by Lee Goldberg
“The killer cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom to cover his tracks,” Disher said. “He even put the frying pan, sponge, and scrub brush in the dishwasher.”
The kitchen opened onto the living room and was spotlessly clean. The counters gleamed; everything was neatly arranged. Even the dishrags were neatly folded and hung. It looked more like an operating room than a place where food was prepared.
I nudged Monk, figuring the sight of such cleanliness might lighten him up. “Look, a clean kitchen. It’s sparkling.”
Monk looked at it and simply nodded.
“Whatever evidence was on the frying pan and cleaning utensils has been washed away,” Disher said. “But we have the crime lab checking the drains and pipes just in case.”
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “We won’t find anything. This is the work of a pro.”
“Or an avid viewer of CSI,” I said.
“I hate that show,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’d like to punch the guy who had the brilliant idea of doing a show that teaches crooks how to avoid being caught.”
“It’s actually three shows,” Disher said. “There’s also the one in Miami and the one in New York. I think they should do one in San Francisco.”
“Why don’t you suggest it to them?” Stottlemeyer said.
“I have,” Disher said. “I jotted down a few ideas for the characters. But they are taking their sweet time getting back to me.”
“Let me guess. It’s loosely based on your life,” Stottlemeyer said.
“It’s mostly focused on my exciting adventures,” Disher said.
“What exciting adventures?”
“You know,” Disher said. “Like this.”
“You find this exciting?”
“It could be,” Disher said. “Imagine if three ninja warriors cartwheeled through the window right now.”
Stottlemeyer turned to Monk. “What do you think? Are we looking for ninjas?”
Monk shrugged.
“Surely you’ve got some observations,” Stottlemeyer said.
Monk shook his head. “I don’t even know who I am. How can I know who the murderer is?”
“Look around,” I said. “Do your thing.”
“I did,” he said.
“You haven’t done this,” I said, and proceeded to do my imitation of his Zen-detective thing.
I walked around the room like a chicken directing a movie. I cocked my head from side to side and held my hands in front of me as if I was framing a shot.
“That’s not quite right,” Disher said. He walked through the apartment, rolling his shoulders and squinting. “This is what he does.”
We both turned to face Monk.
“I don’t do that,” he said.
“So show us what you do,” I said.
“This is it,” Monk said.
“You aren’t doing anything,” Stottlemeyer said. “Haven’t you noticed anything since you got here?”
“I’ve blinked thirty-eight times since I walked in the room,” Monk said.
“About the murder,” Stottlemeyer said.
Monk glanced at the body, then at the apartment. “Like what?”
“Like to get in the building, you have to have a key or get buzzed in. Like there are no signs of a struggle,” Stottlemeyer said. “Like the killer must have been someone that Trotter knew or was expecting or didn’t consider a threat, like a pizza delivery guy.”
“Sounds like you have it covered,” Monk said.
“I don’t have anything, Monk. I was hoping you might give me something more to go on. You’ve solved dozens of more complicated and bizarre murders than this in less time than it has taken you to blink forty times.”
“Forty-two,” Monk said.
Stottlemeyer sighed. “This is going well.”
“Can I go home now?” Monk asked him.
“No, you can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re going with me to question our likeliest suspect.”
“If you have a suspect already,” he asked, “what do you need me for?”
“I need you to be you,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I am.” Monk groaned. “God help me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr. Monk and the Likely Suspect
We found Emily Trotter, Clarke’s estranged wife, having lunch at her mother Betty’s house in Sausalito, a self-consciously and premeditatedly picturesque village across the bay from San Francisco.
The house was a contemporary Victorian-style home pinned uncomfortably between two identical condominium complexes with wood-shingle siding and cottage-style decks. The manicured front lawn was such an intense green, and the flowers were in such glorious bloom, that I had to touch the plants to convince myself that they were real.
Emily was profoundly pregnant, her bulging belly looking as if it might burst open at any moment, which might be why the sofas in her mother’s immaculate house were clad in thick plastic slipcovers. The widow had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her hair looked like dry tumbleweed.
I remembered when I looked like that.
She may have been the likeliest suspect, but I had a hard time imagining her getting up off the sofa, much less schlepping into the city, clobbering her husband with a frying pan, and doing the dishes afterwards.
Monk and I sat on a matching sofa across from Emily. He ran his hand appreciatively over the plastic as if it was fine suede. Stottlemeyer and Disher stood while Betty went back and forth from the kitchen, serving us cookies and tea.
Everything about Betty seemed to be starched, from the beehive hairdo on her head to the apron around her waist. Monk watched her carry the tray from her sterile kitchen with something akin to awe.
“You think that I killed him?” Emily asked Stottlemeyer with exaggerated incredulity.
“He left you for another woman and you’re the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.” Stottlemeyer shrugged. “We’d be fools not to consider the possibility.”
“And my daughter would have to be a fool to have done it,” Betty said. “I didn’t raise a fool, except when it comes to love.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Emily said. “That’s exactly what I need right now, another I-told-you-so.”
Betty set a plate of perfectly square cookies in front of us and handed us each a neatly folded cloth napkin with edges so sharp they could have drawn blood. Monk picked up the napkin almost reverentially and set it carefully on his lap without unfolding it.
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. There was something about Betty and this place that was giving me the willies.
“I didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ ” Betty said. “But, for the record, I was against the two of you getting married.”
“There is no record,” Emily said.
Disher held up his pencil and notebook. “Technically, there is.”
“You’re right, I had plenty of reasons to murder my husband, ” Emily said. “But as much as I hated him for what he did to me, to our family, he was still my daughter’s father. I couldn’t have done that to her. I don’t know how I am going to tell her the news. It will break her heart.”
