Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (6 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Mr. Monk and the Theory

I
made one more call to Daniela Grace, after my staff of cleaners had stopped their racket and Lieutenant Devlin had gone back to her job of tracking down No One.

I assured our lawyer that we were focusing our laserlike brilliance on Henry Pickler but, to be honest, his case had plummeted to the bottom of our pile of two. It’s hard to get passionate about a client who would rather stay cooped up than give the police a plausible explanation. On the top of the pile we had an office shooting with three dead and the beginnings of a nationwide manhunt for a man who didn’t exist.

To add to this case’s appeal, I had a No One theory of my own that I was nurturing. I talked it over with Monk on our way to San Francisco General.

“I think this whole mass murder is just . . .”

“You’re wrong,” said Monk. He was clutching his seat belt, as usual and checking all the mirrors—passenger, driver’s rearview—in a seamless rotation.

“I haven’t said anything. How can I be wrong?”

“You said mass murder. You’re wrong. According to the FBI, a mass murder has four or more victims with no
cooling-off period between the homicides. The bureau is very strict about these things. Mr. Noone might have intended for this to be a mass murder but luckily it’s just a triple homicide.”

“Just a triple homicide? How about massacre? Can I say massacre?”

“You can, but it’s not very accurate.”

“Fine. Triple homicide. Can I go on? I have a theory.”

Monk turned his head from the passenger rearview and stared at my profile. “First Walter White, the drug lord, now this? Is this what it’s going to be? You coming up with theories? I’m all in favor of a partnership. But I’m not sure that includes you having theories.”

“It does. It’s in our corporation bylaws. Section two, paragraph three. Want to read it?”

“Can I amend the bylaws before hearing your theory? Then I won’t have to hear your theory.”

“No. You’re going to listen.”

“I don’t even think we have bylaws.”

“My theory is that the murders were collateral, not part of his original plan. Wyatt Noone went to a lot of trouble setting up his identity. He took a midlevel accounting job just to make ends meet and stay below the radar. Meanwhile, he was working on something big.”

“Big like what?”

“An assassination or espionage or corporate espionage. Maybe a massive bank heist where the fictitious Noone would need to disappear at a moment’s notice. But then his coworkers got suspicious. They began to find out things. Noone had to change gears and kill them before the plan fell apart, whatever it was.”

“He could be a terrorist.” Monk shuddered. “You know how much I hate terror.”

“And his job, working for an import company? Maybe that’s part of the terrorism. Or the assassination. Something he had to import into the country.”

Monk made a face I’ve rarely seen him make, curving his lower lip into a frown and opening his eyes a little wider. It meant, hmm, not bad. Very rare.

“Why didn’t Sarabeth tell us about this?”

“Maybe she didn’t know; just the others. Or maybe it’s something she doesn’t realize she knows. But this accounts for him taking the extra time in the warehouse to try to kill her. He had to kill them all.”

“It’s not your worst idea,” he said grudgingly.

“High praise.”

“It means I’ll need to have many long talks with Sarabeth to figure out what— Yield, yield, yield! Don’t you see the sign? Signs have meanings.”

I didn’t even have to look. “That’s a yield sign for the merging lane.”

“No, it’s for everybody. Everybody has to yield, all the time.” And with that, he white-knuckled his grip on the seat belt and stayed silent for the rest of the ride.

Sarabeth was still in the private ICU, although technically her improved condition placed her out of intensive care. A burly, confident SFPD patrolman sat in a chair outside her door. On our way in, Monk asked to check his sidearm to make sure it was fully loaded. “You can’t be too careful.” The officer replied that if Monk continued this nonsense, he
would have to take action and the sidearm would no longer be fully loaded. I liked this guy.

The office assistant was looking better. Three pints of blood had done their job, improving her color dramatically. A nurse, she said, had come in earlier to wash her hair. It was still slightly wet. The style was short, a pageboy that ended just below her ears with bangs that were now swept to the sides. The color was reddish brown. Truth to tell, she was probably my age, not much older.

“You’re looking better today.” Sarabeth was actually the one who said that to Monk. As I said, she was the nurturing sort.

“Thanks,” said Monk. “I started using a face scrub.” He settled into the chair next to the bed. I stood a few feet away with a pen and a notepad. “Sarabeth, we need you to tell us everything you know about Wyatt Noone.”

“The police should know more than I do.”

“We don’t. That’s why we need your help.”

There didn’t seem to be much to tell. A little more than a year ago, the four office employees had complained to the parent company in Japan about their workloads. They’d been hoping to get raises; the company was profitable enough. Instead, they got permission to hire a full-time accountant. Mel, the manager, interviewed several applicants and settled on Wyatt.

“Did the Japanese owners suggest you hire Wyatt?” Monk asked.

“No. They just said hire someone.”

“Did Mel check his references?”

“I assume so. It’s standard procedure.”

“If Wyatt were a criminal,” Monk said, “what kind of criminal would he be? Other than a killer, I mean.”

“What kind? Is this like a game? Like what kind of animal would he be?”

“No, it’s serious. Use your imagination. If last week someone told you Wyatt had committed a crime, what conclusion would you jump to? Would he be a thief? A professional hit man? Maybe an anarchist who built bombs?”

“An anarchist? Wyatt?” She almost smiled. “If I had to guess, I’d say embezzler. Only because he was our accountant. I really don’t know anything.”

“I’ll bet you know his birthday,” I suggested.

“March twenty-fifth. I bring cupcakes in for everyone’s birthday. Brought.” And she drew in her breath, like a sniffle. This confirmed my theory about her office persona, but I was sorry I’d asked.

“Wyatt kept to himself,” she added. “Politically, he was probably conservative. That’s a guess. There was no girlfriend or boyfriend we knew about. At our Christmas party, he came alone. No one cared enough to be curious about him.”

“Well, something happened,” Monk said. “For some reason, he wanted you dead.”

“You mean he wasn’t crazy?”

“We have a theory,” Monk said. I loved how he said
we
. It wasn’t just Natalie’s silly theory. “Wyatt may have had a secret life. Your friends were killed because they stumbled across some information about this life.”

“You think I know this information?”

“You may not realize it,” I said. “Maybe he accidentally left
something on a desk. Or said something. Maybe someone called the office. Or you saw someone drop him off at work.”

“And that’s why he needed to kill three people?” Sarabeth bit her lip. “Four. Am I still in danger?”

“You’re not,” I assured her. “You have an armed police officer right in front of your door. Twenty-four/seven.”

“That’s right,” said Monk. “We think he has a full clip in his sidearm, but we’re not sure. He says it’s a full clip, but he wouldn’t show it to us.”

“Adrian,” I hissed.

“It probably is a full clip. That’s my guess.”

“I don’t know anything.” Sarabeth’s hands shook and her eyes began to fill.

“Natalie, wipe her tears,” Monk ordered. “Never mind. I’ll do it.” And he took a travel packet of Kleenex from his breast pocket, shook out the top tissue, and started dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

I had never seen Monk do anything like this. Once, while interrogating a quarterback during the halftime of a division play-off game, he’d used a sanitary wipe to try to remove the black smudges under the player’s eyes. But this was different. Monk was actually feeling someone else’s pain.

“You’re a nice man,” Sarabeth whispered.

“I’m not,” Monk whispered back. “But I’ll try harder.”

A buzz from inside my PBS tote alerted me. For some reason, I didn’t want to interrupt this moment. Plus, I think cell phones aren’t allowed in the ICU. I took it outside, past the armed guard to the corridor.

“Hi, sweetie.” It was my daughter, Julie.

Julie Teeger was in her senior year at UC Berkeley. With
maintaining her class schedule and trying to line up an internship after graduation, she felt guilty about not spending more time together. And with all the work of opening an agency and dealing with my partner and four dead bodies (three office workers and a Guatemalan drug runner), I was feeling even guiltier.

