Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (10 page)

“It’s a coincidence,” I said. “They didn’t do it on purpose.”

“You’re too cynical,” Monk said. “Have some faith in your fellow man.”

The cramped squad room of the Lihue police station resembled every other government office I had seen before. Everything was in shades of gray—the cinder-block walls, the file cabinets, the four metal desks, even the linoleum floors, where years of foot traffic had worn trails around the squad room. The only color came from the aloha shirts on the two detectives and the cluster of multicolored pushpins stuck in a black-and-white map of Kauai on a bulletin board behind Kealoha’s desk.

Kealoha rose to greet us. “Hey, tanks for coming down.”

“No beeg ting, bruddah,” I said with a grin.

“Dat’s good,” Kealoha said.

“Do you have some new leads in the investigation?” Monk asked.

“Just mo’ dead ends,” Kealoha said. “The medical examiner confirms that Helen Gruber was killed sometime between eight and eleven
A
.
M
., which rules out Lance as her killer.”

“His alibi checks out?”

“Like he said, he was on a Snorkel Rob catamaran cruising the Na Pali Coast, whale watching and snorkeling.” Kealoha picked up a videotape from his desk. “Snorkel Rob has a crew member professionally videotape each trip; then at the end of the trip, they sell the tapes to the guests for fifty bucks each. I borrowed one.”

There was a TV/VCR combo on a rolling cart near Kealoha’s desk. The detective put the tape into the VCR and hit play. It was cued up to a scene on the boat. Lance was among a dozen tourists on deck watching the whales. Kealoha hit the fast-forward button, stopping at a shot of Lance ogling a young brunette in a tight surf shirt and G-string bikini bottoms as she dove off the boat. A few minutes further into the video, we saw Lance underwater, swimming amidst a school of tropical fish. Kealoha froze the image.

“Bummah,” he said. “I liked him for this.”

“The video could have been made days ago,” Monk said. “How do we know it was taken this morning?”

“I got a sworn statement from the guy who shot the video; plus I’m tracking down all the haoles on the boat to corroborate what he told me,” Kealoha said. “I’ve already talked to one couple from this video. They arrived last night from the mainland. So the video had to be made today. Dems da facts, brah.”

“Did the guests on the boat ever go ashore during the excursion?”

“There’s a couple of isolated beaches along the coast and they stopped at one of them for lunch. But if you’re thinking maybe Lance slipped away from the group, got to a car hidden somewhere, and drove back to Poipu to kill his wife, fo’gedda ‘bout it. What makes Na Pali so spectacular is that it’s a rugged coastline of jagged, four-thousand-foot cliffs that are inaccessible by car.”

“What about a helicopter?” I asked. “Don’t they do tours of the Na Pali Coast?”

“It’d be crazy to try landing on one of those beaches, and even if you did, you couldn’t do that without being seen by everybody on the boat,” Kealoha said. “He’s got a great alibi.”

“Almost too great,” Monk said. “I never trust people with great alibis. Or people who drink soda directly from the can. Or people who pierce any part of their bodies.”

“I have pierced ears,” I said.

“So do I,” Kealoha said. “Nipples, too.”

Monk shivered and pretended he didn’t hear us. “He could have hired someone to kill his wife.”

“I’ve talked to the Cleveland PD,” Kealoha said. “They are checking out Lance and his bank accounts, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Cleveland cops try to wrangle a trip here to deliver their news personally.”

“So I guess that means there’s nothing for us to do but enjoy the island while we wait,” I said, hoping the Cleveland cops took their sweet time. “Shall we go, Mr. Monk?”

Monk drifted over to the map. “What’s this?”

“Don’t bother with that,” Kealoha said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “It’s stuff we’re never gonna solve.”

I wished he hadn’t said that. With those words and that simple gesture Kealoha had carelessly given Monk something else to obsess about.

“Why not?” Monk said.

“They’re residential burglaries in Poipu. Most of the houses hit are vacation homes and condos that are only occasionally occupied by the owners. They can be vacant for months at a time or rented out every week.”

“So by the time the owners notice something is missing, it could be days, weeks, or months after the crime was actually committed.”

“It’s jus li’dat.” Kealoha sighed.

“What about witnesses? Has anybody seen anything unusual?”

“That’s another problem. Lots of the neighboring homes or condos are either vacant or rented by one tourist after another. How do you know when somebody’s a stranger if you’re one too? We’ve asked the gardeners, mailmen, pool guys—the regulars—to keep an eye open, but they’re no better than the tourists at noticing da kine.”

“There must be at least a few cases where you have a rough idea when the burglary occurred. Didn’t any alarms ever go off? Didn’t anybody ever report freshly broken windows or jimmied-open doors?”

“A handful.”

“When and where did they occur?”

Kealoha opened a binder on his desk and passed it to Monk, who scanned the pages.

I thought it was awfully convenient that Kealoha had the information so readily available. I was beginning to suspect that this was all a setup, that Kealoha
wanted
Monk to ask about the burglaries all along.

“These burglaries all occurred in broad daylight on weekdays,” Monk said. “Why would the burglar take that risk?”

“I don’t know,” Kealoha said.

“This is odd,” Monk said, referring to something he was reading. “According to these reports, some of the burglaries even happened in gated neighborhoods and security buildings. How did the burglars get in and out carrying stolen goods without anyone noticing?”

“It’s a mystery.” Kealoha shrugged and winked at me conspiratorially.

But I wasn’t part of the conspiracy. I was a victim. He was practically confessing to unloading his cases on Monk and, by extension, making sure I had no opportunity at all to enjoy Kauai.

Monk pointed to a listing on the page. “An alarm was triggered three weeks ago at two fifteen
P
.
M
. at a house on Hoonani Road. Can you show me where that is on the map?”

Kealoha touched a pushpin on a road that ran along the coast on the southern edge of the island, not far from our hotel. “Right here.”

“And this one four days ago at five
P
.
M
. on Lawai Road?”

Kealoha tapped a pin a little farther east, near where Lawai Road reached a dead end at Spouting Horn, which I knew from guidebooks was a fountain of water created by waves blasting through a narrow hole in an outcropping of lava rocks. I wondered if I’d actually get an opportunity to see it, or any of the island’s other natural wonders, while I was here.

“What about this burglary last week at noon?”

“Here, on the Milo Hae Loop.” Kealoha pointed to some homes along the Grand Kiahuna Poipu golf course.

And so it went. As Monk called out addresses from the binder, Kealoha showed him the corresponding pushpins on the map.

Monk closed the binder and stared at the map. After a long moment, he turned to Kealoha.

“Are you free for a round of golf tomorrow at eleven at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu?”

“I appreciate the invite, but I’m kind of working on this homicide case,” Kealoha said. “And even if I wasn’t, it’s a very popular course. You’d never get a reservation for tomorrow on such short notice.”

“Not even for official police business?”

“Is it?”

“It is if you want to apprehend a burglar,” Monk said.

I decided not to speak to Monk until after we’d finished our dinner at the Royal Hawaiian and he’d given the waiter his credit card to pay the check.

The Royal Hawaiian was in the original Kiahuna Poipu plantation house. The restaurant was surrounded by a lush tropical garden and a meandering path lit by torches that led all the way down to the beach.

Although we couldn’t see the ocean, we could hear the crashing surf and smell the sea breeze that wafted through the garden, picking up the floral fragrances. The dining room was paneled in rich koa wood, which gave the restaurant a distinctly Hawaiian elegance and justified the steep prices of the entrées.

I started with a warm macadamia-nut-and-goat-cheese salad with a passion-fruit vinaigrette followed by lemongrass seared island opah with udon noodles and a Thai basil-lime butter sauce.

Monk had a mixed green salad (which he promptly sorted out on a separate plate), followed by a grilled salmon fillet with white rice. He also had a 7UP with a slice of lemon to, as he put it, let loose a little.

I was trying to punish him with my silence but he didn’t seem to notice. In fact, I think he liked it. Damn him.

While we ate, I thought about what a frustrating, and eventful, day it had been, beginning with a disastrous wedding ceremony and the discovery of a murdered woman. I met a medium who claimed to be channeling not only the dead woman, but my husband, too, and Monk decided to investigate all the unsolved burglaries on the island.

And this was just our first full day.

“You know Lieutenant Kealoha is using you,” I said finally as the waiter returned and presented Monk with his Visa card, the check, the credit card receipt, and a pen on a little silver tray.

