Mr. Monk Helps Himself (31 page)

Maxwell seemed nice. But it’s strange when you’ve heard so many personal details about someone before meeting them. You form very specific opinions and suddenly have to deal with the reality of whoever they really are.

I could see from the way he glanced sideways at me that he was slightly in awe. His girlfriend’s mother had actually caught the Cemedrin killers and had held them at gunpoint. For me, the sideways glance was better than an FBI letter of commendation, although I was still planning to have that framed.

Monk is not a public person, to say the least. The ceremony had probably taken as much out of him as eighteen hours of captivity. But since Ellen had planned the party, he felt he had to come. The two of them stood in a corner of my kitchen, separating themselves from the crowd and talking like teenagers. Still, I wasn’t surprised to look up one moment and find him missing in action.

“Did Luther pick him up?” I asked Ellen, who by now was standing alone, out on my front porch.

“Luther picked him up,” she confirmed.

An hour later, the party was still going when the hostess herself sneaked out and wandered over to the Pine Street apartment.

I found Monk in the middle of his sofa, his lightbulb-cleaning kit on the coffee table, picking up where we’d left off a few weeks ago when we’d been interrupted by the mysterious arrival of Confederate bills. Or he could already be starting on the next cleaning cycle. I didn’t ask.

“Ellen was in an odd mood,” he said without looking up from the compact fluorescent three-way in his hands. The compact fluorescents were always a challenge.

“What do you mean, odd?”

“She seemed happy. She even thanked me, for some reason.”

“A woman thanking you,” I mused. “That is odd.”

“Extremely. She kept talking about having time now to make the right decisions in her life and not to feel boxed in by money worries. I pretended to know what she was talking about. It was easier.”

I felt this was as good a time as any to break the news. “She was probably talking about the reward money we’re going to get.”

He finally stopped polishing and looked up. “What reward?”

“Miranda Bigley’s insurance. They don’t have to pay out the policies, now that we proved fraud.”

I was making it sound simpler than it was. It had been a lot of work in the past week—contacting the three insurance companies, informing them of our role in uncovering the Bigleys’ fraud, getting statements from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to back me up, and reminding the companies repeatedly of their own whistle-blower guidelines.

Insurance companies don’t like paying out anything, even when you’ve just saved them millions. But they wound up seeing it my way.

“So I’m getting a reward?” His face lit up, brighter than a freshly cleaned bulb.

“No, Adrian, you’re not.
We
are getting half a reward, which is going into the general fund for Monk and Teeger, Consulting Detectives, a Limited Liability Corporation.”

“But I’m getting the other half.”

“No,” I said firmly. “The other half goes to Ellen Morse.”

He didn’t like other people standing and talking while he sat—something about heads not being at the same level—so I sat across from him and gently explained my agreement with Ellen.

Ellen had believed in me when no one else had. She had agreed to help and footed the bill for her visit to the Sanctuary. She was the one who had found the pearls and gotten them out of Damien Bigley’s sock drawer. . . . “Plus I promised her she’d get half.”

“But I solved the case,” he whined. “Don’t I get a say?”

“Actually, you don’t. I’m the one with the private investigator’s license and the legal right to start a business. They’re making out the checks to our corporation and I’m the head of the corporation.”

This was all technically true. According to the state of California, if Monk wanted to be in the PI business with me, he would have to be my employee. Not that it would make a big difference in the real world. But it just might give me the extra bit of leverage I needed to get treated like a real partner.

“Don’t worry, Adrian. When the checks come, I’ll give you a nice bonus. As long as you promise not to buy any more limousine companies.”

“You’ll give me a bonus? Wait a minute. I hired you. You’re my employee.”

“Times change.”

“Don’t remind me.”

Monk returned to his lightbulbs, feverishly attacking another compact fluorescent three-way. I could tell he was stewing and thinking, trying his best to adjust to this grim, new reality.

He had just switched over to the row of eighty-watt interior floods when he spoke again. “Don’t you want to stay and help me clean the bulbs? I know how much you like that.”

Who in the world could enjoy sitting inside on a beautiful late afternoon and cleaning lightbulbs? When there was a party to go back to? A party full of friends who loved and admired you and wanted to be with you?

“You’re right. I do. It’s my favorite thing.”

“Good.”

I got up from my chair and he scooted down on the sofa. He passed me a linen polishing rag and we quickly formed our own little obsessive assembly line.

Again we fell into silence. This time it felt much more comfortable. Like old times.

“You know, now that we’re legally in business together, you can call me Mr. Monk. I won’t mind.”

“Sorry, Adrian.”