Mr. Monk Helps Himself (9 page)

Brushing right past me, he strode into the living room and did a three-sixty. “Where’s Ellen?”

“Not here.”

“She always comes to my place on the day of chicken potpie night and helps me count the peas and pearl onions and cut the carrots into quarter-inch lengths. It’s one of our fun traditions. Today she left a message saying she had other plans. I think she’s avoiding me.”

“She’s not avoiding you,” I improvised. Maybe she was; maybe she wasn’t. It wasn’t my place to say. “Ellen’s busy. You should drop by her shop and say hello.”

“Why? The peas aren’t going to count themselves.”

“Forget the peas. Go over there. You can help her polish the bars of soap or dust that hippopotamus-dung chandelier she’s been trying to sell.”

“Don’t even say . . .” His hands flew up and covered his ears. “Augh! Now that image is in my mind. Get it out! Get it out before it cripples me for life!”

Monk had never even ventured inside Poop. He and Ellen had always agreed to meet nearby, often at Lush, a natural-soap store just a few doors away. Lush was much closer to his comfort zone.

“She would be thrilled if you showed an interest. Really.” I wasn’t exactly playing Cupid. But I knew Ellen had been feeling neglected. Having him actually walk through the door of her shop would be huge.

“Show an interest in fecal matter? This is the end of civilization. It’s the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse.”

“You mean the Apoop-alypse.” He didn’t appreciate my attempt at humor. “She’s your girlfriend, Mr. Monk, or something similar. You need to make an effort.”

“Oh, all right. Can you drive me over?”

“I thought you had your ways.”

“I do, but . . . the idea doesn’t seem quite as poopy if you’re going to be there.”

That was probably the nicest thing he’d said to me in a while, which tells you all you need to know about our relationship.

Poop was in a storefront on Union Street, amid a stretch of trendy boutiques, galleries, and restaurants. The area is technically Cow Hollow, but it caters to the folks from nearby Pacific Heights, who can afford to live in a neighborhood with a nicer-sounding name.

I found a parking space a few doors down, in front of Lush. By the time I finished feeding the meter, Monk’s nose was an inch from their display window, sniffing at the colorful piles of sweetly scented soap. “Wrong store, Mr. Monk,” I said, and began to gently shove him toward Ellen’s boutique. Then not so gently. For the last twenty feet, it was like pushing an anvil.

“Why am I doing this again?” the anvil demanded.

“To be supportive of the woman in your life.”

We got within five feet when my strength gave out. “Close enough. I’ll tell Ellen you’re here. If she wants to come out, great. If not, that’s your funeral.”

“It’s my funeral either way.”

My stepping through the shop doorway set off a soft, civilized chime. “Ellen,” I called out. The shop seemed empty. The hippopotamus chandelier was still there, unsold, throwing its soft glow over the perfectly organized shelves of soaps, doorstops, pot holders, and assorted knickknacks.

Brand-new since the last time I was in here was a rack of high-end vitamins. You wouldn’t think sheep dung and monkey dung and six other kinds of dung would contain many vitamins and nutrients. Being a normal person, you wouldn’t think about it at all. But, apparently, this V-8 blend of processed, concentrated, sanitized poo provided you with all the vitamins and minerals for a long, happy life, as long as you didn’t think about where they came from. Then you’d be miserable.

On my previous visits, the shop had been crowded with a blend of the serious consumer and the simply curious. Even the curious usually bought something: a ten-dollar bar of Remains of the Gray whale soap; a twenty-dollar poodle-poo paperweight. So it was surprising to find the place totally empty. Then again, my previous visits had always been on the weekends and this was early afternoon on a Monday, hardly prime time.

“Natalie? Is that you?”

Ellen’s voice had come from behind the counter. I circled around and found her on her hands and knees, scrubbing a section of marble floor left over from the days when the space had been home to a butcher shop. She was working with two wire brushes, one in each hand.

