Half a second later he turned to see. That’s when we made our move.

  I hadn’t counted on Monk joining me on this attack. Maybe it was the threat of imminent death or Ellen’s vulnerable, injured presence. But with the two of us slamming into Damien’s half-turned back, he was knocked off his feet. The gun scuttled across the cave floor.

  As the three of us were grappling, Ellen hobbled over and picked it up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mr. Monk’s Last Package

  The news unfolded in dribs and drabs over the next forty-eight hours.

  It began with Damien Bigley’s arrest on three counts of attempted murder. Next came the arrest of Teresa Garcia at the San Carlos airport, twelve miles due east of the Sanctuary.

  At each one of these press conferences, the county sheriff spoke slowly and modestly. But you could tell how much he was loving it. He mentioned Monk’s name only once, as someone who had helped his office in their investigation. He also mentioned my name once, which was a major improvement over the credit I’d received in past cases.

  By the time of his third press conference, announcing murder charges in the death of Miranda Bigley, Monk and I were back home, comfortably reinserted into our daily lives.

  For the first whole day, Ellen and Monk were holed up at Ellen’s house. I had no idea what the living arrangements were there, but I assumed they were hygienic. More than that, I couldn’t guess and didn’t want to know.

  The Best Possible Me Corporation ceased operations on the same day as the sheriff’s third press conference. Also on that day, the YouTube video soared to more than ten million views. As for my involvement with BPM, the Miranda CDs quickly found their way into the trash. Nonrecyclable.

  It wasn’t that I was rejecting her insights. I think she was basically a good person who’d helped millions. Whether she believed in it didn’t matter. She had served a purpose in my life, and as Miranda herself would have said, it was time to move on.

  • • •

  By Tuesday afternoon, Monk and I were back at his Pine Street apartment, getting ready for Celine Harriman’s seventh birthday celebration.

  The plan was that Monk would never have to put on a “facial disguise,” as we called the red nose and makeup, or wear a “uniform.” That was out of the question and would probably cause a Chernobyl-like meltdown. But he would have to act enough like a clown to get Harriman’s permission to enter the garage.

  We were rehearsing his patter and were making progress. He could actually say “clown” ten times in a row without stammering. But then came Andrew the mailman, ringing the buzzer with another package.

  I’d actually been looking forward to package number four. I just hoped this one wouldn’t be too obvious and give the whole thing away.

  Monk closed the front door on Andrew and hand
ed it to me. “You open it.”

  It was like the others, brown paper wrapped, addressed to Mr. A. Monk in the same scratchy handwriting. This one had been postmarked Miami and was about the size of a hardbound dictionary, for those of you who remember dictionaries.

  Inside was a child’s play kit—for ages eight and up. The name, printed in multicolored balloon letters, was “Insta-Mime” and included, according to the box, “everything you need to turn yourself into a professional-looking mime”: white face paint, black and red accent paint, while gloves, and a beret. The box said “mime,” but all Monk could see was “clown.” As soon as I ripped off the wrapping paper, he fled into the bedroom and slammed the door.

  “We have to call off the mission,” Monk shouted. “They know what we’re up to.”

  “Who knows?”

  “The clown mafia. They’re onto us.”

  Sometimes I wish I was better at fooling people, at drawing out a joke and keeping a straight face and making the most of it. But beyond a certain point, it’s just not in me.

  “It’s not a clown. It’s a mime,” I shouted through the door. “Just like the book was about clowns and mimes. Just like your brother, Ambrose, used to love mimes when he was a kid. Just like he used to collect Confederate money. Remember? Just like Yuki, his wife, is Japanese and likes to give your brother different kinds of massages.”

  The good thing about Monk is that it takes him just a second to put things together. He swung open the door and glared at me. “Well, that’s just stupid.”

  “Not so stupid,” I said.

  Okay. A little bit of background is probably in order.

  Monk’s brother, Ambrose, is, as I mentioned before, an agoraphobe. For years, he never left his house, which had also been his childhood home, which had also been filled with thirty years’ worth of mail, all indexed and cataloged.

  The person responsible for bringing some much-needed change into his life was Yuki Nakamura, a twentysomething biker chick with tattoos and a manslaughter conviction in her past. She began by working as Ambrose’s assistant. The two—improbably, illogically—fell in love and got married.