“Better her heart breaks once rather than repeatedly,” Betty said. “He would have disappointed her throughout her life.”
“Darla was his princess,” Emily said. “He never would have hurt her.”
“You think walking out on her pregnant mother and shacking up with another man’s wife doesn’t hurt her?” Betty said.
“Your cookies are very square,” Monk commented.
“Perfectly square,” Betty said. “Aren’t you going to have one?”
“I just like looking at them,” Monk said.
I shivered again.
“His lover was married, too?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“Claire and her husband, Eddie, were our best friends,” Emily said. “We used to play bridge together every Wednesday. ”
“I don’t know what she saw in Clarke,” Betty said.
“I do,” Emily said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. “He was a teddy bear. There was no safer place to be than in his arms.”
After everything he’d done to her, there was still some love left for him in her heart. Or maybe it was just hormones. When I was pregnant, my mood swings gave my husband whiplash.
“Oh, spare me.” Betty quickly handed Emily a tissue from the box on the coffee table and used another to wipe away an errant tear that had dropped onto the plastic slipcover.
She folded the tissue and stuffed it in a pocket of her apron. “He was a child who never grew up.”
I saw Monk watching Betty. He seemed at peace for the first time since yesterday. I felt another chill and couldn’t figure out why.
“You have a beautiful home,” Monk said to Betty.
“Thank you,” Betty said.
“It’s so comforting,” Monk said.
Comforting?
“Where were you last night?” Disher asked Emily.
“I’m seven months pregnant and I have a five-year-old daughter, Lieutenant. Where do you think I was?” she said. “I was at home.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“My daughter, I suppose.”
“What time did she go to bed?” Disher asked.
“You think I slipped out after she was asleep?”
“It could happen,” Disher said.
“Look at me. I can barely walk,” Emily said. “And I wouldn’t leave my daughter alone, not even to go murder my husband. What kind of mother do you think I am?”
It was a convincing alibi as far as I was concerned, but I guess it helps to be a mother to really understand that.
“I admire how your napkins are folded,” Monk said to Betty. “Did you iron them?”
“Of course,” Betty said. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“In a perfect world,” Monk said. “If only we could live in one.”
“I do,” she said and gestured to the home around her.
I shivered again and that’s when it hit me. If Mrs. Monk were alive today, she’d probably look just like Betty. And her house would look just like this one, covered in plastic and about as homey as a morgue.
“You could have hired someone to kill him for you,” Stottlemeyer said.
“That would require money,” Emily said. “And Clarke keeps me on a very tight budget.”
“Not anymore,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Where would my daughter find a killer? In the Yellow Pages?” Betty shook her head. “You should be ashamed of yourselves for even asking her these questions.”
“I am,” Monk said. “Deeply.”
“You haven’t asked any yet,” I said pointedly.
“The person you should be talking to is Eddie Tricott,” Emily said. “Claire’s husband. He was furious about the affair and he’s wealthy. Who knows what he might have done.”
“Has it occurred to you that the murder might have nothing to do with my daughter or Clarke’s sleazy affair?” Betty asked.
“No,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Clarke was general counsel for San Francisco Memorial,” she said. “He made a lot of enemies over the years winning malpractice suits brought against the hospital by patients. Maybe one of them had enough and sought revenge. It happens on Boston Legal all the time.”
“If you’ve seen it on TV, then it must be possible,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’ll have to look into that.”
“Do you have any other questions?” Emily said, struggling to her feet. Disher gallantly gave her a hand. “I have to go pick up my daughter at nursery school and tell her that her father is dead.”
“I think we’re done for now,” Stottlemeyer said. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Trotter. We’re sorry for your loss.”
“It’s my daughter’s loss,” Emily said. “I already lost him.”
I got up and started to follow Stottlemeyer and Disher to the door. But Monk didn’t move. I looked back at him, sitting on the sofa with the folded napkin on his lap.
“It’s time to go, Mr. Monk.”
“You go,” he said. “I’m staying.”
“We’re done asking questions,” I said. “We’re leaving.”
“I’m not,” he said.
“You have to,” I said.
“I’d rather not,” Monk said.
Emily looked at Stottlemeyer. “Is he crazy?”
“He might be solving a murder,” Stottlemeyer said. “Is that it, Monk? Are you on to something?”
“Her cookies are square,” Monk said. “Her napkins are folded and ironed. There’s no dust anywhere. All the furniture is covered in plastic. It’s paradise.”
My idea of a paradise doesn’t include plastic slipcovers, but maybe I don’t have much of an imagination.
“Thank you,” Betty said. “That’s what every home should be.”
“I can’t go,” Monk said.
“You can’t stay, Mr. Monk,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t live here,” I said.
“I’d like to.” Monk looked imploringly at Betty. “Can I?”
“You want to live with me?” Betty said in disbelief.
“I accept.” Monk leaned back on the sofa, making himself comfortable. His body squeaked against the stiff plastic.
“That wasn’t an invitation,” I said.
“Of course it was,” Monk said to me before turning back to Betty. “You don’t have any cannibals living nearby, do you?”
“Cannibals?” Emily said. “Is he insane?”
Stottlemeyer marched up to Monk, grabbed him by the arms, and yanked him off the couch.
“You’ll have to excuse my friend,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’s having some personal problems.”
Stottlemeyer led Monk out the door. Disher followed, and I was right behind them, when Betty spoke up.
“Wait,” she said.
Betty took four cookies off the plate, set them on a napkin, and handed them to me. “Take these with you. Maybe they will make your friend feel better.”
“Thank you,” I said and walked out.
Stottlemeyer, Monk, and Disher were waiting for me in front of the car.
“That was pathetic,” Stottlemeyer said to Monk, who began to weep tearlessly, which only seemed to irritate the captain even more. “You can’t go on this way.”