Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  The problem was that we didn’t have any official standing,which meant that often the people we were meeting with had no reason to talk with us, certainly not about things that were usually intensely private matters.

  So getting them to open up took a little finesse. As we walked into the store, I was still thinking about what approach to take.

  There were several table displays interspersed among the chairs where people sat trying on shoes. The back wall was covered from floor to ceiling with perhaps a hundred shoes staggered on clear plastic shelves.

  Monk went straight to the back wall and approached the salesman standing there, waiting to be helpful.

  “May I help you, sir?” the salesman asked with a smile as synthetic as his blazer. His name tag identified him as Maurice.

  Monk picked up one of the shoes on display. “Where’s the other shoe?”

  “We have plenty more where that came from,” Maurice said, “and in several handsome styles. Would you like to see them?”

  “This is the shoe for the right foot,” Monk said. “Where is the shoe for the left foot?”

  “I’m sure it’s in the back somewhere,” Maurice said.

  “Why isn’t it out here?”

  “These are just samples, sir,” Maurice said. “But it would be my pleasure to find a pair in your size.”

  “I want the other shoe that goes with this one,” Monk said and began pointing at the individual shoes on the wall. “And that one, and that one, and that one, and that one, and—”

  “You want to try on every shoe on this wall?” Maurice interrupted,giving up any attempt at sustaining his synthetic smile. But I was beginning to see an approach that I could take to get the information we wanted.

  “I want to see them up on that wall,” Monk said.

  “Why?”

  “People have two feet,” Monk said.

  “I’m aware of that, sir,” Maurice said.

  “Shoes come in pairs.” Monk motioned to the wall. “Those aren’t pairs.”

  “Like I said, sir, these are samples.”

  “How can you break up a pair of shoes?” Monk said.

  “It’s easier and more attractive to display one shoe in each style on the wall.”

  “But you’re a shoe professional,” Monk said. “You of all people should respect the rule of the unbreakable pair.”

  “The rule of the unbreakable pair?” Maurice asked.

  “Breaking up a pair is a crime against nature,” Monk replied.

  “You’re telling me this display of shoes is a crime against nature.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “You’ll have to forgive my friend,” I said, pulling the salesman aside and lowering my voice. “But Ronald Webster usually takes care of him. Ron is so good with people. Is he here today?”

  “He hasn’t shown up,” Maurice said. “In fact, his priest called this morning looking for him.”

  “His priest?” I said. “Isn’t that kind of odd?”

  “Ronald never misses morning mass at Mission Dolores, ” Maurice said. “This morning he did.”

  “He goes to mass every morning?”

  “Ronald is a real straight arrow,” Maurice said. “Punctual, clean, extremely organized.”

  “You’re lying,” Monk said.

  Maurice turned to him. “Excuse me?”

  “Look at that wall.” Monk motioned to the shoes again. “No organized, God-fearing man would allow that.”

  The salesman looked at me. “Is he off his meds?”

  “Maybe Ronald is at his girlfriend’s house and overslept, ” I said.

  “Ronald doesn’t have a girlfriend at the moment,” Maurice said.

  “I could have sworn he mentioned her to me,” I said. “He said they liked to go skinny-dipping at Baker Beach.”

  “Ronald? Never. He won’t even wear short-sleeved shirts.” Maurice eyed me suspiciously. “This is a small store and I’ve worked here for five years. I can’t recall ever seeing you or your friend here before.”

  “Maybe you just didn’t notice us,” I said.

  That was when Monk whirled around and pointed at the other salesman.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Monk snapped.

  The other salesman, who was easily in his twenties but still seemed to have the awkward gawkiness of an adolescent, froze in midstride with an open shoe box in his hand.

  “I’m, um, returning these shoes to the back room,” the other salesman squeaked.

  “You can’t,” Monk said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they were on her feet.” Monk pointed accusingly at a female customer, startling the poor woman who was tugging at her loose socks. She was in her fifties and had a hairstyle that looked like it had been done in 1972 and flash-frozen on her head.

