Mr. Monk in Trouble (17 page)

It was a turning point for us, though if Monk realized it, he wasn’t showing it.

“Pug is left-handed,” Monk said, pointing at him with the stick. “Alvie and Elmore are not.”

“How do you know Elmore isn’t left-handed?” Deputy Weaver asked.

Monk threw his stick at Elmore, who instinctively swatted it aside with his right hand.

“The odds were in my favor,” Monk said. “Besides, I already knew it was Pug. He was the only one who wasn’t too drunk to overpower Pete. Here’s what happened . . .”

Monk explained that the three prospectors went into town and left Pete behind with a couple bottles of whiskey to occupy himself. The three men went their separate ways. Pug waited until he’d had his bath and eaten before returning to the cabin to give Pete plenty of time to get good and drunk. That way, Pete would be easier to overpower.

Pug came back to the cabin, killed Pete, then returned to town and spent the rest of the night in the company of a sporting woman.

“I know the sequence of events because Pete smells faintly of lilac water,” Monk said. “That’s because Pug was fresh from his bath and slathered in fragrance when he murdered Pete.”

“If Pete smells like lilac, that’s because I rolled him over when I got here this morning,” Pug said. “I wanted to see what had happened to him.”

“That’s true,” Elmore said. “I saw him do it.”

“Of course you did,” Monk said. “He wanted you to, just in case anybody picked up that scent.”

“Your story doesn’t make any sense at all,” Alvie said. “If Pug stole the gold, how come he didn’t run off with it?”

“Because there’s a lot more gold still to be made from this claim,” Monk said.

“He’s loco, everybody knows that,” Pug said, leaning back against the tree to show how relaxed and unconcerned he was about Monk’s argument. “Five minutes ago he wanted you arrested for licking a rock, Alvie. How crazy is that? He won’t let two horses drink out of the same trough. He changed the name of Third Street to Second Second Street. This is just more of his crazy talk.”

Elmore tugged at his beard as he considered what he’d heard. “If Pug stole the gold, where is it?”

Monk smiled. “You can tell from the mess in the cabin.”

“You can?” Sheriff Wheeler said.

“Any other killer would have wanted to be in and out of the cabin as quickly as possible. He would have taken the gold as it was in the cans and not wasted time emptying the dust into some other container,” Monk said, then turned to the three prospectors. “But Pug couldn’t take the gold back with him into town in the tins or in anything else. He couldn’t risk being caught with that much gold on him. So he had to hide it, somewhere neither his partners nor anybody else would stumble on it, somewhere it would be safe for months, somewhere he could keep his eye on it at all times, day or night.”

“I don’t see how that thinking tells you where it is,” Alvie said.

“It had to be someplace Pug could keep an eye on while he was working or even while he was in his bunk,” Monk said. “So I looked out the window and what did I see? The tree, the one you can see from anywhere you’re working on the claim, the one Pug has been glued to since we got here.”

“I’m telling you, Monk is crazy,” Pug said. “You’re listening to a man who is afraid of milk.”

Monk stepped up to Pug. “It’s easy enough to check. I’d start with the knothole above his head.”

Alvie shoved Pug aside, shimmied up the tree, and reached into the knothole. He came out with a bulging sack full of gold dust.

Elmore launched himself at Pug, knocking him to the ground and pummeling him with his fists. Wheeler pulled Elmore off of Pug and Weaver lifted the killer to his feet.

“Why’d you do it?” Elmore yelled. “Why’d you take our gold?”

“Better me than the faro dealers and saloons,” Pug said, blood streaming from his nose. “You’re throwing it all away. We’ll never get rich that way.”

“You had your share,” Alvie said, jumping down from the tree and leaving the gold in its hiding place for the time being. “What did it matter to you what we did with ours?”

“Capital,” Pug said. “You need money to make money.”

“Money don’t do you no good in your poke,” Elmore said.

