Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (21 page)

The two of us had dinner together again at the Royal Hawaiian. Afterward Monk returned to the bungalow to finish straightening up, and I went to the hotel’s beachfront bar to sample some more of their tropical drinks.

The bar was lit by torches and moonlight. There was a band, some hula dancers, and a warm breeze off the water. The drinks were smooth, sweet, and plentiful. Best of all, since the patrons were mostly couples, I was left alone to enjoy the night without getting hit on by anybody.

I missed Julie but I would have gladly stayed another week if given the opportunity. With all the things that had happened since we’d arrived, I’d hardly had any time to enjoy the resort or explore the island. And yet I was certainly relaxed, more so than when I arrived. Between the night air, the music, and all the drinks, I could have been poured into bed that night. As it was, I returned to our bungalow after an hour at the bar and went to bed content.

I was awakened early on our last morning by the sound of splashing in our pool. Since I was the only resident of the bungalow who swam, I figured either a seal had found its way into our backyard or we had an intruder swimming laps. I put on my bathrobe and went out barefoot to see what was up.

I was surprised to see Monk doing a pretty decent backstroke across the pool. He smiled when he saw me.

“Dive in and I’ll race you,” he said.

It was the first time I’d seen Monk shirtless. And if he was aware of me looking at his nakedness, he certainly wasn’t bashful about it.

“We’re leaving here in two hours,” I said. “Don’t you have to pack?”

“How hard is that? You just throw everything into a suitcase and zip it up.”

Now I understood what was going on. Monk was high. He must have taken his preflight dose of the anti-OCD drug Dioxynl already.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet. I just got up.”

“I’m starving.” He climbed out of the pool. “The buffet opens in five minutes. Let’s go before there’s a line.”

He looked around a moment before he realized he didn’t have a towel.

“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll get you a towel.”

“Forget about it,” he said, and started walking toward the living room.

“You’ll drip water all over the house.”

He waved off my concern. “It’s water, not acid. It’ll be dry in five minutes. You have to learn to relax, babe.”

Monk was lucky I wasn’t holding a heavy object.

I showered, got dressed, and finished my packing. When I came out of my room, I found Monk waiting for me in his freshly laundered golf clothes, his suitcases by the front door, ready to go.

We left our bags with the bellhop and went to the buffet. There was already a short line, but it moved fast. Monk grabbed a plate and piled it high with scrambled eggs, white rice, sausage, hash browns, bacon, ham, melon, and pineapple, all mixed together.

“You don’t have to take all your food at once,” I said when he came to the table. “You can go back for more as often as you like.”

“Cool,” Monk said.

He set down his plate and went back to the buffet for another one, which he filled up with an omelet, pastries, pancakes, smoked fish, bagels, crepes, and Grape-Nuts cereal.

“Are you sure you have enough food?” I said.

“I have a high metabolism.”

“If you eat all of that, you’ll be ready to go into hibernation for the winter.”

Monk devoured his breakfast, taking each bite from a different item. He was channel surfing, only with food. He didn’t care if his lox was mixed with his Grape-Nuts or his pancakes with his pastries. He washed it all down with four cups of Kona coffee, jacking himself up on caffeine on top of his mind-altering Dioxynl high.

I was so caught up in watching the spectacle that I almost forgot to eat my own modest breakfast of pancakes, pineapple, and yogurt.

We’d finished eating and were about to go to the lobby and check out of the hotel when Lieutenant Kealoha strode up to our table.

“I was hoping I’d catch you before you left,” Kealoha said.

“Not to be rude,” I said, “but haven’t we said goodbyes to each other twice already?”

“I wanted to give you the good news personally. We raided the body shop last night. The truck that hit you was there, and so was the man with the goatee that you described. We found millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.”

“All right!” Monk yelled, raising his fists in the air in victory and dancing around the table. “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. Oh, yeah!”

