“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Monk said.
He accidentally kicked the coffee table in his hopping frenzy and knocked over a six-hundred-dollar vase. I caught the vase before it could hit the floor and he managed to shake the Styrofoam off his leg.
Monk straightened himself, tugged on his sleeves and faced us. I knew what was coming. He was going to deliver his account of how the murder had actually occurred.
It was a necessary ritual for him.
He didn’t do it to show off or to humiliate anyone. He did it for himself.
It was the one moment when he could feel that he’d set everything right and brought order to the universe. It was the only time he was truly free of his anxieties and his sorrows. It made him whole, at least for a moment or two.
But then he’d notice something out of place, or realize he was vulnerable to a germ, or remember that he hadn’t solved his wife’s murder, and all his anxieties would come back in full force. And once again, he’d be struggling to restore order in a world that defied it.
“Here’s what happened,” Monk said.
He explained that Mrs. Davidoff waited in the back room until the construction workers started using their jackhammers. Then she strapped down her breasts with Ace bandages, put on a set of shoulder pads and slipped her feet into shoes with lifts. This hid her femininity, gave her broad shoulders and added height. She covered her hair with a ski mask and wore a turtleneck sweater to cover her throat. Otherwise her Adam’s apple would have been a telltale giveaway of her sex. She left the store through the alley, pulled down the ski mask over her face when she came in the front door and shot her husband. She ran outside again, returned to the back room, removed her disguise and then came out to wail for the camera.
Dozier stared at Monk once he finished his summation. “That is the most preposterous story I’ve ever heard,” Dozier said.
“That was nothing,” Sharona said. “Adrian once accused a guy of murder who was in a coma at the time of the killing.”
“And people still take him seriously?” Dozier said.
“He was right,” Sharona said.
“He was?” Dozier said.
“It’s irrelevant,” Mrs. Davidoff said. “I find his accusations insensitive, outrageous and thoroughly despicable.”
“Murderers usually do,” I said.
“You’re out of line,” Dozier said to me and then turned to Monk. “And so are you. There isn’t a shred of evidence to back up what you said.”
“There’s that.” Monk pointed to the Styrofoam on Mrs. Davidoff’s leg.
“That?” Dozier said.
“This?” Mrs. Davidoff said.
“The Styrofoam is charged with static electricity. It’s sticking to everyone and everything that passes through the back room,” Monk said. “You should have watched the security camera video before the police got here.”
“I never want to see it,” Mrs. Davidoff said.
“That was your big mistake. If you’d watched it, you would have noticed a piece of Styrofoam sticking to the shooter’s sweater. That meant that the killer came from the back room. And you were the only one back there. So the video you thought would exonerate you as a suspect is practically a confession.”
“I’ve walked back and forth to the showroom all day,” she said. “I probably tracked the Styrofoam out with me before, just like I have now, and that’s how it stuck to the monster that shot my husband.”
“Makes sense to me,” Dozier said to Monk. “It’s what we in the detective trade call the ‘commonsense explanation.’ And even if you were right, which you’re not, where’s the disguise and the murder weapon?”
“Packed up and ready to go to Madison, Wisconsin. That’s what’s in those boxes that UPS is coming to pick up,” Monk said. “That’s why Mrs. Davidoff was so insistent about those packages getting out of here today.”
Dozier turned to look at Mrs. Davidoff, who was glaring at Monk with such hatred that I was afraid she might launch herself at his throat.
“Shall we open the boxes and prove him wrong?” Dozier asked.
She didn’t say a word. She just glared.
“Mrs. Davidoff?” Dozier insisted.
She blinked hard and looked at Dozier. “You can address any further questions to my lawyer. We’re done talking.”
Dozier’s jaw dropped. Really. His mouth just hung open in slack-jawed shock. It took him a moment, but he managed to regain his composure. He waved over the other detective.
“Read this lady her rights. Then call Judge Mooney,” Dozier said. “We’re going to need a search warrant to open up those boxes in the back room. And make damn sure the UPS guy doesn’t take them first.”
Sharona put her arm around Monk’s shoulder. He cringed all over at her touch, but she didn’t seem to care.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you nail a murderer that I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”
“What’s not to like?” Monk said.
