Mr. Monk Gets on Board (3 page)

“A cruise ship.”

“Never heard of it. What line?”

“It’s independent,” he said. “The ship has seen better days. But they run these business conferences every couple of months. You can meet a lot of clients in a very friendly atmosphere. Plus, it gives you a few days in the Mexican sun. I’ve done it five times myself.”

“Five times?”

“The connections alone are worth the price.”

“On a cruise ship?” I had to laugh out loud. “No. I could never get my partner on a cruise ship, especially an old one. There aren’t enough antiseptic wipes in the world. . . .”

“Don’t take him. You’re the business end. Why does he have to go?”

“Go without Monk?” The idea was a shock, a wonderfully appealing shock. “It wouldn’t feel right.”

“Why not? Can’t he survive without you?” Malcolm laughed.

“I know you mean that as a joke,” I said, “but I’m kind of essential to his process. The last time he tried solving a case without me, he almost died.”

“Wow.” His smile crinkled. “I’m impressed.”

“Of course, we don’t have another case now, not after this one. Sometimes we go for weeks.”

“So take the cruise. Look, it’s your call. You’re the company honcho.”

Malcolm was right. It was my call. If Monk didn’t want to join me for a seven-days-at-sea business conference, he could just stay home. “You’re right,” I confirmed. “I am the honcho.”

“Natalie?” The word had come from the doorway and was spoken as a high-pitched whine. “Natalie?”

I didn’t even bother to look. “What is it, Adrian?”

“You can take me home. I’m ready.”

How humiliating. “What if I’m not ready, Adrian?”

Monk snorted. “How can you not be ready?”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Malcolm stifling a yawn. Oh no. I was boring him already. “Sorry,” he said, recovering. “Still getting over my jet lag.”

“Oh, really?” I said, ignoring Monk’s impatience. “Where from?”

“New York,” said Malcolm. “A buying spree for late medieval medical texts. I actually found one in High German. Most of them are in Latin.”

“People really buy those?”

“God, I hope so,” he said with a mock grimace. “So, are we on for tonight? Around eight?” He reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a watch. It looked like a Rolex. “Still on New York time,” he said, chuckling, and began to wind the stem.

“If you two are done with your chitchat,” Monk said, tapping his foot.

“It’s not chitchat,” I said, perhaps not accurately.

“Well, I’m the one who examined the crime scene and interviewed everyone who was in the house last night and told the captain to drain the pond. What have you been doing?”

“I’ll have you know that I have been talking serious business with Mr. Leeds and—hold on. You told them to drain the pond? What pond?”

“There’s a pond out in the garden, covered with lily pads.”

“Is it dirty? Is that why you want it drained?”

“Yes, it’s dirty. Filthy with nature. But that’s not the reason. Whatever’s at the bottom of the pond is going to solve the case.”

“Sorry,” I said to Malcolm. “This is what happens when you have a partner.”

“Don’t apologize,” said Malcolm. “You two are fascinating.”

I felt like blushing. Instead, I turned to Monk. “Do you know what’s down there or are you just guessing?”

Monk twitched his nose and rolled his shoulders. “I’m eighty-six percent sure. We won’t know a hundred percent until it’s drained.”

   C
HAPTER THREE

Mr. Monk and Ms. Christie

I
felt bad about my behavior that afternoon, at least after the fact. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d left Monk alone at a crime scene. We were supposed to be partners, and I should have stayed at his side and helped to figure out who had killed an old man already on his deathbed.

My only excuse . . . Make that three excuses. One, I had felt sure that Monk would do fine. He was already at eighty-six percent. Two, my contribution was mainly on the business end, and that’s what I’d been taking care of—networking with Mr. Malcolm Leeds. And three, let me mention once again the hazel eyes.

In my attempt to soothe the guilt, I decided to forgo the latest episode of
Downton Abbey
, which was calling out to me sweetly from my DVR. I had been looking forward to it all day. But this was more important. I needed to catch up on the mystery in this mansion before catching up on the ones in that mansion. I certainly couldn’t let Monk solve it without my even knowing the details.

Luckily, Lieutenant Devlin takes good notes—succinct and easy to follow. She had e-mailed them to the captain and me but not to Monk, since he doesn’t own a computer and would remember everything anyway, down to the number of red tassels on the curtains in the front hall.

