by Lee Goldberg
“No worries,” she said. “The mall is closed anyway and I don’t know when the police are going to let them open it up.”
“What happened?” I asked innocently.
“Our own security guards tried to rob a jewelry store last night and Randy caught them. There was a shoot- out and everything.”
“Is Randy okay?”
“He’s wonderful. He’s like an action hero.”
“I’m sure he’d love to hear that.”
“Oh, he knows. He’s the one who told me.”
I was glad that things had worked out so well for Disher and that we still had a job to go back to if my plan didn’t work out.
I arrived at Ambrose’s house a few minutes before eight and crept up to the junction box. I was reconnecting the phone lines when I sensed someone watching me. I stepped back and saw Ambrose looking at me disapprovingly from the kitchen window.
This wasn’t good.
The front door was open, and he was waiting for me in the entryway as I walked up.
“Why did you disconnect my phone?”
“I wanted to be sure that Mr. Monk couldn’t call Captain Stottlemeyer.”
“You could have discussed it with me first.”
“It didn’t occur to me to disconnect the phones until I was walking to my car. After that, it would have been awkward to come back and explain myself to you.”
“But it wasn’t awkward for you to vandalize my home.”
“I’m sorry, Ambrose. It was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. But the phone is fixed.”
“You violated my home and my trust. You haven’t fixed that yet.”
“I did it for Mr. Monk. I’m trying to get him his job back.”
“And yours, too,” Ambrose said.
“Yes.”
“So you really vandalized my home for yourself.”
“For Mr. Monk, myself, and for Julie. But I think calling what I did vandalizing is a little harsh. It was more of a prank.”
“For forty years, people have been pulling pranks on me. Egging my house, toilet-papering my plants, leaving dog excrement on my porch. They know I can’t do anything about it. They think it’s funny and harmless to harass the strange man who never leaves his house. I didn’t think you were one of those nasty people.”
“I’m not and you know it. What I did wasn’t a prank, it wasn’t vandalizing, it wasn’t meant as an insult, and no harm was done.”
“Really? What if Adrian slipped on the stairs and broke his back? How would I have called for help?”
“You could have yelled out the window.”
“My house could be burning down and my neighbors wouldn’t help. You know that.”
It was true. His house was once on fire and his neighbors did nothing. Of course, it was one of his neighbors who started the blaze, but that’s another story.
“You’re right, Ambrose, and I’m wrong. I’m so sorry. What can I do to make it up to you?”
Ambrose shrugged.
“How about if I come over next Saturday, make you waffles, and then we can watch Home Alone together?”
Ambrose smiled. “That’s a start.”
Monk came down from upstairs carrying a stack of newspapers. “I thought you’d never get here. You need to call Captain Stottlemeyer and tell him that I’ve solved the case.”
“I already have,” I said.
“Is he going to meet us at Sebes’ house?”
“Eventually.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll explain on the way,” I said.
Monk came outside. Ambrose called out after him.
“I need those newspapers back, Adrian. In pristine condition.”
Monk stopped and gave Ambrose a withering look. “Have you forgotten who you are talking to? I’m the one who taught you how to iron a newspaper.”
“I don’t like it when my belongings leave the house. What if they don’t come back?”
“They will,” Monk said. “Even Dad came back.”
“I don’t want to wait thirty years for those newspapers.”
“I’ll bring them back before that.”
We got into the car, and on our way back into the city, in stop-and-go rush-hour traffic, I explained to Monk the offer that I’d made to Stottlemeyer.
Monk listened without interruption, and when I was finished, he nodded.
“So is the captain going to meet us at Sebes’ house?”
“You already asked me that. The captain hasn’t accepted our conditions yet. My guess is that he will, but he has until noon today to make his move. If he doesn’t, then we go to the feds.”
Monk squirmed in his seat. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
“You aren’t comfortable with anything.”
“We have to go to Sebes’ house now.”
“He’s not going to let us in, and even if he did, it won’t do you any good to confront him without the police.”
“I could make a citizen’s arrest.”
“All you’d be doing is tipping him off that you’re on to him and giving him a chance to cover his tracks. You have the leverage now to get the city to give you your consulting job back. Do you really want to work at Fashion Frisson and live with your brother?”
“I can’t take the chance that Sebes might kill somebody else while we’re waiting for the mayor and the chief of police to mull over your demands.”
“So we make sure that he doesn’t,” I said, even though I didn’t know how we could keep Sebes under any closer surveillance than the police and the media already were.
Monk nodded. “Okay. That’s what we’ll do.”
I found us a primo parking spot in a red zone behind the row of police vehicles, news vans, and satellite trucks across the street and half a block down from Sebes’ house. We could see part of Sebes’ house and front gate from our car, and that seemed fine to Monk, though he was very uncomfortable with us “flagrantly breaking the law” to do it.
I assured Monk that we weren’t parking if we remained in the car. We were idling. Parking meant stopping and leaving your unoccupied car behind.
