Mr. Monk Helps Himself (20 page)

I don’t know why I said that. It felt like cheating. But it didn’t make any difference. “Sorry, Natalie.”

So there it was. I’d thought we were partners. I thought by now they all trusted my cop instincts. Apparently not. The lure of a big case and the impossibility of a small case were just too much.

“Fine,” I spat out. “If you want to get along without me, that’s your call. Have fun with your clowns—clown noses and clown shoes and clown cars and little clowns in diapers.”

“Natalie,” Devlin warned softly.

“Clown, clown, clown, clown, clown, clown!” I shouted. Then I turned on my heel and walked out.

I could hear a little whimper escape from Monk’s lips right before I slammed the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Mr. Monk Loses It

N
ow that I look back on it, on that day six months ago when Monk and I were in the car and I was about to fly off to New Jersey, I realize it had all been my idea.

I was the one who impulsively turned and said I was leaving the Summit Police Department and coming back. I was the one who insisted on becoming partners and getting my PI license. Monk had no concept of a partnership or of treating me as an equal. He just wanted things back to normal.

There have been many times when I’d threatened to quit and once when I actually did. But this felt different. First, I hadn’t technically quit. It was more of a work stoppage. I wanted to take on a case I thought had merit. They said no. And second, I had no idea how this was going to get fixed. If I was going to be Monk’s partner, then I felt I had to be taken seriously. It was my line in the sand.

On arriving at the cocoon, I scrounged around the freezer and found a Lean Cuisine left over from when Julie, an even more serious noncook than her mother, was staying at the house. I nuked it, toasted an English muffin as a side dish, and sat down in front of CNN. A pretty sad picture, I must say, made slightly happier by the fact that tonight’s newscast did not once mention Miranda Bigley.

I had just rinsed the plastic container and put it in the recycling bin when there was a knock on the door. Three knocks, not ten.

The porch light revealed Ellen Morse, with a box of tissues in one hand and quart of Swensen’s hand-packed Rocky Road in the other. Her face was wreathed in a big, sympathetic grin. “I have a DVD of
Working Girl
in the car. If things get bad, we can put it on and yell back at the male-chauvinist workplace.”

This was pure Ellen, always there at the right moment with just the right touch.

“It’s been quite the day,” I had to admit.

“How did your test go?”

“Not bad. I was somewhere around the seventy percentile.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“The seventy percent of people who don’t pass.” I shrugged. “It’s all right. I was distracted. I can always take it again.”

In all my excitement about the phones and disappointment about the case, I’d already blocked out the earlier trauma of the day.

“I’m so sorry. Here.” She handed me the box of tissues and we laughed. Then she held out the Swensen’s. “Let’s get this into us before it melts.”

I got bowls and spoons from the kitchen, divvied up two scoops for each of us, and put the rest in the freezer. We didn’t want to peak too early.

“I would have brought dinner,” Ellen told me, “but I got sidetracked for a few hours by Adrian.”

“You’re seeing each other again?”

“He popped up at my house after work. I don’t know how he got there.”

“Apparently he has his ways.”

“That’s what he said.”

We settled in at my small dining room table. “What else did he say?”

Ellen blushed and gushed. “He was being very cute. He showed up at my door with a bouquet of ten perfect long-stemmed roses.”

Okay. You and I know that roses come by the dozen. But not with Monk. We also know that real roses aren’t perfect. “Were they artificial?” I asked.

“Of course they were,” said Ellen. “He went through four local florists and bought and discarded their entire rose supply before he settled on this. I assume there’s going to be more than one angry woman in town who’s getting gladiolas for her birthday.”

“Well, at least he made an effort. And artificial roses don’t have that annoying smell.”

“He pointed that out,” Ellen said. “Although he still doesn’t understand what he did wrong. All women, according to him, are flighty, and he doesn’t know what’s gotten into any of us.”

“You’re feeling sorry for him,” I warned her. “That’s not the basis for a good relationship. I’m learning that the hard way.”

Ellen nodded and started on her second scoop. “He also said you refused to work on one of the biggest cases in a decade because you’re obsessed with Miranda Bigley’s suicide.”

“He said that?” It was annoying to hear Monk describe me as obsessed. Okay, maybe I was being unreasonable. But he had been unreasonable about so many things over the years, and I had always supported him. “Do you think I’m obsessed?”

Ellen shook her head. “They didn’t know Miranda. They’re looking at the facts, not the person. Damien is guilty of something. That much is undeniable.”

We had just returned to the kitchen to dish up our second helping of Rocky Road when my cell phone rang. I checked the display. “It’s Monk.” I let it ring. If he apologized in his message, then maybe I’d call back.

But it didn’t go to voice mail. It rang three and a half times and stopped.

Then Ellen’s phone began to ring and it was the same thing—three and a half rings. Then mine did the same again, almost immediately. Then Ellen’s. On the fourth cycle, we knew something must be wrong. Not that Monk wouldn’t play this game for hours just to annoy us. But there was a kind of urgency to the quick succession of calls.

On the fifth cycle, I picked up. “Adrian?”

“Come over, right now.” There was sheer panic in his voice.

“What’s up? What’s wrong?”

“I’m trapped in the kitchen and can’t get out.”

“Is it a spider? Or an ant? We’ve been through this a hundred times. Just kill it.”

“No,” he wailed, but his wail was a little hushed, as if someone might overhear. “Clown,” he said, choking out the word. “In my living room. Cloowwnn!”

A clown in his apartment? “We’ll be right there.”

It’s funny how you react in an emergency. My anger at Monk vanished. He was a friend in trouble—threatened, it seemed, by some maniacal clown. Ellen reacted the same way.

