Mr. Monk Helps Himself

by Hy Conrad

  The window, the only window in the tiny building, had been built for ventilation and opened onto an air shaft, facing someone else’s brick wall two feet away. It was an impossible escape route, but Monk had seen it as his only means of rescue. He had figured out how to attach a message to a balloon, hold it outside the air shaft, fill it with helium, and let it go, like a shipwrecked sailor sending off a message in a bottle.

  I caught him just as he was trying to tie off an inflated balloon. The surprise of seeing me made him let go, and the balloon sputtered and deflated and fell. “Natalie.” He sounded annoyed. “Now I have to start again.”

  “No, Adrian. I’m here. You don’t have to send any more.”

  “But I only did nine.” He voice was hoarse, probably from the hours of shouting and the lack of water. “Help me make it ten.”

  “No.” I turned off the tank valve. “That’s okay.”

  “Do you have anything to drink?” He tried to clear his throat. “I would prefer Fiji Water in an unopened bottle. Thirty-eight degrees.”

  “Soon. Very soon.” Then I took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. He was too weak to squirm. His wrists were cut and bloody from the handcuffs. “They’re going to be here soon. I’m going to hide, but I need you to focus.”

  “Who’s going to be here?”

  “The bad guys. You need to get them talking.”

  “Natalie, no. You can’t leave.”

  “I’m not leaving. I’m just going to hide in a corner.”

  “Can I hide in a corner?”

  “No. You have to stay here and make them talk—about Dudley Smith or the Cemedrin murders. We can’t let them lie their way out of it again.”

  As I was talking, I took my phone out of my bag and began to scroll through the screens.

  “Do you have an app for Fiji Water? Any temperature.”

  “Sorry.” I found what I was looking for, the Voice Memo app. I just hoped it would record long enough to do us some good.

  As soon as I heard them prying at the door, I pressed “record,” slipped it behind a purple fright wig on a shelf, and headed for a disorganized pile of boxes marked “props.” If worse came to worst, I could fight them off with a rubber chicken.

  I knelt behind the boxes, pushing one aside to give me a sliver of a view. For a hopeful second, I thought it might be Stottlemeyer and Devlin coming to the rescue. But I knew the sound of their footsteps. These were different.

  It took them a few seconds. Perhaps they’d been momentarily concerned about the light being on. Then John and Alicia Harriman walked into my line of sight. They stopped, openmouthed, as perplexed by Monk’s ingenuity as I had been impressed.

  “What are you doing?” asked Alicia. She said it disapprovingly, like he wasn’t supposed to try to escape.

  “You can’t squeeze out that window,” John said.

  “I wasn’t squeezing out,” Monk said, his eyes wandering to the purple fright wig. “I was sending a message in a balloon about how you kidnapped me and are going to kill me.”

  The Harrimans didn’t seem fazed by his convoluted balloon scheme. But murder? They glanced at each other, then back at Monk. “Kill you?” Alicia said with more disapproval. “No, no. We just want to talk.”

  “We should have left water,” said John. “I’m so sorry.” Despite the situation, explaining themselves to a handcuffed man in an abandoned office, they treated it as perfectly normal. “Are you thirsty?” John rummaged through his backpack and came out with a water bottle with a blue snap cap.

  I could tell Monk was desperate. He would have salivated, if he’d had any liquid left in him. He stared at it. “Is that the same poison you used on Dudley Smith?”

  “Who?” John shook his head. “The clown? I never met him.”

  “We didn’t even know he’d died until you told us,” said Alicia, in a statement that could probably pass a polygraph.

  Monk kept staring at the bottle. “Or is that what you used in the Cemedrin murders back in oh-nine?”

  That did it. That revelation managed to break through their composure.

  “He’s just guessing,” Alicia said out of the corner of her mouth.

  “That’s quite a guess,” said John.

  “You poisoned the money without even knowing who it would kill. Of course, it wasn’t the first time you’d sent poison out into world.”

