Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “Inequality affects us all as a society,” she said. “My testimony before the state senate, especially given my personal circumstances, only demonstrates how strongly I believe in the principles of fairness. I see nothing unusual about that.”

  “Then you probably don’t think it’s unusual that you ran off with the same man who provided the sperm for your artificial insemination,” I said.

  “How stupid was that?” Sharona said. “If you’d left Ellen for the guy earlier, you could have saved a bundle by inseminating yourself the old-fashioned way.”

  “Don’t be grotesque,” she said.

  Once more, I’d like to point out that she had a cockroach crawling on her at the time.

  “And on top of that, he’s a married man,” I said. “So, if I have this right, shortly after you left your lesbian lover for the married man who artificially impregnated you, you went up to Sacramento to argue that it was time we liberalized our notions of marriage.”

  Her face turned dark red. She was flushed with anger, not embarrassment. I’m sure she saw nothing wrong with her behavior.

  “I don’t see what any of this gay bashing and character assassination has to do with Ellen’s murder,” Sally said.

  “Considering all the hypocrisy and contradictions in your story,” Sharona said, “a cynical person might argue that you went to that hearing in Sacramento just so you’d have an alibi while your ex-girlfriend was murdered.”

  “Do you really think I’ve benefited from any of this?” Sally said. “Whoever killed Ellen has made my life a living hell. My private life is now public and Christian’s marriage has crumbled.”

  “Freeing him to be with you,” Sharona said. “Another win.”

  “His kids hate him now,” Sally said. “And although he’s got tenure, this has probably ruined any chance he has of being the new chairman of the university’s gender-studies department.”

  “Isn’t that where Ellen worked?” I said.

  “They were colleagues,” Sally said. “That’s how she knew him well enough to ask for his sperm.”

  “That must have been an interesting conversation,” Sharona said. “Why him?”

  “Christian was married and fertile,” Sally said. “He wasn’t likely to try to assert any parental rights and Ellen liked his kids. They were bright and attractive.”

  “So why wasn’t she the one who was inseminated?” I said.

  “Medical problems,” Sally said. “She couldn’t have children.”

  “This chairmanship position,” Sharona asked, “was that something Ellen wanted, too?”

  Sally’s face was so red now, she looked like a tomato being devoured by the king of cockroaches.

  “Yes,” Sally said.

  “So you’ve got the kid, you’ve got the man, you’re probably going to get the house,” Sharona said, “and if things really go well, your man will get the chairmanship, too. Yeah, this murder certainly was a big tragedy for you.”

  “Where was Dr. Bayliss when the murder happened?” I asked.

  This question seemed to brighten Sally’s mood considerably. She gave me a smug smile. “He was delivering a lecture in front of fifty students.”

  So there.

  I was tapped out. I think Sharona was, too.

  “Do you have any questions, Mr. Monk?” I said into the phone.

  “Yes,” said Monk over the telephone speaker, “when can we get the hell out of this godforsaken city?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mr. Monk Finds the Holes

  Dr. Christian Bayliss’ office was on the first floor of Haines Hall, one of UCLA’s original four redbrick buildings on either side of Dickson Plaza. They were built in that Romanesque style that screams education and pricey tuition.

  His office had none of the imposing grandeur promised by the exterior of the building. It was just plain white walls, scuffed linoleum floors, acoustic tile ceilings and a sliver of a window. There was barely enough room for his desk, a small sagging bookcase and the man himself.

  I’ve been in roomier elevators.

  Sharona and I squeezed in, brushing against the spare sport jacket, shirt and slacks he had hanging on the coatrack.

  Dr. Bayliss had the perfect teeth of a television anchor-man, a chin prominent enough to merit landmark status and the beginnings of a potbelly, which was pulling his shirttails out of his pleated slacks.

  We introduced ourselves, reminded him that Lieutenant Dozier had sent us and then told him why we were there. He took it all in surprising good humor.

  “I’m glad to help. While I was waiting for you, I Googled Mr. Monk,” Dr. Bayliss said. “He’s quite a remarkable man. What I can’t figure out is why he’s taken an interest in this case.”

  “The gardener accused of killing Ellen Cole is my husband, ” Sharona said. “And I used to be Adrian’s assistant.”

  “I see,” Dr. Bayliss said. “So actually the police don’t really have any doubt about who is guilty.”

