Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

  “It looks like they’re going to be consoling each other tonight,” Ellen said, a tinge of anger in her voice. “I know Adrian is never wrong about his deductions. I just wish he’d been wrong this time.”

  “Damien and Miranda seemed like a perfect couple,” I said, knowing how lame and clichéd that sounded.

  “I’m surprised Damien could get a room, what with the Tech Expo in town.”

  Yes, that did seem odd.

  I put the thought out of my mind. But it came back. Yes, it was odd. Every room in the city was usually booked during the three-day Tech Expo, especially a host hotel like the Belmont. And yet Damien and Teresa had gotten a room. Of course, they could have just lucked into a last-minute cancellation. But I had a different hunch.

  I told Ellen of my suspicion and she was equally curious. “Is there any way we can find out?” she asked.

  “You forget that I’m an ex-cop. Plus, I’ve had nine years’ experience getting information with and without warrants, thanks to Monk.” I glanced at the mantel clock. “We’ll wait till they’re checked in. Then I’ll make a call.”

  We gave them a good ten minutes, during which Ellen opened a third bottle of wine. We promised ourselves, cross our hearts, we weren’t going to finish it. Half a glass later, I dialed the front desk.

  I had good instincts for how the Belmont’s system worked, since I’d recently spent a night there. Normally, I would never dream of staying at such a big-bucks hotel, especially in my hometown. But six months ago my house had been broken into and a woman was killed in my bathtub, so I thought I’d treat myself.

  “Hello? This is Teresa Garcia.” I tried to make my voice sound young and perky. “We just checked in.”

  “Uh, yes, Miss Garcia.” It was an eager young man with the hint of an Irish brogue. I could hear a few keystrokes on a computer. “Room 714. Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” I said, trying for the spoiled, privileged persona that could get me the answers I wanted. “This room you gave us just won’t do. Won’t do at all.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said smoothly. “You are in one of our finer junior suites.”

  “But it’s not the room I reserved. I demand you switch us to another.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible, ma’am. We’re fully booked. Fully booked for the next three nights, in fact.”

  “Well, I reserved this well in advance. And I did not reserve a junior suite.” I winked in Ellen’s direction. If it hadn’t been so serious, we would have laughed.

  “Give me a minute. I’ll pull up your reservation.” After another thirty seconds of keystrokes … “Here it is. Yes. Yes, it appears you did reserve a junior suite. I can e-mail you a copy of the reservation if you want.”

  “Are you sure?” My words were full of accusation. “I made this reservation back in April and I’m sure I stipulated a full suite with a view of Union Square.”

  “No, ma’am. You made this reservation in May. May thirteenth. There’s a note here saying it was our last available suite, so perhaps you did ask for a full suite but we were unable to accommodate you. I apologize if there was some misunderstanding.”

  I spent the next few minutes apologizing myself, the only genuine part of my entire call, and got off the phone before he could insist on getting my e-mail address.

  I turned to Ellen. “They reserved it three weeks ago. Three full weeks.”

  “So what? They planned a little getaway,” she said. “Not all trysts are spontaneous.”

  “But how did they know they would be free? I don’t mean ‘free’ as in being a widower. I’m talking about their schedule.”

  I went to my bag and pulled out the printed schedule. It was on page two. “Tonight Damien and Miranda were to hold a round-robin meditation workshop. It’s the centerpiece of the retreat. Teresa had a nutrition lecture lined up after dessert, which sounds like an odd time to lecture about nutrition, but it’s on the schedule.”

  I turned to page three. “Tomorrow morning, Damien has a nine a.m. lecture and Teresa starts her massage schedule at eight. I know because I’m her eight o’clock.”

  “Hmph. I don’t get it. They were planning to skip out?”

  “Not in the middle of a retreat. These things are twice a month, on the weekends. If they wanted to run off, they could do it any other time, without screwing up the schedule.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  If Monk had been here, I wouldn’t have had to explain. Then again, if Monk had been here, he would have beaten me to it. “Ellen, they knew three weeks ago that the rest of the weekend would be canceled.”