  “It seemed like a clean way to deal with a problem,” Alicia admitted almost nonchalantly. “I’m afraid this one’s going to be messier.” I’m sure Monk didn’t like the sound of that, the messy part and the death part.

  “How did Dudley know?” John asked, genuinely curious. “I assume it was something in the garage.”

  “I kept telling you to clean that garage,” said Alicia.

  “Garages are insidious,” Monk agreed.

  In the stillness of the shadowy room, the beep, the signal from my phone that the Voice Memo was shutting off, was louder than I’d ever heard it.

  Monk glanced toward the wig. Alicia followed his glance and knew. “I thought you took away his phone.”

  ‘I did,” said John.

  “Obviously you didn’t.” The wig and the phone were out of reach for Monk, making it easy for Alicia to grab it and bring it back to her husband.

  “That’s not his phone,” John said.

  She shook her head. “You always refuse to take responsibility. Of course, it’s his phone. Whose phone would it be?”

  “Not his.” John stiffened and began to look around. “His phone was a little red thing.”

  Alicia seemed ready to dismiss her husband’s excuses. But then she looked at Monk, who is a terrible liar, even when he’s not saying anything. This time Monk really tried. He was looking everywhere but the boxes, his eyes darting this way and that around the room, then skipping the boxes like they were made of snakes. Alicia figured it out.

  Slowly, silently, she came toward me and the boxes. Along the way, she picked up a giant umbrella, bright pink, with tassels hanging from the tips. Her eyes locked on the sliver and I stepped back into the darkness. In time, I hoped.

  When the pink umbrella pushed aside the box and sent it crashing to the floor, I was almost ready.

  I had already grabbed the Glock 22 from my bag, released the safety, and was pulling it up to aim. I stepped to one side, keeping both of the Harrimans in my line of fire.

  “Officer Natalie Teeger, SPD.” Even as I said it, I promised myself never to use this little lie again. “You’re under arrest. Put your hands in the air. Both of you.”

  Alicia was closer to me and the threat of the gun, and she did as she was told. John was maybe forty feet away. My fear was that he might ignore me and reach for a weapon. And in a way, he did.

  For a moment, he stood there, frozen. Then, with a flick of his right thumb, he popped open the blue tip of the water bottle and started to raise it to his lips.

  “Don’t,” I shouted. “Put it down.”

  He smiled. “What are you going to do, shoot me?”

  That was a good question. Was I ready to shoot a human being and have that on my PI record, not to mention in my nightmares? Or was I more willing to watch a cold-blooded killer drink the poison he’d been meaning to force on my friend? A kind of just deserts.

  “It’s very painful and messy,” Monk advised him. “Seizures. Cramps. You should have seen Smith after. His clothes. His bed. A god-awful sight. It’s seared in my mind.”

  Monk wasn’t describing Smith’s death throes, but the fact that Smith had been wearing a stained T-shirt and ratty jeans and was lying on a rumpled bed covered with dirty money. His heartfelt description made Harriman pause.

  “Mr. Harriman, don’t,” I urged. “Backup is on the way with an ambulance. Even if you do it, you’ll survive. It’ll be excruciatingly painful but you’ll survive.”

  The threat of pain trumped the appeal of death. I had a feeling he might be like that. Despite four murders, they were amateurs and
had probably never seen a dead body. For them it was all about the easy way out. And for right now, staying alive seemed easier.

  He lowered the bottle. I told him to drop it and kick it over. He did, and I breathed a sigh. “Now stand together,” I ordered. “Now.” They did, and I breathed another sigh.

  By the time Stottlemeyer and Devlin broke in, guns drawn, ready to save the day, I had everything under control.

  “Monk. Natalie. Are you guys all right?” The captain took control of the suspects while the lieutenant did a sweep of the rest of the building.

  “We’re fine, Captain. Thanks.”