  “They do now,” Sharona said.

  That wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to correct her. It was better for our interview if Dr. Bayliss was a little uncertain of his standing.

  “Is Mr. Monk going to be joining us?” he asked. “Or are you investigating under his imprimatur?”

  Wow. “Imprimatur.” I guess he wanted to remind us he was the only professor in the room. It was a shame that I’d left my thesaurus at home.

  “He’s out in the hall,” I said.

  “Why doesn’t he come in?”

  “He wanted us to check to see if you were covered with insects first,” I said.

  “We met your girlfriend. Adrian was afraid she might have given you a live cockroach tie clip for Christmas.” Sharona leaned out the door and waved Monk over. “It’s okay, Adrian. The guy is bug-free.”

  Monk still seemed hesitant to enter and stood with one foot in the office and one in the hallway. It wasn’t entirely by choice. The office wasn’t big enough for the four of us anyway. To make room, Sharona almost had to stand in the garbage can, which contained the latest issue of the Daily Bruin.

  “Why are you wearing a gas mask?” Dr. Bayliss asked.

  “Why isn’t everyone?” Monk said.

  “I don’t see any smoke,” Dr. Bayliss said. “And as far as I know, the air in this room is safe to breathe.”

  Monk stared at him in shock. Or at least I think he did. It wasn’t too easy to see his face through that mask.

  “Have you looked outside lately?” Monk said. “There’s a toxic cloud hanging over the city.”

  “That’s just the smog,” Dr. Bayliss said, tucking in his shirttails, which showed a hint of blue ink.

  “Calling it by another name doesn’t change the facts,” Monk said.

  “But let’s change the subject,” I said. “We didn’t come here to talk about air quality. We want to ask you about your relationship with Ellen Cole.”

  “We were simply colleagues in the gender-studies department, ” Dr. Bayliss said.

  “Do you give all your colleagues your sperm?” Sharona asked.

  “I’d be happy to,” Dr. Bayliss said.

  “Let’s change the subject again,” Monk said, “to one that doesn’t involve that, um, stuff.”

  “You mean sperm?” Dr. Bayliss said—deliberately, I think, for the pleasure of seeing Monk squirm.

  Monk motioned to me for a wipe. Just the word seemed to make him feel dirty. I gave him one.

  “How did your wife feel about your ‘donation’?” Sharona asked.

  “I didn’t tell her,” he said. “Isabel didn’t find out until Lieutenant Dozier and Ian Ludlow came to our door.”

  “What was Ludlow doing there?” Monk looked up from the headline he was reading off the Daily Bruin in the garbagecan. It was something about shoplifting problems at the student store.

  “He was some kind of consultant or observer or something, ” he said. “Frankly, I’m surprised at all the third parties involved
with the police in this investigation.”

  “How did your wife take the news?” I asked.

  “Not well,” he said. “But, to be honest, our relationship has been troubled for some time. She’s become less and less flexible when it comes to my sexual availability.”

  I glanced at Monk. He seemed more interested in a hole in the coattail of the sport jacket hanging on the coatrack than in our discussion. But I knew better than to assume Monk wasn’t hearing, absorbing and at least subconsciously analyzing every word. I would have to watch him carefully, though, to make sure he didn’t poke a hole in the other coattail just to make the jacket even.

  “You mean she didn’t like you cheating on her,” Sharona said.

  “She’s not as tolerant of a humanity-embracing life-style as she used to be. She felt that impregnating another woman, even artificially, crossed some kind of line.” He shrugged and shook his head, as if to suggest her point was absurd. “But the so-called infidelity in and of itself didn’t bother her. I’ve always been actively multisexual.”

  “Excuse me?” Monk said.

  “I could have sex with anyone in this room,” Dr. Bayliss said, “including myself.”

  “Uh-huh,” Monk said.

  And immediately left the room. And the building.

  Sharona glowered after him and continued glowering for some time. I think the way she saw it, Monk was abandoningher as opposed to, say, fleeing from a potbellied pervert who consorted with cockroach-covered lesbians.

  Not that I was being judgmental.

  “He seems awfully uptight,” Dr. Bayliss said.

  “And you seem awfully loose,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Dr. Bayliss said. “It’s what I strive for. It’s the essence of multisexuality.”

  “Don’t you mean bisexuality?” Sharona said.