“Hey, Mom. Are you free for dinner? A Teeger night in?”

“Absolutely.” I would make myself free. Our get-togethers are often quasi-spontaneous. One of us calls the other out of the blue. I try to do a little shopping and get home before she drives over the bridge. Sometimes, due to a murder or Monk, I don’t make it to the store. Then we scrounge the refrigerator and pantry and come up with something. Those can turn out to be the best meals. And a lot of fun, because it feels like a challenge in a TV cooking show. That reminded me. I should tell her about Randy and Monk and the murder at Summit Chef. She’d get a kick out of that.

“How’s the new business?” she asked. “I’m still waiting for an Evite to your grand opening.”

“That’s been delayed,” I said. “We’re too busy to open.”

“Glad you’re busy. Are you and Adrian working the mass murder downtown? It’s all over the news.” She also called him Adrian, and has for much longer than I have.

“Triple homicide,” I corrected her. “Yes, we are. But I should save it. We don’t want to run out of things to talk about.”

“We never run out,” she corrected me. It was true. The two of us could talk and talk for hours, like girlfriends.

After hanging up, I walked back to the officer at the door to Sarabeth’s room. He was halfway through an apple and
held it in his mouth while he wiped his hands and got up to unlock the door.

It was during those few seconds that I glanced through the protective glass panel, a feature only designed into doors of the ICU rooms. I was at just the right angle to see the bed. Monk was standing there, his back to me, straightening the sheets and tucking in the bedspread. I could see Sarabeth, waiting patiently for him to finish, staring off into space. There was something about the look on her face. Something . . .

I know that in retrospect, when you look back at an event and play it over in your mind, you often think you sensed something wrong when you really didn’t. I think we all have the ability to reinvent memories to suit what we later find out to be the truth. Then we smile wisely and say we’d had this premonition.

But I swear to you, even then, I knew something was wrong.

CHAPTER TEN

Mr. Monk and the Intern

I
t started out as one of our better Teeger nights.

I was late arriving home. Daniela had called at the last minute and talked me into an AA meeting. I felt I had to go, and not just because she was a client on a case that we were doing absolutely squat about. I liked Daniela, and I found the meetings soothing and inspiring. Plus, I’d been consistently unable to convince her that I wasn’t an alcoholic.

The misunderstanding happened months ago when Monk and I accidentally attended an AA meeting while he was trying to score some individually wrapped oatmeal cookies. Ever since, the more I tried to deny my alcoholism, the more convinced Daniela became that I was in denial.

Julie’s car was in the driveway when I pulled up. Miraculously, there was a spot at the curb, so I grabbed it. From the moment I opened the door, I felt like I was in an Indian restaurant. The house was full of the unmistakable scent of curry. Red and yellow scarves were draped over the reading lamps to give the living room some soft Eastern ambiance. Julie must have dredged up an old Ravi Shankar CD from some bottom drawer somewhere, because the monotonous strains of sitar music were wafting through the house. (True
story: I once had a Ravi Shankar CD playing for two hours before I realized there was a flaw in the disc and the same song was playing over and over. It was almost impossible to tell.)

“Are you doing an internship in India?” I called out. “Is this your way of breaking the news?”

Julie’s laugh was coming from the kitchen. “I was just in the mood,” she said. “And the online recipe looked easy. I didn’t realize how much chopping was involved. I think I have enough onions for an army. I hope it wasn’t a typo.”

I joined her, washed my hands, grabbed a knife, and followed instructions, chopping carrots and mint and measuring out fifteen different spices.

I don’t cook every night, especially not time-consuming dishes. But I welcomed the chance to do something simple and manual while we caught up on each other’s lives. Julie offered me a glass of my own Chardonnay, but I turned it down, perhaps as a tribute to Daniela and the meeting I’d just attended.