I ran into my bedroom and dove into the closet for my lockbox. Inside was a Glock 22, fully loaded. Lieutenant Devlin had recommended it—a simple, inexpensive gun with decent firing power and enough bullet capacity to make up for my imperfect aim, not that I hadn’t been practicing at a firing range. I had.

I’d been saving this .40 caliber beauty for when I was officially a PI and could take another course and pass another test, this one for a permit to carry a firearm on the job. That’s a different can of worms from just owning a gun.

Anyway, in less time than it took you to read that, I grabbed the Glock, threw it in my purse, and was out the door.

In five minutes, we were at Monk’s building. Not knowing quite what was up, we didn’t ring the bell. I used my keys on the building’s front door and at the top of the stairs on Monk’s door.

Inside, the lights were on and a Bach harpsichord played softly. Everything felt normal, but of course it wasn’t. I dipped into a slight crouch and lifted my Glock with both hands, just as I’d seen Captain Stottlemeyer do on hundreds of occasions. Then I walked slowly and silently down the short hall and turned quickly into the living room.

It was empty.

The great thing about Monk’s apartment is that you immediately know when anything’s out of place. In this case, it was a large, shallow, opened package centered on the coffee table. I relaxed a bit and lowered the gun. Ellen was right behind me.

The bubble wrap in the box had been pushed aside, and we stared down at a coffee table book about half the size of the coffee table. A larger-than-life face stared back up. A clown with a white face and red nose and a painted grin that was enough to unsettle anyone. The title above and below the face was
The Big Book of Clowns and Mimes
.

“Natalie?” It was a whimpering voice coming from the far side of the kitchen.

“Are you okay?” I called softly. “Is it just the book?”

“It’s not just the book, Natalie. It’s the clown book.”

I put the safety back on and tucked the Glock in my purse. Ellen and I both took deep breaths.

We found him in a corner, trying to squeeze himself into the gap between the refrigerator and the wall. “Get rid of it,” he said. “Flush it down the toilet. No, don’t do that. I love that toilet.”

Monk and I waited in the kitchen while Ellen took the book and the package and put them in the trunk of her car, as Monk insisted. Monk insisted that she lock the car, too, just in case the book had some plan to escape.

By the time she got back, Monk had sanitized the coffee table and we were sitting around it, drinking from bottles of Fiji Water. I could have used something stronger.

Monk explained the history of mysterious packages to Ellen—the arrival of Confederate money from Mississippi, massage stones from Arkansas, and now the diabolical clown book from . . .

“I checked the postmark before opening it,” Monk said, still shivering as he sipped his Fiji. “That should have been a warning. Sarasota, Florida.”

“Why would that be a warning?” asked Ellen.

“Sarasota used to be the winter home of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey—names that will live in infamy alongside Cirque du Soleil and John Wayne Gacy. You know, that serial killer who did the clown paintings.”

I’m not sure which Monk considered worse: the fact that Gacy had been a serial killer or that he’d painted clowns in his spare time. Probably clowns.

“The town has a circus museum,” he continued, “with a gift shop, which is where I’m sure he bought the book.”

“Who?” I asked.

“My tormentor,” Monk moaned. “He must be a clown, probably a friend of Dudley Smith’s. I’m being stalked long-distance by a Confederate clown who likes massages.”

“Adrian, you’re not thinking straight.” Ellen turned to me. “Can’t the police do something?”

“There’s no law against sending anonymous presents,” I said.

“You call that a present?” said Monk. “It’s a threat, Natalie. There are too many clowns. You have to come back.”

I’d been expecting this ever since I saw the book. “No, Adrian. I have my own case to work on.”

He scoffed. “That’s just silly. If there was a case with the suicide, which there’s not, you couldn’t solve it without me.”

“I’m going to have to try.”

“And I can’t do mine without you,” he said magnanimously. “So let’s compromise and do mine.”

“That’s your idea of compromise?” I put down my Fiji Water and headed for the hall. “Well, this has been fun. Good luck with your clowns. And remember, you can’t quit when things get tough this time. You promised Captain Stottlemeyer. Your solemn word. You’re germ brothers.”

“Come on, guys,” said Ellen. She tried to block my way. “I hate to see you like this. Maybe there is a compromise. You can do the captain’s case first. And then you can do Miranda’s. How does that sound?” She held out a hand to each of us.

Hmm. It wasn’t a great idea but it wasn’t horrible. Most crimes are solved in the first few days. But Monk has solved plenty that had some age on them. Once he’d even determined that a skeleton in a museum had been murdered. He even knew the killer’s name. Miranda’s case might be able to wait a few extra days.

“Adrian?” There was new hope in my voice. “What do you think?”

“Um.” Monk hemmed and stammered. We could see him struggling. “It’s a waste of time.”

I groaned. “No, it’s not. Are you saying you don’t trust my judgment?”

“No, no. I trust your judgment. Implicitly. You’re just wrong.”

That was it, I guess. There was nothing more to say. Ellen stepped out of my way and followed me into the hallway, almost as disgusted as me.

“By the way,” I shouted over my shoulder, “I know who’s sending you the packages.”

That was a great tease, right? Hitting him with a line like this right before walking out? And the best part was, I did know. It had come to me a few seconds ago while Monk was busy hemming and stammering and being a jerk.

“You do not.”

“Fine. Have it your way.”

I could hear him scampering up from his chair. His head popped around the corner. “That’s impossible. How could you?”

“Because I’m a detective. And a smart one. I’m going to solve my case while you’re still huddled in a corner crying over dead clowns.”

“Impossible. There’s no way you know, not unless you have secret information.”

That was, in fact, true. I did have secret information about the packages. I just hadn’t pieced it together until now.

I laughed. “Secret information? You wish!”

And with that, I was out the door. I didn’t slam it because Ellen was right behind me.

She slammed it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR