Mr. Monk Goes to Germany
Page 16
“Is something wrong?” Geshir asked.
I could answer that for them. Monk’s body language wasn’t exactly subtle.
“Everything is wrong,” I said.
“Why did he change his clothes before leaving?” Monk asked.
“Maybe those are his clothes from the day before,” Stoffmacher said.
“But they are on top of his unmade bed,” Monk said, “which suggests to me that he changed his clothes after he awoke. If he slept in the bed with the clothes on top, they wouldn’t be lying flat. They would be tangled with the sheets or on the floor.”
“If he was fleeing, maybe he simply wanted to be wearing heavier clothes on his journey,” Stoffmacher said. “Or something with more pockets. I honestly don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” Monk said. “It’s a mystery.”
“Not a very interesting one,” Stoffmacher said.
“There’s more,” Monk said and went downstairs. We followed him to the writing table in the living room.
“He’s obviously a writer, but where is his writing?” Monk said. “There are pencils and papers on the table, and a printer, but nothing in the house that actually has writing on it. And why would he take his laptop but leave his charger behind?”
Monk motioned to a charger in the wall. I’d missed that when I looked at the room and I’m sure the two Kommissars had, too.
“It’s simple,” Stoffmacher said. “He was in a hurry. He just grabbed his laptop and his papers, and fled.”
“He might have taken his laptop, but he didn’t take his papers. They were burned.” Monk led us over to the fireplace and squatted in front of it. “There are paper clips, staples, and the spiral rings from notebooks in the ashes. Why would he burn his papers?”
“Maybe Leupolz was suicidal and his journals contained his suicidal rantings,” Geshir said. “He burned them because they were incriminating.”
“Why would they be incriminating?” Stoffmacher asked.
“Because maybe he was going to shoot himself in the head and, at the last second, had a change of heart,” Geshir replied. “His hand twitched and he fired into the wall, accidentally killing Vigg. So he made it look like Vigg killed himself instead. His notes would have tipped us off to what really happened. But I deduced it anyway.”
Stoffmacher gave Geshir a withering look. “That certainly explains why you’re the top detective in Lohr.”
Geshir beamed. “Thank you, sir.”
“And not Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Cologne, or any other major city,” Stoffmacher said.
“But it could have happened that way,” Geshir said.
“No, it couldn’t,” Stoffmacher said, then looked to Monk for support. “Could it?”
“I don’t think so,” Monk said while shaking another bit of fluff off his pant leg as if it was corrosive. “If Vigg’s death was an accident, why didn’t Leupolz just admit it? Why turn it into a crime by running?”
“He would have shot himself instead,” Stoffmacher said. “Who could live with the guilt and humiliation?”
“When he tried to kill himself the first time, he discovered the will to live,” Geshir said. “He ran because he realized that he loves life and didn’t want to spend it with the guilt and embarrassment of this accident hanging over him.”
It seemed to me that there was some logic to that argument, but I was sort of rooting for Geshir after Stoffmacher’s unnecessarily nasty remark, so maybe I was being overly charitable.
“I don’t think that’s what happened here,” Stoffmacher said.
“Do you have a better explanation?” Geshir asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Stoffmacher said. “Maybe Leupolz has nothing to do with the bullet hole or Vigg’s death. Maybe he is at work, or his girlfriend’s apartment, or on a trip, blissfully unaware of the tragedy that has occurred here in his absence.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“A very nervous burglar with a gun broke into the house, was startled by a noise next door, and accidentally shot into the wall,” Stoffmacher said. “He made the killing look like a suicide and then ran off with Leupolz’s valuables.”
“That doesn’t explain the ashes in the fireplace,” Monk said, blowing a tiny pillow feather off the tabletop.
“Maybe Leupolz didn’t like what he was writing and burned it himself last night,” Stoffmacher said. “I’ve heard that writers are highly emotional people. He certainly wouldn’t be the first frustrated author to burn a manuscript.”
Monk shook his head. “We’re missing something.”
“Bruno Leupolz,” Stoffmacher said. “Once we find him, the mystery will be solved.”
“I don’t think so,” Monk said.
“Rest assured,” Stoffmacher said, “he will talk.”
“Not if he’s dead,” Monk said.
“Look around,” Geshir said. “There’s no blood, no signs of a struggle, and no corpse. If you don’t include the dead man next door.”
“I know, but you said this is a very safe neighborhood and most people leave their doors unlocked,” Monk said. “So why would a common burglar come here with a gun?”
“He wouldn’t,” Stoffmacher said wearily.
“But a killer would,” Monk said.
“So why isn’t there blood?” Stoffmacher said. “So why isn’t there a body? What happened here?”
“I don’t know,” Monk said. “But there’s a pillow missing.”
Stoffmacher and Geshir shared a confused look.
“What pillow?” Stoffmacher asked.
“Leupolz has a double bed,” Monk said. “But only one pillow. The other one is gone.”
“What difference does that make?” Geshir asked. “Pillows aren’t valuable.”
“But they can make a decent silencer,” Monk said. “The shooter used the pillow from Leupolz’s bed to muffle his gunshot. That’s why no one heard it. He tried to clean up the feathers afterwards, but it’s not easy. That’s why there’s still some Hungarian goose down and feathers here and why he tracked some into Vigg’s apartment.”
“Why would someone want Leupolz dead?” Stoffmacher asked. “And why wouldn’t he leave the body? And why would he bother to disguise the death next door as a suicide? Why not leave both bodies? Why leave Vigg and hide Leupolz?”
“I don’t know the answers to those questions,” Monk said. “But I will help you figure it out if you help me with something.”
Ah, so there it was. Monk hadn’t forgotten his goal; he’d simply been setting his hook. I’d never known him to be quite so manipulative.
“What is it you want?” Stoffmacher asked, brushing a bit of down off his sleeve.
“Somewhere in Lohr is a man with six fingers on his right hand. I need you to find him.”
“Why?” Geshir asked.
“Because he hired someone to kill my wife.”
Monk briefly explained what had happened to Trudy and what led him to believe a man with eleven fingers was responsible for her murder.
“I am deeply sorry for your loss,” Stoffmacher said. “But how do you know it’s the same man if you haven’t actually seen him before yourself?”
“I know he is the same way I knew everything I discovered here today,” Monk said.
“Here you had evidence,” Stoffmacher said. “Where is your evidence that this eleven-fingered man you saw is the killer you’ve been seeking?”
Monk tapped his chest, right above his heart. “Do we have an agreement or not?”
Stoffmacher nodded. “I’ll have my men start looking for him as soon as we find Bruno Leupolz.”
“My wife’s killer could be gone by then,” Monk said.
“He may be gone already, but this case comes first.”
“There’s no urgency to find Leupolz,” Monk said. “He’s dead.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything. If you have any insights, I’d like to hear them. In the meantime, we’ll be in touch as soon as we�
�ve learned anything new,” Stoffmacher said. “I’d tell you to have a pleasant stay, but I don’t think that’s really possible now.”
He had that right.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mr. Monk Makes a Discovery
Stoffmacher was right: We couldn’t just go back to the bed-and-breakfast and wait. And I doubted I could work up much enthusiasm for sightseeing after what we’d already seen. This is why I don’t recommend hanging around corpses on a vacation.
There weren’t a lot of options open to us. Ordinarily we’d go off and start investigating on our own. But that wasn’t possible here. We didn’t have the authority, we didn’t know the town, and we didn’t speak German.
I was at a loss as to what to do next. But Monk wasn’t.
“Dr. Kroger needs to know about this,” Monk said as we stepped outside the duplex of death.
“Can’t it wait until your appointment tomorrow?” I said, trying to give Dr. Kroger a little peace, not that he deserved it.
“This is a major development in the investigation of Trudy’s murder,” Monk said. “He’s the only one who truly understands what I have been through because he’s been there from the start. He’s felt my pain. This is going to mean as much to him as it does to me.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go or anything else we could do.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I needed some air, so I suggested that we walk up to the hotel. Monk was fine with that.