  “How could they know?” She held out her hand flat, like a stop sign. “Wait. You’re saying they knew this would happen?”

  “And they knew they would want to get away afterward. Be together and avoid the press.”

  “You’re serious? Three weeks ago they knew Miranda would commit suicide today? How?”

  “Because they drove her to it. They made her.”

  “I hate to keep saying this, but how?”

  I didn’t know. But it made a lot more sense than the nonsense I’d been living with for the last six hours. Miranda Bigley didn’t kill herself. She couldn’t have. Someone forced her to do it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mr. Monk and Number 99

  I woke up the next morning surprised I had slept so well. I’m sure the wine had had something to do with it. And that fact that I had a theory now. True, it wasn’t the most plausible theory. How exactly do you drive a person to kill herself, and on an exact, prearranged date? Nevertheless, I had a theory.

  I started the day with a mug of Peet’s French Roast, extra-strong, my usual remedy for the grape-induced cobwebs, but skipped the English muffin and granola. I figured I would save my appetite for Monk’s kitchen, where I would perfectly toast his muffin, cover it evenly with one ounce of butter and get him on board with me, ready to tackle this new case.

  Monk and I were full partners now. Almost. The exam was still more than a week away. But I had every right to bring in a case and have a theory about it. True, we didn’t have an employer, per se. But there have been plenty of cases where we didn’t start with an employer and still got paid. Besides, this was personal.

  I used my key to get in, just like in the old days. And, just like in the old days, Monk was at the kitchen sink, using Clorox and rubber gloves and a bottle brush to clean out the garbage disposal. He didn’t blink an eye to see me walk in, as if the last few months of upheaval had never happened.

  “Why do you clean the garbage disposal?” I said instead of hello. “You never use it.”

  “Of course not. Garbage disposals are full of, you know, garbage. They’re filthy.”

  “Not if you never use them.”

  “It’s still a garbage disposal. It’s like saying a pig isn’t a pig because it’s had a bath. Natalie, stand back. You’re within ten feet of the switch. What in heaven’s name are you thinking?”

  “Sorry.”

  Luckily, the refrigerator and the toaster were twelve and sixteen feet away, respectively, and I could safely make our breakfast without endangering life and limb. “Mr. Monk, I’ve been thinking about yesterday… .”

  As Monk cleaned already clean things and I assembled the muffins, I went on to explain. I told him all about last night with Ellen—about my hunch and the phone call and my deduction about the prearranged tryst.

  “And Damien Bigley, according to the retreat brochure, is a licensed hypnotherapist.” I said this dramatically. It was my big finish. “My theory is that he hypnotized her, maybe over a period of weeks, maybe giving her drugs, leading her closer and closer until finally he got her to jump.

  “That’s how he did it.” I placed the toasted and buttered muffins, each half perfectly centered on a dessert plate, in front of him on the eat-in island.

  Monk had remained silent throughout. Now, finally, he rearranged the muffin on the left and scrunched his face. �
��Ellen was at your place last night?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is, it wasn’t suicide.”

  “Because I called Ellen every ten minutes and she never picked up.”

  “I know. Ellen and I needed to spend some time together. Alone.”

  “To talk about me?”

  “No, not about you. Our mentor, our icon, our life coach just died. We were talking about her.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” I wanted to shake him to make him focus, but I knew it would just make things worse. “Mr. Monk, it’s possible, isn’t it? I know a person can’t be hypnotized to do something against her will. But if there are drugs involved? If the suicide is something as simple as jumping a foot or two forward?”

  “Ellen’s been getting more argumentative lately. The last time I tried to talk to her about her horrible shop …”

  We could have kept going on like this forever. Luckily for my sanity, the phone rang. It was Captain Stottlemeyer with a fresh murder.

  • • •

  The crime scene was an apartment, occupying the lower half of a shabby two-story house on Willow Street on the edge of the Tenderloin. Even people who don’t know San Francisco know about the Tenderloin. Despite the lure of gentrification, which had transformed other parts of town, it has proudly remained a sketchy neighborhood for the past hundred fifty years.

