Mr. Monk on the Road (17 page)

“This bathroom?” Ambrose said.

“It’s the only one we’ve got,” I said.

Ambrose turned to Monk. “There’s only
one
?”

“I thought you’d use the bathroom outside,” Monk said to me.

“You thought wrong,” I said. “But you’re welcome to use it.”

“I don’t use public restrooms,” he said.

“And I certainly don’t,” Ambrose said. “And if we all use this one, then it will become a public restroom.”

“Then I guess you’ve got some problems to work out,” I said. “Good luck with that.”

I walked away.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I
brushed my teeth, used the toilet, and changed into sweats and a baggy T-shirt. When I emerged, Ambrose quickly shielded his eyes and looked at the floor.

“Ambrose, I’m not naked,” I said.

“You’re scantily clad,” he said.

“I’m as clad as I was before,” I said.

He kept his eyes shielded and his head down and barreled past me toward the bedroom. I unzipped my sleeping bag and climbed inside.

Monk reached under the sink and pulled out a bucket of cleaning supplies.

“What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up the bathroom so Ambrose can use it,” Monk said.

“What do you think I did in there?”

Monk shivered. “I don’t want to think about it.”

He walked past me. I turned on my side, faced the wall, and closed my eyes, falling asleep almost instantly, which was truly a blessing. I slept peacefully through what I’m certain were two extensive cleanings of the bathroom and copious whining from the Monks.

I woke up totally rested and rejuvenated in the cuddly warmth of my sleeping bag at seven a.m. I rolled over and peered across the RV to the sofa bed. I saw Monk asleep on his back, his bedsheets tight and firm and up to his chin. I suspected that he was completely dressed, but there was no way to be sure without whipping off the sheets. I slipped my bare feet into my running shoes, grabbed my jacket, which was draped over the back of the driver’s seat, and went outside.

It was sunny, the air crisp and chilly, redolent with the scents of sand and seaweed, pine and eucalyptus, bacon and eggs. I loved it.

I buried my hands in the pockets of my jacket and trudged down the winding trail to the beach. There was only one other person on the sand, and she was jogging barefoot toward me along the berm.

She wore a half top and shorts, her long black hair tied in a bun, which accentuated her slender neck. I knew her, even though I had never actually met her before. She stopped in front of me and was only slightly out of breath. If I’d run half the distance that she had at the same pace that she did I would have needed pulmonary resuscitation.

“Good morning, Yuki,” I said.

“Same to you, Natalie,” she replied. “I want to thank you and Mr. Monk for entertaining Dub last night.”

“It was our pleasure. He’s a wonderful host.”

“Until last night, Dub was on a sharp downward spiral, physically and emotionally. I don’t know what you two did, but he’s himself again. Maybe now he’ll stay that way until the end.”

“Maybe that will be a long way off,” I said.

“I hope you’re right, but he’ll be the one who decides when the time has come.”

That reminded me of the gun under his bed. “Do you really think he’ll shoot himself?”

“If he can’t,” she said, “I’ll help him do it.”

“You could go to prison for that.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time. The only reason I’m not there now is because he saved me. The least I can do is save him.”

Her eyes welled up with tears, which she wiped away with the back of her hand, staring at me defiantly as she did so.

“You love him,” I said.

“The same way you love Mr. Monk.”

Her remark surprised me and, judging from the satisfied look on her face, she liked that.

“No offense, but you don’t know anything about me and Mr. Monk.”

“I know everything,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

Before I could ask her what she meant by her remark, she ran past me and up the trail to the park, and I saw the elaborate snake tattoo that curled menacingly around her spine.

I suppose I could have chased after her, but I had the beach to myself and I didn’t want to waste it. I walked slowly from one end of it to the other, enjoying the solitude and fortifying myself for the journey ahead with the Monk brothers.

Going back up the hill was a lot harder than the trip down, especially after my walk on the beach, and I was disappointed to see when I reached the top that Dub’s RV was already gone and, with it, the meaning behind Yuki’s enigmatic smile.

I trudged into our motor home to find both Monks up and busy. The dinette and couch beds were folded up, and Monk was scrubbing the tabletop with cleanser while Ambrose prepared waffles at the stove.

I showed my appreciation for their labors by using the public showers to clean up and get dressed. The water was freezing, there was sand on the concrete floors, and it smelled vaguely of coconut suntan lotion, but I found the experience refreshing, maybe because it was different, or perhaps because it reminded me of all the days I spent at the beach when I was growing up.

When I got back, breakfast was ready and waiting. I slid into the dinette across from the Monks and suddenly realized that I was ravenous. I devoured the waffles, which were terrific.

“Where to next?” Ambrose asked, bouncing excitedly in his seat like a child.

“You’re in a jaunty mood today,” I said.

“I met a beautiful woman. I don’t meet many of them.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said, and saw his face fall. “I’m only teasing. You must be talking about Yuki.”

“I told her that I wrote the owner’s manual for her scooter,” Ambrose said. “It’s one of my raw, obscure early works.”

“More obscure than your toaster oven manual?” Monk asked.

“
That
was a classic in the field,” Ambrose said.

“There’s a field for toaster oven manuals?”

“There’s a field for everything, Adrian,” Ambrose said, then directed his attention back to me. “Yuki kept her owner’s manual in pristine condition and asked me to autograph it. Seeing that book again after so many years, and feeling the allure of the open road that I infused in every word, reminded me of my youth and put me in the mood for adventure.”

“Then you shall have it,” I said. “Today we’re heading south on Highway 1 through Big Sur.”

“When do we depart?” he asked.

“As soon as we finish breakfast,” I said.

“Maybe we should head back north,” Monk said.

“Why?” I asked.

“We blew through Santa Cruz and Monterey pretty fast. We might have missed something good.”

“Like catching a murderer,” I said.

“Hey, that would be fun,” Monk said, turning to Ambrose. “Don’t you think so?”

“Not really,” he said.

“What happened to the united front we agreed to take?”

“That was before Yuki awakened my inner road warrior.”

“You don’t have one,” Monk said.

“If Dub was right,” Ambrose said, “we all do.”

“And all it took to unleash yours was signing an owner’s manual?” Monk said.

“It’s more complex than that, Adrian. Yuki and her scooter owner’s manual are powerful literary metaphors for the journey that awaits me and for my youth that has slipped away. If you were a writer like Dub and me, you’d see that.”

“This isn’t a story you’re writing, Ambrose. It’s life.”

“Some would say that is exactly what life is—a story that we’re continually writing for ourselves.”

“You write owner’s manuals,” Monk said.

“And I own this.” Ambrose tapped his chest with his thumb. “Maybe it’s time I revised the manual.”

I could have hugged him but there was a table between us. Instead I gave him a big smile.

“Happy birthday, Ambrose.”

He cocked his head and looked at me curiously. “That was yesterday.”

“It feels like today to me,” I said.

 

I retracted the slide-outs and untethered the RV from the utility hookups in no time at all, but backing up out of our campsite took a good fifteen minutes because I relied on Monk to stand outside and guide me. It wasn’t enough for him to keep me from hitting anything—he also wanted to be sure that I backed up in a perfectly straight line, and he used a tape measure to issue corrections to me.

“Three inches to the right,” he yelled to me from behind the RV.

“How do I steer three inches?” I yelled back.

“I thought you knew how to drive.”

“Steering isn’t that precise. Besides, we’re backing out of a parking space, not docking with the International Space Station. Am I going to hit the picnic table or not?”

“You aren’t anywhere near it. But you’re veering wildly off course.”

“What’s ‘wildly off course’ mean?”

“Three inches,” he said. “Are you sure you’re sober enough to drive?”

I was tempted to floor it and back the RV right over him, but I resisted the urge. Instead, I backed up slowly, giving him plenty of time to move out of the way and ignoring his protestations that I was “weaving crazily in all directions.”