“That’s the attitude that would have kept us digging forever and never getting ahead,” Pug said. “It was only a matter of time before you three losers got so deep into debt that you’d have to sell out and with just my share, I wouldn’t have enough gold to be the buyer. Not unless I did something to protect myself. That’s what the gold was for. You brought this on yourselves.”

“You’re gonna hang, Pug,” Alvie said. “And if I have my say, it’s gonna be from
this
tree.”

“Sounds like justice to me,” Wheeler said and then turned to Monk. “And the end of three-card monte in Trouble.”

Monk sighed with contentment as we started walking back to Trouble.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Mr. Monk Needs a Hand

I
was awakened from a deep sleep by the shrill, annoying ring of my telephone. In my drowsy haze, I reached for my cell before I realized that it wasn’t my ringtone that I was hearing but the blare of the old telephone on my nightstand.

I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“It’s Clifford Adams,” he said across a very scratchy line. I could barely make out his words. “I need to see you right away.”

I blinked hard and glanced at the clock radio. It was almost six a.m. “What’s the hurry?”

“I know who killed the museum guard.”

That cleared my head fast. I sat up in bed. “Come on over.”

“No, you two come to me, alone. I want to live.”

And on that ominous note, he hung up.

If my life had a sound track, and in my mind it often did, that was the perfect moment for an ominous, heavy-handed, music sting.

I heard one and it sounded like distant thunder.

Monk was already awake when I knocked on his door at 6:10 that morning. He’d gone to bed promptly at 9:50 p.m., so he’d fall asleep no later than ten, and set his alarm for 6:00 a.m., giving him an even eight hours of sleep.

But he wouldn’t come out when I knocked. He said he needed at least another twenty minutes to boil a pot of water in the electric coffeepot, disinfect his toothbrush, brush his teeth, and disinfect his toothbrush again. And then he’d need another two hours to bathe himself and then clean up the bathroom afterwards.

“And that’s if I rush,” he said.

“You have twenty minutes,” I said. “And then I’m coming in.”

“You don’t have a key,” he said.

“Actually, I do,” I said. “I had the manager give me one when I registered us.”

“Why?”

“For emergencies,” I said. “This could be one.”

Monk came out twenty minutes later, but he wasn’t happy about it. He spent most of the drive wiping his hands, neck, and face with Wet Ones to avoid, as he put it, “catastrophic organ failure and death from septic shock.”

I made a sharp, fast turn onto the dirt road to Adams’ place. I did it so Monk wouldn’t notice the skid marks that I’d left the day before on the highway and ask me to stop and clean them up.

The look he gave me, though, made it clear he wasn’t fooled.

I was going so fast that I didn’t see a pothole in the road ahead of us and hit it so hard that we would’ve slammed our heads into the roof if we hadn’t been buckled in.

Even so, we were rattled pretty hard and I’d probably knocked my tires out of alignment.

Monk took a wipe in each hand and pressed his palms against the dashboard.

“Do you have some kind of death wish?” he asked.

“I’m worried about Mr. Adams,” I replied. “I didn’t like the way he said ‘I want to live.’ ”

“I’d like to live, too,” Monk said. “Could you please show the same concern for me?”

We bumped and rattled our way down the dirt road until we finally reached the compound. Much to my surprise, Monk practically leaped out of the car this time.

I got out and joined Monk as he marched to the door of the Quonset hut. “How come you’re not locking yourself inside my car today?”

“It’s safer out here.”

I knocked on the door. “Mr. Adams? It’s Natalie Teeger and Mr. Monk.”

There was no answer. I knocked again. All was quiet. The only sound was the rusty creak of the windmill blades wobbling slightly in the breeze. Monk shifted his weight.

“Mr. Adams?” I called out. “Are you there? Are you all right?”

I tried to open the door, but it was locked.

I looked over my shoulder at the outhouse, then back at Monk.

“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I’m not going out there.”

