Mr. Monk Helps Himself (4 page)

Then she jumped off the cliff.

CHAPTER THREE

Mr. Monk’s Kryptonite

P
eople talk about things being surreal. Personally, I think the word is overused. But there’s no other way for me to describe the situation.

At one moment, a smiling woman with everything to live for is walking among her fans, exchanging pleasantries and talking about a weekend full of self-improvement. The next moment, she’s walking up to a cliff and jumping off.

Dozens of us saw it. And yet for the first few seconds, no one reacted. Again, surreal. It couldn’t be real. People looked at one another, then back at the cliff, then at one another. Monk wasn’t even aware anything was wrong, except that I was no longer even pretending to pay attention. Then someone screamed.

Damien Bigley was the first to move. “Miranda!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and ran across the lawn. Then as if he’d just thrown a switch, the rest of us unfroze from our trance and followed him.

There was no barricade at the edge, just the end of the emerald green lawn, a few outcroppings of rock and a sheer drop. The tide was in—that was mentioned later in the sheriff’s report—and the waves were crashing right up against the sandy cliffs. Miranda was nowhere in sight.

Monk and I had somehow wound up at the front. The pack of people pressed up against us, and for a second, I thought we might get pushed over the edge ourselves. Monk was in an especially dangerous position. He can’t stand being touched, even under the best circumstances. And now, with a human horde behind him jostling for a better view, I could see him considering jumping, just to get away from them.

I grabbed his arm and he didn’t pull away. “What happened?” he asked.

“Miranda Bigley jumped.” I couldn’t believe I was saying those words. But I guess they were true.

Everyone was gazing out over the Pacific now, listening through the surf for any sounds of life. Miranda had been wearing a bright yellow top, but there was no dot of yellow visible in the churning waves. One of the guests had taken out his phone and was filming the empty expanse of blue-green water.

Monk leaned into me, a very somber look in his eye. “Was it because of me?”

“What? No, Mr. Monk. Not everything is about you.”

“Well, I was pretty brutal. I called the woman a cult leader. Some people can’t take criticism.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I shot back. “Miranda Bigley was a strong woman.”

“And yet she killed herself right after talking to me.”

“A lot of people feel that way. But there are no documented cases of Monk-related suicides. Believe me, I should know.”

“Not until now. Cult leaders have very fragile egos.”

The man with the camera phone pointed it off to a small red object bobbing in the foam, buffeted between a pair of black rocks. “Sandal,” he shouted. “That’s one of her sandals.” Then he went back to filming.

Within half an hour, the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office had arrived, cordoning off the cliff with yellow tape and taking our statements. The helicopter arrived around the same time, making great sweeps up and down the shoreline. Within an hour of the jump, two coast guard boats were patrolling the waters in front of the Sanctuary. I could see several divers in scuba gear and wet suits waiting on deck.

The meditation center became the hub of the rescue operations. Monk and I sat in a corner, filling out statement cards. Actually, I filled out mine, then filled out Monk’s for him. I find that this is faster, since he always takes so much time perfectly writing out each letter. More than once, people have mistaken his penmanship for a computer printout. In case you’re interested, his chosen font is Times New Roman. For years and years, he did Helvetica, but then developed an issue with their lowercase “s.”

“Do you think I should identify myself?” he asked, glancing across to a sheriff’s deputy.

“You mean being a police consultant?” I looked up from his half-completed card. “I didn’t mention it on mine. This isn’t a crime scene.”

“I mean as the person who drove her to suicide.”

“You didn’t drive her to”—I lowered my voice—“to anything. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Can I borrow a pen?” The interruption came from a girl in her midtwenties—tall and muscularly lean, with a reddish brown bob and bangs that accentuated her perfect jawline. I recognized her from the staff orientation. Teresa Garcia, the Sanctuary’s massage therapist. When I’d arrived last night, I set up an appointment, but I didn’t think either of us would be in the mood for it now.

“Sure,” I said, and began to rummage through my bag.

“Have they found her yet?”

“Not that I know of.” I handed her the pen. “Keep it.”

“Thanks.” She sighed. “It’s so inexplicable. Miranda’s whole business was self-fulfillment and happiness. She’s talked people out of suicide. If she was having any troubles at all, there were a hundred people she could have turned to. Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Well, I did say something to her,” Monk said. “About her cult—”

“Mr. Monk,” I interrupted. “Teresa is a massage therapist here. Teresa, this is my friend Adrian Monk. He came for lunch.”

I told you about my magpie strategy. This was another example. And it worked. The idea of talking to a woman who touches half-naked people for a living was too much. It would be like me learning that this woman was a snake handler or raised leaches for medical purposes. It was just enough to shut him up.

“Nice to meet you,” Teresa said, and was slightly taken aback when Monk’s hands flew into his pockets. “I’m sorry you had to visit us under such horrible circumstances.”

I was prepared for the moment to get more awkward but was saved by the appearance of Damien Bigley, coming from the other side of the center. “Teresa, sorry to interrupt.”

Damien was a George Clooney type. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he purposely modeled himself after the heartthrob actor. He was large but not heavy, well-dressed but not fussy. But it was a look that could easily turn disheveled—and at the moment, Damien was looking disheveled. He apologized to us as well, then turned back to Teresa.

