Mr. Monk Is a Mess

by Lee Goldberg

  The lobby was vast and ornate, with massive chandeliers, maritime-themed oil paintings, grand staircases, and a tuxedoed pianist playing tunes at a huge Steinway. You won’t find that at a Motel 6.

  I checked in at the front desk, rattling off a ridiculous story about my house burning down. True, it was a fabrication, but it explained my bags from Marshalls and it got me some sympathy, a coupon for a free drink, and a complimentary toiletry kit to go with my room key. I thanked the clerk and headed for the elevators, stopping for a moment to glance up at the bar, which overlooked the lobby from the second-floor terrace.

  As tired as I was, I couldn’t resist the idea of redeeming my coupon and doing a little detective work. It was, after all, why I was there, wasn’t it?

  My theory about the room was correct. It was a lot nicer than what I would have found at a three-star hotel. The décor was classy, the room was almost as clean as Monk’s apartment, and the bed looked so warm and comfy that I felt myself rapidly losing my resolve to play detective.

  So I tossed my bags on the bed and forced myself into the shower, where the water revived me, washing the travel and the crime scene off of my skin. I stayed under the pounding spray for what felt like hours, then dried off, brushed my teeth, and got into some of my fresh clothes from Marshalls. The ensemble wasn’t Gucci or Chanel, and cost far less than one night in the Belmont’s cheapest room, but I hoped nobody would notice in the dim lights of the bar.

  * * *

  I picked up my purse, my key, and my coupon and headed downstairs for my free drink and, I hoped, a lead or two on the dead woman in my bathtub.

  The bar that I was working at when I met Monk was blue collar and unpretentious. It was a comfortable place to watch a game on TV, eat some stale pretzels, and get drunk. It catered to the lonely and the bored, the alcoholic and the desperately horny.

  The Belmont’s cocktail lounge was white collar and elegant. The upscale and well-dressed clientele snacked on complimentary tapas and warm almonds and spent considerably more on their libations, but they were probably every bit as lonely and bored, alcoholic and horny.

  A bar is a bar, after all, no matter how much you dress up the place or the customers.

  I found an empty stool, took a handful of warm almonds, and glanced around the room. Most of the women were thin, expertly and expensively styled, and showing lots of cleavage. I felt matronly by comparison. In fact, I didn’t even feel like a member of the same species. I couldn’t look like those women if I tried.

  The women were outnumbered by the men, most of whom were in suits and, I assumed, were business travelers staying at the hotel.

  The bartender cleared his throat to draw my attention. He was in his fifties, with a touch of gray in his hair and eyes that looked like they’d seen it all.

  “What would you like?” he asked.

  I slid my coupon over to him like it was a hundred-dollar bill. “I’d like a glass of the house white wine, please.”

  He nodded, took a wineglass from the shelf behind him, set it in front of me, then went off to get the bottle. He came back a moment later, filled the glass, and set the bottle aside.

  In the short time it took him to get me my drink, I’d cleaned out the entire bowl of nuts. I hadn’t realized how ravenous I was.

  He picked up the empty bowl and, from some magic place under the counter, replaced it with one that was already full of warm nuts.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “Actually, yeah, maybe you can,” I said and took a sip of the wine. It was wonderful. “Wow, that’s really good. I’m looking for an old friend of mine, and I know this is her favorite bar, but she doesn’t seem to be around tonight. Maybe you know her.”

  He shrugged. “What’s her name, Detective?”

  I was stunned but I was also very, very flattered. “I look like a cop to you?”

  “The only way you’d look more like a cop is if you were wearing a uniform and a badge.”

  “Really?” I said, taking some more nuts. “What is it about me that’s so coply?”

  “It’s an attitude, I suppose, a gaze that’s observant, judgmental, and a bit cynical.”

  “I could say the same about you.”

  “My cynicism is different from a cop’s,” he said. “It’s also your cheap clothes and the clumsy story you just told.”

  “So you really think I’m a cop,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Most definitely.”

  “I could kiss you,” I said. The comment surprised him and for some reason I took a lot of pleasure in that. “You’re the first person who has seen that quality in me and you’re a total stranger. In a silly way, it makes being a cop true for me in a way that my badge doesn’t.”

  “Okay,” he said, a little uneasy now. I guess I wasn’t talking like any cop he’d ever met.

  “What can you tell me about Michelle Keeling?” I had some more of my wine.

  “I don’t know her,” he said.

  “Redhead, lots of freckles, dresses like all the other women here.”

  “I think I know who you mean. She’s in here a lot. She’s classy. The guys like her.”

  “Any guys in particular?”

  “Rich ones, usually.”

  “And unusually?”

  “There was the guy I saw her with the last time she was in here, about two or three nights ago,” he said. “He dressed almost as cheaply as you, wore a tie that went out of style during the Clinton administration, and smiled way too much, which I’d expect from someone in here who probably lives paycheck to paycheck in Walla Walla.”

  “Walla Walla?”

  “Home of the Washington sweet onion.”

  “How do you know that’s where he was from?” I was down to half a glass of wine and another half bowl of nuts.

