Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “That fits with the description of Ronald that we got from one of his fellow shoe salesmen,” Monk said. “But his coworker said that it seemed as if Ronald worked at being dull. It’s funny, but you used almost the same words to describe him being a good man.”

  “I don’t see your point,” Father Bowen said.

  “I think that Ronald was dull on purpose. He didn’t want to be noticed, which is why I don’t believe he would go to a nude beach,” Monk said. “I also think he was trying to overcome enormous guilt, which is why he came here every single day.”

  “Even if you’re right,” Father Bowen said, “I fail to see what that has to do with Ronald’s death.”

  “I can think of a very good reason why a person would be guilt-ridden and desperate to remain inconspicuous.”

  And once Monk said that, so could I.

  “Ronald Webster committed some terrible crime and got away with it,” I said. “He wanted absolution.”

  “Did he get it?” Monk asked Father Bowen.

  “Of course he did,” Father Bowen said. “God forgives.”

  “The law doesn’t,” Monk said.

  “Maybe someone else doesn’t, either,” I said.

  Monk nodded. “Someone with a hungry pet alligator.”

  Father Bowen shuddered at the thought.

  “What did Ronald do?” I asked.

  Father Bowen chewed on his lower lip. I guess he was in some kind of moral or ethical turmoil.

  “He’s dead, Father,” I said. “You aren’t violating the sanctity of confession by telling us what he told you.”

  “It might help us catch Ronald Webster’s murderer,” Monk said.

  “The captain didn’t say that Ronald was murdered,” Father Bowen said. “He said the circumstances of his death were uncertain.”

  “I’m certain,” Monk said.

  Father Bowen sighed. “Ten years ago, somewhere in the East Bay, he was speeding in his car. He hit a young woman. She was thrown up onto the windshield and, for a few seconds, looked him right in the eye before she fell off onto the side of the road. Instead of stopping to help her, he kept on driving.”

  “Was she killed?” I asked.

  Father Bowen shook his head. “She was badly hurt. Multiple fractures and internal injuries. She may even have been left crippled. Ronald told me that the story was in all the newspapers and the police made a public plea for any information leading to the capture of the hit-and-run driver. But there were no witnesses and the poor girl didn’t remember anything about the car that struck her.”

  “So Ronald got away with it,” I said.

  “On the contrary,” Father Bowen said. “He saw her face every time he closed his eyes. He was tormented with guilt.”

  “Not enough to actually step forward and take responsibility for his actions,” Monk said.

  “He sent her money,” Father Bowen said, “an envelope full of cash every few months. Anonymously, of course.”

  “How much did he send?” I asked.

  “It varied,” Father Bowen said. “But it amounted to tens of thousands of dollars over the years. And he gave generously to the church.”

  “Enough to buy your silence?” Monk said.

  Father Bowen’s face flushed with anger. “My silence is a given, Mr. Monk. When people confess, they do so with the understanding that I will keep what they say in complete confidence.”

  “Even if they’ve committed a crime,” Monk said.

  “We are all sinners, Mr. Monk.”

  “Not me,” Monk said. “I lead a clean life.”

  “Nobody is that clean,” Father Bowen said.

  I was tempted to invite Father Bowen to see Monk’s house, but I didn’t want to shatter the man’s beliefs.

  I arranged a playdate for Julie and one of her friends with one of the other soccer moms, who agreed to take my daughter for the day. I was accumulating a lot of debts with other mothers lately, but I figured it was worth it in the long run. Even so, in the near future, I was going to be spending a lot of mornings giving rides and days playing host to other people’s kids.

  While I bartered that deal, Monk policed the bleachers and made sure that all the parents were observing the importance of balanced seating. They were glad to accommodate Monk’s request, at least while he was present. It was the least they could do, considering he’d nailed the coach of an opposing team for murder. The Slammers were legendary now, even if they hadn’t won a single game.

  Then Monk and I got into the rented Corolla, which I drove back to the mechanic to swap for my fixed-up Jeep Cherokee. On the way, Monk and I discussed the case.

  Although Father Bowen didn’t know the name of the woman Ronald Webster hit with his car, I called Disher and told him what we knew. He said it wouldn’t take long for him to identify and locate the woman. Our tax dollars at work.