Monk wasn’t convinced. I told him that I’d never been ticketed by a cop for idling in a red zone. Once or twice I’d been asked to move on, so I drove around the block until the cop left and then parked in the red zone again.
I wasn’t sure what we were waiting in the red zone to see anyway. If Sebes walked out of the house, the reporters would see him before we did. I noticed a manhole cover in the street near our car and wondered if maybe Disher was on the right track about the secret tunnel after all.
I glanced at the newspapers that Monk had brought along. They all had pictures of Sebes, or his wife, or both of them on the front page. I wondered if he was going to use the newspapers as prosecution exhibits to make his case and, if so, why.
I could have asked Monk all of those questions but I knew that he wouldn’t answer them, not without the killer in front of us.
Monk lived for his summations, it was the one moment in his life when he was in absolute control and the entire universe felt balanced. He wasn’t going to diminish that experience for me.
He suddenly straightened up in his seat. “Start the car.”
I followed his gaze and saw Sebes’ gate open and his black Mercedes glide out. Since the reporters weren’t mobbing the car, I figured Anna Sebes was on her own.
“But it’s just his wife,” I said.
The car passed us and Monk started nudging me.
“Hurry up. She’s getting away!”
I made a U-turn and followed her. “I thought you said that Sebes was the killer.”
“He is.”
“Then why are we following his wife?”
Monk didn’t answer. He just leaned forward, his hands on the dash, keeping her under close scrutiny. I kept a car or two between us so she wouldn’t notice that she was being tailed.
She headed north on Pierce and made a right onto a long, fl
at stretch of Lombard, which took us past motels, bars, hardware stores, and garages. It wasn’t San Francisco’s most picturesque street.
A Saab and a Miata were between her car and ours, but I could see her just fine. She made it easy by staying in the right lane and being very conscientious about using her turn signals, giving me plenty of notice about her intentions.
“Oh my God,” Monk said.
“What’s wrong?”
He pointed a little ways ahead of us. “I think she’s going to that gas station with the drive-thru car wash.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Her car is filthy!”
“So you think she should be getting a more thorough cleaning.”
“We can’t let her clean that car!”
I gave him a look. “Are you sick? Since when have you ever objected to anything being cleaned?”
“That filth is evidence,” he said. “Her car is covered in bird excrement.”
I saw some bird crap and berry stains on the trunk when she’d first passed us, but I didn’t think her car was any dirtier than mine had been last night.
In Golden Gate Park . . .
... at the scene of Duncan Dern’s murder.
The Saab in front of us came to a sudden stop and I was so distracted by my thoughts that I had to slam on my brakes to avoid rear-ending him. The driver stopped to wait for someone to pull out of a parking space on the street. Half a block ahead, I could see Anna Sebes’ car turning into the gas station.
I tried to go around the car in front of me but nobody in the left lane would let me in. We were stuck.
Monk squealed in frustration and jumped out of the car. While I waited for an opening, Monk ran to the gas station and I lost sight of him.
After what seemed like an eternity, I found an opening and cut into it, nearly clipping the front of a Volvo in the process. I sped around the Saab and into the gas station just in time to see Anna Sebes’ car going into the car wash as Monk banged on her window.
But she didn’t stop. Anna drove right into the center of the automated car wash.
Monk leapt up onto her hood and spread his body protectively across it just as the automated cleaning apparatus moved on a track over the car. He held on tight and pressed his face against the windshield as the high-powered jets blasted the car with water and nearly whipped off his clothes.
I drove my car around to the rear of the car wash and blocked the exit. Then all I could do was get out and watch as the cleaning machine moved back and forth along its track, first soaking the car and Monk with detergent foam and then whipping them with hundreds of strips of cloth on giant rotating cylindrical scrubbers. That had to hurt.
My cell phone rang. It was Stottlemeyer.
“Okay,” he said. “You’ve got a deal. We’ll meet you at Sebes’ place.”
The washing equipment was going into its next cycle, power-rinsing the soap off of Monk and the car. Monk was holding on tight and I could see Anna Sebes through the suds on the windshield staring at him in horror while talking animatedly to someone on her cell phone.
“That’s great, Captain. But there’s a slight change of plans. Could you meet us at Sav-Mor Gas and Wash on Lombard? And bring a forensic team along and something dry for Monk to wear.”
I hung up before Stottlemeyer could ask any questions.
Anna Sebes floored her Mercedes and burst out of the car wash the instant the dry cycle was over.
She was heading right for me.
I dove out of the way and she slammed into my car, plowing it into a telephone pole.
The impact sent Monk flying, landing hard on his back on the hood of my crumpled car. She backed up and was about to drive around my car when a black-and-white police car screeched up from Lombard and blocked her. She wasn’t going anywhere.
I got up off the ground and hurried over to Monk. He was soaking wet and groaning. The front of his clothes was stained with berries and poop, but there was still plenty of the mess on her hood.
“Are you okay, Mr. Monk?”
He propped himself up on his elbows and spit out a mouthful of soap. “Somebody kill me and put me out of my misery.”
“I may be mistaken, but I think that’s what Anna Sebes just tried to do.”