"I can think of a couple of things,” Mrs. Davidoff muttered.
CHAPTER TEN
Mr. Monk Had a Little Lamb
It was getting dark by the time we got to Ellen Cole’s house in Santa Monica, just a couple miles west of the antiques store.
Ellen lived in a tiny Spanish-revival bungalow with white stucco walls, arched windows and a gabled, red-tiled roof. Decorative tiles with a flower pattern lined the arched front doorway. The bungalow was adorable.
The front yard had become wild and rangy since her gardener was sent to jail, but it didn’t take much imagination to envision how nice it must have looked when everything was trimmed.
“It’s a crime.” Monk stood on the sidewalk, facing the house and shaking his head. The gas mask was so tight on his head, it was a miracle any blood was getting to his brain.
“That’s why we’re here,” Dozier said.
“He’s referring to the grass,” Sharona said.
“Why hasn’t anyone done something about this?” Monk said. “It’s an affront to human decency.”
“The ownership of the house is in dispute,” Dozier said. “Ellen Cole willed it to her lover, but her parents are contesting it, since the couple had an acrimonious split and were fighting over this house and custody of their two-year-old kid at the time of her murder.”
Monk, Sharona and I stared at Dozier. He looked back at us.
“What?” Dozier said.
“You never said anything before about Ellen Cole being in the middle of an ugly breakup,” Sharona said.
“Why should I?” he said.
“Because her lover had a much better motive to kill her than Trevor did,” Sharona said.
“But she didn’t kill her,” Dozier said.
“She?” Monk said.
“Ellen Cole was a lesbian,” Dozier said. “She and her lover, Sally Jenkins, lived together in this house with their kid before the breakup.”
“So Sally would have known the alarm code,” I said.
“Unless Ellen changed it,” Dozier said.
“Did you check?” Sharona asked.
He didn’t reply, which meant the answer was no.
“Maybe Ellen came home early and caught Sally in the house,” Sharona said. “They fought and Sally hit her with the lamp during the struggle.”
“There’s just one problem with that theory,” Dozier said.
“It would mean you screwed up,” Sharona said.
Dozier let that remark go. “Sally Jenkins couldn’t have done it. At the time of Ellen Cole’s murder, Sally was in Sacramento testifying in front of a state senate committee that’s considering a bill to legalize gay marriage. That’s what we in the detective trade call ‘an airtight alibi.’ ”
“Mr. Monk has broken better alibis than that,” I said, and turned to Monk, only to find him on his knees, measuringblades of grass with his finger and cutting them individually with a pair of nail clippers.
“Adrian,” Sharona said, “what are yo
u doing?”
“Mowing the lawn,” he said, though it was hard to hear him mumbling from inside that mask.
“At the rate you’re going, it’s going to take you a month,” I said. “And by the time you’re done, everything that you’ve already cut will need to be trimmed again. You could be cutting this lawn for the rest of your life.”
“I can live with that,” he said, clipping another blade.
Sharona groaned, grabbed Monk by the strap of the gas mask and forced him to his feet. “We’re investigating a murder here, Adrian. Pay attention.”
She snatched the nail clippers from him and dropped them in her purse. “You’ll get these back when we’re done here,” she said and gave me a hard look. “You’re way too soft on him.”
“I try to be sensitive and understanding,” I said. “I think it’s more effective in the long run.”
“Where did you get that idea? If I treated him the way you do, he’d still be wearing a gas mask every time he left the house.”
It took Sharona a moment to realize the absurdity of what she’d just said. “As opposed to just occasionally,” she added.
“Big improvement,” Dozier said.
Monk walked up the path to the front door of the house with his hands on either side of his face to make sure that he wouldn’t see the overgrown lawn.
We joined Monk at the front porch, where he was scrutinizing the door.
“There’s no sign of forced entry,” Monk said.
“He came in through an unlocked window,” Dozier said.
“Didn’t she have an alarm system?” I asked.
“Yes, so he must have known the code,” Dozier said.
“How?” Sharona said.
“It’s easy,” Monk said.
“It is?” she said.
“Is the alarm activated now?” Monk asked.