  “That term is rigid and inadequate, particularly when describing me,” he said. “I am currently in an erotic relationship with a lesbian.”

  He said it as if he expected us to applaud his accomplishment.

  “She’s not a lesbian anymore if she’s sleeping with you,” I said.

  “Sally didn’t renounce her lesbian self to get involved with me,” Dr. Bayliss said. “She’s simply attracted to my lesbian qualities.”

  “You’re a man,” Sharona said.

  “Who is in touch with his inner lesbian,” he said. “I relate to her from a female rather than male perspective. I make love to her like a woman. It’s not a male-female coupling in the conventional heterosexual sense at all.”

  “Whatever you call it, I’m sure Ellen Cole was furious,” I said. “She came to you to help her and her partner start a family. But instead, you ultimately destroyed her family. You took away her lover and their child.”

  “I bet she didn’t take that well,” Sharona said. “What did Ellen do, Doc? Did she threaten to expose your life-style? Did she threaten to go to your wife? To the faculty? To the media?”

  “If she did, then killing her would have been a foolish move, since it has resulted in my private life becoming public, hasn’t it?”

  “People don’t always think straight when they’re angry,” Sharona said.

  “Which is clearly the case here,” Dr. Bayliss said. “You’re angry that your husband killed Ellen Cole. And rather than accept it, you are lashing out at innocent people like me and Sally. You seem to have forgotten that both Sally and I were in front of not one, not two, but dozens of people at the time Ellen was murdered. Neither one of us could be responsible for this.”

  “They’re great alibis,” Sharona said. “Almost too good to be true.”

  “And what about your husband’s alibi?” he asked. “How good is it?”

  Before Sharona could answer, we were distracted by the sound of footsteps approaching in the hallway.

  I turned, expecting to see Monk. Instead, I saw two uniformed campus police officers coming our way. They were both men, one Asian, the other Hispanic. No one could accuse the campus police of not being multiethnic in their hiring practices.

  Sharona and I had to practically climb up on the bookshelf and the desk to let the two officers in. Their name tags identified them as Officers Tran and Dempsey.

  “Dr. Bayliss?” Officer Tran asked.

  “Yes?” he responded.

  "We’re here because of a tip from Adrian Monk,” Officer Tran said.

  Dr. Bayliss grinned. “I didn’t know that multisexuality was a crime.”

  Officer Tran shared a look with his partner. “Multisexuality? ”

  “He could have sex with anyone in this room,” Sharona said.

  “The hell he can,” Officer Dempsey said, absentmindedly putting a hand on his holster.

  “We’re not here about your sexual activities,” Officer Tran said. “We’re investigating the shoplifting from the student store.”

  My cell phone rang. I answered it. It was Monk, who said he was calling from a pay phone in Ackerman Union, which housed the student store.

  “The man you’re talking to is a freak,” Monk said. “A kleptomaniac freak.”

  “You better do the talking,” I said to him as I put the phone on speaker and held it up for everyone to hear. “It’s Mr. Monk.”

  “Dr. Bayliss has been stealing clothes and other items from the student store,” Monk said. “He removes the security tags later, but he does a bad job of it. That’s why he’s got holes or ink stains on all his clothing.”

  “You’re mistaking the work of moths and leaky pens for criminal behavior,” Dr. Bayliss said. “I need to buy moth-balls but I simply refuse to wear pocket protectors.”

  “Nice try,” Monk said. “The problem is your holes and ink stains are mostly on shirttails that you try to hide by tucking them into your pants. Or they’re on the coattails of your jackets, where they won’t be as easily noticed. Moths aren’t nearly so selective. Besides that, the ink is a unique dye used by security devices.”

  The officers looked at the sport jacket and shirt hanging on the coatrack and at the clothing Dr. Bayliss was wearing.

  Beads of sweat started to form on the doctor’s upper lip.

  “Surely you don’t believe any of this,” Dr. Bayliss said to the officers. “It’s craziness.”

  “If you look at the glasses he’s wearing, as well as the two others on his desk, you’ll notice the frames all have broken arms that were glued back together,” Monk said. “That’s because he snapped the arms when he clumsily removed the security tags. And the clothes and frames are brands sold at the student store.”

  I was convinced.

  Sharona was convinced.

  The officers were convinced.

  And so was Dr. Bayliss.

  “You better come to the station with us,” Officer Tran said sternly. “The detectives will want to talk with you.”