  “Some salesman was at the bar, writing out a label for a FedEx package, contracts he wanted to send to an onion grower in Walla Walla. He didn’t know the zip code but this guy did.”

  “So if she usually went for rich guys, what did Michelle see in him?”

  “His wallet. Warren Buffett doesn’t look like a billionaire, but he is,” the bartender said. “This guy didn’t dress rich, but he drank Cristal like it was mineral water. So maybe he was incognito or just one of those rich guys who like to come across like a regular Joe.”

  “Did she leave with him?”

  “She always leaves with them,” the bartender said.

  “Was she a hooker?”

  “We don’t have hookers at the Belmont,” he said.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  He frowned at me and went off to tend to another customer, leaving me with some questions to ponder. I knew more about Michelle than I did before, assuming we were both talking about the same redhead. Still, knowing she was a hooker who picked up guys at the Belmont didn’t explain what she was doing in my house.

  But I was too tired to do much thinking beyond that. I finished off my wine, and the almonds, and went back to my room.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mr. Monk Gets a Call

  The bed was incredible. It was soft and warm with lots of fluffy pillows. I could easily have slept in until noon if my cell phone hadn’t started ringing promptly at eight in the morning.

  I put a pillow over my head to muffle the ringing until my voice mail snagged the call. The ringing stopped and I started to fall back to sleep. But whoever it was kept calling back every few minutes, unwilling to settle for leaving me a message, repeatedly waking me up just as I was falling off the precipice into sweet slumber.

  I finally gave up and reached for the phone before I remembered that I’d left it charging on the desk across the room. That meant that I had to actually leave the bedded bliss of my linen cocoon to go get it.

  Now I was pissed.

  I got up, marched to the desk, and grabbed the phone, half tempted to throw it across the room, but when I saw the name on the calle
r ID, it took the edge off my anger.

  The caller was Ambrose, Monk’s agoraphobic brother, who’d only stepped out of their childhood home in Marin County maybe four or five times in the last thirty-some years. He’d left once because his house was set on fire and another time because he was poisoned, both instances related to one of Monk’s murder investigations. Ambrose’s most recent venture outdoors was on his last birthday. Monk and I kidnapped him and took him on a road trip in a motor home, which turned out pretty well, even though Ambrose almost got killed again by murderers. It was enough to make an average man never want to leave the house, not to mention Ambrose, but there were no hard feelings. Ambrose even bought the motor home that we’d rented, though he’d yet to venture anywhere in it.

  “Hello, Ambrose,” I said.

  “I’m so glad I got you, Natalie. I need to see Adrian right away.”

  It was an emergency. I knew it because he didn’t bother to say hello and he was always polite and courteous. There was also a frantic undercurrent in his voice.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  “I’ll tell you when you get here,” he said. “But it’s a matter of life and death.”

  “Then call 911,” I said. “Don’t wait for us.”

  “They can’t help me. Only he can. Please hurry.”

  And with that, he hung up.

  I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, wondering what could be wrong, and if the situation was truly so dire, why Ambrose couldn’t tell me about it over the phone.

  That raised another question. If he was so eager for Monk’s help, why didn’t he call his brother directly instead of calling me?

  And why wasn’t Yuki Nakamura, his live-in assistant and girlfriend, whom he met on our road trip, there to help?

  It was odd. Then again, most things involving the Monk brothers usually were.

  I checked out of the Belmont, retrieved my car from the valet, and headed straight to a car wash. Whatever Ambrose’s emergency might be, it would have to wait a little while longer. Monk would never get in my messy car if he saw it in the light of day.

  Once the car was thoroughly cleaned, I went over to Monk’s place and let myself in with my key.

  Monk was going over the entry hall floor with a Swiffer, a dust mop that picks up particles using a dry, disposable cloth. His hands were in rubber dish gloves and he was wearing an apron over his clothes.

  “Good morning, Natalie. I hope you had a more restful night than I did.”

  I wasn’t surprised that he’d had a rough night. He’d spent most of the day sleeping, thanks to the pills I gave him. His internal clock must have been completely out of whack.

  “Did you get walloped by the jet lag?”

  “I was thankful for it. I was up cleaning most of the night. I thought I’d never finish getting rid of all the muck,” Monk said, running the mop over the shiny hardwood. “But this is the last of it.”

  “The apartment looks exactly the same as it did last night.”

  “You were in a state of shock and if that wasn’t abundantly clear before, what you just said proves it and so does this.” He lifted the mop, removed the cloth from the Swiffer head, and held it out to me to inspect.

  “Look at that filth,” he said.

  It was perfectly clean. “There’s nothing on it.”

  “It’s covered with dust particles.”

  “They must be microscopic, because they can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

  “Why do you always have to be so lewd?” he said and carried the cloth to the garbage can in his laundry room.

  I followed him. “It’s an expression, Mr. Monk.”

  “It’s a lewd expression,” he said, removing his apron and hanging it on a hook on the wall.

  “It means looking at something with just your eyes, unaided by any magnifying device.”

