Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Monk’s Road Trip

I
know I’ve mentioned Summit, New Jersey, more than once already. Monk, Summit, and I have this checkered past that may need a little explaining.

For quite a few years, Captain Stottlemeyer’s second-in-command was Lieutenant Randy Disher, a sweet, enthusiastic officer, a hard worker, and a loyal, good friend. Those who don’t know him well might claim that Randy lacks a certain intellectual strength. Those who do know him well would agree. Randy isn’t the sharpest nail in the toolbox. That was why it was a bit of a shock for everyone when Randy was offered the job of police chief in the picture-postcard town of Summit, less than an hour outside of Manhattan.

What clinched the job offer for Randy was that Sharona Fleming lived nearby. Sharona had been my predecessor, a registered nurse who’d been Monk’s sidekick before I came into the picture. She and Randy had had this big-time flirting thing going on during their years together. No crime scene was complete without the two of them bantering back and forth. Now, on Sharona’s home turf, they quickly graduated to living together. So far we haven’t gotten any wedding invitations.

In the past year or two, Monk and I have spent time in Summit. And that’s where Monk met Ellen Morse. Ellen is tall and blond, and she was infinitely kind when it came to dealing with Monk’s quirks. She eventually opened up a San Francisco branch of her store, just so that she could spend more time with him. It had been Monk’s first serious relationship since the death of his wife, Trudy, so many years ago. But it didn’t work out. Apparently even Ellen has her limits.

“The woman owns this store called Poop,” Luther said. He was sitting in my living room, working on his second glass of cabernet and looked like he might need another. “I kid you not. Everything in there is made of animal poop: furniture, artwork, stationery, coffee beans retrieved from the poop of some kind of Vietnamese weasel. The weasel eats the coffee beans. . . .”

“An Indonesian civet,” I explained. “And the result is the most expensive coffee in the world. It’s wonderful. Ellen’s shop is a lot of fun.”

“Well, that makes it all right,” Luther said with a note of sarcasm. “I can see why the San Francisco branch went out of business.”

“Actually, the main reason she closed it was to get away from Monk and me. We weren’t very nice to her toward the end.”

“I know, I know. Mr. Monk told me the story a hundred times. It’s a very long drive when you go under the speed limit and stop at all the car washes.” Luther still called him Mr. Monk.

Two weeks ago, when Monk had made the decision to go cross-country to try to rewin Ellen’s affections, it probably
struck Luther as a romantic thing to do for the man who’d bought his company and was now his boss. “What could go wrong?” Those were Luther’s actual words as they pulled away from the curb in front of Monk’s apartment building on a bright Monday morning.

A lot, to answer his question.

Monk and I have done a few road trips. I know all about the food requirements, the need for bottles of Fiji Water at regular intervals, the backseat driving, the fear of bridges, not to mention tunnels, the long silences followed by the endless repetition of the same story over and over. “So tell me about the murder,” I said.

Luther took another long swig and I was right there to refill his glass. “Do you know the TV show
Master Chef
?”

“I do indeed,” I told him. “It’s a favorite.”

When Luther and Monk finally turned off I-78 and headed down Springfield Avenue, the town of Summit had just experienced its first murder since—well, since the last time Monk came to town. Don’t ask me for the logic. It’s just the way things happen.

This particular murder started when the Union County Red Cross came up with an idea for a fund-raiser. Six local celebrities would compete for two weekends in a cooking contest called Summit Chef. The Channel Eight weatherman had volunteered to show off his cooking skills, as had the Chamber of Commerce president, Kathy Enbrel, and the recently elected mayor, Charlie Cates, to name half of them.

The competition started out friendly enough, but by the time weekend two approached, an angry rivalry was brewing between Mayor Cates and Kathy Enbrel, whom everyone
thought had big political ambitions and wanted to go on the record as being better than Charlie at everything.