  Lieutenant Devlin was waiting on the street. She didn’t come over to meet us, but stayed by the front door. “The captain’s in the back bedroom.” Devlin is not the type to mince words.

  As we walked past, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a sign beside the door, perhaps a homemade business sign, with a colorful round design, like a balloon. It was mostly hidden behind Devlin’s torso, so I didn’t think much of it.

  In the narrow hall, a row of three cops stood against the right wall, lined up, drinking cups of coffee and ignoring us. Again, as we passed, I noticed something half hidden behind them. A painting or a poster? Colorful again, with a striped tent and flags, although I couldn’t really tell. Monk was preoccupied with keeping any part of his body from touching anything in this grimy hole.

  Captain Stottlemeyer stood at the end of the hall, holding a set of plastic gloves in each hand. “In here, Monk. Natalie, good to see you. Put these on before you step inside. And don’t touch anything, even with them on.”

  Lying in the middle of a multistained, rumpled bed was the body of Dudley Smith, late forties, curly dark hair, not unlike Monk, except he was dressed in a stained T-shirt and ratty jeans. Stottlemeyer neglected to tell us his occupation. Whatever it was, it must have paid well, because surrounding him on the bed were stacks of money, everything from singles to twenties. Hundreds of bills.

  “He dialed nine one one, complaining of nausea, dizziness, seizures. When the EMTs arrived, maybe twelve minutes later, he was like this.”

  “Shouldn’t the CDC be here?” I asked, taking a big step back. “If this is a disease …”

  “You mean the CDC branch at the Department of Public Health? Been and gone. They took their hazmats and left a few minutes ago. It’s not viral or bacteria-based. It’s a poison. Monk?”

  This is one of the strange things about Monk. Well, there are plenty of strange things, but I mean strange as in “out of character.” Here is a man who actually called the CDC when I had a cold and demanded I be quarantined. He’s a man who’s been quoted (by me) as saying, “Nature hates us. Nature wants nothing more than to kill us all.” And yet corpses don’t bother him.

  He bent over Dudley’s face, hands clasped behind his back so that he couldn’t touch anything, even by accident. “Dilated pupils, massive sweating. Quick acting. Combined with the other symptoms, I’m guessing atropine. How was it ingested?”

  The captain wriggled his mustache. When he had weird news to deliver, this was his tell. Not good news or bad news, just weird news, which in our world happened quite often. “The EMTs called our boys before trying to move the body. An hour later, both EMTs were admitted to their own ER. Same symptoms.”

  “Are you saying it’s airborne?” Monk almost shrieked. “Augh. Why are we even here?” He slapped a hand over his mouth and began to hyperventilate, which of course made him breathe even harder.

  “Not airborne.” Stottlemeyer tilted his head toward a corner of the room. A trio of canaries fluttered in a large hanging cage, chirping and flapping their wings. “The proverbial canaries in a coal mine,” he said. “If it was airborne, they’d be dead.”

  “What if they’re immune?” Monk asked.

  “The canaries are not immune.”

  “They could be super canaries. We could die any second—horrible, gasping deaths—and they’ll still be chirping away.”

  “It’s not airborne,” Stottlemeyer insisted. “Get a grip.”

  And, surprisingly, Monk did. It took him a minute or two. But with a sheer force of will, he paced in a tight little circle, each time a little calmer. I was so proud. This was his job—more than a job; it pretty much defined him—and he was now willing himself to be a professional.

  “Topical, then,” he said, and returned to his normal breathing, at least normal for him. “The poison was on the body?”

  “The EMTs said they didn’t touch him, but obviously they did.”

  “Or maybe they didn’t,” Monk argued. “After all, they’re pros. And no one lies to an ER doctor who’s trying to save his life, especially something minor like an EMT touching a body. By the way, are they dead?”

  “They both survived. Thanks for asking.”