  I was tempted to throw him a snarky smile and say, “What took you so long?” But I resisted. They had actually saved the day many times in the past. I didn’t want to say or do anything to discourage this behavior.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Mr. Monk and the New Deal

  A tabloid magazine has heard a rumor that Justina, a popular singer, has been injured in a domestic altercation with her boyfriend, and it wants visual proof. The magazine hires you to take her picture.

  You find Justina inside a clothing store, see a bruise on her cheek, and ask for an interview. Justina says, “Not now,” and begins to leave. You physically block her exit from the store and take several pictures. Which of the following is true?

  (a) You are free to take her picture as long as you don’t block her exit for an “unreasonable” amount of time.

  (b) By asking for an interview, you misrepresented yourself and are subject to a fine of $3,000 and/or suspension of your PI license.

  (c) No charges or suit can be filed, since celebrities are public figures and have no expectation of privacy in a public place.

  (d) You are liable for damages from a civil suit. You are also are subject to a fine of not less than $5,000.

  The answer was d, according to the California Antipaparazzi Law of 2012, which prohibits “an assault or false imprisonment committed with the intent to capture any type of visual image, sound recording …” Blah, blah, blah. I also couldn’t use my car to block her car.

  I aced this question and the rest of them and was out of the Hayward facility twenty minutes before “pencils down.” They don’t tell you your score at the end, just pass or fail. But I’ll bet I left with the highest score of the day. After two tries and hundreds of hours of study, the license was mine.

  My motivation for racing through the test on that Tuesday morning was not to show off—okay, that was part of it—but to get back to San Francisco in time for the ceremony.

  Captain Stottlemeyer had received three commendations throughout his career, so he pretended number four wasn’t any big deal. But you could tell from the way he stood on the platform in front of city hall that it was.

  For Lieutenant Amy Devlin, this was a first. Like her boss, she pretended not to care. But I can tell when someone’s just spent two hours at the stylist. Her short black hair had suddenly grown red highlights and her prized Edward Scissorhands look had been noticeably softened at the edges.

  Monk and I sat on the platform for the ceremony. Each of us rated a special mention from both the mayor and the police commissioner for our part in bringing the Cemedrin killers to justice—“for their invaluable consultation services to the department,” as the commissioner so blandly put it.

  For me, the best part of the afternoon wasn’t the official shout-out. It was the view from the platform.

  Ginny Costello’s family—her parents and two sisters—were seated in the front row. Little Craig Tuppering’s parents were right beside them. A row behind them, Harold Luckenby’s three grown children sat solemnly, their own families at their side. All wore black for the occasion, although I had to think this was a good day for them, finally getting some answers about these senseless murders and seeing justice done.

  I can’t say for certain, but I think the best part for Monk must have been the presence of special agents Grooms and Cardea. They were also seated on the platform, but in the back row and off to the side. The mayor mentioned their names in passing, as investigators who had worked tirelessly over the years to solve these heartless crimes. But I think everyone realized that this was just code for “not being able to get the job done.”

  I counted four times when Monk, pretending to have a crick in his neck or the sun in his eyes, craned himself sideways to catch a glimpse of the stone-faced agents. On two occasions, I also found myself with a crick in my neck.

  In the original plan for the ceremony, Monk and I were scheduled to receive letters of commendation from the FBI. The San Francisco field office had fought this, of course, with Grooms pointing out the jurisdictional irregularities of the investigation, among other things. The compromise was that Monk and I would receive the letters through the mail and not at the ceremony.

  We were off the platform by three and back at my mini-Victorian by three thirty, where Ellen and my daughter had organized a little party.

  Julie had made the trip from Berkeley with a carful of classmates, including Maxwell, her too hot/too cold boyfriend. For the first little while, Julie mingled, congratulating Amy and Leland, as she called them, and catching them up on her college adventures. Then she gravitated back to her friends, especially Maxwell. That was normal, but it made me a little sad. She had her own world now.