“Don’t tell me Kathy was killed and Monk arrested the mayor.” I know I shouldn’t have been jumping ahead, but I couldn’t help it. Monk has this habit of pointing at the most important person and saying, “You did it,” whether it’s a TV star or a business magnate or a ship’s captain—which has happened twice if you include submarine captains.

“Half-right,” Luther said. “Kathy was killed. But Mr. Monk didn’t arrest the mayor. Randy Disher had already done that.”

“Yikes. Poor Randy. Hold on.” I stopped his story long enough to go into the kitchen and uncork a second bottle of the California cab. We would be needing it.

The murder had taken place Saturday afternoon in the kitchen of the Grand Summit, an old grand dame of a hotel that I knew well. This was the prep area for the final cook-off, which was taking place that evening in the ballroom.

The rules of the competition were strict. Each contestant had to cook from a mystery box of ingredients chosen by the judges and kept hidden in the walk-in cooler. No one could see the ingredients ahead of time or do any advance prep work.

Police Chief Disher was acting as head judge. And when he walked into the kitchen an hour before showtime, Kathy was already there, lying in the doorway to the cooler. She was a short woman, maybe five foot even, almost enveloped in a large white apron. At least the apron used to be white. It was now covered in sprays of blood. Or blood spatter, as Monk kept calling it.

It didn’t take Randy long to piece together the sequence of events. One of the amateur chefs had sneaked into the kitchen to peek at the mystery boxes and get some sort of advantage. Another chef was also in there. Or maybe the second one followed the first one in. It didn’t really matter, according to Randy. The two competing chefs began arguing about rules and about cheating. Tempers flared. And a carving knife wound up in Kathy Enbrel’s stomach, ending the fight forever.

By the time Monk and Luther had checked into the Grand Summit, it was all anyone was talking about. Chief Disher, who had filled in as the mayor of Summit for a short spell, arrested Mayor Cates on very little evidence except motive, a bruise on Cates’ arm—which Cates said came from a fall on the stairs at home—and the fact that the mayor didn’t have a verifiable alibi.

“The whole town was ready to string Randy from their cute little bell tower,” Luther said. He held up his empty glass, but I was rationing his intake. I wasn’t sure if alcohol was good or bad for someone suffering from post-traumatic stress. “The town finally had a good mayor,” Luther went on, waving his glass at me. “Everyone liked him. And then this friend of yours arrests him for murder.”

When Randy and Sharona found out about Monk’s visit, they were over the moon. “You can prove me right,” Randy had said with all of his customary self-confidence. “The mayor’s prints were in the walk-in cooler—along with everyone else’s, sure. But he had a key to the kitchen—along with all the other cooks, sure. And he had no alibi, although no one else has a good alibi, either. But, hey, he did have that bruise,
am I right? Prove it, Monk. I’m counting on you.” Luther’s impersonation of Chief Disher wasn’t perfect, but I could almost hear Randy saying those words.

“But Randy was wrong,” I said.

“How do you know?” Luther asked. He had given up waving his glass.

“Because Randy and Monk never agree on a killer. Never ever. Monk is almost always right and Randy . . . Well, Randy is Randy.”

This turned out to be true. Monk spent a few hours interviewing suspects and looking at photographs. He walked around the Grand Summit, holding up his hands like a movie director, and reviewed the video from the first weekend, where every one of the cooks seemed to be taking the contest very seriously.

Finally he had the five surviving chefs line up in the ballroom, all dressed in their white aprons with the custom-designed logos. “It was like some old movie,” said Luther. “He lines them up. Then he walks back and forth and talks. And then he points and says, ‘You’re guilty because you’re wearing the wrong apron.’”

“The wrong apron?”

Luther sipped from his empty glass. “It was the TV weatherman, Adam Morse. He’s this tall guy. But Monk kept pointing out how short his apron was and how this made him the killer.”

I mulled this over and came to my own deduction. I asked a few more questions just to make sure. “There were only six custom-made aprons? No more?” Yes. “Did the aprons come in different sizes? Small, medium, and large?” Yes. “Were the
aprons kept in the kitchen in between the two weekend contests?” Yes, at each contestant’s station. How did I know?

