Mr. Monk on the Couch (9 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
s I pulled up in front of the thrift store, Jerry and his team were just leaving in their vans. Monk waved good-bye to them, a wistful look on his face. He stood there in his shirt and slacks and yellow boots, holding his mask in his hand, and continued to wave until the vans disappeared around the corner.

I assumed that Jerry had disposed of Monk’s biohazard outfit. It wasn’t a loss. Monk had plenty more of the Tyvek coveralls. They were hanging in his closet to keep them from getting wrinkled.

Monk climbed into the car and sighed.

“Why are you so sad?” I asked.

“Because it’s over,” he said. “Don’t worry, my boots have been decontaminated and disinfected.”

“I wasn’t worried,” I said as I pulled away from the curb.

“You should have been. I hope you don’t make a habit of letting people in your car with suspect boots.”

“How did the cleaning go?”

“It was great. The blood was everywhere, it dripped and splattered in places you wouldn’t believe, and we had to get it all. Jerry is relentless when it comes to finding every speck.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound impressed.

“He removes every piece of furniture, opens every drawer, and examines every item. That attention to detail extends to the entire room,” Monk said. “He has this incredible spray, a mix of enzymes and surfactants, that liquefies the dried blood so it can be scrubbed off with industrial tissues, stiff brushes, and putty scrapers. It’s hard work.”

“But you liked it,” I said.

“I loved it. There are no half measures with Jerry. The linoleum was covered with blood. Some less dedicated people might have just mopped it up, scrubbed the floor, and moved on. But he could see some tendrils of blood had reached the wall’s edge. So he insisted that we remove the baseboards and lift up the linoleum. Sure enough, the wood underneath the linoleum was soaked. The linoleum had to go. Then we all got on our hands and knees, scrubbed the wood with that miracle spray, and then coated it with sealant so no moisture could get in or out again. I want to do that when I get home.”

“You want to rip up your floor?”

“I bet the wood underneath has never been thoroughly cleaned and sealed.”

“That’s because it’s always been covered with a floor,” I said. “No one has died on your kitchen floor. I don’t think your landlord would appreciate you tearing it up so you can scrub the wood.”

“He’ll thank me later,” he said.

“No, he won’t. He’ll kill you, and then there will be a reason to clean up your kitchen, only you won’t be around to do it,” I said. “How did Jerry and his crew treat you?”

“They’re my new posse,” he said. “They are such a wacky, zany gang. Gene, he’s the jokester. He says the funniest things.”

“Like what?”

“He said that I was a lunatic at best, a pervert at worst, because I enjoy crime scene cleaning.”

“That’s not funny,” I said. “It’s an insult.”

“No, you don’t get it. What he said is the opposite of what everyone knows to be true, which makes it a comical absurdity. You’d be crazy
not
to enjoy cleaning, but he said I was crazy because I
do
. Get it? Hilarity ensued.”

“Uh-huh. What about the others?”

“William is the newbie, so he’s the brunt of lots of goodnatured ribbing, too. Gene would recount particularly gruesome cleaning assignments from the past in an effort to make William gag.”

“Gene sounds like a lovable guy.”

“He’s the class clown,” Monk said.

“What about Corinne?”

“She’s the Hermione Granger,” Monk said. “That’s the studious witch in the Harry Potter books and motion pictures.”

“Yes, I know. But I am wondering how you do, since your knowledge of popular culture is virtually nonexistent.”

“Jerry calls her Hermione, so I asked him to explain it to me, and once he did, I concurred that the comparison was appropriate, although she has no magical powers. But she is very conscientious and thorough.”

“Like me,” I said.

“Yes, just like you, except that she’s younger, cleaner, better educated, and conscientious and thorough. For example, on her own initiative, she used luminol to find any blood that might have been tracked out of the room by the police officers and forensic techs, then got on her hands and knees to clean off every speck that she found. That’s dedication.”

“It’s a good thing she wants to be a doctor and not a detective’s assistant.”

“I bet she uses luminol at home when she cleans.”

“You sound like you really like her.”

“What’s not to like?”

“You should ask her out, Mr. Monk. You could invite her over to help you clean your house.”

“Get real, Natalie. She’s twenty-three. And do you really think that someone so clean, conscientious, and thorough would still be unattached? She’s got a boyfriend and a line of willing suitors waiting in the wings,” Monk said. “Oh, that reminds me. You have to get cleaned up.”

“So you keep telling me.”

“No, I mean immediately, right after you drop me off. You don’t have much time before Jerry picks you up.”

“For what?”

“Your date, of course.”

I jammed on the brakes and nearly got us rear-ended. “We don’t have one.”

“Yes, you do,” Monk said. “Tonight at eight. I told him how much you liked him, that you never go out anymore, and that you’re steadily gaining weight.”

“I never said I liked him. In fact, I told you emphatically that he wasn’t my type.”

“But you were wrong,” Monk said. “You’ll thank me later.”

Cars started honking, so I drove on. “Has anyone ever thanked you later?”

“I can wait,” he said.