Monk stepped back into the motor home and insisted that I back out over again. I told him to forget it.

“You’re being totally unreasonable,” he said.

“What happened to the easygoing, more even Adrian Monk I knew back in San Francisco?”

“I’m relaxed,” Monk said, “but I haven’t lost my grip on reason.”

“It doesn’t matter whether I backed out in a straight line or not. All that counts is that I didn’t hit anything.”

“That’s how it starts,” Monk said.

“What starts?”

“Break one rule, and slowly but surely, no rules matter to you anymore. Before you know it, you’re a sociopathic serial killer.”

“Because I didn’t back up in a perfectly straight line.”

“And you’re not even considering the impact your careless actions may have on others. Some child could come along, see those crooked tire tracks you left behind, and inexplicably feel compelled to shoplift candy bars from the campsite store, thus beginning his downward spiral and the total destruction of his life, perhaps culminating in murdering a woman on a beach in Santa Cruz.”

Now I understood what this was all about: Leaving a murder behind unsolved in Santa Cruz had undermined Monk’s sense of balance, and he was trying to restore it by obsessing over little things he could control.

The aggravation was a small price to pay in exchange for not sacrificing our road trip for a homicide investigation.

“Good point, Mr. Monk. I hadn’t thought of the implications of my actions. So why don’t you take our broom, go outside, and wipe away my tire tracks.”

Monk thought about that for a second, and then, without a word, grabbed our broom and went back outside. Ambrose looked at me.

“May I sit in the passenger seat today?”

“We don’t have assigned seating, Ambrose. You can sit wherever you like.”

Ambrose tentatively got into the seat and then strapped on the seat belt with the careful solemnity of someone preparing to pilot a jet at the speed of sound. When he was done, he placed his hands on the dashboard and nodded at me.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Monk returned a few minutes later and buckled himself into the seat in the dinette area, and then I drove us through the park to the road. Ambrose leaned back into his seat as if he was pinned against it by massive g-forces.

I stopped and checked the road for oncoming traffic. “I wasn’t even going five miles per hour.”

“I know, but it’s still faster than I am used to moving. I’m preparing myself physically and psychologically for what’s coming.”

“But this isn’t the first time you’ve been out of the house or in a car,” I said as I pulled into the traffic and steered us onto the southbound freeway. “Mr. Monk told me you were in grade school together and that your mother dropped you off in her car.”

“That was a very long time ago.”

“I’ve always wondered: What made you go inside your house and not come out again? Was it a traumatic event of some kind?”

Ambrose shook his head. “I always felt panicky whenever I was outside. I like boundaries.”

“Why?”

“There’s too much going on outside, you can’t keep track of all the details, all the people, all the things that are happening. Nothing stays the same, everything is always moving, there’s danger everywhere, but you can’t see it. It’s like being caught up in a raging river. You get swept away and, before you know it, you’re plunging over Niagara Falls to your doom.”

Monk spoke up from his seat. “There’s an order to the universe that never changes and that establishes boundaries. If you follow that order, everything in life is manageable. It’s only when you deviate from the natural order that things go awry. I see that order very clearly, and when something doesn’t fit the way it’s supposed to, I see that, too, which is why I am such a good detective.”

I glanced back at Monk in the rearview mirror. I’d never heard him characterize his obsessive-compulsive disorder or his detecting skills in such a straightforward manner before. I had no idea he was so self-aware.

This trip was becoming as much of a revelation for me as it was intended to be for Ambrose.

“It’s not that easy, Adrian,” Ambrose said. “I don’t have your skill, concentration, or emotional fortitude.”

“But you managed to make it on the outside through most of your childhood,” I said. “So what happened?”

“I caught the Hong Kong flu, and the school told me to stay home until I was healthy. They didn’t want me infecting the other children. My mother didn’t want me infecting the family, either, so she made me stay in the basement.”