by Lee Goldberg
“You don’t have to ever stop loving her and nobody is asking you to. I didn’t know Trudy, but I’m sure that she’d want you to go on with your life, to find someone else you can love.”
“You haven’t.”
“Not for lack of trying,” I said.
“This is ridiculous. Shameful.” Monk set his fork aside. “What would my mother say?”
“Excuse me?”
“Look at her two low-life sons—me, consorting with an excrement merchant, and Ambrose, fornicating with a felon in our own childhood home! This is what happens when you change.”
“You find happiness,” I said.
“You’re missing my point.”
“No, Mr. Monk.” I put my hand on his and gave it a squeeze. “You are.”
He didn’t take his hand away or grab for a wipe.
“You can abandon me if you want,” Monk said. “I think that I will be all right.”
The fact that he wasn’t begging me to stay, or even asking me at all, spoke volumes about how much he’d changed and how self-sufficient he’d become. I suppose I should have been hurt on some level, but I wasn’t. I was proud of him.
“I know you will be,” I said. “But no matter how far away I may go, I will never abandon you.”
The morning crept along slowly after that. I started paying my bills and came to the unsettling realization that I was quickly running out of money. I began to wish I had that half a million in marked money in the house somewhere. But since I didn’t, I reminded Monk that he still owed me my last salary check and then I sent an e-mail to Randy, telling him to deposit my salary for the weeks that I’d worked directly into my checking account. My cell phone rang and it was a call I’d known was coming and that I was dreading. The caller ID said it was Ambrose.
I couldn’t send him to voice mail in good conscience, so I answered it.
“Hello, Natalie, this is Ambrose Monk calling.”
“I’m so sorry I haven’t called, Ambrose. Things have been a bit hectic,” I said.
Monk heard his brother’s name and suddenly found something very urgent to do in another room.
“Does that mean you’ve made progress locating Yuki?” Ambrose asked.
“Yes and no,” I said.
“I only want to hear the yes part.”
“We watched security camera footage from the grocery store and it appears that some men tried to attack her or abduct her. She ran off and they followed. I think they were professionals.”
“Are you sure that was the yes part? Because it sounded to me more like the no part.”
“We’re looking into her past to see if we can figure out who might want to harm her,” I said. “We’ve learned a few things about who she once was.”
I told him that she’d stolen money from the Juanita Banana Company and accidentally killed an operative from Blackthorn Security that they’d hired to find her.
“How does that get us any closer to finding her?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But her past is all we have to go on right now.”
My cell phone started ringing again. It was Captain Stottlemeyer. It was my reprieve. I used it as an excuse to end my call with Ambrose, but not before I promised to call him back as soon as I had any new information.
I picked up Stottlemeyer’s call.
“Hey, Natalie, Lieutenant Devlin has got some more information on Michelle Keeling to share with you.”
“Great. What is it?”
“I’m at a homicide scene a few blocks away from you,” he said. “Why don’t you stop by and we’ll fill you in.”
It was clearly a ploy to get me to bring Monk over to do more consulting for the department, but it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do, like packing up my belongings, or moving my bank accounts to the East Coast, or arranging to have my house listed for sale or immediate rental.
So, sure, why not go off to investigate a murder?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mr. Monk Goes to a Crime Scene
I took down the address and ended the call.
Monk was all for investigating a homicide, of course. He was relieved to have something to focus his energy and attention on. With my house spotlessly clean, there was nothing for him to do but count random things, like how many spoons I had, or how many books I owned, or the number of tiles in the bathroom.
The crime scene turned out to be so close by, we would have been better off walking there, though it would have meant an uphill schlep.
It was a nice little Craftsman bungalow on a narrow street with a tiny backyard dominated by a matching Craftsman-style doghouse that we could see through the wooden slats of the fence.
The front and back yards were landscaped with gravel, drought-resistant scrub and cactus, wild lilacs and sagebrush, and a smattering of large rocks. It looked like the house was in a patch of desert. All that was missing was a few lizards sunning themselves on some bleached animal skulls.
The usual corps of uniformed cops, guys from the medical examiner’s office, and forensic techs were there, but they were sitting around, waiting for Stottlemeyer to release the scene to them, and he was waiting for us.
Or, more precisely, for Monk.
The captain stood on the front porch chewing on a toothpick as we approached, Monk stepping gingerly on the gravel as if each tiny pebble were a sharp tack.
“Thanks for coming by,” Stottlemeyer said.
“You said you had some information for us,” I said.
“I do,” Stottlemeyer said. “But does anything strike you as unusual about this crime scene?”
“We haven’t seen it yet,” I said.
“You were what, three minutes away?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Did we keep you waiting?”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the crime rate in this zip code has skyrocketed in the last couple of days. All break-ins like this. Only now someone is dead and it wasn’t a suicide.”
Monk shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Does this victim live here?”
