by Lee Goldberg
“This is fantastic news. Let’s go out this weekend and celebrate what you’ve done for Sparky,” Joe said. “And for me.”
“That’s a really sweet suggestion, but—”
He interrupted me. “Let’s bring Julie, too. I want to thank her again for bringing Mr. Monk into this. We can make a day out of it. Besides, I’d like to get to know her.”
I put my hand on his cheek to stop him. “No, Joe, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want Julie to start caring for you as much as I have,” I said. “It’s why we can’t see each other anymore.”
I took my hand away. He looked as if I’d slapped him with it.
“I don’t understand,” Joe said. “I thought things were going so well.”
“They were,” I said. “You’re wonderful, and I really enjoy being with you. I can see us becoming very close.”
He shook his head as if to clear it. “Then what’s the problem?”
“That is the problem. Who you are. And all of this.” I waved my hand to encompass the firehouse around us. “You’re a firefighter.”
“So?”
“You risk your life for a living, and that’s noble, and great, and heroic,” I said. “But it’s wrong for me, wrong for Julie. We both lost a man we loved who did the noble, great, heroic thing. You’re so much like him. We’d both fall in love with you, and I can’t go through it again.”
He forced a smile. “What if I promise I won’t get hurt?”
“You can’t make that promise.”
“Nobody can,” Joe said. “You could get run over tomorrow by a truck while crossing the street.”
“I know, but I don’t make a living of leaping in front of speeding trucks every day,” I said. “I can’t get involved ever again with anyone who has a dangerous job. I can’t take the worry and the risk, and I can’t do it to my daughter. She needs—we both need—a man in our lives who has the safest job on earth.”
“I’m not that guy,” Joe said.
“I wish you were.”
“I wish I were, too.” He took me in his arms and gave me a soft, sweet, sad kiss. “If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.”
He smiled, turned his back on me, and walked outside. I watched him go, trying hard not to cry, then saw Captain Mantooth and Monk watching, too. Monk tossed his towel into the basket and came over to me.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“Eventually,” I said.
He saw the tears in my eyes and my trembling lip.
“Would you like to borrow my Marmaduke book?”
I smiled and nodded, a tear rolling down my cheek. “That would be great.”
When we told Julie that Sparky’s killer had been caught, she threw her arms around Monk and startled him with a big hug.
“Thank you, Mr. Monk.”
“It’s nice to have a satisfied client,” Monk said.
“I did something for you,” she said. “Can I show you?”
“Sure,” Monk said.
Julie motioned for us to follow her, and she hurried ahead of us down the hall to her room. As soon as her back was turned, Monk motioned to me for a wipe. I gave him one.
“Children are so special,” he said, wiping his hands thoroughly, “but they’re walking cesspools of disease.”
I gave him a look. “Did you just call my daughter a walking cesspool?”
“She’s also bright and adorable and lovable,” Monk said. “From a safe distance.”
She stood in front of the door to her room, her hand on the doorknob.
“Okay, prepare yourselves,” she said.
Monk glanced at me. “Am I going to need shots for this?”
Before I could reply, she opened her door and waved us inside with a big, proud smile on her face. I peeked in first.
She’d cleaned her room. But saying that doesn’t do it justice. It was immaculate, with everything organized.
“You should see this, Mr. Monk,” I said.
He hesitantly stuck his head in and then looked at Julie. “What have you done?”
“I’ve Monked it.”
“Monked it?” he said.
“My books are arranged by author, genre, and copyright date, and my CDs are organized in even-numbered stacks by artist.” She strolled into her room and opened her closet. Her clothes were arranged by color and type. So were her shoes. “I organized my closet and all of my drawers.”
Monk went over and looked at her shelf of stuffed animals with obvious admiration. “You’ve arranged your animals by species.”
“And size,” she said. “And whether they are amphibians, reptiles, birds, or mammals.”
“That must have been fun,” he said, and he meant it. In fact, from the expression on his face, I think he envied her the experience.
“Oh, yes,” Julie said. “I had a great time.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This was a major change for a kid whose idea of making her bed was picking her pillow up off the floor.
“It must have taken you hours to do this,” I said.
“Actually, it’s taken me a few days, but I wanted to show Mr. Monk . . .” Julie stopped and shrugged, at a loss for words to explain herself. “I don’t know. I just wanted to say thank-you.”
I gave her a kiss. “I love you.”
“I didn’t do this for you, Mom.”
“Can’t I be proud of you anyway?” I said.
Julie turned to Monk. “What do you think?”
I was curious to know that myself. Monk touched a whisker on one of her stuffed lions and smiled.
“I think I’m sorry that I have to go home tomorrow,” he said.
24
Mr. Monk and the Wrong Teeth
I woke up in the morning to find Monk all packed, dressed, and ready to go. He insisted on making breakfast for Julie and me. I figured it would be bowls of Chex all around, but he surprised me by saying he’d be making eggs.
“I’d like mine scrambled, please,” Julie said.
“Perhaps you’d like some LSD and some weed with that too.” Monk gave her a chastising look, then glanced at me as if to say I’d failed as a parent in some fundamental way.
