Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

  “What do you mean?” Devlin asked.

  Here’s where I jumped in. I was almost a full partner, and I wanted to show that Monk and I were on the same page. “He means the first attack is reasonable.”

  “Barely reasonable,” Monk interjected. “Reasonable anarchy.”

  I jumped in again. “Ebersol kept his meat thermometer in a pot on the counter. So it’s reasonable that someone might have grabbed it to use as a weapon.”

  “Barely reasonable.”

  “But the second victim, Angela Phister, kept her utensils in a bottom drawer.”

  “No one grabbed a knife, even though they were right here.” Monk pointed to the magnetic strip by the stove, covered with a row of cheap kitchen knives. “No, they opened a drawer—a bottom drawer—and rooted around and found the most disgusting, improbable weapon imaginable. Why?”

  Devlin gave the room a few seconds of thoughtful silence. “Maybe it’s not her thermometer. Maybe the attacker brought his own.”

  “Brought his own?” Monk gasped and blinked. “You mean instead of a gun or a knife? He started a crime spree with a handful of meat thermometers?”

  “Maybe they mean something to him.”

  “Meat thermometers? Do you think our killer is a deranged chef who wants to make sure his victims are well done?”

  “I don’t know!” Devlin shouted. “Give me a theory, Mr. Genius. Any theory. Why do we have two such attacks five blocks apart within twenty minutes?”

  “Well, it’s not a coincidence,” he shot back. “And it’s not a new rage in weapons.”

  “Then what is it?”

  I certainly didn’t have an answer. But Monk did. I could see the light dawn in his eyes.

  “There weren’t two attacks. There was one.”

  “What do you mean?” At least she’d stopped shouting.

  “Angela Phister is our bad guy,” Monk said, thinking as he talked. “She and Ebersol fought in his kitchen. Don’t ask me why. One of them grabs the meat thermometer. And both of them get stabbed, which serves them right for picking such a stupid weapon.”

  Devlin scrunched up her nose, like she was fighting off a nasty sneeze. “Then why would she go home and call the police?”

  “She needed medical attention. And how else could she explain her wound? Any hospital would report a serious wound like that, and you guys would be on it in a minute.”

  “I suppose we would,” Devlin said grudgingly.

  “Of course,” I added. “You’re too smart to let that slip.”

  Devlin nodded and took the scenario from here. “So, she goes home, grabs the thermometer from her own kitchen, and makes up the story about being attacked by the same perp.” Her mouth scrunched again. “But why kill Ebersol in the first place?”

  “I told you not to ask me that.”

  “You asked for a theory,” I reminded the lieutenant. “We gave you a theory. As far as I know, it’s the only one that makes sense.”

  “That’s fair,” she had to admit. “All we have to do is comb through the evidence and see if it fits. Damn. Why do murders always come right before the weekend?”

  “Oh, speaking of weekends …” This was my opportunity and I took it. “Mr. Monk, I won’t be around this weekend. I’m spending some time with my girlfriends.”

  “What girlfriends?”

  Devlin laughed. “C’mon, Monk. Every girl has girlfriends.”

  “Okay,” he mumbled, then began to circle the kitchen. His hands were up now, framing the scene like a director on a movie set, his eyes focused on everything and nothing. “We’ll manage without you. Have fun.”

  What did I tell you? A magpie.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mr. Monk and the Cult

  Of course I wasn’t spending the weekend with girlfriends.

  Monk was right. I didn’t have any, not in the Carrie Bradshaw, let’s-go-to-Vegas sense. I had told my twenty-two-year-old daughter, Julie, that I was attending a weekend seminar, preparing for the upcoming California PI exam, which was also a lie. I didn’t even bring along my study guide.

  Lying usually bothers me, especially to loved ones. But this weekend was special. I didn’t need their permission or curious questions. The very thought of explaining it to anyone seemed to diminish the whole experience. Look at me. I’m having a hard time just explaining it on paper.