Kealoha stared at him as he danced. “Not only that, but we discovered a crop of marijuana in the field behind the shop. It’s the biggest drug arrest in Kauai history. There’s already talk around the station that I’m going to be promoted to captain.”

“Give me five.” Monk held up his hand. Kealoha slapped it. Monk slapped back. “You deserve it, man.”

“Maybe if I solve Martin Kamakele’s murder, they’ll make me chief.”

“Wish I could help you there, bruddah, but the Monk doesn’t know who killed him. What would you like from the buffet?”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“I’ll get some more food and you can eat it off my plate. They’ll never know.”

“Really, I’m fine,” Kealoha said.

“You’ll change your mind when you see the grub.” Monk got up and hurried to the buffet, piling his plate high with bacon.

Kealoha looked at me. “Is he on drugs?”

I nodded.

“Have a nice flight,” Kealoha said, and walked away.

I won’t torture you with the details of our flight home. It might not be torture for you to hear, but it would be for me to recall it. The horror began when we were in the security line and Monk started pulling out the bacon and pastries he’d stuffed into his pockets at breakfast. Things only got worse and more embarrassing from there. Let’s just say that Monk isn’t welcome to fly on Hawaiian Airlines again.

After five hours in the air with Monk, I was glad to be home. Julie loved her Red Dirt shirt, although my mom found it almost as disgusting as Monk did.

My mother had heard all about what happened at Candace’s wedding. Apparently the news had spread throughout the high society of Monterey and San Francisco. I felt terrible for Candace.

“When will you learn not to take Monk to weddings?” my mother said.

“Would it have been better if Candace married a married man?”

“I’m sure the situation would have resolved itself more quietly, and with more dignity, than what happened at the wedding.”

“You mean it would have ended up being just as disastrous, if not worse for poor Candace, but at least it could have been kept quiet.”

“Her parents may never come back from safari,” my mother said.

Julie gave me a fashion show that night of all the clothes my mother had bought her while I was gone. By the time it was over, I was so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open. I kissed Julie and Mom good night and went to bed.

I was awakened by the phone at nine
A
.
M
. sharp. I knocked the phone over reaching for the receiver and nearly fell out of bed trying to pick it up off the floor.

“What?” I snapped into the receiver.

“Where are you?” It was Monk.

“Obviously I’m at home. You just called me here. Some detective you are.” I’m surly when I’m tired and still half-asleep.

“Why aren’t you here?”

“It’s my first day back,” I said. “I assumed I had the day off.”

“You just had a week’s vacation in Hawaii. How much more rest could you possibly need?”

“I’m recovering from the flight,” I said.

“You were sitting the whole time. I don’t see what’s so difficult about that.”

I restrained myself. My job was difficult, but I wanted to keep it.

“I’ll stop by this afternoon,” I said.

“That’s too late. I need you now. I have work to do.”

“You have a case already?”

“Of course,” Monk said. “I have to expose Dylan Swift as a fraud.”

“Can’t you expose him tomorrow?”

“He’s taping his show today at eleven at the Belmont Hotel, and I want to be there,” Monk said. “And then there’s Martin Kamakele’s murder to deal with.”

“What can you do about it from here?”

“I can solve it,” Monk said. “Today, in fact, if you can drag yourself out of bed.”

The low-lying fog over San Francisco swallowed the buildings of the Financial District, obscuring the upper floors from view and blotting out the sun, leaving the streets windy, cold, and gray.

But San Franciscans like me were used to mornings like this and never lost hope that before the day was out, either winds off the Pacific would blow the fog away or the sun would burn it off. If neither happened, so be it. The fog gave the city—and, by extension, all of us who lived there—character. Character meant more to San Franciscans than sunlight anyway.

The Belmont Hotel had plenty of character. It was one of the oldest hotels in the city and a Victorian masterpiece right in the heart of Union Square. It was as much a part of San Francisco as the Golden Gate, Fisherman’s Wharf, cable cars, and foggy mornings.

