Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (16 page)

“I think you mean Einstein of crime detection.”

“Crime detection doesn’t sound as good. Amy, look, I’m nervous, too. But after all these years, I know Adrian’s strengths and weaknesses. When it comes time to bring him in, we’ll do it. But not now.”

Devlin didn’t answer.

“Was it Adrian who arranged for Sarabeth to feel free enough to sneak away and get on that bus? No, that was me.”

“That was you,” she had to agree. “You want a bottle of water?”

“No, thanks, I’m good.”

We spent the next two hours sitting side by side, saying next to nothing, staring at the door and front windows of the ground-floor apartment of the painted lady on Haight Street.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mr. Monk and the Scene of the Crime

“I
need to speak to Adrian.”

I’m not sure if I was doing this out of boredom or because I wanted to move things forward. As long as Monk was in there, I knew our suspect wasn’t going anywhere or making any calls.

Once again Sarabeth had answered the door in her colorful housedress. From the faint odor on her breath, I could guess they had finished the sandwiches. “Natalie, come on in. You just missed lunch. I have to tell you, Spam is a wonderful thing. I had no idea.”

Monk was in the little eat-in kitchen, wiping the plastic tabletop clean. “Can we have a moment?” I asked Sarabeth.

“You can say anything in front of her,” Monk said a tad defensively. “Sarabeth and I don’t have any secrets.”

“Okay.”
Actually, you do have secrets,
I wanted to say.
At least Sarabeth does.
“Adrian, I need you with me in the field. We have two big cases. And we have an obligation to Lieutenant Devlin. She’s not saying anything, but I know the commissioner has set up a review board.” I looked over to Sarabeth. “I’m sorry to drag him away.”

“But she needs protection,” Monk said. He had finished his second wipe of the kitchen table and was starting his third. “The police, in their wisdom, removed the squad car.”

“That’s because they no longer consider her in danger.”

“Adrian, it’s been a delight having you here,” Sarabeth said, all sweetness. “But Natalie’s right. I’ve got good locks now, thanks to you, and I’ll follow all your protocols, I promise.”

“We can review them once more,” Monk said. “What do you do if you hear a noise in the chimney? I know that’s a trick question since you don’t have a chimney. But if you did have a chimney . . .”

“Sweetie.” Sarabeth took him by the shoulders and he didn’t flinch. “Three of my good friends are dead. We need you out there finding Wyatt. I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll stay right here.”

“Do you promise to stay here?”

“I promise.”

Monk wasn’t about to listen to me, but he listened to her. When we stepped out of the house, the Grand Am had been moved around the corner and out of sight—although I’ve never dismissed the possibility of his having X-ray vision.

“I hope you’re happy,” Monk whined as we walked.

“Happy’s a relative thing. Where do you want to go? I say East Decorative Imports. If we figure out how Noone left the building, that’ll go a long way to clearing Amy’s name.” Monk didn’t bother to answer, which told me he approved. “Good. I already called Mr. Ito. He’s meeting us there.”

“Did you investigate the survivors of the victims?” We were driving on Broadway and now heading east, miraculously
hitting all the green lights. “Mel Lubarsky’s widow and Katrina Avery’s ex-husband?”

“Yes,” I answered somewhat truthfully. Devlin’s people had done checks on them both. “Neither one seems to have a connection to our mystery man.”

“I still think Noone had inside help.”

“So do I.”

At the main entrance on Stockton, I rang the office/showroom buzzer. We took the stairs to the third floor and emerged onto a spare, elegant space decorated with statues and soothing rock fountains and drops of blood soaked into the wood-paneled floor. Remnants of yellow crime scene tape hung from a pair of Tibetan prayer wheels on either side of the reception desk.

Monk took a moment to stand in the middle and absorb it all. He didn’t raise his hands to frame the scene but turned in a slow, deliberate circle. He was just about to move on when something outside the front windows caught his eye.

They were two large, side-by-side windows, typical of a warehouse, each consisting of nine panels of glass and looking out onto an old, five-story office building on the other side of Stockton. The sun was just beginning to inch its way past the corner and into the street below.

