by Lee Goldberg
“About legitimate violations of the law,” Ambrose said. “I’m a good citizen and I’m vigilant. You wouldn’t believe the things I see from my window. It’s a jungle out there. People would be much better off if they just stayed in their homes.”
“I hate to say this, but maybe she was in an accident,” I said. “Did you try calling local hospitals?”
“Of course,” Ambrose said. “I’m relieved to say that she’s not in any of them.”
“Did you call the biker bars?” Monk asked.
“Why would I do that?” Ambrose replied.
“It’s good to know you haven’t completely lost your senses,” Monk said. “So she’s gone. It was bound to happen. All things considered, you came out of this entire sordid episode unscathed. You’re better off without her.”
Ambrose folded his arms across his chest and glared at his brother. “Are you better off without Trudy?”
Monk flinched. It was a low blow, bringing his dead wife into this, but he deserved it.
“It’s not the same thing,” Monk said. “Trudy wasn’t a tattooed, ex-convict biker chick who I picked up on the road. Her skin was unblemished by ink, she was law-abiding, and she was my wife.”
“Meeting Yuki is the best thing that has ever happened to me, Adrian. She’s completely changed my life.”
“She has? How?” Monk said. “You’ve been living in this house for forty years and you’re still afraid to step out the door.”
“But can’t you see that everything else about me is different?” Ambrose said.
“You look exactly the same,” Monk said. “You’re even wearing the same clothes.”
“Inside, Adrian. I’m a totally different person inside.”
“Ipecac and an enema will have the same effect,” Monk said. “Though I’d rather kill myself.”
“Mr. Monk,” I said, giving him a stern look, “Ambrose is trying to tell you something important.”
“It’s okay, Natalie,” Ambrose said. “I’m used to Adrian’s indifference. That’s one of the reasons Yuki is so special. She lets me know every moment of every day that what I feel, and what I think, and what I do matter to her.”
“Of course she did,” Monk said. “You were her meal ticket.”
“I love her, Adrian, and I know that she loves me.”
“Then why did she leave you?” Monk said.
“Mr. Monk!” I could have slapped him. “How can you say something so cruel to your own brother?”
“Because I’m trying to knock some sense into him,” Monk said. “It’s called tough love.”
“Adrian asked a valid question, Natalie,” Ambrose said. “And here’s my answer. She wouldn’t leave me. That’s why I know that she’s in trouble. You have to find her. I wish I could go out there and do it myself, but I can’t. I’m a miserable excuse for a man. I don’t deserve her.”
I went over to Ambrose and gave him a hug. And for the first time ever, he didn’t go rigid with discomfort, which was all the evidence I needed that Yuki had changed him. I stepped back, but kept my hands on his shoulders.
“You’re a good man, Ambrose. We’ll find her.”
“Thank you, Natalie,” he said.
“But there’s something I have to know first,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “What if we find her and she doesn’t want to come back?”
“Then at least I’ll know that she’s okay,” he said. “If she’s happy, then I will be, too.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” I said.
“‘Good riddance’ is what I wanted to hear,” Monk said.
“That’s heartless,” I said to him.
“It’s better than mindless. I appear to be the only person in this room who is thinking clearly,” Monk said. “Let’s be honest about this, Ambrose. What do you really know about this woman?”
“Not much more than you do,” Ambrose said.
What we knew was that she’d been in prison for something, that she’d killed someone, and that she’d ended up in St. Louis. An investigative journalist named Dub Clemens, who was dying of lung cancer, hired her as his assistant to help him with what he knew would be his last story. Together, they set out in a motor home, chasing clues left across the country by a serial killer. That’s how we met her. And when Clemens died, Yuki came to work for Ambrose and they fell in love.
“How can you love someone you know so little about?” Monk asked.
“It’s not her past that I fell in love with,” Ambrose replied. “It’s who she is today and who we are together.”
“Do you have a photograph of her?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “It was a huge mistake. I just never imagined her leaving. But I’m going to take hundreds of pictures of her as soon as she gets back.”
“Do you have anything that might have her fingerprints on it?”
“What for?” he asked.
“There’s a possibility that Yuki Nakamura may not be her real name,” I said. “If she has a criminal record, her fingerprints will give us whatever is on her in the system.”
“Are you listening to what she’s saying, Ambrose?” Monk asked. “Think about it. Is the woman Natalie just described someone you really want back in your life?”
Ambrose ignored him. “Good idea, Natalie. Let me see what I can find.”
He went upstairs. As soon as Ambrose was out of earshot, Monk glared at me.
“Why are you encouraging him? It’s obvious what happened. She couldn’t stand being a prisoner in this house for another second and fled.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“It’s a certainty.” Monk paced in front of me. “She couldn’t have done this at a worse time for me. I can’t tell Ambrose that I’m leaving right after she’s left him. His mental health is shaky as it is.”
“So that’s why you’re so upset. It’s pure selfishness. Well, now you have a great motivation to find her, don’t you?”