 

I wasn’t going to admit it to Monk, but my opinion of Jerry had changed. I was excited about the date, though I wasn’t thrilled that Monk had portrayed me as this plump, slovenly, desperate spinster living in squalor. The fact that Jerry was interested in me anyway was another point in his favor.

I showered, changed into a simple black dress, and scrambled to straighten up the house, though considering Jerry’s line of work, any mess I had would look inconsequential compared to what he usually saw.

Jerry rang my doorbell promptly at eight. He was dressed stylishly casual in a short-sleeve blue silk shirt, khaki slacks, and loafers. The colorful ensemble seemed to make his red hair and megawatt smile even brighter.

“I hope you can forgive me for asking you out without actually asking you out,” he said. “But when Adrian told me that you were single, and that you’d been looking for a guy like me, I was afraid that you’d find him, and that it would be tonight, and that it wouldn’t be me. I’ve been thinking about you since we met at the hotel, and I was gathering my courage to ask you out this morning, but I lost my nerve when I saw you.”

“Why? After the horrible picture Mr. Monk painted of me, how could I possibly have seemed intimidating?”

“You’re smart and attractive, which means you wouldn’t want to be around a guy who spends his days and nights cleaning up gore.”

“That never crossed my mind,” I said. It was a lie, of course, and ordinarily that’s not the best way to start off a relationship with someone, but I had no choice. I vowed to myself that I would be honest with him from that point forward. More or less.

His megawatt smile went supernova. I almost reached for a pair of sunglasses.

“Do you like Italian food?” he asked.

“I like anything that I don’t have to take out of the freezer and put in my microwave.”

“I can see this is going to be difficult,” he said.

He led me out to his car, which was a Porsche.

“You seem surprised,” he said. “You didn’t think I’d take you out in one of the vans, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I just didn’t know your profession was so lucrative.”

“We aren’t Merry Maids,” he said.

He opened the passenger door for me, an act of gallantry rarely performed by men these days.

I sat down on the leather seat and he closed the door gently. The car was immaculate inside. I took a deep breath, drawing in the scent of leather and that oh-so-fleeting but luscious new-car smell.

“Did you buy this car on your way here?” I asked Jerry as he got in and buckled up.

“I’ve had this clunker for six years,” he said.

“You have? So what’s the secret to keeping the new-car smell?”

He shrugged. “I don’t smell it. My work requires me to concentrate so hard on detecting the slightest whiff of decay or rot that I don’t notice the nice smells anymore.”

“What a waste,” I said.

“But on the other hand, I appreciate beauty even more because of what I have to see every day,” he said and smiled at me. “I could look at you all night.”

It was a cheesy line that he’d probably used on a hundred women, and I’m ashamed to admit that it worked on me anyway. I felt a hot flush rising on my skin. Or maybe it was menopause arriving early. That would be just my luck.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

J
erry took me up to Columbus Avenue in North Beach, the same neighborhood where Dr. Bell’s office was located. The street was lined on both sides with Italian restaurants, and I always found the selection overwhelming. There were just too many restaurants to choose from.

What made it worse was that they all had somebody standing outside their door like carnival barkers, doing everything short of clubbing you over the head and dragging you inside their restaurant. Their desperation for my dining dollar was too much. I’d rather have a Big Mac than deal with it.

But Jerry had a cozy little bistro already picked out, and a candlelit table was waiting for us by a bay window. There was something very homey about the place, despite the usual Tuscan architectural flourishes, the red-checkered tablecloths, the salami hanging behind the counter, and the bad paintings of gondoliers and Italian landmarks on the walls.

The candlesticks on the tables were caked in layers of wax, the seats were wooden benches littered with hand-sewn pillows of all sizes, and the silverware was a hodgepodge of unmatched pieces.

Over a very basic but delicious dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, salad, garlic bread, and wine, we did the usual first-date interviews, asking each other to summarize our lives in three thousand words or less. I went first, telling him the broad strokes of my story, and then I asked him how he became a crime scene cleaner.

“It wasn’t exactly my lifelong dream,” he said.

“What was your dream?”

“To be a private eye, a rock star, or an astronaut. So, naturally, I became a real estate agent.”

“Makes perfect sense,” I said.

“I went to Diablo Valley College and bounced around all kinds of different jobs, and I was getting ready to bounce out of real estate, too, when I got a listing for a house in Concord that had belonged to this old grandmother. She tripped and died. Her body wasn’t discovered for a couple of weeks. Are you sure you want talk about this now?”

He gestured to my plate of spaghetti, which I was in the midst of devouring in a very unladylike fashion.

“You’re forgetting my line of work,” I said, wiping the spaghetti sauce off my face with my napkin. “It’s going to take more than some talk about decomposing corpses to kill my appetite.”

“Is it too soon for me to fall in love with you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Go on with your story.”

“The granddaughter was willed everything and hadn’t set foot in the house since her grandmother was found. She associated the house with the smell of Nana’s fresh-baked pies. She didn’t want that memory ruined by the smell of fresh-baked Nana. Part of my job was getting the place cleaned up so it could be sold. I had to get rid of the stench, the stains, and the insects or I’d never unload the house and get my commission. That’s when I discovered the world of crime scene cleaning.”