  “I was only trying them on,” she said meekly.

  “You try, you buy,” Monk said. “That’s the law.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Maurice said.

  “But they don’t fit,” the woman said.

  “You should have thought of that before you put them on your feet,” Monk said.

  “I’m wearing socks,” she said.

  “You weren’t wearing any when you came in,” Monk said.

  “They gave these to me,” she said, gesturing to the other salesman, “so I could try on the shoes.”

  Monk turned to Maurice. “You gave her those filthy socks? How many other disgusting feet have they been on?”

  “Disgusting?” she said. “My feet aren’t disgusting.”

  “They weren’t when you came in, but they certainly are now,” Monk said. “Don’t handle any food with them.”

  “I don’t eat food with my feet!” she exclaimed. “I’m not a monkey.”

  “Then you have no excuse for sticking your feet in every shoe you see, do you?”

  Like I said, finesse.

  Maurice glared at us both. “That’s enough. Leave immediately or I’ll call the police.”

  “You know what, Maurice? I think that’s an excellent idea.” I handed him my cell phone. “You can use my phone. Ask for Captain Leland Stottlemeyer.”

  I know it would have been a lot easier if I’d just had the captain call the shoe store before we went there. But, technically,this wasn’t an official homicide investigation yet, and if Monk went out on his own and got into a situation that was potentially embarrassing to the department, Stottlemeyer could still plausibly claim ignorance.

  I didn’t used to think about the politics of Stottlemeyer’s job, but during the unofficial police strike a while back, Monk was reinstated as captain of homicide and I got a firsthand glimpse at how things worked in the department. I realized afterward that protecting Stottlemeyer was, in a way, simply an extension of my job protecting Monk.

  But finesse hadn’t worked, things were going badly, and we hadn’t mined the information we needed. I had no choice. I had to bring Stottlemeyer into it.

  Of course, this also meant that Stottlemeyer had to tell Maurice that his coworker was dead.

  The good news, though, was that Maurice and Ronald weren’t close, so while the news was surprising, it wasn’t devastating. Nevertheless, Maurice closed the store for the day, politely hustled the customers out and sat down with us to answer our questions.

  We should have left the store when Maurice threw us out and not bothered to bring Stottlemeyer into the situation, because, as it turned out, Maurice didn’t have much to add beyond what he’d already told me.

  “I worked with the guy for five years and I really don’t know him any better today than I did on the day we met,” Maurice said. “He wasn’t somebody who let you inside.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “We’re in the shoe business. It’s awfully slow here most of the time, and when that happens, there isn’t much to do except stand around and talk to each other, you know?” Maurice said. “So you talk about your girlfriends, your families, things you
’ve done, places you’ve been. Ronald never talked about anything you’d remember.”

  “Did Ronald have any enemies?” Monk asked.

  “He was a shoe salesman,” Maurice said.

  “Shoe salesmen don’t make enemies?” I said.

  “It’s not a job that inflames passions,” Maurice said, then glanced at Monk. “At least not usually.”

  “What about in his personal life?” I said.

  “What personal life?” Maurice said.

  “Everybody has a personal life,” I said.

  “Not everybody,” Monk said.

  Good point.

  “Even so,” I said, “he could have been a real rat bastard outside of this store. Maybe he slept with married women, ripped off old ladies, betrayed his friends.”

  “I wish he had,” Maurice said. “Then at least he would have had something interesting to talk about. Ron was a nice guy but he was insanely dull. It was almost like he worked at it.”

  Monk cocked his head. “What do you mean by that?”

  Maurice shrugged. “Nobody could actually be that boring. To be honest, I’m not surprised he had a secret life.”

  “What makes you think he had a secret life?” I asked.

  “He was skinny-dipping at Baker Beach, wasn’t he?” Maurice replied. “The guy I knew, or didn’t know, wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” Monk said.

  “Did he ever mention anybody else in his life?” I asked. “Someone who might know more about him?”