“Yes. His name is Jeroen Berge. He was an architect who lived alone with his dog. He’d been away working on a retirement home project in Florida for the last week or so. His sister, who was taking care of his dog at her place while he was away, says he came home yesterday afternoon, two days earlier than he’d originally planned. She stopped by this morning to bring back his dog and found the body.”
“You look like you’re wearing the dog,” Monk said, plucking a hair from Stottlemeyer’s jacket. “A golden retriever. You might as well give the beast your jacket to mate with.”
“That paints a wonderful picture,” Stottlemeyer said. “Thanks a lot, Monk.”
The captain turned and walked into the house. Monk hobbled after him.
“What is your problem?” I asked.
“Dogs should not be allowed to live in people’s homes,” Monk said. “It’s unsanitary. They lose twice their body weight in hair annually and they groom themselves with their tongues.”
“I meant why are you limping?”
“I’ve got a pebble in the treads of my left shoe,” he said. “It’s throwing me completely off balance.”
“You can feel it?”
“Jeroen Berge is dead,” Monk said. “I’m not.”
Berge’s house had beautifully restored hardwood floors and the furniture was in the woodsy Craftsman style. Monk was undoubtedly pleased that most of the interior décor, as well as the doghouse in the back, matched the exterior design. It wasn’t often he found that kind of stylistic consistency in a home. Then again, Berge was an architect, so it made sense. There was a suitcase by the door and some keys on the side table, indicating that he’d just arrived.
We found Berge’s body in the main room. It was a bloodless death. He lay openmouthed and wide-eyed on his side, a bunch of letters and magazines spilled out on the floor and furniture in front of him like large pieces of confetti.
He was Caucasian, in h
is thirties and casually dressed, and would have looked great if he hadn’t been a corpse. His head was cocked at a gruesome and unnatural angle and his jaw was hanging oddly, too.
Lieutenant Devlin was across the room, studying a recliner that was about the size of a golf cart, its bloated cushions upholstered in the kind of plush brown velour that I thought had gone extinct with the 1975 Chrysler Cordoba. The massive chair was at odds with the Craftsman style of the place and faced a huge flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. But Monk was distracted from that inconsistency by a greater concern.
“You look like a dog,” Monk said to Devlin, who immediately took offense, her entire body stiffening.
I held up my hand to stop her before things spun out of control. “Relax. He’s referring to a dog hair on you.”
“More like a full pelt,” he said, walking around the body, hands out in front of him, framing the scene.
She noticed the hair on her jacket and began wiping it off. “It’s not so bad.”
“If you’re going undercover as a golden retriever,” Monk said.
I approached the recliner. “Is that what I think it is?” Stottlemeyer nodded. “It’s an original.”
“I’ve heard about them, and dreamed about getting one,” I said, “but I’ve never actually seen one of these up close.”
“Me, too,” Devlin said.
Well, at least that was one thing we could bond over.
If a man’s home is his castle, then this recliner was his throne. It was called the Captain’s Chair because, as the slogan said, it put you in command of your comfort.
While Stottlemeyer, Devlin, and I admired the recliner, opulent in its garishness, Monk crouched beside the body.
“What was the medical examiner’s preliminary determination on the cause of death?” he asked.
“A broken neck,” Devlin said. “But I suppose now you’re going to tell me that he drowned.”
“I concur with Dr. Hetzer.” Monk took a baggie and a pair of tweezers from his pocket and removed a piece of gravel from Berge’s hair. “Berge was killed from a kick to the head that was so strong it also dislocated his jaw.”
I walked around the chair, admiring it. “Would it be a horrible violation of crime scene protocol if I sat on it?”
“I hope not,” Devlin said. “Because the captain and I already did.”
“It’s irresistible,” Stottlemeyer said.
Apparently that was even true for dogs. It explained why the captain and Devlin were wearing the golden retriever.
I was starting to sit in the chair when Monk cried out.
“Don’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because the dog has obviously been using it as a bed and a place to groom himself,” Monk said. “You will not only pick up his hair, but his fleas, ticks, worms, and the rest of his filth.”
“I’ll take that chance,” I said.
I sat in the chair and sank deep into the plush cushions. It was comfy and warm, embracing me like a hug. It had a built-in massage function, and like a first-class seat in an airplane, it could recline into a bed. It was the most comfortable chair I’d ever sat in.
“This is amazing,” I said.
“That’s nothing.” Stottlemeyer opened up the hidden console on the armrest. “This baby is 3G enabled and connects to your home wireless network. You can control every electronic device in your house without moving your butt.”
“Every man’s dream,” I said.
“All it needs is a built-in toilet and you’d never have to leave,” Stottlemeyer said.
“That’s truer than you think,” Devlin said. “I read about a guy who weighed a hundred ninety pounds when he bought the chair and four hundred seventy pounds when firefighters had to knock out a wall and remove him from it with a crane three years later.”
I patted the armrest. “So we know it’s durable.”
Monk stood up and began roaming around the room, tilting from side to side, not so much because of his observational technique, but because that pebble in his shoe was throwing his balance off. He kept having to grab things for support.
