by Lee Goldberg
“Then there should be four holes made by the chair in the grass somewhere along the pool fence.”
Monk bent over and walked slowly around the entire perimeter of the pool.
He walked very, very, very slowly.
So slowly that I’m pretty sure he was counting the blades of grass as he went.
Everyone was silent, watching Monk. Even Braddock was transfixed, holding a towel to his bloody nose.
After what felt like hours of frustration and suspense, Monk returned to me, tipped his head from side to side, rolled his shoulders, and then addressed the crowd.
“Bill Peschel didn’t step on a chair, climb over the fence, and jump into the pool,” Monk said. “He was murdered.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mr. Monk Asks Around
Before long the guests were gone and the crowd at Carol Atwater’s house was made up of cops and crime scene investigators from the Mill Valley Police Department. Even Carol and her family had left, preferring to spend the night in a hotel. I wondered if they’d ever come back to this house now.
Stottlemeyer and Slade stuck around-the captain to protect Carol’s interests and Slade to publicize his own.
Slade was careful to remind Monk that he worked for Intertect and that any further observations he wanted to share had to go through him first.
“I don’t know what forensic evidence they hope to find,” Slade said, watching the forensic technicians doing their thing. “The scene has been hopelessly compromised and contaminated. The yard has been watered, which is bound to have washed away trace evidence, and everything has been trampled and touched by dozens of people since Peschel’s death.”
“You mean his murder,” Monk said.
“They’re just following procedure,” Stottlemeyer said. “They know as well as you and I do how futile it is.”
“It’s my fault the evidence is lost or ruined,” Monk said. “I saw all the things that were out of place yesterday and didn’t put it together. What was the matter with me?”
“You were tired,” I said, shooting a nasty glare at Slade, who didn’t seem to pick up on it.
“But it was all right in front of my face,” Monk said.
“And mine and theirs,” Stottlemeyer said, nodding towards the Mill Valley police. “At least I’m accustomed to missing the clues that you see. They’re not. They really feel like jerks.”
“Then it’s the perfect time to let them know that Monk’s consulting services are available through Intertect,” Slade said, and excused himself from us to try to snag himself a new client.
“Who could have wanted Bill Peschel dead?” Monk asked.
“Anyone who got sent to prison because of one of the tips that he gave the police,” I said.
“Why wait until now?” Stottlemeyer asked. “Peschel retired and moved to Florida ten years ago.”
“Maybe the killer just got released from prison,” I said. “Or maybe it took the killer this long to figure out that it was Peschel who ratted him out. Or maybe he only recently learned that Peschel had moved back to the Bay Area. Maybe it’s all of those things put together.”
“That’s a lot of maybes,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I thought maybes were your specialty,” I said.
“My specialty doesn’t matter,” Stottlemeyer said. “This is a Mill Valley homicide. I don’t have jurisdiction here.”
Slade came back over to us. “I was just told that the Mill Valley Police Department has a policy of not hiring people to do the job that they are paid to do. They don’t have money to burn like the San Francisco police do. That’s a direct quote.”
“Tough break for you,” Stottlemeyer said.
“They’ll come around after a few weeks of getting nowhere,” Slade said.
“After a few weeks, it will be too late,” Monk said. “The trail will be cold.”
“You’ve solved a bunch of cases for me already that were colder than a few weeks,” Slade said.
“This is different,” Monk said.
“Yeah, the Mill Valley police know that somebody would have gotten away with murder if it weren’t for you,” Slade said. “You’ve embarrassed them. They aren’t going to be able to stick this case in a drawer if they get nowhere with it. They’ll have to come back to us. The public will pressure them into it.”
“How’s the public going to know anything about it?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“There were a lot of people here today,” Slade said. “Word will get around. And I’ll be sending out a press release this afternoon. See you later.”
Slade walked away.
Stottlemeyer sighed and looked at us. “I’d better get back to the office, assuming that I still have one.”
“Why are you being so pessimistic? The murders of Judges Stanton and Carnegie were solved. It’s old news,” I said. “There will be other headlines today. Your bosses can’t be as angry with you as they were yesterday.”
“I just punched a cop at a wake,” Stottlemeyer said.
“He had it coming,” I said.
“True, but I don’t think the chief is going to see it that way.”
“Who says he’s ever going to know?”
“Braddock will make sure that he does,” Stottlemeyer said. “Every cop at the convention is going to ask him how his nose got busted and he’ll tell them, though he’ll frame the story so that he looks terrific and I come across as a raging psychopath.”
“With his charming personality, it’s probably not the first time someone has slugged him,” I said.
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “Braddock is used to giving beatings, not taking them. He’s always been protected by the authority of his badge. Most people are afraid to hit him back. He’s not used to a fight that isn’t rigged in his favor before he even throws a punch. He isn’t going to take this well.”
“It’s not Braddock that I’m concerned about,” Monk said. “What are we going to do about Bill Peschel’s murder?”