  “Just his priest,” Maurice said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mr. Monk Goes to Church

  Monk decided he wanted to try talking to Father Bowen at morning mass, so we called it a day. I thought that would be a good idea. It would also give Stottlemeyer a chance to call Father Bowen and warn him that we were coming. I didn’t want to try finesse on a priest. I was in enough trouble with God as it was.

  But I wasn’t ready to let Monk off without knowing what he was thinking, not only about the Webster case but about Trevor as well. And when he was in my car, he was a captive audience. So I took the long way back to his place, which practically meant giving him a tour of downtown San Francisco.

  “What makes you so sure that Ronald Webster’s death was murder?” I asked.

  “He was attacked by an alligator,” Monk said.

  “It could happen,” I said.

  “If he was in a bayou,” he said, “not on a beach in San Francisco.”

  “What about the possibility that someone’s pet alligator escaped and attacked him?”

  “That means the alligator either had to scurry across the open sand to get him,” Monk said. “Or it was waiting for prey near the tide pools and struck when he sat down on the rocks to undress. I have a hard time believing either scenario.”

  “Maybe Ronald took a swim, drowned and, when his body washed up on the beach, the alligator attacked it.”

  “I suppose that could have happened,” Monk said. “But I don’t believe it, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it doesn’t seem to fit with his personality as the other shoe salesman described it,” Monk said, “and because it’s ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous things happen,” I said. “Imagine what people thought when they saw you walking around Los Angeles wearing a gas mask.”

  “What was ridiculous about that?”

  There was no point trying to explain that to him, so I let it drop. “What else makes you think this was murder and not a freak accident?”

  “His car wasn’t there,” Monk said. “My guess is that we’re going to find it parked near his home or the shoe store. That whole situation at the beach was staged by whoever took him to the beach to make it look like he was skinny-dipping or nude sunbathing when he was killed.”

  “So you think the alligator attack was faked?”

  “That’s the simple explanation and the one that makes the most sense. The medical examiner should be able to determine if it’s fakery or not easily enough.”

  “Why would someone want to make it look like Ronald Webster was killed by an alligator on a nude beach?”

  “That’s the mystery,” Monk said.

  It was certainly a far more intriguing and Monk-like puzzlethan Ellen Cole’s murder, which I’m sure made it a lot more compelling for Monk. That, and it was happening in San Francisco and not in the toxic environs of Los Angeles.

  “It’s one mystery,” I said. “You still have another one to solve. Who really killed Ellen Cole? Sharona is counting on you to find out. So is Benji. And so am I.”

  Monk squirmed in his seat. “It’s not so easy.”

  I gave him a look. “Someone hit Ellen Cole on the head with a lamp. It’s not nearly as complicated and bizarre as most of the cases you solve.”

  “In a way, it’s too simple,” Monk said, “which makes it complex.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The more things that don’t fit, that don’t make sense, the more I have to go on in my investigation,” Monk said. “Someone killed by an alligator on a nude beach is so inherently wrong that there are all kinds of questions to ask and inconsistencies I can ponder. All I know about Ellen Cole is that someone besides Trevor hit her with a lamp.”

  “And framed Trevor for it,” I said.

  “Or not,” Monk said. “Trevor could be innocent of murder and still guilty of everything else he’s accused of. He just made a handy fall guy. There isn’t anything else out of place for me to explore.”

  “It’s not like there’s a shortage of suspects,” I said.

  “All of whom have solid alibis and good explanations for why they wouldn’t have benefited from her death.”

  “That’s never been an obstacle for you,” I said.

  “I believe them,” Monk said. “I don’t think either Ellen’s lover or her lover’s lover or her lover’s lover’s wife killed her.”

  I was getting lost following who was who, but I got his point, even if it wasn’t the one he necessarily intended to make.

  “So you ran away,” I said.

  “Of course I did,” Monk said. “You saw the people down there. You saw the air. You are not supposed to be able to see air. Or chew it.”

  “That’s not why you ran,” I said.

  “It’s why I ran screaming,” he said.