Mr. Monk on the Road (5 page)

“Your guide to the Heiko 61B678 Blu-ray DVD Player was positively sublime,” I said to Ambrose. “It blew away the instruction manual for my old DVD player.”

“The Kinyosonic 47GGT DVD-VHS Combo, correct?” Ambrose said with a nod. “A manual totally devoid of artistry, texture, pacing, and theme. Pure Ed Bevnick, the miserable hack. He’s an embarrassment to the industry. But don’t get me started.”

“Too late now,” Monk mumbled.

Ambrose stopped beside a four-foot-high wall of copies of the
San Francisco Chronicle
that stretched to the back of the room and into the last decade.

“Molly has been writing movie reviews for the
Chronicle
for a few years now,” Ambrose said. “Two or three a week.”

“Her writing is glorious,” Monk said. “Did you read her review on Monday of
Bloodbath Daycamp for Girls, Part 7
?”

Ambrose nodded. “She has the potential for a bright future in the technical manual field if she’s willing to apply herself. I would gladly be her mentor. I’ve been waiting for a promising apprentice that I could mold into greatness.”

“Is
that
what this is about?” Monk asked.

“No, my profession is a calling, and the desire to follow it has to come from within. This is about you, Adrian. I know how much you’d like to catch up on all of Molly’s reviews and that you don’t know how to operate a computer. So I want you to have these.”

Ambrose placed his hand on the top of the nearest stack of newspapers.

Monk cocked his head. “You’re giving me your newspapers?”

“I’ve been saving them for something special,” Ambrose said. “And I think this is it.”

Monk cleared his throat and shifted his weight between his feet. “I’m honored, Ambrose. But I think you should keep them.”

“But you need them, Adrian. I have every review that Molly has ever written.”

“I’ll come here to read them.”

“It’s a long way for you to go,” Ambrose said. “You would have to spend a lot of time here.”

“That’s okay with me,” Monk said.

Ambrose smiled. “Maybe we could read them together.”

“That would be nice.” Monk glanced at his watch. “Oh gosh, would you look at the time. We really should be going. We have work today.”

Nobody from the police station had called us to a crime scene, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. Monk wasn’t very good at handling emotional moments, and this had been a big one.

We thanked Ambrose for a wonderful breakfast and promised him that we’d be back on Saturday to celebrate his birthday.

“That was a very nice gesture on Ambrose’s part,” I said as we walked out and headed for my car.

Monk nodded. “I wish I could do something for him.”

“You just did,” I said.

But I could see from the expression on Monk’s face that he wasn’t satisfied yet.

CHAPTER FIVE

As
we drove back over the Golden Gate Bridge, I made a call to Captain Stottlemeyer using the Bluetooth unit in my ear, a device that made me look like Lieutenant Uhura did on the bridge of the
Enterprise
in the original
Star Trek
.

When I was a kid, I thought that Lieutenant Uhura’s ear thingie, which resembled the end of a honey dipper (and probably was), looked ridiculous and extremely uncomfortable. But now everybody had a device sticking out of their ears. It had become stylish, cool, and even required by law if you wanted to use your phone in your car. Frankly, I was surprised that nobody had come out with a Bluetooth replica of Lieutenant Uhura’s
Star Trek
earpiece to bring it all full circle.

It’s not the twenty-third century yet, and already it seems to me that almost everything in
Star Trek
has come true, except for starships, dilithium crystals, transporter beams, photon torpedoes, and Klingons, of course.

Every time I used my Bluetooth I was tempted to open the hailing frequencies with the Romulans, or contact the landing party on the planet below, or send an important message back to Star Fleet Command. Calling Stottlemeyer, whom I almost always addressed as “Captain,” only added to my Trekker fantasy.

He answered on the first ring.

“Hello, Captain, this is Natalie,” I said. “I’m just checking in for Mr. Monk.”

“You can let him know that we nailed David Hale.”

“He knows that. He was the one who did it.”

“Yeah, but now we have irrefutable evidence to back up Monk’s deductions. Some of Hale’s blood was on the piece of fishing line that was still attached to the hook in the paramedic’s shoe. We’ve made a positive DNA match.”

“Have you figured out why Hale killed Derrick?”

“He won’t say, but Devlin found out that Derrick was leaving Hale for another agent who’d managed to sell the movie rights to his first novel for six figures. Hale had represented Derrick for decades and felt betrayed.”

“That’s what Hale gets for being a lousy agent. If the money was out there, Hale should have found it for him.”

“I didn’t say that Hale was right,” the captain said.

Monk leaned toward me. “Ask the captain what’s being done about the paramedic.”

“We’re having him executed this afternoon,” Stottlemeyer said, but only I heard him. The mike picked up what Monk was saying, but Monk couldn’t hear the captain’s replies.

I turned to Monk. “He says that the fire department is taking harsh disciplinary action.”

Monk nodded with approval. “I hope the paramedic learns to respect the sanctity of a cup.”

“I didn’t know that coffee cups were sacred,” Stottlemeyer said. “Did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“We have a responsibility to keep things intact,” Monk said. “This is especially true for things that can’t be reassembled, like foam cups. What the paramedic did was an act of wanton destruction.”

“Did you hear that?” I asked Stottlemeyer.

“Consider me enlightened.”

“Do you need us for anything, Captain?”

“Nope. It’s real slow around here. I just sent Devlin out to pick up a box of Major Munch Peanut Crunch.”

“I hope you’re not planning on eating the cereal,” I said. “You heard about the recall, right?”

“That’s why we’re picking it up.”

“I didn’t know the FDA uses cops now to confiscate tainted food.”

That got Monk’s attention. He sat up real straight and stared at me.

“They do when the Justice Department is preparing to file criminal charges against the company responsible for the salmonella contamination,” Captain Stottlemeyer said. “A lot of people have gotten sick and died.”