For those of you who haven’t spent years watching Monk’s every move and trying to figure out how he thinks, I’ll give you the solution. The rest of you have probably figured it out and can skip the next few paragraphs.

Adam Morse, explained Monk to Chief Disher and Sharona and a handful of other bystanders, had been the one to sneak into the kitchen and take a peek in the mystery box. He had put on his apron, an extra large, and began doing a little prep work.

At some point, Kathy Enbrel walked in. Monk didn’t know what happened between them. He’s not a mind reader. But they both had a lot to lose from any scandal. Kathy was a woman with political ambition and Adam’s career was based on being the lovable, community-minded weatherman.

After Kathy’s fateful encounter with the carving knife, Adam realized he had a second problem. His extra-large apron was covered in Kathy’s blood. These were specially made aprons, one for each player. There was no way he could clean the apron in time, if at all. And for him to tell everyone that he had lost it would look suspicious, especially since the aprons were kept with the other supplies in the locked kitchen.

Adam’s only way out was to trade aprons with his victim. He put his large bloodstained apron on Kathy and put her clean small one at his station. Monk had basically figured it out from the moment he saw the photo of Kathy in the huge bloody apron.

Giving Monk credit where it’s due, this was something I
never would have come up with. He clocked the unusual size of her apron and that the blood was in a spatter pattern, which is different from the way blood looks when it oozes out of a wound. But once Luther told me about Monk’s pointing a finger at the man in the small apron, it wasn’t hard.

“Well, that doesn’t sound like a horrible weekend,” I said. “Solving a murder. Getting Randy off the hook. Sounds pretty good.”

“I didn’t tell you about Ellen,” said Luther.

“Oh yeah.” After all, this had been the whole reason for the trip. “Was Ellen around for this? Did she see how Monk’s obsession can be a good thing?”

“Not so much. When we first showed up, before we even got involved, Mr. Monk went over to Ellen’s and tried to apologize. He was persuasive. The man really likes her. Ellen’s brother was there and he did his best to talk Ellen into giving Mr. Monk a second chance.”

“That’s good,” I said, but I had a feeling it wasn’t. “Does Ellen listen to her brother?”

“Ellen loves her brother. Ellen and Adam Morse are very close.”

“Adam Morse?” I wanted to make sure I heard it right. “As in Ellen’s brother is the weatherman Adam Morse? As in Monk wound up arresting Ellen’s brother for murder?”

“Yep. Now, where’s my wine?”

CHAPTER THREE

Mr. Monk Goes to Work

W
hen I didn’t hear from Monk, I didn’t worry. I waited until the next day, then tracked him down. He wasn’t in his apartment. Captain Stottlemeyer hadn’t heard from him. And Luther swore that he wouldn’t be taking him anywhere, not until Luther had had time to recover from the long, tearful drive home. But I was a real detective now, full of deduction skills. Monk had just been rejected by the only woman he’d had any romantic feelings for since the death of his wife. Even nondetectives could figure this one out.

It was around midmorning when I arrived in Colma, a pretty little town just south of the city where the dead outnumber the living by about a thousand to one. I don’t mean brain-dead or boring. I mean physically dead in the ground.

The city of San Francisco stopped building cemeteries more than a hundred years ago because things were getting crowded. The city fathers even went as far as digging up old graves and moving the bodies. You would think that after reclaiming all this land, parking might be a little easier in San Francisco, but it’s not. Colma, not far from Daly City, wound up as the epicenter of the new funeral industry.

I’ve never known how Monk finds his way out here. My
two guesses are a very clean bus or teleportation. Either one. But long before Luther came on the payroll, this had been Monk’s go-to place whenever he had something to discuss with the one woman who completely understood him.

Trudy’s resting place is in Greenlawn Memorial Park, just south of Woodlawn Memorial Park, a scene of artificial rolling hills and hundred-year-old trees, all very well maintained. I know how to get to the grave site by heart, without checking the little row markers. But all I had to do on most occasions was listen for the sound of a clarinet.