“Could you ask her to please try again?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Mr. Monk Breaks the Perfect Alibi
Captain Stottlemeyer looked like he was in pain. He was grimacing and rubbing his forehead.
The car wash was closed off, police officers were taking reports from witnesses, and the forensic techs who’d taken Monk’s clothes were now going over Anna Sebes’ Mercedes and what was left of my Buick Lucerne, which was now shaped like bow-tie pasta.
Monk was wearing a gray SFPD sweat suit, which he had refused to put on until Stottlemeyer assured him that it was brand-new and that just because it was called a sweat suit, that didn’t mean any sweat was added to the garment in the manufacturing process. He eventually changed clothes in the sterile environment of the forensics van.
Disher was talking to Anna Sebes, scribbling furiously in his notebook to keep up with her rapid speech and vivid profanity.
“Why isn’t she in handcuffs?” Monk asked.
“Because I’m not entirely sure who is at fault here,” Stottlemeyer said.
“She tried to kill us,” I said.
“It was self-defense,” Anna snapped and marched over to us. Disher rushed to keep up.
“Oh, give me a break,” I said. “You weren’t in any danger.”
“The hell I wasn’t,” Anna said, pointing a gnarled, white-gloved finger at Monk. “That crazy man followed me here from my house. The moment I stopped my car, he ran up to my door, pounded his fists on my window, and demanded that I get out. So I drove into the car wash to get away and that psycho threw himself on the hood, staring at me the whole time with the twisted, insane look on his face that serial killers have.”
“I know that look,” Disher said. “It’s sort of like this.”
He furrowed his brow, flared his nostrils, and snarled. It looked to me like an expression of severe constipation rather than inherent evil.
“When his enabler blocked the exit with her car”—Anna gestured to me—“I was certain it was an ambush and that my life was in danger. So I called the police.”
“A very clever move to throw suspicion off of you,” Monk said. “But it failed.”
“Suspicion of what?” she asked.
“Do you deny that you came here to wash the dirt off your car?”
“Of course I don’t. I came to the car wash to wash my car. Isn’t that what car washes are for, to wash your car? I wasn’t aware that was a crime.”
“It is when the dirt is evidence. The forensic experts will confirm that the bird doo-doo and berry stains on your car are a day old and came from Golden Gate Park, where Duncan Dern was strangled yesterday. This proves that you were there.”
“As I often am, along with thousands of other San Franciscans, but I didn’t kill Duncan Dern.” She took off her gloves and showed us her arthritic hands. “If I was capable of strangling anybody, which sadly I am not, I would strangle you right now.”
Stottlemeyer looked like he was tempted, too. “Is that true, Monk? Did you follow her here, pound on her window, and jump on the hood of her car?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To protect the filth,” Monk said.
Stottlemeyer stared at him in disbelief. “Did I hear you right? Did you just say ‘to protect the filth’?”
“That filth puts this car in Golden Gate Park yesterday. You’ll also find Dalmatian hairs and pine needles in the car, proving that she’s also been to Lincoln Clovis’ home and Russell Haxby’s backyard.”
“Of course I have, you lunatic. Both of those men worked with Bob for years and were dear friends. Or at least we thought they were until they swindled all of Bob’s clients and framed him for their
crimes.”
Stottlemeyer took a deep breath and turned to me with an expression not unlike the one Disher demonstrated earlier.
“Can I speak to you for a moment in private?”
It wasn’t a request as much as it was an order. I followed Stottlemeyer over to the car wash, out of earshot of Monk, Disher, and Anna Sebes.
“Adrian Monk threw himself on a dirty car to stop it from being cleaned,” Stottlemeyer said. “If that doesn’t scream out to you that he’s completely lost his mind, nothing will.”
“Mr. Monk knows what he’s doing. It’s all part of his cunning plan.”
“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to, Natalie. I’ve known Monk a lot longer than you have. You have no idea what he’s doing and he doesn’t either.”
“He’s building his case.”
“There is no case. The deal is off.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “He’s solved the murders.”
“I can’t support him after this. Any reasonable person who found themselves in Anna Sebes’ shoes today would have done the same thing that she did.”
“Mr. Monk told you why he jumped on her car.”
“And it’s insane,” Stottlemeyer said. “She’s right. The crap on her car and the dog hair inside of it prove absolutely nothing. He’s just lost whatever credibility he had left with us or with the feds.”
“So forget the deal. You’ve still got to take Mr. Monk back to confront Bob Sebes and make his case.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because if Mr. Monk is right, Bob Sebes murdered three people and is damn close to getting away with it. But if Mr. Monk is wrong, you can cut him out of the investigation and any future police work without feeling any lingering doubt or guilt about it.”
“What makes you think that’s what I’d feel?”
“Because you know that solving crimes is what Mr. Monk was born to do and that he’s never been wrong about murder before. I know he sounds crazy today, but in the end, it always makes sense.”
“This might be the one time that it doesn’t.”
“It might be,” I said. “But we won’t know until it’s over. Can you live with not knowing?”