Mr. Monk on the Road (4 page)

Ambrose supported himself as a writer of technical manuals, encyclopedias, and textbooks, which made him an expert on a myriad of subjects and products, knowledge that he enjoyed demonstrating whenever he talked to people.

He was socially awkward, especially around women, but he was more technologically adept and plugged into what was going on in the world than Monk was.

That’s because Ambrose spent so much time on his computer, surfing the Web and getting involved in sites and discussions relating to his many, and often arcane, interests. He had pals all over the world whom he kept in touch with via e-mails and video chatting. Julie and I were among them.

He was also something of a pack rat. He’d saved every piece of mail and every issue of the
San Francisco Chronicle
that had come to the house since the day their father abandoned them when they were children. Ambrose used to say that he was saving it all for their dad. But even after their father finally returned a few years ago, Ambrose continued to collect the stuff. The mail was carefully organized in dozens of identical file cabinets, and the newspapers were kept in neat stacks lining the living room in rows that Julie used to run through as if she were in one of those garden-hedge mazes.

Ambrose called me as we were leaving Nelson Derrick’s house and invited us over for breakfast the next day. Monk wanted to put off the visit until Ambrose’s birthday, which was coming that weekend, but Ambrose was insistent.

So early the next morning, as a heavy fog hung over the city, we drove across the Golden Gate to Tewksbury.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
ewksbury is known for its small-town feel, the meticulously preserved Victorian- and Craftsman-style homes, and the hundreds of backyard hot tubs (or, as Monk called them, “boiling cauldrons of pestilence”) left over from the swinging ’70s.

Of course, Monk’s childhood home didn’t have a hot tub, but Ambrose kept the property in excellent repair inside and out, as if he feared their controlling and pathologically overprotective mother might claw her way out of the grave just to run her white-gloved finger over all the smooth, disinfected, spotless surfaces.

I didn’t blame their father for walking out on Mrs. Monk, with her twisted sense of order and cleanliness, but I did resent him for being too gutless to take the boys with him. I held her responsible for their deep psychological problems, all of which she wouldn’t have seen as problems at all. From what I could tell, they were perfect reflections of her bizarre worldview.

Ambrose greeted us at the door wearing his usual long-sleeve flannel shirt, sweater vest, and corduroy slacks. He gripped the doorframe as if he was afraid he might get sucked out into the street by explosive decompression if he let go.

“Greetings. It’s delightful to see you Natalie,” he said. “And you, too, Adrian. Won’t you please come in?”

He stepped back in the entry hall, giving us plenty of leeway and putting lots of distance between himself and the door.

I kissed him on the cheek as I came in and he instantly blushed. “You’re looking great, Ambrose.”

“He looks exactly the same as the last time we were here,” Monk said.

Ambrose ignored Monk and kept his eyes on me. “Thank you, Natalie. This is the newest of my brown sweaters, and it’s just back from the dry cleaners. I was very sorry to hear that you broke up with your boyfriend and that you’re available again for new romantic opportunities.”

“Is that what we are here for?” Monk asked. “So you could slobber all over my assistant?”

Ambrose turned an even darker shade of red. “Do not be grotesque, Adrian. I was merely expressing my sympathies. It’s what people do. It’s called being considerate. Could you please close the door?”

Monk slammed the door shut.

“Out of curiosity,” I said to Ambrose, “who told you about Steven?”

“Julie mentioned it,” Ambrose said. “We were IMing the other day.”

“You were doing
what
?” Monk said. “She’s only nineteen.”

“We were instant messaging, Adrian,” he said. “It’s a technology that people in our modern society use to communicate with one another, using text messages over the telephone or with your computer. I really don’t know how you function in the world.”

“But I do,” Monk said.

“With lots of very attractive help,” Ambrose said, smiling at me. “Adrian, could you please lock the door?”

Monk locked, bolted, and chained the door. “What’s the big emergency?”

“There isn’t one,” Ambrose said. “I just wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

“Because you are my brother, Adrian.”

“I have been for forty years.”