  It all began back in Summit, when Randy Disher first invited Monk and me to come and help him out. One of the people we met while in Summit was a blond, blue-eyed beauty named Ellen Morse. Monk was attracted to her immediately. The feeling was mutual. But it all ground to a halt when he found out what she did for a living.

  Ellen had opened a store on the main drag in Summit called Poop. And, yes, that’s what it sold: dinosaur poop fossils that were real works of art; poop stationery and inks; fireplace logs made from Scottish peat; even poopy bags for dogs. These were made from a special plastic mixed with ground, sanitized dog feces and sold mainly as a novelty item. “Pick up your dog poop with our dog poop.”

  I won’t go into detail about Monk’s on-again, off-again relationship with Ellen. After all, this weekend was about me, not him. But when Ellen impulsively decided to open up a Poop store in San Francisco, only part of her rationale was to get physically closer to my boss.

  The other part was to be closer to the BPM Sanctuary at Half Moon Bay.

  “I can’t believe you never heard of it,” she said one day as we lingered over a couple of chai lattes at the Starbucks directly across from her Summit store.

  “I’ve heard of Half Moon Bay,” I replied. It was a sleepy little town south of the city, with seaside cliffs and pristine beaches. The majority of tourists tend to ignore it for some reason, maybe because it’s too close to San Francisco and all the flashier attractions of the city.

  “But you never heard of Miranda Bigley?”

  Of course I’d heard of Miranda Bigley. She was a national presence, a self-help guru, queen of the infomercials, right up there with Tony Robbins.

  “It’s not as tacky as it sounds,” Ellen assured me. “In fact, it changed my life.”

  I knew that Ellen was obsessive-compulsive. It was one of the things that drew her to Monk and made her so understanding of his foibles. Her OCD symptoms were much less severe than his. But there had been a time, she told me, just a few years ago, when she had almost been paralyzed by her need for order and neatness.

  Then one night she saw the infomercial for BPM—Best Possible Me.

  “Sure, I was skeptical,” she told me that afternoon. “We’ve seen these things a million times. But something spoke to me that night. Maybe it was Miranda herself. She seemed so genuine and understanding. It made me think I could have control over my life.”

  Our Starbucks chat ended with her lending me the CDs. For the next few weeks, whenever I was alone in the patrol car, or lying on the pull-out sofa in Randy Disher’s living room late at night, I listened to Miranda’s voice.

  Her life plan, as she called it, was simple. It probably wasn’t all that different from other self-help strategies. But Ellen was right. Something about Miranda spoke to me, too, telling me what to accept about myself and how to improve the rest. It was, in short, a revelation.

  This introduction to BPM happened at a pivotal point in my life. I had persuaded Monk to move cross-country with me to accept temporary jobs with the Summit PD. When Randy Disher offered to make our positions permanent, I jumped at the chance, but Monk opted to move back to San Francisco. Of course, I would eventually change my mind and move back as well.

  I may have made it sound easy when I wrote about all of this before. But it takes a toll on you. It has to. You question your judgments about life and you worry—worry so much—about your family and what you’re putting them through.

  Everyone had been wonderful, of course. Randy said he understood completely. But I knew I was leaving him and the town of Summit in the lurch, one officer short, even though he had done so much a
nd bent so many rules to get me hired in the first place.

  Miranda and the BPM CDs were just about the only thing that got me through the ordeal, helping me understand my decisions and realize that this is all part of my path to create a better me.

  All right, enough of my personal mumbo-jumbo. Let’s just say that as soon as I settled back into my cozy Victorian row house in San Francisco and unpacked my bags, I made my reservation for the BPM weekend retreat. It would be my necessary little gift to myself.

  That Friday, after leaving Monk and Devlin to their meat thermometers, I drove less than an hour south to what was probably the highest point overlooking Half Moon Bay.

  The BPM property was sprawling but modest. And absolutely perfect. The main building was a retro 1960s structure, all stacked stone and glass, like the James Mason house in North by Northwest. And like the James Mason house, it was cantilevered over a section of cliff.