Dinner that evening was a paillard from the freezer, left over from my daughter Julie’s visit last weekend, when we spent a few great hours pounding chicken breasts and cooking them and eating together. Tonight, I added some freshly steamed snow peas. Dessert was a printout of Devlin’s report, served in the living room in front of the dark, taunting face of my TV. As a side dish, I poured a nice glass of Barolo, then turned off my phone and got to work.

According to the lieutenant, the mansion on Pacific Avenue had been occupied by three individuals that night, four if you count the victim. There had been no sign of a break-in, which was kind of refreshing. Almost every inside job these days seems to involve a halfhearted attempt to make it look like a break-in. In this case, the killer didn’t even try. Nothing at all seemed to be missing from the house.

Devlin had included a photo of each suspect, taken with her iPhone and with their consent. The first was the victim’s son, Jeremiah Melrose, who wisely went by the nickname Jerry. The man looked to be about fifty, with a large frame and a thin, pinched gray face. The kind of face that always looked hungry.

Jerry had taken over as president of First Mercantile, the century-old family bank. He was rich in his own right and, as Lester’s only child, stood to inherit most of his father’s assets, including the mansion, which he could probably sell off as a small hotel. Jerry was divorced, no children, and lived on the second floor, in the wing opposite his father’s.

Second on the list was Portia Braun. She was a rare book curator hired by the Melrose Foundation four months ago to catalogue the mansion’s library. Apparently, the library is not only a pretty room. It’s a big deal. At least it was to Lester Melrose. As his final contribution to his legacy, he had brought Portia over from the University of Munich to make some sense of the thousands of old volumes. He had offered to put her up in the cavernous old mansion, and she’d accepted.

From the beginning, Jerry Melrose had been on his guard with Portia. His father was a sick seventy-six-year-old who was now spending half of each day with a German bombshell. Okay,
bombshell
may be an overstatement for a fortysomething academic. But from Devlin’s snapshot, Portia was still quite attractive, with long blond hair, a trim figure, and a wide, ingratiating smile. And Lester, it seemed, hadn’t been too old or sick to notice.

The family soap opera had all come to a head the previous night, Portia’s last night at the mansion. Her work on the library was finally complete, and the next day she would be heading off to another job, wherever that might be. Lester, despite his health and his ever-present oxygen tank, had arranged an intimate farewell in his bedroom—just him, Portia, Jerry, the butler, and the family lawyer.

Yes, I did say
lawyer
. I can just imagine how Jerry Melrose must have felt walking into the old man’s room and finding an attorney from Brace & Feingold, who was looking embarrassed and holding a fresh codicil to his father’s last will and testament.

According to the butler, Melrose senior said he wasn’t giving it away as a frivolous gift, but was doing it for the sake of humanity, for the good of future generations of scholars. What it amounted to was that Portia Braun, a virtual stranger, not to mention a foreigner, was suddenly going to inherit the pride of the Melrose family, the Shakespeare first folio.

Jerry tried to talk his father out of it. And so did Portia, believe it or not. From what Smithson the butler said, she seemed genuinely surprised and, to her credit, more reluctant to accept his generosity than anyone might have imagined. But the ink was dry and Lester was insistent. Smithson and the lawyer signed on as witnesses.

As the four of them walked out of the dying man’s room, Jerry had been overheard hissing to the sexy German scholar, “I want you out of this house tomorrow morning. Whatever business you have, do it through a lawyer. I don’t ever want to hear from you again.”

Smithson later testified that he let out the lawyer, locked the heavy front doors but neglected, as seemed to be his habit, to set the alarm system. The butler retired to his quarters on the third floor, while Jerry went off to his own wing and Portia retreated to a guest room on the first floor.

Given the size and sturdiness of the Melrose mansion, it wasn’t surprising that no one heard any noise during the night. You could have played basketball in the library and not disturbed the other floors or wings. The next morning, at a few minutes after seven, Jerry went to check on his father, saw that the bedroom was empty, and walked one room down the hall to find the old man bludgeoned to death with Homer, lying on the Persian carpet.

I put down the pages from Devlin’s report and didn’t even think about reaching for the DVR remote. This wasn’t quite
Downton Abbey
, more like an Agatha Christie novel with a limited cast of suspects. But it was fascinating.

First there was the enraged son, Jerry, aka Jeremiah, who had just seen a family heirloom given away on a whim. Then came the exotic stranger, Portia Braun, who had charmed a dying man to the tune of a six-million-dollar book. Last, of course, was the butler. I was really hoping it would turn out to be the butler.