Monk is not a great musician, although he does claim to have almost played in a jam session with Willie Nelson, whatever that means. How can you almost play in a jam session? But Trudy must have liked his playing.

I found him, as usual, sitting cross-legged on a blanket on the grass in front of a simple headstone—
TRUDY ANNE MONK, 1962–1997, BELOVED WIFE
AND DAUGHTER
. He was playing the old love ballad “Till There Was You.” There were more than a few squeaks coming out of his reed instrument, so I assumed he hadn’t made the trip for a while and was out of practice.

Monk and Trudy met in college. Their seven years of marriage was the only true happiness Monk had ever known. Her unconditional love soothed his obsessive nature and made him almost forget his phobias. And then she was murdered by a car bomb and things got ten times worse than they’d been before.

“Someone will love you again, Adrian. It’s not over.” He looked up, not at all surprised to see me. “Luther told me everything.”

“Did he tell you that Ellen was right? That I’m not worthy of being loved?”

“Did Ellen say that?”

“Not in so many words. She said she hated my guts and never wanted to see me again.”

“Well, you did send her brother away.”

“It’s not my fault. The truth is the truth. Did she want someone innocent going to jail instead of her murderous brother?”

“Is that how you explained it to her?”

“I tried. I sent Luther into her poop shop to explain for me. I sent him in four times, until she slapped him and he wouldn’t go in again. The woman is stubborn.”

“You’ll find someone else. I promise.”

“Who?” he demanded. “No woman is going to put up with me. From all reports, I’m pretty impossible. Am I impossible, Natalie?”

“Nothing’s impossible. But you can be difficult. When the right woman comes along, you’ll want to be a better person for her. You’ll be kinder, more considerate. It’ll come naturally.”

Monk placed the cap back on his clarinet mouthpiece. “I took Ellen for granted,” he admitted. “Not to mention the whole killer-brother thing. I can see that was the wrong strategy.”

“Just leave yourself open. Love will come when you least expect it.”

“I don’t expect it now.”

“You see? You’re halfway there.”

“So if I’m not expecting it, it should be here, right? Of
course, now I’m expecting it. That’s the trouble with phrases like that. I’ll always be expecting it and so it won’t come. Ever. Thanks a lot.”

I smiled. “You know what will make you feel better? Getting settled in your new office. It’ll be like a new beginning.”

“What new office?” said Monk, blinking and trying to look perplexed. “Oh, you mean that case yesterday in the strip mall.”

“Give it up, Adrian. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Monk reluctantly accepted my ride back into the city. He didn’t jump out of the car as I pulled into the strip mall, which I counted as progress. The sign company had been by this morning and the tastefully scripted black letters welcomed us from the front window:
MONK &
TEEGER
. The second line was smaller and in red.
CONSULTING DE
TECTIVES
. It looked pretty cool, I have to say.

Monk got out of the car and stared, arms folded across his chest. “You tried this once before, you know.”

“I know. But this will be different.”

We
had
tried this once before. Several years ago, I took it upon myself to open up an office in a storefront not unlike this one. I was tired of seeing less talented PIs making a lot of money and us just scraping by. This was back when Monk was our only consultant. I couldn’t even call us private investigators at the time since neither of us was licensed. The experience did not go well.

“I hate being on display like a monkey in a window. And I hate sitting around the office and having no one show up.”

“Well, if no one shows up, you won’t be on display in the window. First problem solved.”

“I wasn’t through,” said Monk. “I hate risk, especially financial risk like monthly bills. I hate not having any authority when I interview suspects. I hate not having Lieutenant Devlin to do police stuff that we don’t have the resources for. And I hate risk again, especially physical risk like not having the police around to back me up. I hate meeting new people. . . .”

“Are you working your way up to ten reasons?” I had to ask.