On our last wedding anniversary before Mitch was sent overseas, we dropped off Julie with my parents in Monterey and spent a wonderful night in a nineteenth floor room at the Belmont. We stayed in the old tower, the one that dates back to the 1920s, not the new one they built in the 1970s, which I guess isn’t so new unless you compare it to the old one.

Mitch and I never left our bed except to look out the window at our view, at the sliver of the Bay Bridge we could see between the clustered skyscrapers of the Financial District. We didn’t even sleep. We held each other close and listened to the music of the street: the clanking of cable car bells, the raplike rantings of a sidewalk preacher, the wail of distant police sirens, someone playing a harmonica, the honking of cars trying to inch up Powell Street, the drums and clatter of Hare Krishnas marching down Geary.

It’s a memory I cherish. And for that reason, I was very uncomfortable about going to the Belmont with Monk to see Dylan Swift.

I can understand how my apprehension might not make a lot of sense to you. But the Belmont is a place that has a lot of emotional resonance for me because of the time I spent there with Mitch. If Swift and I were both at the Belmont, and Swift really could talk to the dead, I was sure to hear from Mitch again. In the same way the Grand Kiahuna Poipu, by virtue of its placement as the jumping-off point for souls, might give Swift a foot in the door to the great beyond, I figured the Belmont would be crackling with psychic energy as far as Mitch and I were concerned.

I’d finally reached a sort of peace with my grief back in Hawaii. But it was a fragile peace. Another message from Mitch, real or not, could shatter it. So I was very uneasy as we approached the ballroom where Swift’s show was shot.

Monk was as excited as a kid on his way to Disneyland, though you’d have to know him well to recognize it. To the casual observer, Monk appeared as tightly wound as ever. But I saw the intensity in his eyes, the slight curl of a smile at the edges of his mouth, and the way he kept rolling his shoulders.

There was an enormous line of people waiting to get inside, hundreds at least, jamming the hallway in carefully roped-off lanes that snaked the line back on itself several times in the corridor. Even so, the line stretched down the corridor and out of sight around the corner.

“We’ll never get in,” I said.

“Stay here,” Monk said.

He went to the head of the line and said something to the beefy security guard there. The guard mumbled into his radio, listened to the reply, then motioned Monk into the ballroom. Monk waved me up.

“What did you say?” I asked as we were moved to the front of the line and admitted into the ballroom, which was already rapidly filling up with people.

“I told him I was Adrian Monk and that Mr. Swift would be very upset if he knew we stopped by and were turned away. The security guard checked. Apparently I was right.”

There were several minibleachers, with only three rows each, arranged in a half circle facing a stage. The ballroom was lit by the harsh glare of enormous movie lights mounted on scaffolding that stretched over the stage and bleachers. Cameras that pivoted on the ends of telescoping crane arms were positioned in each corner of the room. Several flat-screen monitors hung from the scaffolding so we could see ourselves on TV.

“Mr. Monk, the only reason Swift would let you in is if he intends to take advantage of you.”

“I know,” Monk said, scanning the audience for two empty seats.

“He’s in his element here and in complete control of what happens. He’ll reveal your most intimate secrets and fears on national television.”

“I’m counting on it,” Monk said.

“Or he will reveal mine,” I said, revealing my true fear.

“I won’t let him do that, Natalie.”

“You don’t have any control over what happens here, Mr. Monk. This is his show.”

He smiled enigmatically. “Not today.”

We found two unoccupied front-row seats next to two familiar faces—Captain Stottlemeyer and Lieutenant Disher were sitting in the audience waiting for us. Stottlemeyer looked grumpy and uncomfortable, but Disher was wide-eyed and exuberant.

“What are you doing here?” I said as we took our seats beside them.

“Ask Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “He insisted we show up for this freak show.”

“It’s gonna be great,” Disher said. “This guy Swift can talk to the dead.”

“No, he can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “Because dead people don’t talk. You want to know why they don’t talk?
Because they’re dead.
”

“I’m looking forward to introducing you to my uncle Morty,” Disher said.