The only trouble was that none of them had a motive, not that I could figure. And what was the deal with the lily pond? After doing his usual inspection of the library, holding up his hands and wandering around like a movie director, Monk had instructed the captain to drain the backyard pond. I carefully read the rest of Devlin’s report but still couldn’t figure out what extra detail my partner had latched onto, which, I’m embarrassed to say, is not unusual.

I was beginning to fantasize about all the possible permutations. Was anyone, Jerry or Smithson, having an affair with the German temptress? Had anyone in the mansion opened the door to a late-arriving stranger? Could all of them have done it together?

It seemed obvious that something had gone on in the library, something that had made a sick man get out of bed and roll his oxygen tank in there. What could it have been?

I drained the last gulp of my Barolo, turned my phone back on, and immediately saw I had two messages. Both from Malcolm Leeds. Damn. I had forgotten all about our vague, flirty agreement to get together.

I pressed
CALL BACK
and spent the next two seconds trying to decide how apologetic to sound. The armchair I was sitting in was close to the front door, and I was stunned to hear a phone start ringing right out on my porch. Why was there a cell phone ringing on my porch?

I figured this puzzle out almost instantly, although it took me a few tries to wipe the girlish grin off my face. By the time I opened the door, it was down to a bemused smirk. “Malcolm.”

He was standing in front of me, one hand holding my business card, the other hand holding his ringing phone. His face was also displaying a bemused smirk. “I’m not going to answer this,” he said.

“I wouldn’t,” I said, and pressed
END
. “I think it’s that crazy woman you met this afternoon.”

We both laughed, and our rush of apologies tripped over each other. He was sorry for tracking me down at my address. I was sorry for forgetting our drink. He was sorry for not being more specific about this evening. I was sorry for turning off my phone.

I invited him in, then made a quick visual sweep of the living room. Not bad. One wineglass, a raft of printouts on the coffee table, and a folded copy of the
Chronicle
on the sofa, left over from the morning. It’s usually worse.

We made our way into the kitchen to find the rest of my bottle of Barolo. Another visual sweep. A lot worse in here, especially the counters. I’m not the neatest cook in the world, even when I’m just doing leftovers and snow peas. Malcolm behaved like a gentleman and pretended not to notice.

“Have you given more thought to the cruise?” he asked as soon as we’d turned our back on the clutter and poured and toasted. “I’m thinking of doing it again. Number six.”

Only once before had I been on a cruise, to Alaska to celebrate my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary, along with the rest of our huge extended family. It had been a great experience but might have been even greater without running into a Teeger around every corner.

I had become interested enough to check out the cruise Malcolm recommended online. It was called the B. to Sea Conference, an awkward little play on words—“taking business to sea,” as their tagline promised. It was a combination of a few seminars and more than a few chances to network with a business card in one hand and an umbrella drink in the other. Plus a bonus: Malcolm had just said he might go. I couldn’t imagine a better venue for a real first date.

“I thought about it,” I replied. “But I need to invite my partner. It’s only right.”

“I’m guessing he won’t come.” Malcolm stepped a foot closer, tipping down his head to look me in the eyes.

“I’m guessing so, too,” I said. Okay, this may sound like a banal exchange, but it was actually quite sexy.

A second later, my phone on the counter did a quick little vibrate-and-ping. Before I could even look, Malcolm’s phone did the same from his jacket pocket.

“It’s Lieutenant Devlin,” I said, reading from my screen. “They found what they were looking for at the bottom of the pond. I have to bring Monk over tomorrow morning to wrap things up.”

“I’m supposed to be there, too,” Malcolm said, holding up his phone and showing me an identical text from Devlin. “Why do they want me?”

“You’re the book expert. Must have something to do with books.”

“I told them everything I know.” All the flirtation had left his voice. “I don’t understand.”

“You’ll get paid for your time,” I pointed out. “And you’ll get to see how Adrian solves a case. It can be a memorable moment.”

“You mean they’re going to arrest the killer? On the spot?”

“If we’re lucky.” I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but this had the earmarks of a classic, with Monk standing in a room of suspects and pointing to the killer. Given the prevalence of DNA and electronic evidence, we don’t get many classics anymore, not like in the old days. It would be a sight to behold.

“Sounds exciting,” he said, but his expression conveyed something else. Was he just feeling out of his element? A little apprehensive? I can’t imagine that antiquarian book experts deal with the arrest of many murderers.

Or could something else be going through his mind, something more sinister?

Please,
I said to myself, my heart beginning to sink.
Don’t let it be something else.