An hour and a half later, when we were sitting down to our shrimp curry, we had gone through boyfriend stories—hers, not mine, which don’t exist—the sagas from Summit, and a brief outline of the current cases. Julie has been hearing Monk cases since she was eleven, so what might have seemed like crazy mysteries to the average poli-sci student sounded perfectly normal to her.

“So what’s happening with the body in the vacant lot?” she asked. “The guy is obviously hiding something. Have you looked through his house or talked to his neighbors?”

I suppose a normal mother doesn’t discuss murder over
the dinner table. I wouldn’t know. “Don’t make me feel guilty,” I said. “We’ve been so busy with the triple homicide, I haven’t even thought of the next step in the Pickler case. Maybe tomorrow we’ll have time to refocus.”

“It’s your first case in the new office. You’ll have to frame your first dollar and put it on your wall. That’s what businesses do for luck.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

Then I switched subjects and turned into a mother. Julie was graduating this spring and planning for law school. But she hadn’t been able to get into her top-two choices, Stanford and Harvard. This had been a big disappointment, evenings of long, tearful phone calls. But she was bouncing back and wanted to take a year off to do an internship in a law office. Somewhere local, I hoped.

“You know, my client Daniela is a senior partner. Working for her would look good on your résumé.”

“She won’t mind hiring the daughter of an alcoholic?”

“Recovering alcoholic,” I said, and we toasted with the Chardonnay I’d poured for dinner. “Daniela’s firm practices all types of law. Corporate. Criminal. Civil. Class action.”

“Actually, I was hoping to do an internship closer to home.”

“Closer than the business district?” It sounded like a joke.

“Emotionally closer. I was thinking an unpaid internship at the firm of Monk and Teeger.”

“Where?” I actually said that before realizing what she meant. “Are you serious? No. Spending a year with Monk and me is not going to help get you into law school.”

“That’s just it. I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer.”

“Julie.” I took a deep breath. “Just because you didn’t get
into Harvard or Stanford . . . They’re the two most competitive schools in the country. I know it was rough. But if you spend a year at a great firm and get a little more realistic in your choice of schools . . .”

“Mom, I’ve thought this through. I want to be a police detective. Or a private investigator like you.”

“No, no, no.” I don’t know why it took me by surprise. Julie was practically raised with detectives and had been on a first-name basis with more than one killer. She’d been in the background of dozens of cases and in the foreground of several more. But I’d never once thought that any of this had been appealing to her.

“What? You don’t want me to be like you?” I think she was annoyed by my three emphatic no’s.

“Julie, you’re young. There’s so much more you can do with your life.”

“More than what? More than you? I thought you loved your work. I thought you were proud of your life.”

“I am proud. But I got here . . .” How could I explain? “This is not what I intended. Yes, I love it. I love Adrian and the work. But if I was starting from scratch . . . Sweetie, you can be anything in the world. You’re graduating from Berkeley. You don’t want to waste that.”

“It’s an education. I’ll have it no matter what. And the police academy prefers college graduates.”

“Police academy? Why do you want to sell yourself short? You’re too smart.”

“Monk was a police officer,” she countered. “So were you.”

This was in fact true. I had served for a brief stint in the Summit police department. But that was beside the point. I
wasn’t a sweet, educated twenty-one-year-old related to me by birth. Kids don’t understand.

“Or I could be like you,” Julie said. “Get my license and open my own detective agency.”

“That was a fluke,” I said. “I just happened to get eleven years of training with one of the most brilliant minds in the world. Warped but brilliant. What do you think the chances are of you finding a brilliant partner?”

“Maybe I’m the brilliant partner, huh? You tell me that I’m selling myself short? But it’s you who’s selling me short. Maybe I’m the next Monk.”

The girl had a point. She was smart and insightful and tenacious. But I think most mothers would be on my side. I’d just gone from visualizing my little girl writing tortes in a safe, wood-paneled office to shooting bad guys or hanging from a cliff. . . . True. I’d done both myself and a lot more. But it was still a mental adjustment.