“He came down here today, too?”

“He died ten years ago,” Disher said. “But if Dylan Swift makes a connection to the beyond, I guarantee you my uncle Morty will grab the phone.”

Stottlemeyer groaned. “You’d better have a damn good reason for dragging us down here, Monk.”

“Did you get my letter?” Monk asked.

Stottlemeyer patted his breast pocket. “It’s right here in my pocket. Unopened and unread, just like you told me. If I give it to you now, can I leave?”

But as Stottlemeyer spoke the doors closed and an assistant director, a young woman wearing a headset microphone, stepped onto the stage.

“I’m Abigail Donovan, the first assistant director, and I want to thank you all for coming today to be a part of the Dylan Swift show.”

The audience applauded. Why, I don’t know, but we joined in because it seemed to be the thing to do. Donovan smiled, pleased with the response.

“That’s great; we love an enthusiastic audience. Your positive energy is very, very important to the show. We’re assuming you came here to talk to a loved one who has passed on. If not, we ask that you give up your seat to one of the hundreds of people outside who are anxious for a reading.”

Monk whispered to me. “She’s making sure Swift has a receptive audience, people eager to help him when he starts fishing for information under the guise of hearing from the dead.”

“Remember that this is a dialogue between you and your departed loved ones, with Dylan in the middle,” she said. “He needs your cooperation to interpret the messages he’s relaying, so don’t be shy.”

“In other words, if he gets it wrong, tell him the right answer,” Monk whispered to Stottlemeyer. “It’s the audience that’s doing all the work, not Swift.”

“The best suckers are the people who want to be suckered,” Stottlemeyer replied in a whisper.

“You could be on camera at any moment during the program,” Abigail Donovan said, “and we want your friends at home to know you’re having fun. React to what he is saying.”

“So Swift will know if he’s scored with one of his guesses,” Monk whispered to me.

“This show is produced live on tape, so we’ll be shooting in real time, pausing only for the commercial breaks.”

I didn’t listen to the rest of the technical stuff she had to say; I was still trying to figure out what she meant by “live on tape,” which sounded like a contradiction to me.

When she stepped off the stage, the show’s theme music blared from several speakers and the main title sequence played on the monitors. The main title was comprised of shots of Dylan Swift talking to people who were either amazed at his powers or overwhelmed and sobbing with joy.

The instant the main titles ended Swift bounded out from between two bleachers onto the stage with a big smile on his tanned face.

“Hello, my friends!”

The audience applauded uproariously, many of them rising to their feet. I could feel their excitement and anticipation as palpably as the heat from the TV lights.

Swift’s gaze panned the bleachers, settling for just an instant on Monk and me, but long enough for me to be sure he’d seen us in the audience.

“What happens or doesn’t happen today depends largely on you. My ability to communicate with your loved ones on the other side requires that you be receptive, open, and willing to receive their messages. You know your loved ones better than I do, and I may not always understand the messages I’m receiving. It’s up to you to interpret them.”

Monk whispered to Stottlemeyer, “In other words, if his guesses are all wrong, it’s not because he’s a fraud; it’s because you weren’t receptive enough.”

“I’d like to arrest him right now,” Stottlemeyer said.

Swift closed his eyes and held his hands out in front of him, palms up, as if feeling the heat from a campfire. “I’m sensing blue and the letter
M.
”

Disher’s hand shot up. “Me! Me!”

Stottlemeyer yanked Disher’s arm down, but it was too late. Swift had opened his eyes and was on his way over.

“What’s your name?”

Disher stood up. “Randy Disher.”

“How do you know this spirit is calling out for you, Randy?”

“Because my uncle Morty loved to fish at Loon Lake,” Disher said. “And his favorite color was blue.”

“Yes, I see him now,” Swift said. “He’s an older man, not exactly fat, but not thin, either.”

“That’s him! He had a beer gut.” Disher turned to Stottlemeyer. “Isn’t this amazing?”