“But I haven’t seen you in months. You didn’t even bother to tell me that you’d solved Trudy’s murder. I had to read about that in the newspaper.”

Monk lowered his head. “I’m sorry. It was a hectic time.”

“Trudy was my sister-in-law, Adrian. And you know I felt somehow responsible for what happened to her because she was running an errand for me the same day that she was killed.”

“Her murder wasn’t your fault at all.”

“Yes, I know that now, but it would have been nice to have heard it from you,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have known about Molly if it wasn’t for Natalie calling me to share the joyous news.”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” Monk said.

“Of course I care. I hope you’ll bring her to meet me sometime.”

“Why?”

I glared at Monk. How could he be so insensitive? Of course, I knew how, but it didn’t make it any easier to take.

“Because she is Trudy’s daughter and I loved Trudy,” Ambrose said. “Maybe not as much as you, but I loved her.”

“I’m sorry,” Monk said. “Of course you did.”

Ambrose waved away the whole subject with his hand. “You can make amends by telling me all about her over waffles.”

Monk brightened up immediately. “You made waffles?”

“Mom’s recipe. Six squares on every side.”

Monk practically swooned. So we went to the kitchen, where breakfast was already laid out. We sat down, and Ambrose supplied each of us with an individual cup of maple syrup and an eyedropper. I had no idea what the eyedroppers were for until I saw the Monks use them. They carefully extracted the syrup from the bowls with their droppers as if they were handling nitroglycerin, and then precisely squirted it out again in equal amounts into each individual waffle square.

While we ate, Monk told Ambrose all about Molly, including such pertinent details as her favorite foods, the exact floor plan of her apartment, her vital stats (age, height, weight, width, eye color, number of fingers and toes, length of her hair, number of freckles on her face, overall symmetry of her features, social security number, blood type, location and number of teeth with fillings, length of fingernails), and the make, color, and license plate number of her car.

“She sounds wonderful,” Ambrose said.

“She is,” Monk said. “And I am still getting to know her. She could be even more wonderful than I already know.”

“I am sure she is.” Ambrose opened the cupboard, took out a bright red box of cereal, and shook it. “Can I tempt you with a delicious bowl of Major Munch Peanut Crunch?”

Monk looked horrified. “How can you eat
that
?”

“Breakfast is not complete without it,” Ambrose said. “I’ve had it every morning since I was four years old.”

I understood Monk’s concern. I felt it, too, and not just because Major Munch Peanut Crunch was nothing but a bowl full of candy, sugary yellow squares with a mushy peanut butter center. The big selling point of the cereal was that it “never gets soggy in milk!” Neither would sugar-coated foam pellets, but you wouldn’t want to eat them.

The front of the cereal box featured a cartoon illustration of square-jawed Major Munch, flying his spaceship through a universe filled with cosmic peanuts. Big letters inside a starburst promised that each box contained one of four plastic toys based on the cartoon dogs wearing trench coats in the movie
Spy Dogs
.

“You keep up on the news, Ambrose,” I said. “Surely you’ve heard about the salmonella outbreak. It was traced back to tainted peanut paste, and your cereal was among the four hundred products on the recall list.”

“Of course I know that,” Ambrose said.

“And you’re still eating it?” Monk asked in disbelief. He doesn’t generally follow the news, unless it involves plagues, epidemics, and natural disasters. He loves those stories because they scare the crap out of him and confirm his general worldview that living is too dangerous to attempt.

In this case, a single peanut processor in Texas that supplied peanut butter and paste for cookies, cereals, candy bars, and ice cream had a leaky roof in its warehouse. As a result, the paste ended up being contaminated by bird and rat feces, causing a salmonella outbreak that had sickened more than five hundred people nationwide and killed two dozen others, most of whom were elderly, were very young, or had weakened immune systems.

The contaminated products had been found in school and hospital cafeterias, retirement homes, grocery stores, and prisons.

As soon as Monk heard the news, he threw out his peanut butter, as well as everything else that was in the pantry. He treated the peanut butter as if it were radioactive without even bothering to check if it was actually on the list of tainted products.