“Do you want to take the road or one of the trails through the forest?” I asked.
“The road,” Monk said. “There’s less nature.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It is,” Monk said.
“What’s wrong with nature?”
“It’s full of dirt, germs, bugs, and animals,” Monk said. “And the things that animals leave behind.”
“We all leave things behind, Mr. Monk. It’s natural.”
“See?” Monk said. “Nature again. We spend most of our lives cleaning up after it.”
“You do,” I said.
“Mother Nature was obviously a very filthy person,” Monk said.
The houses in the neighborhood were spaced widely apart and loosely followed the line of the forest. There weren’t any fences, though there were a few plants and low rock walls marking property boundaries.
The road got gradually steeper. I wondered if there was a shortcut we could have taken through the woods. But if we’d taken it, I would have missed an oddity. At first I mistook it for a group mailbox atop a post, but as we got closer, I saw it was actually a cigarette vending machine. There were pictures of various brands of cigarettes and a knob under each one to pull after the proper number of coins had been inserted in the slot.
We both stood there staring at the machine as if it was a meteor. I’d never seen a vending machine on a residential street corner, much less one that sold cigarettes, and I’m pretty sure that Monk hadn’t either.
“That’s odd,” I said.
“No odder than anything else in this town,” Monk replied.
“I wonder what other vending machines they have in the neighborhood and what they sell.”
“I guarantee disinfectant isn’t one of the things,” Monk said.
“You’re probably right,” I said.
“I usually am.”
We continued walking. We crossed a bridge over a tiny creek and were on the Franziskushohe property.
“Don’t you ever doubt yourself?” I asked.
“All the time.”
“About what?”
“What shirt to wear,” Monk said.
“All your shirts are the same.”
“That’s what makes the choice so hard,” Monk said.
“I mean about big things,” I said as we crossed the bridge we’d driven over yesterday. “Decisions you’ve made about your life, about love, about the future.”
“When I make a decision about something, it’s based on the facts and how things are supposed to fit together,” Monk said. “Facts are immutable and things only fit together one way, so how can I be wrong?”
“Facts can change and things don’t always fit the way they should.”
“That’s heresy,” Monk said. “I’d keep your voice down if I were you. They burn women at the stake for that here.”
We took the steps up the hillside rather than following the winding road. It was steeper, but seemed like a more direct route to me. Monk followed my lead without comment.
“Look at you and me,” I said. “If you consider the facts about us and our lives, we shouldn’t fit together at all, and yet we’ve worked together for years.”
“That’s a poor example,” Monk said. “I made a decision about you, based on the facts and how things are supposed to fit together, and I was right.”
“I don’t see it,” I said, stopping to catch my breath. I needed to get more exercise. “What facts? What fit?”
“My longtime nurse had left, so I was looking for a capable person to protect my interests, anticipate my needs, and keep my life as even as possible.”
“Exactly,” I said and started up the steps again. “And I wasn’t a nurse, a secretary, or a psychic. I was a bartender and a single mother. Those are the facts and it made me a lousy fit for the job.”
“You’re forgetting that Sharona was a single mother, too,” Monk said.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You hold your home together, struggle with finances, and face countless small disasters, all while providing a safe, productive, predictable, and nurturing life for your child. Those are facts, and I needed someone with those same skills for me. You fit right into the space left by Sharona. Fact and fit—that’s why it’s worked.”
Before Sharona and me, there had been Trudy, who kept him more than together. From what I’ve heard, when she was around, he had all his anxieties in check. He was almost normal, and yet still possessed his amazing skills as a detective.
The difference, of course, between her and us was that Monk loved Trudy and she loved him.
We cared for him, and he probably did for us, but there was no love in his life anymore. That was a fact, and a sad one. I don’t think he was looking for anyone to fit into his life that way again and maybe he never would. At least not until he could solve her murder and relieve himself of some of the undeserved guilt he carried for her death.
“So you are always right,” I said.
“On matters of fact and fit,” Monk said, “yes.”
“And are there any matters that don’t involve fact and fit?”