Ellen looked up, and her shoulder-length blond hair was half covering her face. “I’ve been meaning to do this for months,” she said, smiling and sweating. “The dirt gets really ground in on these high-traffic spots.”

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Like Monk, Ellen had a long history of OCD. She had worked hard to control her symptoms. Opening her unique business had been, in fact, an act of therapeutic defiance, proving to herself and everyone that all of life, even defecation, could be embraced and cleaned and consumed and sold at full retail.

“I’m fine,” she said, getting up from her knees and sweeping back her hair. “I was just taking advantage of the lull.”

“There does seem to be a lull,” I agreed.

“Well, it’s Monday. And the initial buzz has faded. My clientele is settling into regular customers and street traffic. That’s perfectly natural. The store in Summit was like that, too.” She removed her heavy-duty plastic gloves. “So, any news?”

“Nothing new.” I had called Ellen yesterday after the recovery of Miranda’s body. We were both still learning how to deal with the tragedy, and I wondered now, looking at her sweating forehead and raw knuckles, if this sudden need to polish the floor was a good thing for her or a bad thing.

“Nothing new?” She looked disappointed. “You just dropped by to say hello?”

“No, I brought a friend.” When I cocked my head toward the door, she could see. There was Monk, framed in the open doorway. He was frozen, standing on one foot, with his other reaching forward, suspended in midair.

“Adrian.” Ellen was shocked and delighted. She had never seen him so close to her shop. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, keeping her voice soft and raising it nearly an octave. “Come in. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” It was like coaxing a kitten.

Just to add to the fun, the door chime started going off. Every time Monk extended his leg into the shop, he would break the beam and trigger another round of chimes. It became like a self-generating accompaniment.

I’ve got to say this for Monk: He tried. He stayed on one foot, balancing forward and back, like a brown-suited flamingo. At one point, he lost his balance and had to reach out and touch the frame. Letting out a little shriek, he managed to push himself back into position.

“Don’t worry,” said Ellen. “I sanitized it this morning. The whole place is spotless.”

But Monk remained in his tightrope-walking stance, one foot on the sidewalk, one foot hovering over the threshold, complete with tinny music . . . until Ellen took pity and met him at the door.

“I’m proud you came this far,” she said. “Baby steps.”

“I’m not taking baby steps. Or any kind.” And with that, he lowered his leg and took a firm stance outside.

“This is the first time you’ve seen my San Francisco store. What do you think?” Ellen air-kissed him three inches from his cheek and I saw him fight the urge to wipe it off.

Peering inside, Monk examined the space, left to right. “It’s empty.”

“It won’t be empty if you come in,” I suggested. “Come on. We’ll pick something and I’ll buy it for your birthday.”

“No one wants to come in here,” Monk said. “You can tell because no one’s in here.”

“It’s slow,” Ellen admitted. “It picks up later in the afternoon.”

“Why? Is that when the insane asylum lets out its patients?” No one laughed or cracked a smile. “So they can shop for animal poop?” Again, nothing. “Because no one would go into a poop store like this unless they were clinically insane.”

“We get the joke, Mr. Monk.”

“Because buying and selling animal feces is crazy.”

“We get it,” I said.

“I’m not sure you do.”

“Adrian, we’ve discussed this.” I could see Ellen’s patience was wearing thin. “I’m trying to make the world cleaner. I’m reusing waste so it’s no longer wasted. Making people reevaluate what they put down the sewers and into landfills. I thought you appreciated what I’m doing.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “From a distance. Which is where I should have stayed. This is all Natalie’s fault.” He pointed at me with both index fingers.

“My fault?”

“If you hadn’t physically dragged me here, Ellen and I could have met at the soap store or any other civilized place on earth.”

“Natalie dragged you?” Without even looking, I could hear the disappointment.

“She said I had to make an effort. I told her that was nonsense.”

“I suppose it is nonsense,” Ellen said, “expecting an effort.”