“I’m actually working my way up to a hundred. I hate being in the vicinity of a pawnshop and a Laundromat both. The one is a breeding ground for the crime, the other a breeding ground for—”

“Adrian,” I pleaded, then took a deep breath and leaned back against the side of my old Subaru. “I know how you hate change. But things change. We can’t make a living just on police work and by hoping for the occasional reward to bring us into the black. I worked long and hard to become a private investigator. You encouraged me—as much as you’re capable of encouraging any change. I studied how to run a business. I’ve made connections. And we can’t run a business out of your living room, especially when you refuse to open the door half the time or you make the clients wear plastic booties.”

“Are you working your way up to a hundred reasons?”

“I have one more.” I stared him in the eyes. “At this moment, do you really want to have another woman mad at you? Huh?”

“Good point.”

And this was enough to propel him through the door. Just inside on an end table were an ice bucket and a bottle of nonalcoholic champagne—sparkling wine I suppose is the
correct term—dropped off by our friend Tony Rassigio, proud owner of the only restaurant Monk will patronize. Beside the bucket were two glasses wrapped in cellophane.

I gently blocked the door with my body and set about unwrapping the foil and popping the cork. While Monk was busy retrieving the cork and placing it in a wastebasket, I removed the cellophane and filled the glasses.

“To Monk and Teeger,” I said, handing him a glass and proposing a toast. “To a new chapter in our lives.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t use the word
new
. New is only good when it means shiny and untouched by human hands.” But Monk accepted the glass and clinked it with mine. He actually took a sip to seal the deal.

“Natalie? What are you doing?” The voice wasn’t Monk’s. It came from a woman standing right outside the door I was blocking. She did not sound pleased.

“Daniela. Hello.”

The woman was Daniela Grace, a wealthy, thin, well-put-together woman of indeterminate age. Monk and I had met Daniela on a business cruise we’d taken not long ago. She was the senior partner in the law firm of Grace, Winters, and Weingart. She was also, through a mix-up that was only partly Monk’s fault, my Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor, even though I don’t have a drinking problem. I really don’t. I just go to an occasional meeting to keep Daniela happy. It’s a long story.

“Natalie? Is that champagne?”

“It’s nonalcoholic,” I blurted out. “Check the label.”

She actually put on a pair of reading glasses and did just that. Her tone eased and she smiled. “Thank goodness.”

Thank goodness is right. I’d gone back and forth about
using real champagne. But Monk isn’t much of a drinker—or a celebrator. “You came just in time for our grand opening,” I said. “Really more of a soft opening, since no one else is here.”

“I’m not staying long,” said Monk to our guest. “You can drive me home.”

Daniela ignored him. “I didn’t come to check up on you, Natalie. I read about your new business in the
Pennysaver
and I wanted to see for myself.”

“You pick up the
Pennysaver
?” I asked.

“Heavens no. But my gardener does. So . . .” I made way for her in the doorway and Daniela stepped inside. “It seems you’re the real deal after all.” She nodded in approval. “You never know. People will have a nice business card or a brochure. Then you show up and they’re running it out of their garage or some such.”

“My living room,” Monk corrected her.

She continued to ignore him, which was fine. “You’re officially open for business, then?”

“Yes,” I lied. I was actually planning a grand opening in a week or two—with Evites and a new Facebook page and maybe balloons. This was better. “Is there something we can help you with?”

“I hope so. A client of mine has been arrested for capital murder. A very sweet man, if that doesn’t sound too odd. He was apprehended by the highway patrol, who found him dragging a dead man, a drug dealer, into a vacant lot at two in the morning. The victim had been shot in the head. There was no weapon found. There was, however, a shovel at my client’s feet, which doesn’t help our case.”

Interesting. “What does your client say happened?” I asked.

“That’s the problem, dear. He won’t say anything. He’s clammed up, to use the vernacular. The man is ready to be convicted without saying a word in his defense. It’s hopeless.”

“Nothing is hopeless,” said Monk. “Except my love life. That’s hopeless.”