“Why don’t we start after graduation and see how it goes?” she said. “You can use my help. You’re falling behind on the Mafia case, right?” She pointed to the file folder out on the coffee table.

“I’m not having you get involved with that. When Sal Lucarelli asks how my beautiful daughter is doing, he’s not being nice. It’s a threat.”

“I can do simple stuff. Looking into Henry Pickler’s background like we talked about.”

“You remembered his name?”

“What if I can do a little investigating and connect him to the Mexican cartel? Wouldn’t that be helpful?”

“I need to show you season four of
Breaking Bad
.”

“I’ll be an intern. I won’t put myself in danger. Even though you put yourself in danger all the time.”

I took another deep breath. When was Ravi Shankar finally going to get to a new song? “Okay, sweetie,” I said. “Let me think about it.” Meaning no.

“Why do you always say no?”

It was somewhere around here that Captain Stottlemeyer came to my rescue, arriving on the front porch and ringing the bell. He hadn’t called ahead, but I welcomed him with open arms.

“I can come back,” he said, looking through the window and waving at Julie.

“Don’t you dare leave. Your timing is perfect.”

“Oh,” he said, a little startled. “That’s too bad.”

“Just mother and daughter stuff. What’s up? And don’t say you were in the neighborhood.”

“Thanks for the warning.” He smoothed both sides of his mustache, a classic stalling technique. “By the way, good catch with the name. It helps to know we’re dealing with a fake identity. Keeps us from going down too many dead ends.”

“Is that why you dropped by?”

“No. I guess I’m here because of Devlin. The chief and the commissioner are itching to set up a review board and she’s feeling the pressure.”

I nodded. “Adrian and I are doing all we can. What have you gotten from the FBI? They have great resources. Maybe we can set up a meeting.”

“The FBI isn’t involved. This doesn’t involve federal law or go over state lines. And with just three deaths, it’s not a mass murder.”

“They’re very strict with their rules, aren’t they?”

“I’ve never seen her like this,” said the captain, lowering his voice. “You know her. Confidence is her key asset. She can be wrong and rude and a pain in the butt. But her self-confidence is what always makes it work. Now she’s second-guessing herself. She’s got a team of twenty tracking this guy down and she’s a mess. I’ve never seen her so indecisive and disorganized.”

“She offered to personally pay us for helping.”

“Whoa.” This was obviously news to him. “You see? If this doesn’t turn her way, I’m afraid she might put in for a transfer or even quit the force. She mentioned it once, casually. But nothing is really casual with her.”

“Quit the force? She can’t. Amy is a born cop.”

“She let a killer escape a locked-down building dressed as an EMT. That’s what everyone thinks. Even if he got out some other way, she was the one in charge.”

That did seem to be bad. “Well, as Adrian says, ‘The truth is the truth.’ All we can try to do is find it.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” said Stottlemeyer.

By the time the captain drove away and I went back inside, Julie and I had both calmed down. Neither of us mentioned the internship. We kept to small talk as we cleaned the kitchen and filled the dishwasher and sat down with some cookies and milk. We let ourselves be grossed out by a half hour of
Tosh.0
, a show that I never watch on my own but keep on my DVR just for her.

Julie had to get ready for an early class, so she didn’t stay overnight in the shrine that used to be her bedroom. I stood
on the porch and watched her drive off around the corner. Then I went straight to bed. It had been a long day.

Sometime during the night, I received a voice mail from the captain asking us to come to the station for an early meeting with the president of East Decorative Imports who had just flown in from Tokyo to deal with the massacre.

I got the message the next morning and immediately found myself in a rush. First was the call to Monk, telling him he had to alter his morning routine in order to be ready for me to pick him up. “Cut out your second shower and your second exfoliation,” I advised. Then I hung up and dealt with my own, much shorter routine.

When it came time to race out the door, I grabbed my PBS tote and my car keys and the triple-murder file from the coffee table. It struck me at the time that the Pickler file wasn’t there. It had been sitting right beside the other file, or so I thought.

At the time I thought I’d just misplaced it.