“I have to get out of here for a while, to preserve my sanity.”

“What about the press?” she asked gently. “There are at least two TV trucks outside the gates. You can see the antennas from here.”

“They’re going to be like vultures.” He shook his head. “There’s nothing they like more than irony. First the owner of the Segway company accidentally drives one off a cliff. Now a self-help guru commits suicide. They’re going to reduce poor Miranda to a sick joke.” His voice caught in his throat.

What he was saying was absolutely true. I remember the case of Jim Fixx. Back in my teenage years he’d been kind of a hero of mine, the man who practically invented jogging. I started doing it myself and lost a ton of weight, which did wonders for my popularity. But when Jim Fixx died of a heart attack while jogging, the late-night comics were all over it.

“Mr. Bigley,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Thank you. We’ll get through this. Anyway, I need a little drive along the coast. Clear my head.” He took out a set of keys. “The gardener’s pickup is by the side gate. I’m pretty sure I can get away without being seen.”

“I’ll take care of things here,” Teresa promised. She put a comforting arm on his shoulder and walked him out the door.

“I’m glad to see they’re getting along,” Monk said as they disappeared from view.

He expected me to understand. I didn’t. “What do you mean, getting along?”

“They had a big fight. From the shade of the coagulated blood on his left earlobe, I’d say two hours ago. And there’s the tiniest drop of blood on her collar. She hasn’t noticed it yet, so I assume that’s fairly recent, too. The most obvious theory is the two of them had a fight and she bit his ear.”

Oh! I guess I’d seen the blood, too, now that I thought about it: a red spot at the very bottom of Damien’s ear. And then the equally tiny stain on Teresa’s top. I could have kicked myself for not putting the pieces together. But then Monk isn’t perfect, either.

“Mr. Monk, I don’t think that was from a fight.”

“What else could it be?”

“Sex. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”

If Adrian Monk was like a Superman of detectives, then sex would be his Kryptonite. He just didn’t get it, which could be both charming and annoying.

“Sex!” His shoulders twitched twice, two involuntary spasms of revulsion. “Augh! People actually bite each other during coitus? I mean, I’ve read about it, but I thought it was just folklore.”

“It’s not folklore. Not that I’ve ever done it myself,” I lied. What’s a little love bite on the ear? But I knew he wasn’t ready to hear that.

“Good. I don’t want anyone I know biting each other like cannibals or preying mantises. What’s this world coming to?”

I didn’t know what it was coming to. I was too busy thinking about Miranda’s husband and the tall Hispanic masseuse at his side. “So, Damien and Teresa are having an affair,” I whispered.

“Or a fight,” Monk said, then shrugged. “Okay, probably an affair. That would also explain him smelling of her perfume. You don’t always get that from a fight.”

“No, you don’t,” I agreed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Mr. Monk Goes Unanswered

I
guess it didn’t really hit me emotionally until the drive back.

We were barely onto the I-280, heading north when Monk brought up the obvious—insensitive but obvious. “Okay, maybe I didn’t cause her suicide,” he admitted. “It was her husband’s affair. Ms. Cult Leader found out and couldn’t handle it.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “Miranda helped hundreds of women deal with this exact situation. You didn’t know her. You can’t judge.”

“It’s not a judgment.” He was tightly gripping his seat belt the way he always did when I drove. “In seventy-nine percent of suicides in which one or both partners are having an affair, the affair is the primary cause of the suicide. It’s a well-known statistic.”

“Well-known? I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s because you don’t read the annual report from the World Health Organization. It’s in a footnote on page three forty-four.”

“Statistics,” I snorted, and kept my eyes locked on the road. “Did you know that sixty-two point seven percent of all statistics are made up?”

“No. You’re making that up.”

“Exactly.”

He winced. “I get it. Humor. Well, that doesn’t change the facts. Your beloved cult leader—”

“Stop calling her that,” I shouted into the windshield. “She has a name. It’s Miranda and she was a wonderful human being. She was more giving and caring than you’ll ever be. So don’t pretend you know her, because you don’t. You don’t have a clue. Not a clue.”

Looking back on those words, I can see how harsh they sound. But at the moment, they expressed exactly how I felt and I wasn’t about to take them back.

For once, in a personal interaction, Monk said the right thing. Nothing. No protest, no statistic, no counterargument. It was probably the only way of stopping my rant, and somewhere inside, he knew it.

We sat for several minutes, until the merge onto 101 North. Then, calmer and sick of the silence, I punched the button on the radio. But instead of the comfort of the classic oldies on 89.3, I heard, “The drive for happiness is a modern phenomenon.” It was her voice, soothing and self-assured. “No one asked the cave man if he was happy. Throughout most of history, it was only important that someone’s God was made happy or the local lord or king. The life of man, according to an English philosopher, was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ But we live in different times—wonderful times—with an almost limitless possibility for creating our own joy.”

I had forgotten that I’d been listening to the CD on the drive down. I switched it off and the car fell once more into silence. Not quite silence. I found myself sobbing the rest of the way.

I dropped Monk off at his apartment on Pine Street, still crying (me, not him), then steered my middle-aged Subaru down Divisadero to a treelined street and my protective cocoon of a Victorian row house.