“What?” I asked. I knew he had seen something. “What’s wrong?”

Monk wagged his head at an angle, as if shaking loose a drop of water from his left ear. “Nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. I know your looks. That’s not your ‘aha’
look or your ‘interesting’ look or your ‘something’s not symmetrical’ look. That’s your ‘something doesn’t make sense’ look. What is it? What doesn’t make sense?”

“You can see the same thing I’m seeing.”

“Adrian, that’s not fair.”

“It’s nothing,” he insisted, and forced himself to move on, focusing his gaze onto the floor. We followed the trail of stained wood back to the largest office where Mel, the first victim, had been gunned down.

“Mr. Monk. Ms. Teeger. Please come in.”

Takumi Ito sat at a handsome teakwood desk, his tall, lean frame slumped back. Ledgers lay open on either side of the computer screen. “Forgive me for not getting up. I’m not sure I have the strength.” He certainly didn’t look or sound well.

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s worse than I thought,” said Ito. “The losses may be three or four million now.”

“Three or four . . . How can that be?” I asked. “A company this size? How could no one notice?”

“It’s absurdly simple,” he said, and held up one of the ledgers. “East Decorative sells original pieces worth tens of thousands U.S. to serious collectors. We also sell copies worth maybe a few hundred apiece to decorators and businesses. Mr. Noone was fulfilling orders for original pieces and substituting copies. Then he listed the sales as copies and pocketed the difference.”

“And this was easy to do?” I asked. It sounded easy.

“It was child’s play. That’s the expression, correct?”

“Child’s play,” I confirmed.

“Our copies are very skillful, down to the rust and the verdigris. They go through customs with labels confirming them as copies, but it’s not hard to remove the labels. I spent all the weekend comparing receipts and invoices. We’re going to have to make good on everything. As you can imagine, our whole business depends on a reliable reputation.”

“Could one person have done this?” asked Monk.

Ito was puzzled. “Of course, one person did it. Are you saying there was someone in addition to Mr. Noone? Who?”

“You answer my question first. Could it be just one person?”

“Yes. As I said, child’s play. Being the accountant, he had access to the invoices. And the warehouse is right below us. Now please answer my question, Mr. Monk. Was there someone else?”

Monk chose his words carefully. As with everything, work life and personal, he likes to be precise. “I don’t know. There are aspects that make it look like a partnership—how Noone got hired in the first place; his ability to keep a low profile; and how he managed to escape the building. But, as you say, the actual embezzlement could have been done by one. And when you’re planning to kill three people, partners are always dangerous.” Monk shrugged. “There’s something I’m not quite seeing.”

Not quite seeing? I liked the sound of that. It meant he was keeping an open mind, maybe even open enough to think about Sarabeth.

“Mr. Ito?”

Todd Avery stood in the office doorway, dressed for work—
work gloves, back-support belt, a clipboard in his hands. “Hello,” he said, looking a bit surprised to see us. “Monk and Teeger, right? Good to see you. Mr. Ito?” He returned his focus to his boss. “I had a few questions about the deliveries.”

“You’re back at work?” I asked Todd. “So soon?”

“Todd is our foreman,” said the company president. “He was gracious enough to come in. Our business can’t stop or it may never restart. We have some local deliveries that were due last week. Todd, I’ll meet you at the loading dock in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” said Todd, but he didn’t move from the doorway. “How’s the investigation? I’m sorry for interrupting but the police aren’t saying much. Are you going to catch this bastard? That’s all I want to know.”

“We’re getting close,” I said, partly to calm him down and partly to gauge his reaction.

“That’s good,” he said. “I never thought I was into revenge. But you want things to make sense. A man kills your ex-wife, the woman you once planned to spend your life with. Then he disappears. There has to be more to it than that.”

“I agree,” said Monk. He has a special place in his heart for the husbands of murdered wives. “That’s what we do, try to make sense of things.”

Ito nodded and I nodded. We all seemed to want to make sense of this. “Todd, I’ll meet you on the loading dock.”

