Mr. Monk in Outer Space (29 page)
Read Mr. Monk in Outer Space Online
Authors: Lee Goldberg
“Most murderers usually are,” Monk said.
“Is he one?”
“I don’t know,” Monk said. “Yet.”
I admired the unshakable confidence behind the way Monk said “yet.” In every case he investigated, there was never any doubt in his mind that he would find the killer.
There was just one exception, and it was the case that mattered the most to him.
Trudy’s murder.
I looked forward to the day that changed.
22
Mr. Monk and the House of Horrors
I’m not sure why people draw a distinction between so-called old money and new money. Money is money. Either you have it or you don’t. It’s how you spend it that counts.
I know from personal experience what it’s like to be rich and poor. I came from a very wealthy family that made their fortune in the toothpaste business.
“Everybody has teeth and they don’t want to lose them,” my grandfather used to say. “It’s the most secure business on earth.”
It was a business my grandfather almost lost after it was revealed that he’d laced the original formula for his toothpaste with sugar to appeal to his customers’ “sweet tooth,” thus hastening their dental decay. The business miraculously recovered from the scandal, diversified, and thrived, becoming the global conglomerate that it is today.
I had whatever I wanted when I was growing up exceptmaybe a little insecurity. My life was too safe, too pampered, too restricted.
I know what you’re thinking: oh, boo-hoo for the rich girl. Believe it or not, money isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Not only does money not buy you happiness, but it doesn’t necessarily give you freedom either. Sure, you have freedom from the fear of starvation or homelessness. But when everything comes easy, and you live in a rarefied world, it doesn’t really feel like you’re living.
So I rebelled. I disavowed my family’s money and I eloped with a man who was rich in character but cash poor. It was the happiest time of my life, and I have Julie to always remind me of it.
I’ve been struggling financially ever since. It’s no treat being a single mother. It would be easier to just give in and take my father’s money, but then I wouldn’t be surviving on my own, and what lesson would my daughter take from that? And I wouldn’t have met Monk, and my life would be considerably less unpredictable and exciting.
Knowing what it is to be rich and poor means that I’m not impressed by wealth or the people who have it. Monk isn’t either, but for entirely different reasons. He’s socially illiterate. He’s unaware of the deference, envy, and feelings of inferiority that are expected of you by those who have more money than you do.
In fact, Monk didn’t know the appropriate behavior in any situation. He made his own rules and was surprised when nature and humankind didn’t follow them.
So neither Monk nor I was intimidated by Brandon Lorber’s Victorian mansion in Pacific Heights and its commanding, IMAX view of the Golden Gate, Marin County, and Alcatraz Island.
Pacific Heights has been the Mount Olympus of San Francisco’s elite since the 1800s. Merchants and robber barons flush with their gold, sugar, and railroad riches needed a high place where they could live above the riffraff they exploited and be certain that everyone could see the monuments to their success.
That’s still true today, whether your money is old or new or just on paper.
Stottlemeyer and Disher, being poorly paid civil servants, would have been uneasy around so much money and power, which is probably why they opted to let us see Veronica Lorber on our own. I think the captain believed that a black-sheep rich girl and a socially clueless detective would be more effective with the widow Lorber than they would be. Money and influence are kryptonite for people whose livelihoods depend on the whims of politicians.
So I parked at the cul-de-sac at the end of Broadway, where the street met the lush forest of the Presidio and the top of the Baker steps that led down to the Marina District.
I saw two painters with their easels standing at the top of the Baker Street steps facing the spectacular view. One artist was painting a picture of the bay, the other was painting the painter who painted the bay.
I looked over my shoulder as we walked to the Lorber mansion to see if maybe there was someone else above us perhaps painting a picture of a painter painting a picture of a painter painting the bay. I bet you can’t say that four times fast.
There were two stone lions, each with one paw on a stone ball, on either side of the Lorbers’ front gate. Monk was troubled by this; he liked the symmetry of the matching lions but felt they should have a ball under each paw.
He didn’t say that, but I could tell. I’d been with Monk a long time. And like I said before, he’s not real good about hiding his feelings.
I wasn’t wild about the lions either. Lots of rich people had them and I had no idea what they were supposed to symbolize. Why lions? And why did they have their paws on stone balls?
The front door, the size of the entrance to Oz, was opened by a uniformed butler. He looked like a turtle who’d evolved into a man fifty years ago and traded his shell for a tuxedo.
“Your lions only have one ball,” Monk said.
The butler raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“This is Adrian Monk and I’m his assistant, Natalie Teeger,” I said. “Captain Stottlemeyer of the San Francisco Police arranged an appointment for us with Mrs. Lorber.”