“Not if it’s just so she can tell us that she’s finished with him,” Monk said.
“Then you better hope it really is true love and that she’s in trouble.”
“So I’m screwed no matter what happens,” Monk said. “I see that my life has finally returned to normal.”
Ambrose came downstairs with a book in a plastic bag. It was an owner’s manual for a 386 desktop computer.
“One of my early classics,” Ambrose said, handing the bag to me. “She’s been reading one chapter each night before bed. It’s been a revelation. I had no idea when I wrote it that I was writing erotica.”
Monk did a full-body cringe. I ignored him and looked at Ambrose.
“Please don’t worry,” I said. “Mr. Monk won’t rest, and neither will I, until we find Yuki.”
“I know that you won’t.” Ambrose looked at Monk. “Regardless of what some of you may think of her.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mr. Monk Goes to the Store
We went from Ambrose’s house to Beach’s grocery store, which was where Yuki was going when she disappeared. It was located in a small shopping center a few blocks away and across the street from U-Store-It, where the motor home was supposed to be parked in storage.
As we drove by U-Store-It, I could see that the motor home was there, smack in the middle of a lot crammed with other RVs, boats, trailers, and large trucks. There were also rows of storage units with corrugated-metal roll-up doors painted bright orange.
“Someone should notify the owner of the storage facility to correct their sign,” Monk said. “It was obviously written by someone who is illiterate. Even a preschooler knows how to spell you.”
“It’s shorthand,” I said.
“We should leave a note, or better yet, a correction,” Monk said. “It’s a blight on the entire town.”
“We have other priorities,” I said, and steered our car into the shopping center parking lot.
“If this was Summit, I would ticket him.”
“The
re’s no law on the books that says words on signs have to be spelled correctly.”
“The law of gravity isn’t on the books,” Monk said. “But we are expected to follow it anyway.”
“We don’t have the choice.”
“Exactly,” he said. “It’s the same thing.”
I might have argued with his logic but I was distracted by a troubling sight. Yuki’s motorcycle was in one of the parking spaces and her tires were slashed. I pulled in beside it and stared at those tires, which struck me as a particularly ominous sign. I could just imagine the sharp knife that was used to cut the tires and imagine what damage the same weapon could cause to a human body.
Like Yuki’s.
But I was being overly and needlessly dramatic. There were no signs of blood on the motorcycle or the pavement, so I scolded myself for letting my imagination run wild.
Thinking such grim thoughts about Yuki, and only minutes into our investigation, wasn’t helpful. In fact, it was damaging. I needed to objectively analyze whatever I saw without adding drama that could color my perceptions and lead us down the wrong path.
“Why are we parking here?” Monk asked. “There are other spaces that are much closer and if you park beside that Chevrolet two spaces down, the cars on this side of the aisle will be in alphabetical order.”
“Because that’s Yuki’s motorcycle next to us,” I said. “And the tires are slashed.”
Monk looked over his shoulder at the next aisle. “In fact, if we could get the driver of that Acura to move his car into the first space on this side, that would be perfect.”
“I need you to focus, Mr. Monk. Yuki’s motorcycle being here changes things.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Because someone slashed her tires. If it happened while she was in the store, maybe she decided to walk back home and something happened to her on the way. On the other hand, she could have abandoned her bike here for some other reason and the tires were slashed afterward, which also raises some troubling questions. What do you think?”
Monk frowned and rubbed his chin. “I think the motorcycle needs to be taken away. It doesn’t belong in a row of cars. Motorcycles should have their own row.”
“Forget about organizing the vehicles in the parking lot and think about Yuki. That’s our mission right now.”
“That’s your mission,” Monk said.
“He’s your brother.”
“Who deserves better than some motorcycle mama. She probably walked out of the store, hitched a ride with the first biker that she saw, and rode off with him to his garage, where they are happily smoking marijuana joints, taking LSD, and listening to rock music way too loud.”
“When you took Ambrose on the road trip for his birthday, you did it because you wanted to open him up to the world so he could find happiness. You succeeded. It was on that trip that he met Yuki and she makes him happy, more so than he’s ever been. That’s the only thing about her that should matter to you.”
I got out of the car and slammed the door behind me. Sometimes Monk could be so extraordinarily childish, petty, and selfish that I wondered how I could have spent so many years devoted to making his life easier. He certainly didn’t try to make life easier for anyone else, not even the ones closest to him.
Perhaps it was time for me to rethink my life and my priorities.
Then again, maybe I already had.
Monk caught up to me. “When I was a kid, this store was called McCabe’s. Ambrose and I used to come here and play.”
I stopped outside the entrance to the store. “What did you play?”
“What every kid does. The Hunt for Expired Products,” Monk said. “We’d run up and down the aisle with shopping carts, seeing who could find the most expired items in a limited amount of time and bring them to the attention of the manager.”
“He must have appreciated that.”
“Mr. McCabe banned us from the store,” Monk said. “I resented it then, but now, with the benefit of maturity, I understand that he couldn’t have kids roughhousing and engaging in shenanigans in a place of business.”