He’d probably never eat anything with peanuts in it again for the rest of his life.

Ambrose shook the box of Major Munch Peanut Crunch. “This is not one of the tainted boxes.”

“How can you be sure?” Monk asked.

“This one was produced after the peanut paste was recalled. You can tell from the lot number.”

“What if you’re wrong?” I said.

“I’m not,” Ambrose said. “The cereal produced after the recall includes toys from
Spy Dogs
, a movie that just came out. The tainted boxes contained Peanut Cars, Peanut Rockets, and Peanut Boats from the Major Munch Peanutiverse.”

He motioned to a row of plastic toys in a glass china cabinet at the far end of the kitchen. At the end of the bottom row, there were a car, a rocket, and a boat shaped like peanuts.

“Those toys came from the boxes of tainted cereal,” Monk said.

“Yes, they did,” Ambrose said. “I kept the toys but I threw out the cereal.”

“But the cereal was virulent with plague,” Monk said.

That wasn’t entirely accurate. Salmonella isn’t a plague, but he had a good point, so I kept my mouth shut.

“I had to have them, Adrian. I have all the Major Munch toys, going back for decades. I even have an extra set in case of an emergency.”

“Like what?” Monk said, practically yelling, his voice cracking with exasperation.

It was odd hearing him ask that. It was the kind of rational question I usually asked him about his irrational behavior. And yet now he was doing the asking. Granted, he was asking another Monk, but it was still gratifying to hear. Maybe Monk was getting a better grip on himself after all.

“I have a list,” Ambrose said.

Of course he did. Monk had lists, too. And lists of his lists. He’d promised to will all the lists to me when he died, which I found kind of ironic, since it was those insane lists, and his insistence on living by them, that would provoke me into strangling him one day.

“I can show the list of emergencies to you if you like,” Ambrose said.

“Don’t bother,” Monk said.

“Both sets of toys are perfectly safe.”

“You dug them out of a box of sugar-coated plague!”

“Each of the toys was sealed in a plastic bag and I thoroughly disinfected them after I took them out,” Ambrose said.

“But you opened the box in the house, releasing plague into the air. We’re probably breathing it right now,” Monk said. “We’ll know because within minutes we’ll experience fever, chills, sweats, headaches, weakness, nausea, vomiting, fall into a coma, and die, though I would prefer if death preceded the vomiting.”

“You don’t have to worry, Adrian. I took the cereal box into the basement. I cleared the room, covered it entirely with plastic sheeting, sealed all the vents, and wore a hazmat suit while I performed the extraction procedure. The room was virtually airtight the entire time.”

“You’re joking,” I said.

Ambrose gave me a look. “I wanted the toys, but I’m not insane. Afterward, I had the tainted cereal and the plastic removed from the house by a hazardous waste company.”

I shook my head. “All of that just for three lousy peanut-shaped plastic toys?”

“Yes,” Ambrose said and shook the box again. “So now that I’ve reassured you, how about savoring the delights of Major Munch with me?”

“I’ll pass,” I said.

“Me, too,” Monk said.

“We’re stuffed,” I said. It was one of the few times Monk and I had ever agreed on anything.

“Very well,” Ambrose said, setting the box down. “I’ll have my bowl later. So I guess that brings breakfast to a close, and we might as well get to it.”

“Get to what?” Monk asked.

“There’s a reason I invited you over today.”

“You wanted to show me where to find your will in case the Major Munch Peanut Crunch ends up being your last meal.”

“I have something special for you.” Ambrose led us into the living room.

“I really don’t need any more instruction manuals for products that I don’t own,” Monk said.

“There are many discerning readers who enjoy them for the breezy writing style, the sly wit, and the opportunity to enhance their knowledge of the world,” Ambrose said, casting an appreciative glance my way. I think he expected me to raise my hand so Monk was certain whom he was talking about.

But Monk already knew it was me. I was probably the only person on earth with a collection of signed first-edition owner’s manuals.