“Indeed,” the butler said, stepping aside. “She’ll see you in the study. This way, please.”
We stepped inside and followed him down a marbled corridor. My grandfather was right about everybody having teeth, but it looked to me like there was more money to be made in selling the food they chewed with them.
The butler led us into a massive room with a ceiling high enough to accommodate the space shuttle.
Monk staggered back from the study in horror and revulsion. I’ve seen him do the same thing when confronted with a bowl of granola.
It wasn’t the ceiling that freaked him out, it was the decor. It looked like the trophy room of a hunter’s lodge. The walls were crowded with mounted fish and the decapitated heads of deer, elk, antelopes, bears, and God knows how many other creatures. There were animal skins on the floors and draped on the furniture. An enormous stuffed bear stood in one corner in an eternal snarl at a glass-eyed tiger across the room.
I wondered if Brandon Lorber had personally shot every cow that Burgerville used for its beef. But he didn’t limit his killing to the animal kingdom. There was even a colorful collection of butterflies spread out in display boxes on a few of the tables.
Veronica Lorber sat in a chair beside the bear. She was probably the only trophy Lorber had bagged that wasn’t dead and stuffed.
If Dolly Parton fell into a vat of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream and ate her way out, she’d look like Brandon Lorber’s widow.
Her eyes were red, her cheeks tear-streaked. She clutched a balled-up tissue in her fist like a lifeline. It was a good thing the tissue was in her hand and not on the floor or Monk might have called in a strike team from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
The butler announced us as if we were arriving at some grand ball. “Mr. Adrian Monk and Ms. Natalie Teeger are here to see you, madam.”
“Thank you, Maxwell,” Veronica said.
The butler gave a slight bow and shuffled away.
“Do come in, Mr. Monk,” Veronica said with a sniffle.
“I can’t,” Monk whispered to me.
“Just a moment, please,” I said to Veronica with a smile, then turned to Monk. “What’s wrong?”
“What isn’t?” Monk said.
I looked back at the room and tried to see it from Monk’s point of view. Animal heads of all sizes, shapes, and species everywhere. Nothing matched.
In Monk’s worldview, it was complete chaos. If they were going to have deer heads on the wall, there should have been an even number of the same size heads lined up in a neat row, not mixed with elk and antelope. Every animal should have had its own row. And don’t get me started on the butterflies. They shouldn’t even have been in the same room.
“I know that it’s a mess, Mr. Monk, and that the deer shouldn’t mingle with the elk and the butterflies,” I said, “but you can do this.”
“Who cares about the mess?”
“You do,” I said. “You
always
do.”
always
do.”
“That’s the least of the problems,” Monk said.
“Is it her sniffling that’s bothering you?”
“Open your eyes, woman!” Monk pointed into the room. “It’s a slaughterhouse!”
“What did you say?” Veronica asked.
“He says it’s a beautiful house,” I said, then lowered my voice to Monk. “Please keep your voice down. It’s just a trophy room.”
“I don’t see any trophies. All I see are body parts splattered everywhere,” Monk said, raising his voice again in his exasperation. “The walls are dripping blood.”
“Did he say something about dripping blood?” Veronica asked. “What blood?”
“You must have misheard him. He said ‘ripping good.’ It’s a British expression, a compliment. We need another moment,” I said and pulled Monk out of her earshot.
I couldn’t believe that he was so rattled by some animal heads. He was a homicide detective. He’d seen a lot worse. And since I’d become his assistant, I had, too.
“What’s the big deal?” I whispered. “You see dead bodies every day.”
“I’ve never been in a room where hundreds of mutilated corpses were nailed to the walls, spread out on the floors, and draped over the furniture. It’s revolting, not to mention extremely unsanitary.”
“What about the morgue? You love it there. And there are bodies, and body parts, everywhere.”
“But they are clean bodies and body parts that are meticulously organized in a sterile environment,” he said. “Clean, organized, and sterile. The way everything in life should be.”
I groaned and leaned back into the study.
“Would you mind if we moved this discussion to a different room?” I asked Veronica. “It seems that Mr. Monk is allergic to elk.”
“I’m staying right here,” Veronica said. “I haven’t left this room since I got the awful news that Brandon was killed. I may never leave.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“When I sit here,” she said, “I feel close to him.”
“Is his head on the wall, too?” Monk asked.
Veronica gasped and so did I.
“Mr. Monk!” I said, then turned back to Veronica, who had the same startled look as the deer on the wall. “Please forgive him. He’s not himself today.”
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