Mr. Monk Helps Himself (17 page)

“The third victim was Harold Luckenby. He was an older man, a Vietnam veteran who lived alone and was a bit of a hoarder. Hated spending money or throwing things out. His daughter came by every day to check on him. Harold regularly took pain relievers for his arthritis. She discussed the scare with him. She made him promise to throw away any bottle of Cemedrin. The next day, she came and found him dead in front of the TV. All because he wouldn’t throw things away.”

The three tainted bottles had been bought from two drugstores in the Mission District, both of them Walgreens. So had the two other tainted bottles that were caught in time. The police deduced, from the estimated dates of purchase, that the bottles had been tampered with and placed on the shelves two weeks before the first death.

“The Harrimans had been in San Francisco during that period,” Stottlemeyer continued, still not referring to any notes. “Along with eight hundred thousand other citizens.”

“And they had no connection to any of the victims,” I said, just to be sure.

“None. And according to their insurance records, neither Harriman has been treated for any mental or emotional disorders, which doesn’t rule out anything. Jeffrey Dahmer had a clean bill of health, as far as I know. Look what happened to him.”

“How about their investments?” Monk asked.

The captain scowled. “You mean the Harrimans’?”

“They were both stockbrokers at that point. Did they have any investments that might have profitted from the Cemedrin scare? Did they own stock in a rival company like Tylenol? Or in a rival drug store like CVS?”

“Are you saying they killed three people, including two kids, just to manipulate the stock price?”

“It’s money,” Monk said. “People kill for it. And they had no idea that kids would die, only that someone would.”

The captain shook his head. “I’ll get Devlin on it. If it was a business investment, there’d be a record at their brokerage house. If they did it on their own, there are all sorts of ways to hide it.”

“How about their tax returns?” I said. “If there was any profit or loss declared from a transaction . . .”

“And how do you suggest getting their returns?” the captain asked. “You can’t even make presidential candidates show their returns. The whole point, Natalie, is for us to get a warrant without arousing their suspicions.”

“Oh. Right.” I’m sure I would have known this if I’d spent the weekend studying for my PI exam instead of eavesdropping and getting a massage. My embarrassment was tempered by the ringing of Monk’s bell.

“Adrian?” came a voice from the other end of Monk’s intercom. It was Andrew, the mailman. “Got a package for you to sign for.”

“Is it from Japan?” Monk asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Monk was disappointed. But he started down the stairs, leaving the front door open behind him. Stottlemeyer watched him go, then lowered his voice. “Monk tells me you spent the weekend in Half Moon Bay.” His tone sounded a little accusing.

“Not that it’s anybody’s business. But yes.”

“And that you’re trying to make her suicide into something more.”

“Adrian thinks it might be more,” I said. “He’s going to help me look into it.”

“Don’t do this, Natalie.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you admired this woman. But this clown case is big. We have families still looking for answers. Not to mention me and Devlin putting our jobs on the line. If it blows up and the FBI discovers we were withholding evidence in one of their biggest cases—”

“We can handle more than once case,” I assured him. “We do it all the time.”

“Maybe. But we need his full attention. I can’t order you to stop—”

“That’s right. You can’t.”

“But I can appeal to you as a friend. There’s a lot on the line. Life is not just about you and your personal fulfillment, no matter what this guru told you.”

I was thrown by his attitude, to say the least. And it really hurt. Miranda’s philosophy wasn’t about selfishness. It was about taking control over your choices. And that’s what I thought I was doing here, taking some control.

“Natalie?” Monk was coming back up the stairs, holding the open box Andrew had just delivered, about twice the size of a shoebox but shallower. There was confusion in his voice.

“What is it?” But I already knew. “Mystery package?”

He held it out and I reached in past the bubble wrap. “Stones.”

“The handwriting is the same,” he said. “Addressed to Mr. A. Monk. And there’s no note or return address, like the other.”

“You mean like the Confederate money?” Stottlemeyer said, pushing his way to see. “Put it down. It could be dangerous.”

“No, I had Andrew open it. There’s no bomb. Just stones.”

“Stones?” Stottlemeyer took the package anyway, brought it in, and placed it on the kitchen counter. “Who would send you anonymous stones?”

Before unwrapping the stones, Monk insisted that we put on rubber gloves. He kept them in a drawer in all our sizes—small, medium, and large.

Neither the captain nor Monk knew what they were dealing with, but I did. Flat, black volcanic stones with rounded edges. Eight of them of various sizes. “They’re massage stones,” I said.

“Massage stones?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“It’s a technique where they heat up stones and massage you with them,” I explained. “From Japan, I think.”

“Then it must be good,” Monk said. “Except the massage part.” He shivered with disgust, then turned to me. “How do you know this? What kind of massage did this Teresa give you?”

“A hot-stone massage,” I said. “You don’t think . . . Why would she send me stones?”

Monk was already checking the postmark. This time it was inked and clear. “Hot Springs, Arkansas. It wasn’t Teresa.”

“Who is Teresa?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“She’s Damien Bigley’s mistress,” I told him. “And she was involved in Miranda’s suicide.”

“Says you,” Monk scoffed.

“Says me,” I confirmed. “Where was the Confederate money sent from? Could your guys lift the postmark?”

“They could,” Stottlemeyer said. “I got their report this morning. Tupelo, Mississippi.”

“Not Hot Springs, Arkansas.”

“But the same person sent both,” Monk said. “The handwriting is the same.”

“What are we going to do about this?” I asked the captain.

“Do about it?” He tilted his head. “Okay, let’s review. You’re receiving anonymous stuff in the mail. There’s no note. There’s no threat. There’s no charge. I’m not sure what we can do to stop this heinous crime spree.”

“But isn’t it a little weird?” I asked.