“That’s one word for it,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I see a very special place on the lake. It’s his favorite fishing hole, the one he never told anybody about,” Swift said. “You know the one I mean, his secret spot.”

“In the bay, by the swimming dock in front of the little red cabins?”

“The secret is out now,” Stottlemeyer said.

“That’s the one. He wants you to know that his spirit is there and the fish are still biting.” Swift put his hand on Disher’s shoulder. “Go park your boat in front of the little red cabins when you want to be close to him and you will be.”

Disher nodded, all choked up, and looked to the ceiling. “I love you, Uncle Morty.”

“He loves you, too,” Swift said, then turned and regarded Monk.

“Hello, Mr. Swift,” Monk said.

“This, ladies and gentlemen, is Adrian Monk, the great detective,” Swift said. “If you watched me on
Larry King Live
last night, you know that Adrian and I worked together with the spirit of a murdered woman to find her killer and bring him to justice. You can read the whole story in my next book.”

The audience
ooh
ed and
aah
ed. I noticed that Swift was calling Monk by his first name now, like they were old buddies, something even I didn’t feel comfortable doing. Stottlemeyer was Monk’s oldest friend and he didn’t call him by his first name, either. The fact that Swift was assuming such familiarity must have been particularly galling to Monk. But if it was, Monk hid it well.

Swift smiled warmly at him. “It’s good to see you, my friend. How are you?”

“Troubled,” Monk said.

“Is it about your wife, Trudy?”

Monk nodded.

Stottlemeyer stared at Monk, obviously surprised that he’d disclosed something so personal on television—or at all.

Swift faced the audience in the other bleachers. “Adrian’s wife was killed a few years ago, and her murder was never solved. You should know that I’ve relayed some messages from Trudy to Adrian before, but beyond that, we’ve had no subsequent contact.” Swift faced Monk again. “Isn’t that true?”

“Yes, it is. I’m here now because I believe there’s more she has to tell me. I can feel it.”

“I’m sure you can, Adrian. Your connection to your wife is very strong. What you’re feeling is her effort to communicate with you. And she
has
reached you, but you lack the gift to receive more from her than that vague sense that compelled you to see me again. She wanted you to seek me out today because there
is
more she wants to tell you.”

The audience fell silent, staring in rapt attention at Swift and Monk.

“But I have the gift. I can feel her concern for you. Trudy knows you’re in pain. She wants you to be at peace.”

Swift closed his eyes and began to tremble all over. The entire room became eerily silent, as if everyone were holding their breath, waiting for whatever powerful revelation would surely come.

His trembling stopped and his eyes opened. He met Monk’s gaze and spoke to him as if the two men were all alone.

“I’m sensing something, Adrian. It’s an object of some kind. It feels soft and it makes her warm. It’s like being cuddled. Do you know what it is?”

Monk shook his head.

“Help me here, Adrian. It’s something very important to her. It’s something she’s had all of her life and has even now in the afterlife. I’m sensing the letter
N
very strongly,” Swift said. “I’m sensing it so strongly, it’s almost like there are two of them. Yes, definitely two
N
s. And I see the night sky. What does this image mean?”

I got a shiver down my spine. I knew the answer. And I was certain Monk knew it, too. It gave me the creeps.

“Her night-night,” Monk said. “It was what she called her security blanket.”

Stottlemeyer and Disher shared a look of true astonishment. I’m sure I had the same expression on my face, too. Until the other night in Hawaii, Monk had never shared that information with anyone else. There was only one way Swift could have known it.

“Yes, her night-night,” Swift said. “I feel it around her as a baby. I sense her sucking on the corners when she was teething. She couldn’t sleep without it, even when she was an adult. So you buried her with it, didn’t you, Adrian?”

Monk nodded. “So she would always be comforted by it.”

People in the audience were so touched by the story that several were beginning to cry. To be honest, my eyes were tearing up, too.