I sighed and trudged out to the outhouse. I was downwind from it and when the breeze kicked up, the acrid stench was so strong that I had to fight the instinctive urge to turn back.

How could Adams go in there every day?

I covered my nose and breathed through my mouth, but I could still taste the odor, which was even worse than smelling it.

I reached the outhouse and knocked on the door. The last thing I wanted was to surprise Adams in there.

“Mr. Adams?”

When he didn’t answer, I slowly opened the door. The smell slapped me in the face and I was assaulted by flies. I glanced inside only long enough to be sure Adams wasn’t in there before slamming the door shut.

I practically ran back to Monk, who hadn’t moved from where he was standing.

“Maybe he’s gone,” Monk said.

“His pickup truck is parked here,” I said. “He might be working inside the mine.”

“I’m not going in there,” he said.

“I know that,” I said. “But maybe if we go up to the entrance and call his name, he’ll hear us.”

We started walking up the hill to the mine when Monk stopped, turned to the left, and cocked his head. Something had caught his eye.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Is that Adams?” He pointed to a collection of boulders and scrub grass about fifty years away. A man was sitting with his back against one of the boulders. But he was slumped forward, as if he’d fallen asleep.

“I don’t know whether it’s him or not,” I said and headed out towards the rocks, walking fast, nearly running. Monk followed after me, hurrying to keep up.

“What would he be doing way out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But he might need our help. He looks unconscious from here.”

“Maybe he’s just napping.”

“At seven thirty in the morning?” I said. “What if he’s hurt himself? What if he’s been bitten by a snake or stung by a scorpion?”

I immediately wished I could take back what I said.

Monk stopped. “Then we should run back to the car and lock the doors.”

I turned around to face him. “You want us to leave without checking if Mr. Adams is all right?”

“We can go back to town and get help. They can look him over.”

“By then it could be too late,” I said. “He might need our help right now.”

“But if he has been bitten or stung or both, the snake and the scorpion could be lurking out there, waiting for us to show up.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

Monk cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “MR. ADAMS? IS THAT YOU? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” There was no answer. We were still too far away for me to see if it was Adams or not. Whoever it was didn’t move.

“I’m going out there,” I said. “You can do whatever you want.”

I rushed out towards the boulders.

“Wait,” Monk said, chasing after me. “If you get bitten, what happens to me?”

As I got closer, I could see that the man sitting on the ground was Clifford Adams—his head was down, his legs splayed out awkwardly in front of him.

I had a bad, bad feeling about this.

And that’s when I heard the crack behind me. I whirled around just in time to see Monk dropping into the earth as if a trapdoor had opened underneath him.

One second he was there and the next there was only a puff of dirt in the air where he’d been standing.

“Mr. Monk!” I yelled. “Mr. Monk!”

I ran back to where he had fallen and saw a huge pit still partially covered with the remains of a rotted piece of plywood and dirt.

I dropped to my knees, pushed the board away, and leaned over the edge of the pit, staring into the blackness. The pit seemed bottomless.

“Natalie,” Monk whined.

He was about ten feet below me and flush against the side of the pit, holding on to the jutting rock.

But he was trying to find a toehold and the combination of his movement and his weight was jogging the rock loose. I could see it moving, particles of dirt falling onto Monk’s shoulder like sand in an hourglass.

“Don’t move,” I said to him. “Stay still.”

“I’m going to fall,” he whined.

“No, you’re not.” I lay down on my stomach, slipped over the edge as far as I could without falling in myself, and reached my right hand down to him. “Take my hand.”

He reached up to me with his left hand, but there were still a few feet separating us.

“I’m going to die,” he said, lowering his left arm.

“You always say that,” I said, trying to keep things light as I sat up and looked desperately for something, anything, I could use to quickly bridge the distance between us.

“But now I’m facing certain death,” he said.

“Oh, come on, Mr. Monk.” I couldn’t find anything. I wanted to cry. “You think that you’re facing certain death every time you step out of your house.”

