Mr. Monk on Patrol (20 page)

I called Disher and let him know that the alibi that Woodlake gave him for Pamela Goldman’s murder didn’t hold up—not that he was expecting that it would.

Now that the Goldman murder and the string of home burglaries were solved, Disher was hopeful that law enforcement in Summit would go back to the usual mundane dribble of petty crimes and misdemeanors.

Since Prosser’s house was only a few blocks from the Goldman residence, I decided to cruise by and see how Joel Goldman was doing. Goldman was a stranger to me, but the grief and anger he was feeling were not.

I remembered all too clearly how I’d felt when I learned that my husband’s plane had been shot down over Kosovo. At least I didn’t have to see him being carried out of our own home in a body bag. I couldn’t imagine what that must have felt like.

When we pulled into Goldman’s driveway, I could see him carrying drywall into the garage that he was converting into a home office.

I took the radio and called the dispatcher to let her
know we were Code 6 at the Goldman residence, which basically meant we’d left our car to investigate something.

“What are we doing here?” Monk asked.

“Showing a victim that we care,” I said and got out of the car.

We walked down the driveway to the garage, where I could hear Goldman working inside with his nail gun, most likely securing the drywall.

“Mr. Goldman?” I called out between nail firings.

Goldman emerged wearing leather work gloves, his sweatshirt and jeans covered with dust. He seemed bewildered to see us.

“When did you become police officers?” he said.

“This morning,” I said. “It’s only temporary. There’s a manpower shortage on the force.”

“That’s because two police officers were arrested yesterday for burglarizing your home and murdering your wife,” Monk said.

“I know all about that,” Goldman said. “I had a dozen reporters outside of my house last night, jockeying for the best position for their live shots on the eleven o’clock news.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.” Goldman turned to Monk. “I understand from Chief Disher that I have you to thank for solving the case.”

“It wasn’t very hard,” Monk said. “I once solved a case where the murderer’s alibi was that he was in a coma at the time of the killing.”

“Really?” Goldman said.

“This was a no-brainer,” Monk said.

I spoke up quickly. “Not that he’s diminishing, in any way, your horrible loss.”

“I know he’s not. I want to apologize for the way I
treated you yesterday.” Goldman took off one of his work gloves and held his sweaty hand out to Monk. “I am forever in your debt.”

Monk hesitated, staring at Goldman’s moist hand as if it were covered with maggots.

I took Monk’s arm by the elbow and forced him to extend his hand toward Goldman, who shook it.

“Mr. Monk appreciates it,” I said.

“If there is ever anything I can do for you,” Goldman said, “don’t hesitate to ask.”

“You could wash your hands.” Monk took a disinfectant-wipe packet from his pocket and tore it open.

“Okay, I will,” Goldman said and nodded toward the house. “I’m going to do it right now.”

Monk vigorously wiped his hands with the moist towelette. “You’ll thank me later.”

“I believe I just did,” Goldman said.

“You’ll thank me again,” Monk said.

Goldman went inside. I’m sure he was grateful for the polite excuse to get as far away from us as he could. The last thing Goldman needed to deal with today, less than twenty-four hours after his wife’s murder, was Monk’s eccentricities.

Monk held the wipe out to me but I ignored him and started walking down the driveway to the car.

“You’re supposed to take this,” he said, hurrying after me with the wipe, and the packet it came in, held at arm’s length.

“That’s your problem, not mine,” I said. “You’ve got a pocket full of baggies. Use one of them.”

He stopped and took a baggie out of his pocket. He dropped his used towelette into the baggie, sealed it tight, then tossed it into the Dumpster beside Goldman’s garage.

I got in the car, called the dispatcher, and reported that we were back on patrol.

Monk got in and we drove off.

“Did it seem odd to you that he was working on his home office the morning after his wife was killed?” he asked.

“Not at all. What did you do after you got the news that Trudy had been killed?”

“Sobbed uncontrollably,” he said.

“And after that?”

“Kept sobbing,” he said.

“After that?”

“Sobbed some more.”

“What did you do after the sobbing?”

“I cleaned the house,” he said.

“Because you were trying to restore order in your life.”

“Because the house was a mess,” he said.

“I heard that you cleaned nonstop for three weeks until you finally collapsed from exhaustion, dehydration, and sleep deprivation and had to be hospitalized.”

“It was a very big mess,” he said. “It was work that needed to be done.”

“So is the renovation of Joel Goldman’s garage into a home office.”

“What does he need his home office for now?”

“It’s got nothing to do with whether or not he needs a home office, Mr. Monk. He’s desperate to occupy himself, to go through the motions,
any
motions, to distract himself from the overwhelming grief and pain that he’s feeling. Maybe this is his way of restoring order to his life.”

Monk looked at me. “What did you do after the sobbing?”

“I focused all of my attention on Julie,” I said. “I absorbed myself completely in mothering her. Actually, smothering her is more like it, but she survived. And thanks to her, so did I.”

“I had Sharona,” Monk said.

“And Joel Goldman has his home office,” I said.

“What’s he going to do when he finishes it?”

I shrugged. “Maybe he won’t.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said.

“Have you ever heard of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose?”

“Nope,” Monk said.

“It was owned by the guy who made the Winchester rifle. After he died, his widow, Sarah, kept remodeling and adding on to her Victorian mansion. The work continued every day until her own death thirty-eight years later. The house has two ballrooms, forty bedrooms, ten thousand windowpanes, forty-seven fireplaces, three elevators, six kitchens—more than a hundred and sixty rooms in all. She thought the never-ending construction would appease and confound the spirits of all the people killed by her husband’s weapons.”

“She was a fruitcake,” Monk said.