“You can even call the chair from your smartphone,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Why would you want to do that?” Devlin asked.
“To tell the chair to set your DVR, play your phone messages, set your alarm, or chill your beer.” I opened up the other armrest to reveal the built-in drink cooler. There were three cold beers already in there.
“Were there any signs of a break-in?” Monk asked.
Devlin nodded. “The intruder broke a window in a French door in back. All he had to do was reach through and unlock the door. People with French doors might as well post a sign that says, WELCOME THIEVES, RAPISTS, AND KILLERS.”
I turned a dial and the chair rotated in a circle, allowing me to see the broken French door and the toppled potted cactus on the patio.
“Has anything been stolen?” I asked, mostly to show that I was paying some attention to the task at hand.
“Not that we can tell,” Stottlemeyer said. “There’s been a little ransacking, but we think maybe Berge walked in on the burglar just as he was getting started.”
I felt bad for poor Mr. Berge, but that aside, it didn’t strike me as a particularly unusual or puzzling murder, certainly not one that demanded our immediate presence.
Stottlemeyer had lured us here on the pretense of giving us information on Michelle Keeling, but it seemed to me he just wanted Monk to quickly solve a murder for him.
If that was the case, I wanted our payment up front. And in this instance, the currency was information.
“I can see this is a very complex and puzzling murder that requires the undivided attention of the greatest minds in criminal detection,” I said. “But you got us here by saying you had a lead for me on Michelle Keeling.”
“When did you become so hard and cynical?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“When I got my badge,” I said. “So, do you have something for me or not?”
“Actually, it’s Devlin who does,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I went down to the Belmont bar last night and asked a few questions,” she said.
“Why did you do that if Keeling’s death is a suicide and the FBI is taking over the case?” I asked.
“Because Monk caught a murderer yesterday that I would have missed, so I figured that I’d do a little digging into this to pay him back,” she said, glancing over at him. It was as close to a thank-you as Monk would ever get from her, but if she was expecting one in return, she was in for disappointment.
He was busy examining the mail on the floor and didn’t appear to have heard what she’d said, or at least was doing a good job of pretending that he hadn’t. That was okay. It meant that at least one of us in the room was still giving the Jeroen Berge murder investigation their full attention.
“The first thing I learned was that there were no guests staying at the Belmont from Walla Walla last week,” Devlin said. “The guy Michelle met must have come in off the street.”
“That would explain why she took him back to my place and not to his room,” I said. “But not what she was doing in my house to start with.”
I turned a dial on the armrest console and the lights in the room dimmed.
“The other girls say Michelle was deeply depressed,” Devlin said. “She felt like she was imprisoned by her life rather than living it. She wanted to change but didn’t know how to do it.”
“Stealing money from the FBI evidence room wasn’t the way,” I said.
Devlin shook her head. “She didn’t do that. If she’d been in the building, the feds would have known, the same way they knew you two weren’t inside.”
“What if the guy from Walla Walla was actually an FBI agent using the money he stole to party and pick up women?” I said. “She took him to my house, slipped him a mickey, and stole whatever money he had on him. That was her MO, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was,” Devlin said. �
��But why did she stash some of the cash under your bed?”
“You know, I think we’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” Stottlemeyer said. “It wasn’t Keeling who was staying at your house, it was the guy. He brought her back from the hotel for a little whoopee and, for whatever reason, she offed herself, so he grabbed his loot and got the hell out of there.”
His theory made a lot of sense to me and I felt stupid for not thinking of it myself.
“So the money in her purse was what she stole from his wallet, or wherever he had it on him,” I said. “The rest he hid under my bed. The cash that was found there was just bills that he accidentally left behind.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Stottlemeyer said. “What do you think of my theory?”
“It must have been pretty lumpy sleeping on five hundred thousand dollars.” I hit another button, the chair started to hum, and a tiny joystick lit up. I pushed the joystick forward and the chair actually moved. The chair wasn’t just the size of the golf cart, it drove like one, too.
“It doesn’t track for me,” Devlin said. “Why would an FBI agent be using Natalie’s house as a love nest?”
“That’s easy,” Stottlemeyer said, jumping out of my way. “Because he’s married and can’t bring the woman home, and doesn’t want to risk renting a hotel room.”
“It didn’t stop him from hanging out in one of the nicest bars in one of the fanciest hotels in town,” Devlin said.
“And why did he pick my house?” I put the chair into reverse and nearly ran over Devlin, too.
“And how did he know she wouldn’t be there?” Devlin said.
“I didn’t say it was a perfect theory,” he said.
I hit another button and the shades on the windows opened. It was anticlimactic after making the chair drive, but it was still cool.
Monk stared at the window shades, rolled his shoulders, and got that serene look on his face that could mean only one of two things—he’d either dislodged the pebble from his shoe or he’d solved the case.
Stottlemeyer noticed it, too. “You already know who killed this guy?”
Monk turned and looked at me. “I know where Yuki is.”