  The rest of the Sanctuary consisted of a small meditation center, more stacked stone and glass, surrounded by a collection of adorable shingled cottages, all situated on an emerald green lawn leading down to a different section of the same craggy cliff.

  I checked in with the friendliest staff I’d ever met and had a light dinner with two dozen people, who were just as excited as I was to be there. After settling into my little one-room cottage, I listened to my favorite Miranda CD, then fell into bed. In five minutes I was serenaded to sleep by the pounding surf just fifty yards from my door.

  The next morning, Miranda welcomed us and outlined the weekend. I’d come to know her well, or thought I had, from the infomercial and the CDs.

  She was a slight woman, thin and fit and a few years older than me. Her hair was cut short at a few odd angles and dyed unapologetically red, almost crimson. But her best feature was her smile, wide and open, like Julia Roberts’ before she started doing those more serious films.

  For the rest of the morning, Miranda’s husband, Damien, led us through an Actualization-Visualization session in the main building. It lasted almost three hours but felt like ten minutes.

  I was having lunch afterward—a warm crabmeat salad over fresh greens from the Sanctuary garden. Delicious. I sat by myself at a table for two on the lawn, thinking how fulfilling it can be when you decide to own and celebrate your choices.

  And that’s when Monk walked in. He spotted me from across the lawn and headed straight my way.

  “I knew you’d joined a cult,” he said. Before I could stop him, he’d wiped down the other chair and joined me. “Am I going to have to kidnap you and do an intervention?”

  “It’s not a cult. How did you know I was here?”

  “‘A,’ you don’t have any girlfriends, despite what the lieutenant says, and ‘B,’ I could tell you and Ellen had some sort of secret going. All it took was a simple two-hour phone call for me to worm it out of her.”

  Poor Ellen. I didn’t blame her for buckling. Anyone would.

  “How did you get here? You can barely drive. And you hate taxis, not to mention public transportation.”

  “I have my ways,” he said with a twitch and an uncomfortable shrug. That’s one thing I’ve learned about Adrian Monk. He may seem completely helpless, but he can do all sorts of things when he really wants to.

  “How did the thermometer case work out?” I asked, hoping to distract him back to his shiny object. For a minute it worked.

  “Ms. Phister’s in stable condition,” he reported. “And she’s sticking to her story. She swears she interrupted a burglar who grabbed the thermometer from her drawer and attacked her.”

  “What about physical evidence?”

  “The CS techs are concentrating on Barry Ebersol’s kitchen. It’s only a matter of time before they find a trace of her blood. Then it’s a done deal.”

  “What about motive? Why’d she kill him?”

  “Simple,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Devlin kept trying to find some connection between the victim and Ms. Phister. I think Devlin’s a romantic at heart. But then we found six bags of golf clubs in her garage, along with a lot of jewelry boxes. Nine to be precise. Plus eight iPads.”

  “So, Angela isn’t a spurned lover. She’s a breakin artist.”

  “Not an artist.” Monk hated it when people tried to glorify crime. “She’s a burglar. A thief.”

  “And she burgled houses in her own neighborhood?”

  “Her own little crime spree. You know, over half of all crimes occur within half a kilometer of where the perpetrator lives. That’s a fact. It was in the official newsletter.”

  “Burglars send out a newsletter?”

  Monk smirked. “The Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC. Very informative. Did you know that Jesse James was shot while he was standing on a chair, dusting the top of a picture frame?”

  “You must have mixed feelings about that,” I suggested.

  He nodded vigorously. “I know. On the one hand, a cold-blooded killer was finally brought down. On the other hand … he was dusting!”

  “Wasn’t he also shot in the back?”

  “Sure, but that’s not the important part. The man was dusting. What kind of coward shoots a man when he’s dusting?”

  “I wonder if he finished the entire frame.”

  “My question exactly. I wrote a letter to the True West Historical Society but they never replied.”

  “Natalie, hello. Why don’t you introduce me to your friend?”