“No, he’s not.” Monk took out his own pen and began carefully signing the receipt.

“He tricked you into solving those burglaries for him.”

“I don’t mind,” Monk said.

“
I
do,” I said. “It’s bad enough that you inserted yourself into a homicide investigation, but now you’re taking on his entire caseload.”

“You call that a caseload?” Monk said. “I could solve a year’s worth of his cases in a week.”

“That’s exactly what he’s hoping for.”

Monk dropped his pen in disgust, then used the straight edge of his table knife to carefully fold the receipt in half and tear it down the middle. Then he repeated the process on the two halves before waving over the waiter.

“Can I help you?” the waiter asked.

“I need you to void this transaction and print out another receipt for me,” Monk said, piling the four scraps of the receipt onto the little tray.

“Did I make a mistake totaling the bill?”

“No, your addition was fine. I screwed up. My signature was a mess.”

The waiter, baffled, picked up the tray and walked away.

I usually tried not to eat out with Monk unless he was paying cash. When he uses a credit card, he has to make sure he signs his name
just right
. It once took him six attempts over a period of twenty minutes to sign a receipt.

“I’ve got an idea, Mr. Monk,” I said. “Why don’t you go to work for the Kauai police full-time while we’re here. That way, Kealoha can hang out with you all day while I enjoy my vacation. I’ll see you at the airport on Tuesday and you can tell me all about the cases you solved.”

“I don’t understand what’s bothering you. We’re going golfing tomorrow morning, aren’t we? That’s not work. That’s fun.”

“It’s only so you can stake out those houses on the course,” I said.

“That’s part of it,” Monk said. “But it’s mostly so I could get in a few holes of golf. We couldn’t get on the course otherwise.”

“You’re saying
you
manipulated
him
.”

“Let’s just say I can be cunning when I want to be,” Monk said. “It’s like a superpower. I’m afraid if I use it too much, it will consume me.”

The waiter returned with the check, the credit card, and the receipt. Monk straightened up, stretched, and attempted to sign his name again. He leaned down, his face so close to the table that his nose was nearly touching the receipt.

“Have you ever played golf?” I asked.

“Of course,” Monk said. “I’m really quite good. I’m a par player.”

I was skeptical. It takes considerable skill, born of years of practice and steady play, to reach that level.

“How come I’ve never seen a set of clubs in your house?”

“I only need one club,” Monk said. “My forte is windmills.”

“Windmills?”

“You have to time the putt perfectly or your ball won’t go through the hole in the mill house; it will get hit by the windmill blade and knocked aside. A lot of amateurs get bogged down there, and the strokes really add up. It’s a sad thing to see.”

“You’re talking about miniature golf. It’s not the same thing as golf.”

“I know that,” Monk said, concentrating on his signature. “Miniature golf takes precision. It’s like the difference between brain surgery and hacking off someone’s leg with an ax.”

“You’re saying miniature golf takes
more
skill?”

“Have you ever seen a windmill or a castle on a PGA-ranked course?” Monk said. “I think not.”

He sat up with a frown, eyed the receipt from different angles, then tore it up again in the careful way he had before. The waiter, who was standing off to one side watching us, came over to the table.

“Is there another problem, sir?”

“I need a new receipt. I think the signature line was crooked. You should really check it out before you bring over the next receipt,” Monk said. “Borrow a level from the kitchen.”

“Why would we have a level in the kitchen?”

“How could you run a restaurant without one?”

“Of course, my mistake, sir.” The waiter took the tray and walked away.

Monk gave me a look. “He must be new.”

Since Monk was going to be a while signing his name, I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room, which gave me a chance to walk through the restaurant and admire the paintings of island flowers and luau dancers.

On my way back to the table, I passed by the restaurant front desk, where a slim woman in a low-cut sundress was waiting while the hostess bagged a togo order for her.

The woman had a dark, Mediterranean complexion, hazel-brown eyes, a lithe body, and black hair tied into a ponytail that fell between her shoulder blades. I’d seen her before. She was the woman on the catamaran whose butt Lance was admiring. She wore a surf shirt in the video, so I noticed something about her this time I didn’t see before: She had a tattoo on the top of her left breast.