“That must have been it,” I said and we went inside.
He stopped and looked around. “It’s hardly changed.”
“You haven’t been inside since you were a kid?”
“Of course not,” Monk said. “I was banned.”
We’d been to this same shopping center seven years earlier, on Halloween day, when Monk was called in to investigate the shooting of an armored car driver in the parking lot. But now that I thought about it, I remembered that he had stayed in the parking lot and never went inside the store.
“I think you’re safe,” I said. “It’s been decades and the store has changed hands since then. The ban has long since expired and been forgotten.”
I turned my back on Monk and approached the customer service desk, where a portly fellow with a mini-beard on his knobby chin stood organizing coupons. He was facing a mounted microphone on an adjustable arm.
“Excuse me, are you the manager?”
“Yes, I am,” he said, moving the microphone aside. “How may I help you, ma’am?”
I reached into my pocket, took out my badge, and flashed it, an action that continued to make me feel really good. “I’m Natalie Teeger. We’re detectives with the Summit, New Jersey, Police Department.”
“We?”
“Me and my partner.” I turned to gesture at Monk, but he was gone. I looked around and saw him racing out of sight down the frozen food aisle with a shopping cart. “Who is around here somewhere.”
“You’re a long way from home, Detective.”
“It’s a big case and a vital witness might have been in your store yesterday. Her name is Yuki Nakamura. She’s in her twenties, dark-haired, about—”
He interrupted me. “Yeah, I know her. She’s Ambrose Monk’s assistant. She was in here around four o’clock. We used to make deliveries to the Monk place two times a week until she came along. Really sweet young lady. She’s saving us a bundle in time and aggravation.”
“Did anything unusual happen when she was here?”
He shook his head. “Nope. She came in, got her stuff, and left.”
“What about afterward?”
“Mr. Monk called about fifty times looking for her, saying she didn’t come back, but like I told him, nobody knows where she went after she left the store. That guy is a strange one. He never leaves the house. Ever.”
“So I’ve heard,” I said.
“He’d pay us in exact change,” the manager said. “The cash was ironed and the coins were cleaned. I swear to God.”
“I believe you,” I said. “Do you have any surveillance cameras on the parking lot?”
“We’ve got one right above the entrance to the store,” he said. “It’s a wide-angle view.”
“Would it be possible to get the footage from yesterday afternoon?”
“I can do better than that.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a business card, and wrote something on the back. “All the cameras inside and outside the store record onto a DVR. The footage goes back thirty days. You can access it online and scan through whatever you like. Here’s the username and password but don’t spread it around.” He passed the card to me.
That’s when Monk charged up with a shopping cart filled with boxed, canned, and frozen goods. He was breathing hard and there was a smile on his face. “I haven’t lost my mojo.”
“I’m sorry, sir, this is the customer service desk,” the manager said. “You’ll have to pay for your items at one of the cash registers.”
“No one is buying these. They are all expired goods,” Monk said. “You need to dispose of them right away.”
The manager looked confused. “You came into my store just to look for expired food?”
“I feel like a kid again,” Monk said to me. “Still wild at heart. It’s nice to know some things never change.”
The manager glanced at me. “You know t
his guy?”
“My partner,” I said.
“You should be more vigilant about checking for expired food,” Monk said. “I should never have been able to gather so many items in so little time.”
“What are you?” the manager said. “The grocery police?”
I laughed and took the card off the counter before the manager could change his mind. “Thank you so much. You’ve been very helpful.”
I started to go, but Monk held back.
“We need to make an important announcement to your customers,” Monk said to the manager.
“No, we don’t,” I said.
But Monk was already reaching for the microphone and turning it on.
“Attention, shoppers. Would the owner of the brown Acura please move your car to the first open parking spot closest to the store? Thank you. For future reference, owners of Alfa Romeos, Audis, and Aston Martins may park in the first spot of any row if it is available. Otherwise, alphabetical order according to the make of your vehicle always applies. For instance, a Bentley or BMW may park in the next available spot, followed by a Chevrolet or Chrysler. And so forth and so on. This is true of our parking lot and any others that you may visit. Thank you for your attention and good citizenship.”
He clicked the mike off. The manager stared at him suspiciously.
“Are you any relation to Ambrose Monk?” he asked.
“Of course not,” I said, before Monk could answer. “Why would you think that? Thank you again for your help.”
I grabbed Monk by the arm and led him quickly out of the store before he could do more damage.
“Why did you lie to the manager about me and Ambrose?” he asked once we were outside.
“I didn’t want the manager to invalidate the password he gave me to view their surveillance footage or to ban you from the store forever.”
“Why would he do that?”
I knew Monk would never understand how irritating it was to the management for him to gather expired products or how outrageous it was to demand that people park their cars in alphabetical order according to their brands. So I came up with an explanation he could accept.
“Because he’s petty, vindictive, and small-minded. He’d want to get back at you, or worse, at Ambrose, for pointing out to him his intolerable mistakes and staggering incompetence.”