Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (23 page)
Read Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Online
Authors: Lee Goldberg
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
M
onk 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.
onk 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.
screaming
,” he said.
“You fled Los Angeles because you are afraid of failing,” I said. “You have no idea who killed Ellen Cole and don’t know where to start looking.”
“I know I’m not going to find the answer by staying in Los Angeles and questioning everyone who was remotely involved with either Ellen Cole or Trevor Fleming.”
“Isn’t that how you usually investigate a crime, by asking questions, learning new information and spotting contradictions?”
Monk shook his head. “I solve it the first time I visit the crime scene. I see something that isn’t right, and by trying to make things fit, I figure out how the murder was really committed.”
“You saw lots of things that weren’t right at Ellen Cole’s house.”
“But not
the
thing,” he said.
the
thing,” he said.
“And you think you will see it here?” I said. “We’re hundreds of miles away.”
“I’ve already seen it,” Monk said. “I just haven’t realized it yet.”
It all made sense to me now. “You’re worried that you never will,” I said.
“It’s happened before,” Monk said quietly.
He was talking about his wife, Trudy, and the car bomb that killed her. He didn’t know who killed her or why.
He’d failed her.
For a while that failure crippled him. And the person who helped him through that nightmare and showed him how to reclaim his life was Sharona, and now he was terrified that he was going to fail her, too.
“You’ll see the thing that isn’t right,” I said. “I know you will.”
“How can you be so sure?” he asked.
“Because you’re Adrian Monk,” I said, “and I have faith in you.”
“I wish you didn’t,” Monk said.
“You have to have faith in something,” I said.
“I do,” Monk said. “But I don’t think Formula 409 is going to solve my problems.”
Even though Julie couldn’t play soccer with her broken arm, she wanted to attend the Saturday-morning practice at Dolores Park to show her team spirit. I think she also wanted to get maximum exposure for her cast-vertising campaign. It worked out great for me, because Monk wanted to talk with the priest at Mission Dolores, which was only two blocks away from the park.
The mission was founded by the Spaniards in 1776 to proselytize the Indians, five thousand of whom succumbed to a measles epidemic brought by the same people who came to save them from their heathen ways. The adobe church that stands today was built in 1791 by the Neophytes, a fancy word for Native Americans who’d survived the epidemics and become Christians. The four-inch-thick walls had withstood the ravages of time and the 1906 earthquake, so I figured the church could withstand Adrian Monk.
I wasn’t going to tell him about the measles epidemic, even though it happened hundreds of years ago, or else he wouldn’t have stepped into the church. He might even have had to move out of San Francisco entirely if he learned about it.
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