“This proves that I’m right!”

I looked back at the Quonset hut, trying to decide if I had the time to run back there to find a rope, a hose, anything. There wasn’t time. The rock wouldn’t hold much longer under Monk’s weight.

“So you should be feeling good,” I said. “You love being right.”

“For once it would be nice to be wrong,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for something to reach you with,” I said.

What could I use? I instinctively patted my pockets, as if there might be six feet of rope in there that I’d overlooked.

My belt.

I unbuckled the belt, and yanked it out of the loops of my jeans. I looped the belt through the buckle around my wrist so it would tighten under Monk’s weight, grabbed the leather in my fist, and lay down again.

I reached for Monk again, dropping the belt to him. “Hold my belt.”

But even as I said it, I could see that it wasn’t going to be long enough.

He probably knew it, too, although he tried to grab the belt anyway, but it didn’t reach.

There were still about ten or twelve inches between the end of the belt and Monk’s free hand, which was grasping at air.

“Oh my God,” Monk shrieked, yanking his free hand back and once again scrambling for a foothold.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Spider,” Monk said. “I can see a spider.”

“If you don’t calm down, you’re going to fall.”

“But at least I won’t be bitten by a poisonous spider.”

I sat up and stared at my useless belt.

What would MacGyver do in a situation like this? He’d be able to fashion a rope out of whatever he had in the pockets of his jeans, even if it was just lint and a breath mint.

The jeans.

Denim could take a beating. They might hold Monk’s weight.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Don’t move.”

“Tell that to the poisonous spider,” Monk said.

I stood up, kicked off my shoes, and stripped off my jeans. I tossed the belt to the ground, wrapped the end of one pant leg firmly around my wrist, grabbed the denim tight in my fist, and got back down on my stomach.

I reached over the edge and dropped my jeans down to him.

“What do you expect me to do with that?” he said.

“Grab it,” I said.

“Those are someone’s dirty pants.”

“They are
my
pants and they were clean when I put them on this morning.”

“But then you put them on,” Monk said. “Against your body. Did you shower before we left?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re lying,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter whether I showered or not,” I said. “You’re holding on to a loose rock for dear life.”

“Your body is caked in dried sweat and layers of dirt,” Monk said. “And now it’s infected your pants. What if I have an open wound on my hand? I could get a horrible infection.”

“At least you’ll still be alive,” I said.

“Only to die a slow, hideous, drooling death from a pants infection.”

I could see that the rock he was holding was coming loose. It would pop out in seconds and Monk would fall to his death.

“Grab my pants now,” I said.

“Couldn’t you use something else?” Monk asked imploringly. “Like a rope, a chain, or a ladder?”

“If I had one of those, do you think I’d be using my pants?”

“I’ll wait,” he said.

“Take the jeans, Mr. Monk.”

“I’d rather die,” he said.

“You will!”
I yelled.

“But at least the poisonous spider won’t get me and I won’t get an infection from your pants, have my gangrenous limbs amputated, and die a limbless, pitiful wretch covered in open sores.”

“If you die in this pit today, I swear to God that I’ll bury you in mismatched socks, an untucked shirt, and a jacket with a missing button.”

“You wouldn’t,” he said.

“You’ll be a mess,” I said. “For eternity.”

Monk gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and grabbed my pants with his left hand. At the same instant, the rock he was holding gave way and he dangled over the abyss, clutching my pants. His deadweight was pulling me over the edge.

I screamed in pain and fury, digging my free hand and bare knees into the hard dirt to prevent my slide.

“Climb!”
I yelled.

Monk used my pants like a rope, pulling himself up, hand over hand.

My outstretched arm was burning with pain and I could feel myself sliding over the edge, the gravel scratching my bare legs and tearing at my fingernails.

And then I felt a pop in my arm and a searing pain that made me scream again. Through the agony, I felt my fingers going numb. I willed myself not to let go, to maintain my grip.