  Maxwell seemed nice. But it’s strange when you’ve heard so many personal details about someone before meeting them. You form very specific opinions and suddenly have to deal with the reality of whoever they really are.

  I could see from the way he glanced sideways at me that he was slightly in awe. His girlfriend’s mother had actually caught the Cemedrin killers and had held them at gunpoint. For me, the sideways glance was better than an FBI letter of commendation, although I was still planning to have that framed.

  Monk is not a public person, to say the least. The ceremony had probably taken as much out of him as eighteen hours of captivity. But since Ellen had planned the party, he felt he had to come. The two of them stood in a corner of my kitchen, separating themselves from the crowd and talking like teenagers. Still, I wasn’t surprised to look up one moment and find him missing in action.

  “Did Luther pick him up?” I asked Ellen, who by now was standing alone, out on my front porch.

  “Luther picked him up,” she confirmed.

  An hour later, the party was still going when the hostess herself sneaked out and wandered over to the Pine Street apartment.

  I found Monk in the middle of his sofa, his lightbulb-cleaning kit on the coffee table, picking up where we’d left off a few weeks ago when we’d been interrupted by the mysterious arrival of Confederate bills. Or he could already be starting on the next cleaning cycle. I didn’t ask.

  “Ellen was in an odd mood,” he said without looking up from the compact fluorescent three-way in his hands. The compact fluorescents were always a challenge.

  “What do you mean, odd?”

  “She seemed happy. She even thanked me, for some reason.”

  “A woman thanking you,” I mused. “That is odd.”

  “Extremely. She kept talking about having time now to make the right decisions in her life and not to feel boxed in by money worries. I pretended to know what she was talking about. It was easier.”

  I felt this was as good a time as any to break the news. “She was probably talking about the reward money we’re going to get.”

  He finally stopped polishing and looked up. “What reward?”

  “Miranda Bigley’s insurance. They don’t have to pay out the policies, now that we proved fraud.”

  I was making it sound simpler than it was. It had been a lot of work in the past week—contacting the three insurance companies, informing them of our role in uncovering the Bigleys’ fraud, getting statements from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office to back me up, and reminding the companies repeatedly of their own whistle-blower guidelines.

  Insurance companies don’t like paying out
anything, even when you’ve just saved them millions. But they wound up seeing it my way.

  “So I’m getting a reward?” His face lit up, brighter than a freshly cleaned bulb.

  “No, Adrian, you’re not. We are getting half a reward, which is going into the general fund for Monk and Teeger, Consulting Detectives, a Limited Liability Corporation.”

  “But I’m getting the other half.”

  “No,” I said firmly. “The other half goes to Ellen Morse.”

  He didn’t like other people standing and talking while he sat—something about heads not being at the same level—so I sat across from him and gently explained my agreement with Ellen.

  Ellen had believed in me when no one else had. She had agreed to help and footed the bill for her visit to the Sanctuary. She was the one who had found the pearls and gotten them out of Damien Bigley’s sock drawer… . “Plus I promised her she’d get half.”

  “But I solved the case,” he whined. “Don’t I get a say?”

  “Actually, you don’t. I’m the one with the private investigator’s license and the legal right to start a business. They’re making out the checks to our corporation and I’m the head of the corporation.”

  This was all technically true. According to the state of California, if Monk wanted to be in the PI business with me, he would have to be my employee. Not that it would make a big difference in the real world. But it just might give me the extra bit of leverage I needed to get treated like a real partner.

  “Don’t worry, Adrian. When the checks come, I’ll give you a nice bonus. As long as you promise not to buy any more limousine companies.”

  “You’ll give me a bonus? Wait a minute. I hired you. You’re my employee.”

  “Times change.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  Monk returned to his lightbulbs, feverishly attacking another compact fluorescent three-way. I could tell he was stewing and thinking, trying his best to adjust to this grim, new reality.

  He had just switched over to the row of eighty-watt interior floods when he spoke again. “Don’t you want to stay and help me clean the bulbs? I know how much you like that.”