  “Do you think she lured Webster out to the beach and fed him to her alligator?” I asked Monk after the call.

  “She certainly has a strong motive,” Monk said.

  “But why wait until now to kill him? And why take him to a nude beach? And why use an alligator as a murder weapon?”

  “We’ll have to ask her,” Monk said.

  “There are so many simpler ways to kill someone,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Monk said. “She could have hit him over the head with a lamp. And then where would we be?”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Monk.”

  The truth was, I was glad to hear him beating himself up over the Ellen Cole case. It meant he was still thinking about it. I was thinking about Ronald Webster.

  “It must be a pretty big alligator,” I said.

  “It must be,” he said.

  “You’d think people would notice if she had a pet like that.”

  “You’d think so,” he said.

  “What do you feed a pet alligator?” I asked.

  Monk shrugged. “Hit-and-run drivers, I suppose.”

  We picked up my car from Ned, my mechanic. Monk made a point of standing far away from me when I went to the cashier to pay the bill for the repairs. I think Monk was afraid I might hit him up for a loan. He was a wise man. What I really needed were smelling salts.

  I left the cashier wondering if I could get away with robbing a bank. I found Monk and the mechanic standing by my car.

  “Did you take care of the tick?” Monk asked Ned.

  “She didn’t say anything about a tick,” he said.

  “You didn’t?” Monk said to me.

  “I never heard a tick,” I said.

  “Oh, there’s a tick,” Monk said. “A very persistent tick.”

  “Now this is a man who knows cars,” Ned said. “Very few people realize that a tick can actually be the death rattle of the suspension bushings.”

  “It’s not a rattle. It’s a tick,” Monk said. “Like this: tick, tick, tick.”

  “I can’t afford to fix one tick,” I said, “much less three. We’re taking my car and going now.”

  “What about the suspension bushings?” Ned asked.

  “I’ll be sure to bring the car in right after I win the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.”

  “But it’s getting worse,” Monk said. “Before the trip to Los Angeles, the tick was occurring every three seconds. Now it’s every two and a half. I timed it with my stopwatch.”

  “Maybe that’s what you heard ticking,” I said.

  We got in the car and left. The steering was fixed and the car was running fine as far as I was concerned. Monk complained about the tick, which I couldn’t hear. I think it was only audible to Monk and dogs. But after a few minutes, he stopped whining about that so he could complain instead about my filthy car, specifically the grains of sand in the carpet, which, if you heard him describe it, made it seem like his feet were resting on a pile of gravel.

  “Forgive me,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to go to the car wash. Things have been a bit hectic lately.”
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  “Things aren’t hectic now,” Monk said.

  A trip to the car wash with Monk was, at best, a three-hour event and I didn’t see how we could spare that much time in the middle of two homicide investigations.

  “You’re investigating two murders,” I said.

  “We’re in a lull,” Monk said.

  “We don’t have to be in a lull,” I said. “You could think of something to ask somebody.”

  “I did,” Monk said. “I thought of asking you to wash your car.”

  My cell phone rang. It was Disher. He had the name and address of the woman Ronald Webster hit with his car. Her name was Paula Dalmas and we could find her in Walnut Creek.

  “The lull is over,” I said.

  “What a waste of a good lull,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mr. Monk Goes to the Orthodontist

  Walnut Creek was once a quaint little town on the banks of a tiny creek that wound through the walnut groves under the shadow of Mount Diablo. In the sixties and seventies, the groves were mowed down and the creek diverted to make room for thousands of tract-home communities with names like Walnut Acres, Walnut Grove and Walnut Walk.

  By the new millennium, downtown Walnut Creek had been demolished and rebuilt so that it had become a Disneyesque shopping center designed to evoke memories of small-town America instead of actually being small-town America.

  Dr. Paula Dalmas had an orthodontics practice in a medical complex downtown that perfectly reflected the ethos of the new Walnut Creek. Her practice was in a collection of offices that looked like a shopping center and had a tract-home-community name: Doctors’ Park. The only thing missing was a Panda Express, though the panda in the logo would have needed a stethoscope around its neck to fit in.