“It worked, Adrian,” Swift said. “It keeps her warm and safe in her eternal sleep. It cuddles her the way you used to.”

Monk broke into a smile, but not one of happiness. It was one of victory. “You’ve just helped me solve another murder.”

“Your wife’s?” Swift said.

“No, the murder of Martin Kamakele, the operations manager at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu.”

“And you’ve solved it here, on my show, thanks to that message from your wife?”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Incredible,” Swift said.

The audience applauded, and Swift basked in their admiration for a long moment before motioning them to stop.

“I don’t deserve that,” Swift said. “It’s the spirits who are doing the work. I am just their messenger and Adrian Monk their agent of justice. Tell us, Adrian, what the spirits have helped you discover.”

Monk stood up and motioned to Stottlemeyer. “I’d like you to meet Capt. Leland Stottlemeyer of the San Francisco Police Department.”

Stottlemeyer stood up and Swift shook his hand.

“It’s a pleasure, Captain,” Swift said.

“A few days ago, I sent Captain Stottlemeyer a notarized letter from Hawaii that he hasn’t opened,” Monk said. “Captain, would you please take out that letter now and show us the postmark?”

Stottlemeyer stood up, took out the letter, and held it up. On the monitor, I saw the camera zoom in on the Hawaii postmark from two days ago.

“Would you please open the letter and read it?” Monk asked.

“Gladly,” Stottlemeyer said.

Swift shifted his weight nervously, a forced smile on his face, as Stottlemeyer tore open the envelope and removed the letter.

“It’s a handwritten letter from you that’s been signed, dated, and witnessed by a notary,” Stottlemeyer said, and held up the letter. The camera cut away from Swift to a tight shot of the notary’s seal, then back to Stottlemeyer as he began to read.

“‘Last night in our bungalow at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu, in the presence of my assistant, Natalie Teeger, and no one else, I shared a story about my wife, Trudy, and her security blanket, which I called a night-night. I said that Trudy was swaddled in it as a child, teethed on the edges, and couldn’t sleep without it. I said that she carried the blanket with her all her life and that, unknown to anyone but me, I’d buried it with her.’”

Stottlemeyer paused for a moment, glanced up at Swift, and broke into a grin before he read the rest. “‘That story, which Dylan Swift has told you today, never happened. It’s a lie that I came up with last night.’”

There were gasps of shock throughout the audience. Swift looked as if he’d been slapped. He was wide-eyed, his cheeks reddening. He shook his head in denial. I remembered the emotion Monk showed when he told me that story. I believed it. Even now, hearing the content of that letter, I still did.

“The story is true; it’s that letter that is the lie,” Swift said. “I know what I am sensing. Trudy had a night-night and she is holding it now. I see it very clearly. What does this have to do with Martin Kamakele’s murder?”

“It shows why you killed him,” Monk said. “It also explains why you murdered Helen Gruber and framed her husband, Lance, for the crime.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Swift said, turning to face the nearest camera. “We’re ending this taping now.”

“I don’t care whether you end the taping or not,” Stottlemeyer said. “But you aren’t going anywhere.”

“You’re a con man and a fake,” Monk said. “You rely on ‘cold reading,’ an old-fashioned grifter’s trick, to make people think you are communicating with spirits when, in fact, the sucker is giving you all the information. Like you did with Lieutenant Disher a few moments ago.”

“
Lieutenant
Disher?” Swift said.

Disher flashed his badge at Swift. “That’s right, pal, I’m a cop.”

I looked up at the monitors. The cameras were still rolling, holding on a two-shot of Monk and Swift. Somebody in the production booth must have realized this film could end up being very valuable.

“You said you were sensing a color and a letter, and you waited for an eager mark in the audience to show himself,” Monk said. “The mark, Lieutenant Disher, gave you the significance of the color and the man’s name, identifying the spirit as his uncle. You said he wasn’t fat but he wasn’t thin, a nondescription, and waited, once again, for Lieutenant Disher to give you the rest.”