“Last time I checked, weird wasn’t a crime.”

It was a puzzlement, all right. We get into a case with poisoned money, and a few days later, someone sends Monk a package of Confederate money. We get into a case where I eavesdrop during a hot-stone massage, and days later, someone sends him massage stones. From across the country no less.

My first thought was that our cases might be connected. This has happened more often than you might think. Dozens of time. It’s almost a pattern. We work on two impossible cases, and by the end, they wind up being parts of the same case. But I really didn’t see how that could be happening this time.

On the upside, since Monk will never, ever have anything to do with a massage, I now had my own set of massage stones.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mr. Monk Skips Lunch

T
hat afternoon I had a late lunch scheduled with Ellen, just us girls. We’d both been meaning to try the new Peruvian bistro on Steiner, one block over from her Union Street store. This would be the perfect time. Between her rocky relationship with Monk and my weekend at BPM, the two of us had a lot to catch up on.

This left me just enough time to visit Lieutenant Devlin.

I found her in Captain Stottlemeyer’s office with the door closed. Ever since we started our special team, this had been our command center. And Devlin was getting more and more used to sitting at the captain’s desk when he was away. She didn’t even get up when I knocked, but just motioned me inside.

“Where’s the captain?” I asked.

“At the courthouse,” she mumbled, then went back to staring at her laptop screen. “He’s throwing a Hail Mary Markowitz.”

That was our nickname for it: a Hail Mary pass made in front of Judge Mary Markowitz, the most cop-friendly jurist on the San Francisco bench. We’ve gotten a lot of questionable warrants through her. I personally think she has a thing for the captain, even though they’re both happily married.

“Trying to get a warrant for the garage,” I guessed.

“Uh-huh. But he can’t tell her about the Cemedrin bottle. All he can show her is our evidence that this clown Smith was blackmailing someone and that he had used the Harrimans’ garage shortly before the alleged blackmail began.”

“Is he going to mention Monk’s theory that garages are insidious time bombs?”

“I don’t think it matters what he says. But he’s giving it a shot.” Devlin lowered her laptop lid and emitted a groan. “If we can show the Harrimans profited from the Cemedrin murders, then we can tell her about the bottle and maybe get a warrant. Maybe. Even then we’d have to make the argument that this is our jurisdiction and not the FBI’s.”

“So, how’s it going?” I asked, pointing at her computer. “Anything?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I suppose we could get a tech in here to hack their financial records, but we’d need a search warrant for that. A search warrant in order to find something that might get us the search warrant we want.”

I nodded in sympathy—make that empathy, since I was part of the team. “Do you have a minute?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Totally different case.” I cleared my throat. “Do you need a warrant to get the phone records of a deceased person?” I knew the answer from my PI study guide but figured this was a good way to bring up the subject.

“Not if it’s an active investigation. Why?”

I sat down in the guest chair and explained about the phone in the pocket and Monk’s three percent hunch.

“So he thinks someone called Miranda? How is that important? A lot of deceaseds get calls. We had a case last month. The victim got three dozen texts from her BFF in Cincinnati before we called back the number and gave her the bad news.”

I shrugged. “You know Adrian. He has this whole grading system on crime scene anomalies. Anywhere from ‘Huh, that’s odd’ to ‘He’s the guy.’ This one is three percent, so it’s barely worth checking out. Still . . .”

“Sure I can get it,” Devlin said. “I was the officer in charge at the recovery.”

“But it’s not an active investigation.”

“Yeah? Who’s going to protest?”

My mouth fell open. “Well, you, for one. I gave myself an hour to beg and argue and talk myself blue. And you just said ‘sure’?”

“Natalie, I told you. I’m doing this for Miranda, not you. So don’t get used to it.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll never get used to it.”

“Good. Do you know her cell number?”

“I can find out.”

I remembered Ellen telling me about a bad emotional patch she’d gone through last year. I didn’t ask what. But out of desperation, she’d called the BPM Sanctuary and they had put her directly through to Miranda. She had never expected that. Miranda spent an hour with her, talking her through whatever it was, then gave Ellen her private cell number. Just in case. Ellen had kept it on her phone ever since, as a reminder that a caring friend was always available.

“I’ll text you the number this afternoon,” I said, trying to keep the gratitude out of my voice.

By the time I got out of the station and drove to Cow Hollow and found a parking spot two blocks away and did the pay-and-display and started race-walking uphill, I was a few minutes late. I had just turned the corner onto Union Street and was all set to jaywalk across to Poop, when I saw him out of the corner of my eye.

You know how it is when you recognize someone. It’s not just the physical features that you notice, but the attitude and posture and clothing. In this case, the clothing made it easy. “Adrian?”

He was in front of Dahlia’s, an upscale flower shop directly across from Ellen’s store, half hidden behind a central pole that helped support the building’s iron awning. “What are you doing here?”

He saw me but stayed behind the pole. “I have my ways.”

“I didn’t mean how. I meant why. I couldn’t care less about your ways.” This wasn’t strictly true. How was this man getting around? I was stumped. Was he using a sanitized taxi? Did he have a friend with a car I didn’t know about? Had he gone crazy and bought a motorcycle? But right now I was more curious about why. “Are you spying on Ellen?”

“Please,” he scoffed. “I’m not a loony. I just don’t know how to get into her store.”

“You could use the door.”

“Let’s eliminate that right off. I can’t. I just want to be in there with her,” he said wistfully. “In a different store. With her.”

Ahh. I found this touching, I had to admit. He missed Ellen. He wanted to apologize in his own way and be with her. “Adrian, I know. Why don’t you come to lunch with us?”

This was really the last thing I wanted. Ellen and I needed to talk about a whole host of things, including him. But what could I do? The man was in pain.