“She was carrying a lot of grief,” I said. “Who knows, today we might have witnessed the beginning of the Goldman Mystery House.”

The next few hours lived up to Disher’s hopes. Monk wrote a few parking tickets, cited some people for spitting, and chastised others for letting their dogs urinate on the street.

One elderly woman who was walking her poodle took genuine offense at being admonished by Monk.

“My dog has been doing his business on this street for ten years,” she said.

“You should be ashamed of yourself and your dog,” Monk said. “There are laws against public urination.”

“For people,” she said.

“Urine is urine,” he said. “Do you think your dog’s is any less disgusting and unpleasant? Do you think people appreciate having their streets soaked in dog pee? It’s barbaric.”

“Where would you have my dog relieve himself?”

“In a bathroom,” Monk said. “Like any other civilized creature.”

“A dog isn’t a civilized creature,” she said.

“Yours certainly isn’t,” Monk said. “You shouldn’t own a dog if you aren’t going to properly train it.”

“I’ve never seen a dog use a toilet in my life,” she said.

“Of course not,” Monk said. “That’s why we have bathroom doors.”

“That’s outrageous,” she said.

“Don’t press your luck, lady,” Monk said. “You’re lucky I’m letting you walk away without a ticket.”

“For what?”

“Public urination, of course,” he said. “You ought to crank up the volume on your hearing aid before you go out.”

“I don’t have a hearing aid,” she said.

“Then maybe you should get one,” Monk said.

The woman stormed off in a huff rather than continue engaging Monk in debate. So he turned his attention to using his tape measure to determine whether parked cars were equally spaced between one another. If they weren’t, he left a warning citation under the windshield. But drivers with the misfortune of parking while we were there had to endure Monk’s directing them into place. He wouldn’t let them leave until their
cars were perfectly centered between the other vehicles.

While he did that, I stood around and tried to look confident and coplike as his backup.

It was an important job. There was always the chance that one of the drivers might become frustrated enough to shoot him. I wasn’t parking my car but I was tempted to shoot him myself just listening to him give drivers directions.

I suppose I could have stopped him, but I knew it was making him happy. So I let him indulge himself. He deserved it for all the good he’d done in Summit over the last couple of days.

And for me.

Thanks to him, I was a cop, and I didn’t even have to spend a single day at the police academy.

Monk was on the sidewalk on Springfield Avenue, directing foot traffic, making sure people stayed in their invisible lanes, when I spotted Ellen Morse coming our way, a friendly smile on her face.

“Here comes Ellen Morse,” I said.

Monk looked up with a scowl on his face. “The she-devil.”

“This would be a good time to apologize to her.”

“For what?”

“For accusing her of having an affair with Joel Goldman and implying that she was involved in his wife’s murder.”

“She could have been,” he said.

“But she wasn’t,” I said. “You like to say that you’re always right when it comes to homicide, but this time you were wrong.”

“I never
officially
declared that she was the one.”

“You were wrong.”

“It doesn’t count because she sells poop soap,” he said.

“You were wrong.”

“She sells poop paper,” he said.

“You were wrong.”

“For God’s sake, Natalie, she’s pure evil.”

That was when Morse reached us. “Congratulations on joining the Summit police force. You’re the talk of the town.”

“That will settle down soon,” I said.

“I doubt it,” she said. “The cars on the street have never been parked by make, model, and color before. People will be talking about this for a long time.”

“I apologize,” Monk said through gritted teeth.

“I kind of like it,” Morse said. “I’m a very orderly person myself.”

“It’s not about the cars,” I said and gently nudged him. “Tell her what you’re sorry for.”

“For suggesting you had an extramarital sex affair with your neighbor,” Monk said. “But I’m categorically, absolutely, and definitively not apologizing for condemning you for being a poop purveyor.”

“That’s very nice of you,” she said. “However, I won’t accept your apology unless you come to my house for dinner tonight.”

“Will you be serving hot buttered poop, poop salad, and cow patty cookies?” Monk asked.

“Not tonight,” she said with a smile. “See you at seven.”

“What can we bring?” I asked.

“Gas masks, gloves, our own eating utensils, and penicillin,” Monk said.

She laughed, though she probably didn’t realize that he was being serious. But nothing Monk said seemed to offend her. If anything, it only seemed to make him more endearing in her eyes.

“Just bring your charm and good humor,” she said and ambled on toward her store.

“I hope you’re happy,” Monk said to me.

I was.

We got back in the car and went on patrol. Over the next couple of hours, we gave out a few tickets for traffic violations and Monk laid down the law to some jaywalkers.

After that, we were dispatched to the home of Yasmine Dugoni, a three-hundred-pound woman with varicose veins who was wearing a loud, floral housedress and who had reported an act of terrorism. It turned out to be the toilet-papering of a tree in her front yard while she was at work.

Monk was outraged by the crime.

“This is what happens when you have a store in town that sells poop,” he opined to me.

I didn’t see the correlation.

I thought it had more to do with the fact, which I learned from the dispatcher, that Mrs. Dugoni had called the police 153 times in the last year to report the neighborhood kids for loud music, reckless driving, indecent exposure, curfew violations, and scores of other charges.

Considering how much she’d harassed those kids, I thought she was getting off lightly.

And I told her so.

“They’re criminals,” she said.

“They’re kids,” I said. “Being kids. If they were truly criminals, they would have done something worse and more permanent. This was harmless. My advice, Mrs. Dugoni, is to buy some drapes and some earplugs. That way you won’t see the kids or hear them and you
won’t have anything to yell at them about anymore. If you stop yelling at them, you won’t have to worry about them toilet-papering your tree again.”