“You saw how you could help people avoid the pain and ugliness of death.”

“I’m ashamed to say that what I saw were dollar signs. It was a guaranteed revenue stream, a profession that was totally immune to market forces, to the ups and downs of the economy, or even seismic cultural and political shifts in our country. Everybody dies and nobody wants to deal with the mess, except maybe Adrian. I didn’t want to, either, but money is a strong motivator.”

I appreciated his honesty, probably because I knew from personal experience what he was talking about.

“You don’t have to be ashamed of wanting to make a buck, Jerry. Assisting Mr. Monk and investigating homicides wasn’t something I set out to do, either. I stumbled into it, just like you did with crime scene cleaning. I stuck with it, despite my discomfort around dead bodies, because I needed a good job. I wanted a steady income to support myself and my daughter. And you’re right. Death is one thing you can always depend on.”

“Looks like we have a lot in common,” he said.

“We’re both in an ugly business,” I said. “You impressed Mr. Monk with your attention to detail and your dedication to your work. I don’t think it’s just about money for you anymore.”

“I don’t think I could still be doing such a gruesome job if it was. Once I really got into it, once I started dealing with all those bereaved people, it became about much more than the money. I realized that my job wasn’t just about cleaning up messes. It was about sparing people from as much pain and misery as possible,” he said. “It’s bad enough losing a loved one without having to clean up after it. My nightmare is that I will miss something while I’m cleaning, and six months later, someone will move a piece of furniture and find a tooth, or a bone fragment, or a glob of brain from their dead kid or spouse. Can you imagine how horrifying that would be for them?”

“You’re a knight in shining Tyvek,” I said.

“Finally, someone who sees me as I really am,” he said. “So what about you?”

“What do you mean?”

“When did helping Adrian become more than just a job for you? And when did homicide investigation become not just what he does, but something that you love, too?”

“Am I that transparent?”

“Maybe I’m just incredibly observant.”

I finished my glass of wine and he quickly refilled it. That’s when I realized we were already on our second bottle. I’d have to slow down or he’d be carrying me home, which, I have to admit, was beginning to have some appeal.

“I can’t tell you exactly when Mr. Monk became family to me. It was a gradual thing. But you’re right—whether I continue working with him or not, he’ll always be in my life.”

“So if you’re that close, why do you call him Mr. Monk instead of Adrian?”

“Because he’s my boss,” I said.

“What if you stop working for him someday?”

“He’ll always be Mr. Monk to me,” I said. “Besides, he hates change.”

“Maybe you’re not so fond of it, either.”

“You think Mr. Monk is influencing me?”

“I know he is,” Jerry said. “Isn’t that why you’re interested in being a detective now, too?”

I shrugged. “Or maybe it’s like you and crime scene cleaning. It was survival instinct. If I didn’t find a way to invest myself emotionally and intellectually in my work, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the violent death I see day after day.”

“Or maybe I was always meant to clean up awful messes and you were always meant to be a detective. We just didn’t know it.”

“You think it’s our destiny,” I said.

He shook his head. “I believe there are people who are great garage door installers, or bus drivers, or insurance salesmen, or whatever, and I’ll bet you that ninety-five percent of them never intended to be in those jobs but love what they do and can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“So if it’s not fate, then you’re saying we just naturally drift into what we’re best at,” I said. “And then find a reason to invest ourselves in it so we can keep on doing it.”

“We find our place in life and then, if we are very lucky, we find a way to love it.”

“That sounds a lot like self-delusion to me.”

“Isn’t that what happiness is?”

“That’s a cynical way of looking at it,” I said.

“What did you expect from a guy who cleans up after murders, suicides, and natural deaths every day?”

I smiled. “Everything you’ve turned out not to be.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.

It was.

We chatted about this and that and flirted some more, and then he took me back home. It was nearly midnight when he walked me to my door. I thanked him for a wonderful evening.

“Does that mean you’d be open to doing it again sometime?” he asked.

“Very open,” I replied with a smile.

“How does Friday night work for you? Or would that be moving too fast?”

“Friday it is,” I said, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went inside.

I felt ridiculously, childishly giddy about our first date. I really liked Jerry. I didn’t know where things would go, but I liked how things were starting out.

I was heading to bed when I noticed that I’d left my laptop computer on. I went over to the table to turn it off and saw that I had a few new e-mails waiting for me. One of the e-mails was from the bike blogger. She’d heard from a Wheeler Wheels expert who’d identified the Dandelion Racer in my picture. It was made for Cantwells, a local, Northern California department store chain that went out of business in 1989.

I Googled Cantwells and discovered that, in their heyday in the 1970s, their southernmost store was in San Jose, their northernmost store was in Redding, and most of their stores were clustered in the Bay Area and the Sacramento area.

That would certainly help us narrow down where the photo was taken, unless, of course, they’d moved away from Northern California and had taken the bike with them.

Even so, I was pleased to have made a small step forward in my investigation. The day had ended up being a good one all around for me. I e-mailed the information to Ambrose and Yuki and went to bed.