  Dr. Dalmas was open one Saturday a month for patients, most of whom were children and teenagers, who couldn’t make a regular weekday appointment, probably because there wasn’t a parent around to drive them.

  I could appreciate that. I wished my daughter’s orthodontist had weekend hours. I was thinking that it might even be worth schlepping Julie out to Walnut Creek to take advantage of Saturday appointments.

  Given Monk’s fear of dentists, I thought I was going to have a hard time getting him into Dr. Dalmas’ office. But much to my surprise, he didn’t seem at all reluctant. He practically bounded inside.

  The waiting room was warm and comfortable, painted in soothing earth tones and furnished with inviting overstuffed chairs. If it weren’t for the framed posters of teeth before and after orthodontics, the issues of Highlights for Children scattered on the coffee tables and the requisite aquarium full of tropical fish, you could have mistaken the place for someone’s living room.

  There were two children waiting with a parent to see the doctor or one of her associates. Looking at those kids, and the transparent, barely perceptible braces on their teeth, filled me with bitterness and jealousy.

  When I had had braces, I was stuck with a mouthful of wires, rubber bands and gleaming silver that made me ashamed to smile. I had to put wax on the wirework in my mouth so it wouldn’t scratch the inside of my cheeks. You can imagine how attractive that made me. That wasn’t even the worst of it. After school, I had to attach my braces to elaborate headgear from the Tower of London collection that made my face look like it was being slowly pulled off my skull.

  Twenty years later, I was still feeling the shame, so much so that I resented these kids for not having to endure what I did. I’m obviously a woman with a few issues to work out.

  While I presented myself to the receptionist, Monk went over and admired one of the posters. He stood in front of it, hands clasped behind his back, intently studying the vivid pictures of crooked yellow teeth and how they looked after they had been straightened and whitened. You would have thought he was in the Louvre.

  “Magnificent,” he said.

  He took out a magnifying glass from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and examined the before-and-after pictures on the poster.

  “Extraordinary,” he said.

  The receptionist motioned to me. “The doctor is just finishing up with a patient,” she said. “You can go back and see her if you like.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  When I turned, I saw that Monk was holding a tape measure up to the teeth in the poster. I have no idea what he was measuring, but he was nodding with approval.

  “Exquisite,” he said.

  “Mr. Monk, the doctor can see us now,” I said.

  “One minute.” Monk put the tape measure back in his pocket and went up to the receptionist.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Do you know where I could purchase that work of art?”

  “What art?” the receptionist said.

  Monk gestured to the poster. “It’s a marvelous piece, true genius.”

  “You mean the pictures of the teeth?” she asked.

  “It would look fabulous in my living room,” Monk said, “though I imagine it’s probably way, way out of my price range.”

  “That thing?” she said. “I think it was some promotional junk that came with one of our orders of dental picks.”

  Monk smiled. “No, really. I’m serious.”

  “It’s a freebie,” she said. “They give it away.”

  “I get it. The doctor doesn’t want everyone to know how much she paid.” Monk lowered his voice to a whisper. “It wouldn’t help business for her to flaunt her wealth in front of the patients. I admire your discretion.”

  Monk followed me back into the examination area. The hallway was decorated with candid photographs of Dr. Dalmas’ smiling patients, some with braces, some without. Monk moved past them slowly, trying to look at them all. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he was impressed by what he saw.

  The exam area was one big room with four dental chairs facing a large picture window overlooking the hills.

  There were teenage girls in two of the chairs, one having her teeth brushed by a dental hygienist, the other having her mouth examined by a woman I presumed was Dr. Dalmas, since she was the only one wearing a lab coat.

  Dr. Dalmas was tall and slender and wore her hair in a ponytail that made her look almost as young as her patients.

  “Looking good, Mariska,” Dr. Dalmas said. “But you have to wear your retainers more often or you’ll be back where you started.”

  “But the retainers look so yucky,” she said.

  “Not as yucky as your teeth looked before,” Dr. Dalmas said, peeling off her rubber gloves.

  “You should listen to her, young lady,” Monk said. “She’s doing God’s work.”

  Dr. Dalmas smiled at Monk. “That’s quite a compliment coming from someone I’ve never met.”

  “You’re turning chaos into order,” Monk said. “You’re saving people’s lives.”