  “So say that,” Monk said. “There’s no need to use the N word.”

  “Naked is not the N word.”

  “It is in this house,” he said. “Speaking of which, where did you sleep last night?”

  “The Belmont Hotel.”

  “I pay you way too much,” he said.

  “You haven’t paid me in weeks.”

  “It’s a good thing I haven’t because you obviously can’t control your spending. You’d just blow right through it, living a lifestyle you can’t sustain. You should be thanking me for keeping your salary safe.”

  “I was there one night, in the cheapest room they had, and I wanted to do some digging into the Michelle Keeling case. But I’ll tell you about that later. We have more pressing concerns.”

  “Like your inability to hold on to money.”

  “Ambrose called and wants to see you right away.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He won’t tell me,” I said. “But he says it’s an emergency.”

  “It’s just a ploy to drag us out there.”

  “So what if it is? He doesn’t leave the house and you’ve avoided him ever since Yuki moved in.”

  “Forgive me for not wanting to hang out with the Hells Angels.”

  “Just because she rides a motorcycle, that doesn’t make her a Hells Angel.”

  “She has tattoos, the kind that don’t wash off. And she’s an ex-convict.”

  “None of that matters. Ambrose wants to see you and we’re going out there.”

  “I don’t see why when we could just call him back and make him tell us his problem on the phone.”

  Well, at least now I knew one good reason why Ambrose called me and not Monk.

  “Because he’s your brother, Mr. Monk. You haven’t seen him in months, and it could be a long time before you see him again. Or have you forgotten why we’re here?”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “I did. It completely slipped my mind. How am I going to tell him that I’m moving all the way across the country?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “How did you tell Julie?”

  “I haven’t yet,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with walking into my house and finding a dead woman in my bathtub.”

  “Maybe after you tell Julie you could tell Ambrose for me.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “You’ll be on a roll,” he said.

  “Telling your brother that you’re moving away is something you’ll have to do yourself, Mr. Monk.”

  “Then maybe I should stay.”

  “You’re going to give up your job as a police officer in Summit, and forfeit any future you might have with Ellen Morse, because you’re afraid to tell Ambrose that you’re leaving?”

  “That sounds reasonable to me,” he said.

  I didn’t feel like arguing with him. Instead, I just went to the closet, took out his coat, and handed it to him.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  * * *

  On the outside, the Monk family home in Tewksbury looked exactly as it had when the Monk brothers were growing up. It was a handsome, well-maintained Victorian on a tree-lined street with a perfectly manicured lawn. And that’s how I knew something was wrong.

  The last time that we were there, Yuki Nakamura’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a class C motor home, the kind that looks like a camper-trailer eating a Ford van, were parked in the driveway.

  Today, they were both gone.

  From that alone, I had a pretty good idea what Ambrose’s emergency was and so did Monk.

  “Wipe that smile off your face,” I said while we were still in my car, parked at the curb out front.

  “You’re the one who is always telling me to lighten up and look at the bright side.”

  “Not at your brother’s expense,” I said. “If you don’t go back to being your miserable self right now, the first thing I will do when I get out of this car is pick my nose.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’ll wipe my finger
on my pants and then I’ll spit on the sidewalk.”

  “You’re an animal.”

  “Perfect,” I said, pointing at his sour face. “Hold that thought.”

  We got out of the car and headed up the front walk. Ambrose was waiting for us with the front door open, but the screen door was closed.

  He wore his usual ensemble—an argyle cardigan sweater vest buttoned closed over a long-sleeve flannel shirt, buttoned at the collar and cuffs, a pair of corduroy pants, and a pair of Hush Puppies identical to those worn by his brother. Instead of greeting us with his usual awkward yet endearing smile, he looked distraught.

  “What took you so long?” Ambrose said, taking a big step back into the entry hall as we opened the door. “Yuki is missing and time is of the essence.”

  “Don’t worry, Ambrose,” Monk said as we came in. “We’ll chase her down. How long ago did she go off with your motor home?”

  “Yuki didn’t take it,” Ambrose said. “She moved it to the storage lot across from Beach’s grocery store weeks ago because the neighbors were complaining about it.”

  “But how do you know it’s still there?” Monk asked, closing the door.

  “I don’t care whether it is or not. It’s Yuki that I’m worried about.”

  Even though Ambrose and Yuki had been living together for several months now, nothing inside the house had changed, at least not downstairs. The living room was still full of file cabinets, which contained every piece of mail that had come to the house over the last forty years, as well as tidy stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books.

  “We’ll bring her to justice,” Monk said. “What did she take?”

  “She didn’t take anything. Everything of hers, except her motorcycle, is still here.”

  “What about everything of yours?”

  “You aren’t listening to me,” Ambrose said. “Yuki is gone. She went to Beach’s grocery store yesterday afternoon and didn’t come back.”

  “Did you call the police?” I asked.

  “Of course I did. But they were no help. They wouldn’t do a thing. They never do when I call. They think I’m a crank.”

  “That’s because you call them six or seven times a week,” Monk said.