Julie’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What’s LSD? And why would I want to eat weeds?”
“Never mind,” I said, giving Monk a chastising look of my own. “So how are you preparing them?”
“There’s only one way,” Monk said.
He expertly cracked the eggs on the rim of the pan and the yolks spilled out, the egg whites forming perfect circles. I’m not exaggerating—perfect circles.
“How did you learn to do that?”
“Lots of practice,” Monk said. “It’s all in the wrist.”
“Could you teach me?” Julie asked.
“I don’t think we have enough eggs,” Monk said.
“How many does it take?”
“One thousand,” Monk said.
Julie and I both looked at him.
“You know the exact number?” I said.
“It was actually nine hundred and ninety-three,” Monk said. “But I broke seven more to make it even.”
“Of course,” I said. “Makes perfect sense.”
“Can you buy some more eggs today?” Julie asked me.
“I’m not buying a thousand eggs,” I said. “You’ll just have to learn two eggs at a time over breakfast each morning.”
“That could take years,” she whined.
“Now you have a goal in life,” I said.
Monk toasted some sourdough bread, which he cut into even halves and served to us on separate plates, along with oranges that were completely peeled and sliced in perfect wedges.
The breakfast was so perfect, in fact, it looked synthetic and strangely unappetizing, as if it were all made of plastic.
Julie had no such reservations. She devoured her breakfast, finishing up just as her ride to school arri
ved. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and ran out.
Monk cleared the table and I washed the dishes. After that, we were all alone with nothing to do. No murders to solve. No crimes to investigate.
“So what’s on the agenda for today?” I asked.
“Moving back into my house and cleaning,” Monk said. “Lots of cleaning.”
“You haven’t been there in days,” I said. “What is there to clean?”
“Every inch,” Monk said. “The entire building has been tented and pumped full of poison. It’s a death trap. We’re going to be on our hands and knees scrubbing for days.”
“You will; I won’t,” I said. “I signed on to be your assistant, not your maid. I’ll supervise.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ll be sitting on the couch reading a magazine and watching you work,” I said. “If you miss a spot, I’ll let you know.”
I picked up my purse and my car keys. He grabbed his luggage and we went out to the car. Mrs. Throphamner was in her garden, already tending to her roses. I remembered I still owed her money.
“Good morning, Mrs. Throphamner,” I said. “Your flowers are looking lovely today.”
“So are you, dear,” she said.
At least she didn’t have any hard feelings.
“Oh,” Monk said. “I almost forgot.”
“Me, too,” I said, reaching into my purse. But before I could pay her, Stottlemeyer drove up and got out of his car.
Monk set down his suitcases and we walked over to greet him.
“Monk, Natalie,” Stottlemeyer said. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Sure is.” It amazed me that he could still appreciate it, considering a typical day meant he had plenty of ugliness and death in store. “Do you need Mr. Monk’s help on a case already?”
“Nope,” Stottlemeyer said. “I was on my way into the office and thought I’d stop by with the good news. We’ve got Breen.”
“We had Breen yesterday,” Monk said.
“We had cat hair yesterday,” Stottlemeyer said. “Today we’ve got a fingerprint. The crime lab found his prints inside a firefighter’s glove. He might have been able to explain away the cat hair, but he can’t talk himself out of that. You came through for me again, Monk, like you always do.”
“You too, Captain,” Monk said. “In fact, there’s something you can do for me right now.”
“Retie my shoes? Adjust my belt to a different loop? Change the license plate on my car so all the numbers are even?”
“Yes, that would be great,” Monk said. “And when you get a moment, could you also arrest Mrs. Throphamner?”
I glanced back at Mrs. Throphamner, who was coming out of her backyard with the hose.
“Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard, Mr. Monk?” I said. “She fell in your lap by accident.”
Stottlemeyer looked past me. “That’s Mrs. Throphamner?”
“Yes,” Monk said.
“And she was in your lap?”
“Yes,” Monk said.
“Maybe it’s you I should arrest,” Stottlemeyer said.
Monk scowled at Stottlemeyer and went over to Mrs. Throphamer, who was rolling up the hose.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Throphamner?” Monk said. She turned around. “You’re under arrest for murder.”
“Murder?” I said. Actually, Mrs. Throphamner, Stottlemeyer, and I all said the same thing in unison. We sounded like a chorus.
“Her husband isn’t in a fishing cabin near Sacramento,” Monk said. “He’s buried in her backyard. That’s why she planted the most fragrant roses she could find and kept changing them—to hide the smell of his decomposing corpse.”
I knew that he was always right about murder, but this time he just had to be wrong. Mrs. Throphamner, a murderer? It was ridiculous.
Mrs. Throphamner sagged and let out a weary sigh. “How did you know?”
“It’s true?” I said, utterly shocked.
Mrs. Throphamner nodded. “I’m glad you found out. I’m so tired of tending the garden, and the guilt was driving me mad. I loved him so much.”
“I know you did,” Monk said. “That’s why you couldn’t entirely let go. That’s why you kept his teeth.”
“His teeth?” Stottlemeyer said.
“His dentures,” Monk said. “She’s got them in her mouth right now.”