We waited until the foreman left, listening for the door to the stairwell to close behind him. “Is there anything more I can do for you?” Ito asked. “I wish I knew more myself.”

“We’d just like to look around,” I said. “The first time we
were here, the place was in lockdown. We didn’t get to take our time.”

Ito waved his hand across the space. “Please feel free. Nothing is off-bounds. If you have any questions, I’ll be on the ground level with Todd.”

For the next ten minutes, after Ito left, Monk wandered the offices and the showroom displays. I tried to stay out of his way. But I noticed that he kept gravitating to the reception area. Katrina’s office, then reception. Mel’s office, then reception. Caleb Smith’s office . . . And on each return, he seemed to be pulled toward the large front windows facing the receptionist’s desk.

I waited until his next gravitational pull. “What?” I asked again. “What are you looking at?”

“I told you before, nothing.”

“You know I’m going to bug you until you tell me.”

“It’s just a little discrepancy, nothing big.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

“You’re a detective, Ms. Detective. Figure it out.”

“Okay, I will,” I said, but without much conviction. I hate these little challenges of his.

Monk stepped away from the window just as I stepped up. Stockton Street looked exactly the same as it had on a dozen other occasions. The windows of the office building opposite us were tinted for privacy or energy efficiency or both. Street traffic was relatively heavy. The tops of a dozen or so heads paraded below me. Another dozen were crossing at the corner and one was jaywalking. If only I knew what I was looking for . . . A third of the way down the block, a Dumpster was positioned not far from a fire hydrant. Did it have something
to do with the Dumpster? I wondered. Could Wyatt Noone have escaped into the Dumpster? Not with half of the San Francisco police force looking on.

I stayed at the window, not wanting to give up. And that was when I saw the red Grand Am pulling in behind the Dumpster.

“It’s not a clue,” Monk said from across the room. “Just a discrepancy. I’m sure there’s an explanation.” He must have been saying something like that, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too focused on Lieutenant Devlin sitting behind the wheel of the Grand Am.

What is she doing?
I asked myself. She’s supposed to be on stakeout. She wouldn’t have left except in an emergency. Even in an emergency . . . The only reason why a hardnose like Devlin would drive away from a stakeout . . . I glanced directly below to the street in time to see a glint of light as the front door to East Decorative Imports swung shut.

“What are you doing? Natalie?”

What I was doing was gingerly opening the door to the stairwell, just enough to stick out my head and listen. “Shh.”

“Is Mr. Ito coming back up?” Monk whispered. “Why are we whispering?”

I noticed that the elevator didn’t engage. But there was definitely someone on the stairs. One pair of soft feet. Then the sound of another stairwell door closing.

“Adrian, let’s check out the second floor. You’re done on this floor.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” There must have been something urgent
in my voice, because when I turned to mime-drag him into the stairwell and down the stairs, he was right behind me. When we reached the landing, I stopped and quietly laid down the law. “You don’t need a hazmat suit, Adrian. We don’t have the time. You can hold your breath if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” Then I slowly opened the door to the warehouse.

I couldn’t tell you if anything had been moved or changed, but the upper warehouse level looked just as shadowy and creepy as before. Just inside, Monk made a move to switch on the lights, but I stopped his hand. That was enough to tell him that we were in stealth mode. He cocked his head to one side, silently asking, “What next?” Then he must have heard something, something I couldn’t hear, because his finger went up and he pointed it directly ahead through a lineup of weapon-wielding Shivas from India with eight arms apiece. Did we want to go toward the sound or away from it? I nodded yes.

I knew exactly what to expect. But I had no idea why she was here or what she was doing or how Monk would react, which made things fairly tense. As far as I could tell, we were retracing the path she had taken from the stairwell to her hiding place during the confusion of the mass murder. My mistake, triple homicide.

“Adrian.”

She must have just heard us, because we found her in the middle of a walkway, backed up by a quartet of four seated Buddhas made of tin, all identical, about four feet high and looking too fat to ever get their legs into a lotus position. Sarabeth just stood there, a little out of breath.