Dozier nodded.
“Open the door but don’t type in the code,” Monk said. “Let me do it.”
“Sure.” Dozier unlocked the door and opened it, immediately triggering the alarm.
The loud, electronic wail sounded like a red alert on the Starship Enterprise.
Yeah, I know that’s my second comparison to Star Trek, but so much of what was on that show is now part of our daily lives. Take a look at your flip phone or all the people walking around with those Bluetooth things in their ears like Lieutenant Uhura and tell me I’m wrong.
Monk stepped in and scrutinized the keypad. “The code is 1212333.”
I was stunned. “How did you know?”
“The one, two and three on the keypad are dirtier than the rest,” Monk said, stepping into the living room, holding his hands out in front of him like a director framing a shot.
The house was only about fourteen hundred square feet and very cozy, with lots of fluffy pillows on the furniture and plenty of paintings, mostly landscapes, on the walls.
“But how did you know the order of the numbers?” I said. “There must be thousands of possible combinations.”
“Monk figured it out the same way Trevor did,” Dozier said and punched in the code. The tones formed a familiar tune, “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The alarm went off. “Trevor must have heard her deactivate the alarm one of the times when he was here gardening.”
“Over the sound of the mowers, the blowers and the ringing alarm?” Sharona said.
Monk seemed to be swaying to a rhythm only he was hearing as he moved through the living room. It was his observational dance, his method of picking up the details in the room and feeling the karmic traces of what had occurred.
“Maybe he wasn’t mowing or blowing,” Dozier said. “Maybe he was standing here, talking to her at the time.”
“That would make her awfully stupid,” Sharona said.
“That’s why she’s dead,” Dozier said.
I was still impressed that Monk figured out the security code thing and was surprised that nobody else was, especially Dozier.
“Aren’t you amazed that Monk guessed the security code?” I asked him.
“Not really,” Dozier said. “Ian Ludlow figured it out, too.”
“Ian Ludlow the author?” Sharona said, clearly surprised. “He was here?”
“Ludlow has helped me out on some tricky cases. He’s like our Adrian Monk,” Dozier said, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “Only sane.”
I knew who Ludlow was. It was impossible not to. You couldn’t step on an airplane without seeing one of his Detective Marshak novels in just about everybody’s hands. It made me wonder if there was some FAA regulation requiring airline passengers to read Ludlow’s books.
Ludlow must have had elves cranking out his books for him because there seemed to be a new title every month in the grocery store checkout line, in the place of honor and prestige, right next to the National Enquirer and the Star.
Lieutenant Disher, who took a UC Berkeley extension class from Ludlow, once referred to the author as the “Tolstoy of the Mean Streets.”
I glanced at Monk, who was still examining everything, pausing to align pillows by size, straighten crooked pictures or alphabetize a bookshelf. It was his process and I didn’t dare intrude.
“I’ve been Ludlow’s technical adviser on his last couple of books, which were inspired by some of my cases,” Dozier said. “He creates the excitement. I provide the gripping realism.”
“So I guess in Ludlow’s next book Detective Marshak’s fly will be open the whole time,” Sharona said. “And he’ll send the killer’s murder weapon to Wisconsin.”
“What was Ludlow doing here?” I asked quickly, hoping to distract Dozier from gunning Sharona down for that remark.
“He was intrigued by the case,” Dozier said. “All we had at the time was a UCLA professor of gender studies found dead in her home. We looked at her lover and her students but we didn’t have any suspects. Ludlow helped us develop the leads that led us to her husband.”
Although Dozier was answering my question, he deliveredthose last two words directly at Sharona as if they were physical blows.
And that was exactly how she took them, but she probably deserved it for her crack about his technical advice.
“Was this where you found the body?” Monk asked from afar.
I’d been so caught up in my conversation with Dozier that I’d completely lost track of Monk. He’d wandered down the hall into the master bedroom.
There was a big four-poster bed in the center of the room that was covered with pillows and a fluffy, frilly comforter. I wanted to climb into that bed with a good book and never get out.
There were matching nightstands on either side of the bed. One had a lamp on it; the other didn’t. Now I knew where the murder weapon came from.
Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Page 9