I should point out here that any normal person would have picked up on the warning signs. They were in Ellen’s voice and on her face. Any normal person would have backed off or apologized.

“I told her no one should have to walk into a poop store. It isn’t natural. There are sixteen people in the soap store down the street, seventeen people in the toy store, and twenty-one in the Starbucks. So it’s not a slow afternoon. It’s a slow Poop.”

“A—slow—Poop?” Ellen pronounced each word like a separate sentence. Any normal person would have been terrified.

“I meant the name of your store, not the other thing. Depressingly slow. It’s a wonder you can stay in business.”

“Adrian Monk.” Ellen was seething. “Get out of my store.”

Monk looked down at his feet. “I’m not in your store. I thought that was the whole point of this discussion—about why I’m not in your store.”

“Get out,” she said, then slammed the door in his face.

CHAPTER NINE

Mr. Monk Counts His Peas

M
onk had been thrown by Ellen’s anger. For a brilliant guy, he can be pretty dense. “I don’t understand,” he said over and over as I drove back to his apartment. “It was all part of our usual, witty repartee, our give-and-take.”

“Where you give the insults and she takes them.”

“It’s an understood thing. If she was considering a change in format, she should have submitted it in writing.”

“Maybe she just got tired of having her loved one putting her down and ridiculing her dreams.”

“In writing!” Monk emphasized. “Then I would have known.”

“The women in your life are too nice to you, Mr. Monk.” I’d never said this before, but it was true. He brought out their mothering instincts and they were somehow willing to overlook an awful lot of insensitive behavior. Me included.

“I am as God made me,” he replied, then sat back, crossed his arms, and pouted for the rest of the drive.

He seemed surprised when I dropped him at the curb and didn’t get out. “Chicken potpie,” he reminded me. “Don’t you want to stay and count the peas?”

“I’ll pass. I have to go see the captain and try to save our jobs.”

“They’re not going to fire me,” he scoffed.

“It’s not just you. It’s me, too. And, yes, they have the right to fire us for not taking a case.”

“The law makes an exception for clowns.”

“I’ll bring that to their attention,” I said, tired of arguing. “See you later.”

From Monk’s place, it was a short drive to the station house, where I found Lieutenant Devlin in Stottlemeyer’s office. One wall of it had been transformed into a small command center, with a dry-erase board and a bulletin board and several open files littering the chairs and floor. It’s a decent-sized office and more than once has served double-duty like this.

Devlin looked up, an annoyed expression crossing her face. “Is Monk waiting outside? Tell him we’re not straightening up just so he can come in.”

“Not here,” I said. “Where’s the captain?”

“Not here, either. Angela Phister is recovering from her meat thermometer. The captain went over to San Francisco General to formally charge her and have her transferred to ward seven.” The hospital’s ward seven was a secure facility run by the county sheriff’s department.

“So, the DA has enough evidence?”

“Thanks to good old police work. We picked up her DNA from a blood sample in Barry Ebersol’s backyard and partial prints in his kitchen. We probably didn’t need Monk on this one after all.”

That was typical Devlin, trying to downgrade my partner’s contribution. I couldn’t let it pass. “First off, if it wasn’t for Monk, you wouldn’t have known his attacker had been stabbed, so I doubt you would have swabbed the yard for DNA. Second, a print is only as good as what you can match it with. And Ms. Angela Phister, your presumed second victim, wouldn’t even have been on your radar.”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You’re protecting your paychecks. Fair enough. Oh, speaking of paychecks . . .” Devlin put down the file folder she’d been reading and picked up an envelope from the out-box on Stottlemeyer’s desk. “Two days of consulting, for what was probably an hour’s worth of work.”

“You’re paying him for his expertise,” I said, snatching the check from her hand.

“I call it luck. He happened to get fixated on a couple of meat thermometers.”

“Used twice in twenty minutes. Would you have been able to figure out the connection?”