“She does?” He narrowed his eyes and stared at her mouth, but she closed her lips and turned her head away. “How could you possibly know that, Monk?”
“When she babysits, Mrs. Throphamner likes to set her dentures on the table beside her while she watches TV,” Monk said. “I had the chance to examine them. They’re obviously male dentures. The maxillary lateral incisors are prominent and large, while a woman’s are narrower. Also, a male’s alveolar bone has a heavier arch, and the internal portion of the dentures—”
“Okay, okay,” Stottlemeyer interrupted, still watching Mrs. Throphamner’s face, waiting for a glimpse of her husband’s teeth. “I believe you. What tipped you off?”
“The flowers that Firefighter Joe brought on his date with Natalie,” Monk said. “He said they were to cover any lingering smell on him from the dump. That got me thinking about Mrs. Throphamner, and it all fell together after that.”
It took me a second, but then it all fell together for me, too. That was two days ago. I felt my whole body tighten with anger. My fists clenched. I think my toes did, too.
“Milton was cheating on me after forty years of marriage; can you believe that?” Mrs. Throphamner said. “The only thing he was fishing for in Sacramento was hanky-panky. I had to kill—”
“Wait a minute,” I snapped, cutting her off. I turned to Monk. “You’ve known since Wednesday that she’s a murderer and you didn’t tell me?”
“I was distracted by a lot of other things,” Monk said defensively. “I had three unsolved murders on my plate. We were both very busy.”
“You let me leave my daughter alone with this monster?”
“I knew how badly you needed a babysitter while we were on the case.”
“She’s a murderer!” I yelled.
“Well, yes. But other than that she’s very dependable,” Monk said.
“Dependable?” I took a step toward him, and Monk took five steps back. “She’s sucking on her dead husband’s teeth!”
“That’s exactly my point,” Monk said. “She only kills husbands. One husband, actually. She hasn’t had a second one yet. And she probably won’t. So Julie was safe.”
“You aren’t,” I said, and turned to Stottlemeyer. “Take Mr. Monk with you. Get him away from me before I kill him and bury him in my garden.”
As I stomped off, I heard Monk say something to Stottlemeyer then that any court in the land would agree was a reasonable and excusable provocation for murder.
“Women,” Monk said. “They’re so irrational.”
Read on for an excerpt from the next book starring Adrian Monk, the brilliant investigator who always knows when something’s out of place . . .
Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii
Coming in July 2006
I had to leave the house at five a.m. to make my eight-o’clock flight to Honolulu. I drove to the airport, stowed my car in long-term parking, and took the shuttle to the terminal. I stood in a long line at check-in and another long line at security and still got to the gate with twenty minutes to spare before boarding.
Adrian Monk was the furthest thing from my mind as I settled into my narrow economy-class seat for the five-hour trip.
The flight attendants were all Hawaiian or Polynesian women wearing floral aloha shirts and red hibiscus flowers in their hair.
A video of palm trees, waterfalls, and pristine Hawaiian beaches screened on all the plane’s TV monitors. Hawaiian music—that gentle rhythm of ukulele, ukeke, steel guitar, and native chants flowing like the tide, lapping at the white sand—played softly throughout the cabin.
I closed my eyes and sighed.
The plane was still on the tarmac at LAX, but mentally and emotionally I was already more relaxed than I’d been in weeks. The clatter of passengers getting settled, the murmur of conversation, the wail of babies crying, the hum of the engines, and even the sweet Hawaiian music all faded away.
And before I knew it, I was sound asleep.
I was awakened seemingly an instant later by the gentle nudge of a flight attendant asking me if I wanted breakfast.
“You have a choice between a cheese-and-mushroom omelet, macadamia-nut pancakes, or a fruit platter,” she said, pulling out trays from her cart and showing me the entrees.
All of the choices looked gross to me. Even the fruit looked as if it had been soaked in grease.
“No thanks,” I said. I glanced at my watch and was surprised to discover I’d actually slept through takeoff and had been snoozing away for forty-five minutes.
“If she’s not going to have it, I’ll take it,” a man said. I knew the voice, but I had to be wrong. It couldn’t possibly be who it sounded like.
“You already have a meal, sir,” the flight attendant said. I tried to see who she was talking to, but I couldn’t see past her cart.
“But I’m almost finished with my omelet, I’m still hungry, and I’d like to sample the pancakes,” he said. “If she’s not going to eat her meal, what difference does it make who does?”
No, it wasn’t him. He’d never say what I’d just heard. He’d never get on a plane. And he’d certainly never sit in an odd-numbered seat in row thirty-one.
What I was hearing was my guilt tormenting me. Yes, that had to be it.
The stewardess forced a smile, took a tray of pancakes, and handed it to the passenger on the other side of the cart.
“Mmmm,” the familiar voice purred. “Looks mighty tasty. Thank you, sweetheart.”
It couldn’t be.
She pushed her cart along, and Monk smiled at me from across the aisle, his mouth full of pancakes.
“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said. “This is delicious.”
I blinked hard. He was still there.
“Mr. Monk?”
“Hey, we’re off the clock, sister. The Monk says, let’s keep it casual.”