“Bill lived and worked in San Francisco most of his life. Odds are that whatever happened here began across the bay on my turf,” Stottlemeyer said. “The homicide case may be out of my jurisdiction but I’m going to do some asking around anyway.”
“Me too,” Monk said.
Stottlemeyer nodded and walked away. As soon as he was gone, I gave Monk a look.
“Who are you going to ask?”
“Danielle,” Monk said.
“But no one has hired you to investigate this murder,” I said.
“I’ve hired me,” Monk said.
As I drove us back to San Francisco, Monk called Danielle Hossack and asked her to dig up all the information that she could about Bill Peschel, his daughter, and her husband. She promised to get Monk a preliminary report tomorrow.
“I understand why you want background on Bill Peschel,” I said. “But why on the others?”
“You mentioned to me that Peschel made a lot of money from the sale of his bar and some stocks.”
“Carol said he was an early investor in InTouchSpace-dot-com, which is the biggest social networking site on earth.”
Monk looked at me blankly, so I explained what I was talking about.
“It’s an online community where millions of people share information about themselves, their interests, and their hobbies, make new friends, renew relationships with old ones, and play all kinds of games.”
Monk still looked at me blankly.
“Let me put it another way,” I said. “InTouchSpace allows you to socialize with others without ever leaving your house or actually meeting another human being in the flesh. You might actually like it. Julie and I use it. So does Ambrose. He’s very active on it.”
“My brother is talking to strangers with his computer?”
“He’s agoraphobic,” I said. “How else is he going to interact with people?”
“Why would he want to?”
“Because he’s a human being,” I said. “And human beings need rela
tionships.”
“Not if they want to stay healthy,” Monk said. “Relationships aren’t sanitary.”
“They are on a computer,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever heard of computer viruses?”
I could see that this was yet another argument I wasn’t going to win. Besides, we were getting so far away from the subject of Bill Peschel’s murder that I’d almost forgotten the point I’d originally wanted to make.
“Do you really think that Carol Atwater murdered her father?”
Monk shrugged. “Maybe in addition to his stocks, Bill also had a hefty insurance policy. We only have her word about what happened that morning. What if it’s all a lie? It wouldn’t be the first time that greed led to murder.”
“I have a hard time believing that she cracked her father on the head, pushed him into the pool, and then staged the accident with her daughter in the house.”
“It’s easy enough to check out her story. But I have other reasons for learning more about her and her husband. The murder may have had nothing to do with Peschel’s past. It might have been related to something that Carol and Phil are or were involved with. It might have been a warning of some kind. Or maybe Peschel interrupted a burglary.”
“In other words, you have no idea what you are looking for.”
“I’m looking for a murderer,” he said.
Until Danielle got back to us, we had nothing to go on in the Peschel investigation. And since we’d worked through all the open cases at Intertect-well, at least as far as Monk knew-there was nothing else for us to do.
Monk came to this conclusion even faster than I did and asked me to take him to Dr. Bell’s office so he could try to squeeze in some sessions between other patients.
Once again, I dropped Monk off and made a speedy getaway.
I used the time to run some errands for Monk-buying groceries, picking up his dry cleaning, and taking it all back to his place and putting it away. It was actually a pleasure to do those chores without him at my side, turning what should be a painless two-hour experience into a six-hour ordeal.
He called me at six to come get him. When I drove up to the Victorian house where Dr. Bell lived and worked, I found Monk and the doctor sitting on the front stoop together.
I felt my stomach tighten. I knew I was about to get in big trouble, but I put on a smile and pretended that I was oblivious to any wrongdoing.
Monk started for the car but Dr. Bell stopped him.
“ Adrian, I just realized there are only three sharpened pencils on my desk.”
“And you left the office? What were you thinking?”
“I must have been preoccupied,” he said. “I was paying such rapt attention to your troubles that everything else became insignificant.”
“Of course, that’s only natural. Stay here, I’ll handle it,” Monk said, and rushed back inside as if there were a grease fire on the stove.
Dr. Bell came up to the passenger side of the car and leaned in the open window to talk to me. He was nearly bald, with a close-cropped gray mustache and beard. His loose black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans made him seem far more casual than I knew him to be.
“Would you like to tell me what’s going on, Natalie?”
“I’m doing fine, thanks.”
“I’m not,” Dr. Bell said. “Twice now I’ve had Adrian in my waiting room for hours at a time trying to squeeze in five-minute therapy sessions between my other patients or to sit in on their appointments.”
“I guess it means that he really likes you,” I said. “That’s good, isn’t it? I’m sure you were worried about whether he’d learn to trust you the way he did Dr. Kroger. Well, now you know that he does. Congratulations!”
Dr. Bell smiled. “I am his psychiatrist, not his babysitter. You can’t drop him off here every time you want some free time.”