  I had been so busy distracting Monk that I never saw her coming. Miranda was standing right over us now, her Julia Roberts smile beaming down. Competing with her smile was a simple but stunning strand of natural pearls, perfectly matched. It was another one of her trademarks. She held out a hand toward Monk.

  “Miranda.” I was mortified. “This is my friend. Adrian Monk—Miranda Bigley. Miranda is the founder of the BPM Sanctuary.” I was using my “don’t embarrass me” voice, but it did no good.

  Monk is usually a gentleman, except for things like opening doors and pulling out chairs. Germs, you know. This time he didn’t even get up. “I would shake your hand,” he said. “But ‘A,’ I don’t shake hands, and ‘B,’ I don’t shake hands with cult leaders.”

  “I appreciate your candor,” Miranda said with an easy nod. “But you should leave yourself open to new ideas. That’s the only way to maximize happiness.”

  “Happiness is overrated.”

  She smiled brilliantly. “You need to change your ratings system.”

  “No, thanks, Ms. Cult Leader.” That was his idea of a snappy rejoinder.

  “He’s leaving,” I blurted out. “I promise he’ll be gone in two minutes.”

  “No problem. Enjoy your visit, Adrian.” And she moved on to the guests at the next table.

  “I guess I told her,” Monk said, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Mr. Monk, you have to go.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” he hissed. “Anyone who runs an infomercial is running a cult. It’s a fact.”

  “What about cleaning products?” I countered. “They have infomercials. What about Billy Mays? Was he a cult leader? The man who brought us OxyClean and the Shamwow?”

  Monk gasped, as if I’d just insulted the pope, a very, very clean pope. “Take that back. Billy Mays was a saint. How dare you say his name in the same sentence with this Jell-O-haired charlatan!”

  “How do you know she’s a charlatan?”

  “Natalie, I know cults. I was in one.”

  That was, in fact, true. My boss had once gone undercover into the Siblings of the Sun, trying to find out if their leader had been involved in a brutal murder of a young woman at a highway rest stop. Within two days, we had had to kidnap Monk back from the cult and deprogram him. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Cults are tough to resist,” he said, looking as modest as he could. “I can just imagine what it must be like for someone who doesn’t have my natural willpower.”

  “Natural willpower?”

/>   We went back and forth like this for several minutes. I stopped paying attention.

  My mouth kept moving. Clever words kept coming out. But I was focused over Monk’s shoulder on Miranda, willing her to ignore us until I could force Monk—physically, if need be—to walk through the gates and off the grounds to whatever mode of transportation might take him home.

  Miranda had moved on to the last table, a pair of couples who had traveled from Connecticut just for this weekend. I was afraid she might come back our way afterward. But she didn’t.

  Good, I thought, sending out whatever vibes I could. Keep going the other way.

  And she did. Miranda slowly lifted her arms above her head in what resembled a yoga stretch. Then, with a steady, purposeful gait, she walked toward the sea and the sound of the surf against the jagged rocks. When she reached the edge, she barely hesitated.

  Then she jumped off the cliff.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mr. Monk’s Kryptonite

  People talk about things being surreal. Personally, I think the word is overused. But there’s no other way for me to describe the situation.

  At one moment, a smiling woman with everything to live for is walking among her fans, exchanging pleasantries and talking about a weekend full of self-improvement. The next moment, she’s walking up to a cliff and jumping off.

  Dozens of us saw it. And yet for the first few seconds, no one reacted. Again, surreal. It couldn’t be real. People looked at one another, then back at the cliff, then at one another. Monk wasn’t even aware anything was wrong, except that I was no longer even pretending to pay attention. Then someone screamed.

  Damien Bigley was the first to move. “Miranda!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, and ran across the lawn. Then as if he’d just thrown a switch, the rest of us unfroze from our trance and followed him.

  There was no barricade at the edge, just the end of the emerald green lawn, a few outcroppings of rock and a sheer drop. The tide was in—that was mentioned later in the sheriff’s report—and the waves were crashing right up against the sandy cliffs. Miranda was nowhere in sight.