  I’d like to say Monk ignored the sarcasm, but he probably didn’t realize it was there. Instead, he held out his hands and framed the scene. “So the EMTs lied. They must have touched something. And it had to be something serious enough to risk their lives over.”

  Okay. Sure, when you phrase it that way and you’re looking at a bed covered with money … “Money,” I said before anyone could beat me to it.

  “The poison’s on the money,” Stottlemeyer added. “Of course. Guess they couldn’t resist a little fringe benefit.” He turned to a CSI. “Bag a handful from the bed and take it in. Now. Devlin!”

  The lieutenant appeared in the doorway, ready for action.

  “Call the ER at St. Mary’s. Have them isolate the EMTs, their clothing and equipment. Also the ambulance. We’re looking for contaminated currency the guys may have filched from the crime scene. Also, anyone who may have come in contact with the bills.”

  “You think the poison’s on the money?” Devlin asked, staring down at all the tempting cash.

  “I do,” said Stottlemeyer. “More important, Monk does.”

  “Good enough for me. Do you want me to make an arrest?” Devlin always seemed eager to slap on the cuffs.

  “No, but keep them separated. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I can question them.” Devlin volunteered. She was stopped by one of Stottlemeyer’s patented glares.

  “Also, we need to clear this with the Secret Service and the Postal Inspection Service.”

  The lieutenant eyed the corpse and shook her head. “They’re not going to want this one.”

  “Maybe not. But we need to inform them and keep them in the loop. I’ll take care of it.”

  “I can do it,” said Devlin, only to be met with another glare. “Okay,” she said, and turned and walked away.

  “What is that under the bed?” Monk was pointing to a pair of large bright yellow objects barely visible under the dust ruffle.

  “Shoes,” the captain said. “Our guy has big feet, huh? Look, Monk, our priority is finding out where this money came from.”

  “What did you say Smith did for a living?” I could hear his throat getting a little constricted.

  “He’s an entertainer. Small stuff.”

  Monk was suddenly alert. His hands went up again, framing bits of the room. “What’s that?” He pointed to a shiny piece of tin sticking out of
a bookcase shelf.

  “Looks like a bike horn,” Stottlemeyer said. “Our friend must have taken up biking. Now, Monk …”

  “And that?” He pointed to what resembled a red rubber ball on the dresser behind the captain.

  “That? Looks like a rubber ball.”

  “It’s not a rubber ball.” He was hyperventilating again. “It’s a rubber nose.”

  Monk can move fast when he wants to. Within a second, he was out of the room. Within five, he was probably out of the house and across the street.

  So much for being a professional.

  “Dudley Smith was a clown?” I asked Stottlemeyer, dumbfounded. He shrugged yes. “You know Monk is afraid of clowns. It’s a real condition. Coulrophobia.”

  “What?” Stottlemeyer chuckled. “You know the names of all his phobias?”

  “Not all,” I had to admit. “Some of them don’t have official names.”

  “Because he invented them. What about his fear of milk?”

  “That has a name. It’s lactaphobia. And don’t try to distract me. His fear of clowns is a real affliction. You knew that. You knew and you didn’t warn him.”

  “Then he wouldn’t have come in and we wouldn’t have gotten to the money so fast.”

  “Well, now he’s gone and is not coming back. Congratulations.”

  The captain seemed unfazed. “You can make it work, Natalie. Isn’t that what you do? Monk is brilliant and you keep him controlled.”

  “Wrong. That’s what I did when I was his assistant. Now I’m an ex-cop. I’m a week away from getting my PI license. I’m not his babysitter. If you want to fix the mess you made, do it yourself.” I was almost ready to follow Monk into the street.

  Stottlemeyer gave a thoughtful nod, then sent out the last CSI and closed the door.

  “It’s still your job to fix it,” he said, looking me straight in the eyes. “Monk is making you his partner out of respect. Do you honestly think the force would hire you as a consultant? On your own?”

  I wanted to say yes. I’d been involved in hundreds of cases by now. Many of them probably wouldn’t have been solved without my participation. “Think carefully before you answer,” said the captain, eyeing the clown in the T-shirt and jeans.