“This isn’t about me,” I said. “It’s about Mr. Monk. He needs you and his new medical plan will cover the extra sessions.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about the comfort and privacy of my other patients,” Dr. Bell said. “If Adrian has free time, perhaps he can find a hobby or his new employer can assign him some additional cases to keep him busy.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “Mr. Monk will work himself to death.”
“That’s a preferable fate to my patients murdering him in my waiting room,” Dr. Bell said. “Or if I do it myself.”
Monk bounded out of the door. “It’s all taken care of, Dr. Bell. Crisis averted.”
“Thank you, Adrian,” Dr. Bell said. “It’s a big relief.”
“So, same time tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Bell said.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to be very busy,” Dr. Bell said, directing his words more to me than to Monk.
“How do you know?”
“Call it a hunch,” Dr. Bell said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mr. Monk and Disher’s Big Case
As it turned out, Dr. Bell’s hunch was right. I arrived at Monk’s apartment the next morning to find him already hard at work at his kitchen table, a rolling cart of files at his side.
More cases from Intertect.
Black belt or not, I was going to kick Danielle’s tight little butt into the street.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
“Who?” Monk asked.
“Danielle Hossack.”
“I have no idea,” Monk said. “But I hope that wherever she is she’s getting me the information that I asked for.”
“Then if she isn’t here, who brought you all those files?”
“A detective from Intertect came to my door first thing this morning,” Monk said. “All that publicity must have brought in a slew of new cases. It’s a good thing we don’t have anything to go on with the Peschel case yet because I’m swamped. I can get these cases out of the way first.”
I turned and headed back to the door.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Down to Intertect to see if I can give Danielle a hand.”
I was thinking of giving it to her the same way that Stottlemeyer gave it to Braddock.
“That’s a good idea,” Monk said. “I’m so glad to see you two are working so well together.”
I kept on walking so he couldn’t see my red-faced anger. I broke a few speed laws heading downtown and was worked up into a fine rage by the time I got to Monk’s office at Intertect.
Danielle was sitting at her desk, typing away on her computer. I stabbed a finger in her direction.
“Come with me,” I said, marching past her into Monk’s office. As soon as she was inside, I slammed the door behind her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked oh so innocently.
“You are,” I said. “You’re fired.”
Her eyes went wide. “Why?”
“I told you not to send any more files to Mr. Monk and you did it anyway,” I said. “You’re looking out for Intertect, not for Mr. Monk. That’s unacceptable.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Another one of those rolling file drawers was delivered to his apartment this morning. It didn’t roll to his place by itself.”
“I didn’t send them,” she said angrily, but I could tell that it wasn’t directed at me. “I wouldn’t do that to him or to you.”
“If you didn’t, then who did?”
Her face tightened and she glanced towards the door. “There is only one person with the authority to send files to anyone.”
The way she said it left little doubt who she was talking about. I knew I owed her an apology, but I didn’t want to do anything that would slow my momentum or cool my anger.
I threw open the door, marched down the hall, and blew past Slade’s buxom secretary, opening the door to his corner office and entering uninvited. His secretary tried to chase after me, but she was too top-heavy to keep up.
Slade was hun
ched over a putter, knocking golf balls into what looked like a silver dustpan, which was engraved with the words, INTOUCHSPACE INVITATIONAL GOLF TOURNAMENT. His office was larger than Monk’s apartment. There were lots of pictures on the walls of him with his arm around celebrities, most of them women.
“Are you insensitive, greedy, or just plain stupid?” I said.
“I can be all of the above,” Slade said. “I suppose it depends on the situation and how much alcohol is being served.”
Slade waved his secretary away and she closed the door behind me.
“You’ve heard of killing the goose that laid the golden egg? Well, that’s exactly what you are doing with Mr. Monk,” I said. “You’ve giving him way too much work to do.”
“And I’m paying him handsomely for it. Not only that, he’s closing the cases as fast as I can give them to him. He enjoys it.”
“Kids like ice cream, but that doesn’t mean you let them gorge themselves on the stuff,” I said. “He can’t keep up this pace.”
“I haven’t heard any complaints from him.”
“You’re hearing it from me,” I said. “As of now, he’s taking a break.”
“He’s only worked four days and he already wants a vacation? That’s got to be a record.”
“So is the number of cases he’s solved for you this week,” I said. “This is nonnegotiable. If you don’t like it, fire him.”
“Maybe I’ll just fire you,” he said.
“Mr. Monk will go with me,” I said.
“Why? He doesn’t have to rely on you anymore,” Slade said. “I can give him all the assistants that he wants.”
“So fire me and see what happens,” I said.
He looked at me for a long moment, then broke into a smile. “Let’s not overreact, Ms. Teeger. Monk has certainly earned a breather. We can revisit this discussion next week.”
“No, we won’t,” I said. “All his cases will go through me from now on and I will divvy them out to him as I see fit.”
“You’re very protective of Mr. Monk,” Slade said.
“If you’re smart, you will be, too. He’s going to be worth a lot of money to Intertect if you treat him right. I suggest you start now.”