“Tell him I want to help,” Monk said.

“The latest victim is a thirty-three-year-old woman, a recovering cancer patient here in San Francisco,” Stottlemeyer continued. “She ate a bowl of Major Munch a couple of days ago and died this morning from septicemia.”

“So you’re charging the peanut paste maker with homicide,” I said.

“That’s not enough,” Monk said. “Anyone who violates basic sanitary standards in food preparation and storage should be prosecuted in The Hague for crimes against humanity.”

“I don’t think they’ll go quite that far,” Stottlemeyer said. “Maybe multiple charges of involuntary manslaughter.”

“I want in on the investigation,” Monk said, yelling into my ear.

“You don’t have to yell, Mr. Monk, he can hear you just fine,” I said.

“Tell him there is no investigation,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’re not doing anything but picking up the box as a courtesy to the Justice Department to maintain the chain of evidence.”

“What’s the local connection?” Monk asked. “Why is Captain Stottlemeyer involved?”

“A woman here died from eating Major Munch Peanut Crunch,” I said to him. “Lieutenant Devlin has gone to her house to pick up the cereal box because the Justice Department is prosecuting the manufacturer of the contaminated peanut paste.”

“I want in on this,” Monk said.

“Tell him there’s no mystery here,” Stottlemeyer said. “We know who died, we know
how
she died, and we know
who
killed her.”

I translated for Monk. “The captain says there’s no case for you to investigate.”

“Ask him for the address,” Monk said. “I want to see the crime scene.”

“There’s nothing to see,” Stottlemeyer yelled.

“You don’t have to yell, Captain. You’re already talking right into my ear.”

“Tell him it’s a heinous, disgusting crime that’s the direct result of unsanitary conduct,” Monk said into my ear. “It’s an affront to everything that I believe in and my entire way of life. I need to be part of bringing them down.”

Monk had a good point. The company’s actions, regardless of whether it was the result of avarice or incompetence, violated every principle he had about order and cleanliness.

“You heard the man,” I said to the captain.

He sighed and gave us the address.

 

Brenda Monroe’s home was in the Castro District at the top of Collingwood Street, which was on a hill so steep that the sidewalks were concrete steps.

Her house looked as if it had been built one room at a time, the contractor improvising as he went along rather than working from blueprints. The final result, a mix of architectural styles and materials, reminded me of the Swiss Family Robinson tree house without the tree.

Amy Devlin was leaning against the front grill of her unmarked Mercury Marauder Interceptor as we pulled up behind her car. I’m not sure why the detectives called their cars “unmarked,” because they aren’t fooling anyone. Her car might as well have had placards on all sides that read “POLICE” in huge letters.

Monk and I got out of my Buick Lucerne, a gift from my parents that also might as well have had placards on all sides, but mine would have read “SENIOR CITIZEN.”

Devlin scowled when she saw us. “What the hell are you two doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too, Lieutenant,” I said.

“I wanted to see the crime scene,” Monk said.

“There is no crime scene,” she said. “There’s just a box of cereal.”

“Stuffed with plague,” Monk said. “And the victim ate it in that house.”

“This isn’t our case. I’m not investigating anything here,” Devlin said. “But if I was, I wouldn’t need two civilians looking over my shoulder.”

“You did yesterday,” I said. I couldn’t resist the jab. I might have made more effort, though, if she hadn’t been so impolite when we arrived.

“I just got off a yearlong undercover assignment. It’s been a while since I’ve had to process a crime scene,” she said. “But I would have analyzed the photos, the forensic evidence, the autopsy report, and reached the same conclusions that Monk did in a day or two.”

“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” I said.

“You have to be to survive undercover. Out there, I’m on my own. I’m the only person I can trust.”

“I used to think that way,” Monk said. “Then I got an assistant. You should get one. They’re great.”

“I don’t need one,” she said. “I don’t need anybody.”

“That lone-wolf attitude won’t get you far in homicide,” I said.

“I don’t need advice on being a cop from a secretary,” she said.

I felt my face flush with anger. I didn’t have a badge, but I’d been an active part of more than seventy homicide investigations. I had more experience at it than she did. But I decided not to challenge her, mainly because she was already irritable and I was afraid she might beat the crap out of me.

“The point I am trying to make, Lieutenant, is that we’re all on the same side trying to accomplish the same goal. We can help one another.”

“I heard that you, Monk, and Disher were all pretty chummy,” she said. “I’m not chummy.”

“Neither am I,” Monk said.

“Then we’ll get along fine,” Devlin said.

I doubted that.

A dented Ford pickup truck with a large rusted camper shell parked behind my car, and a shaggy-haired man in his forties, with a gray-flecked goatee and wire-rimmed glasses, got out and approached us. The man and his car were like a married couple who had grown to resemble each other. They both had a lot of miles on them.

He was wearing a baggy, hooded black fleece, corduroy pants, leather loafers, and a befuddled expression that had probably become permanent years ago.

“I’m Aaron Monroe, Brenda’s older brother,” he said, offering me his hand since I was the nearest to him. We shook, and I saw that his watch was twenty minutes slow and that the crystal was cracked. “Sorry I’m late. I was at the mortuary making arrangements.”

“We understand,” I said.

Devlin glowered at me. “I’m Lieutenant Amy Devlin. These two are Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger. They’re civilian consultants to the department. We are very sorry for your loss.”

She stressed the word
civilian
, though the emphasis seemed lost on Aaron, who offered his hand to Monk, who pretended not to notice, so he moved on to Devlin, who was next in line.

“Not as sorry as Graylick Foods is going to be,” he said, shaking Devlin’s hand. “I hope you’ll see to that.”

“I’m afraid we’re just here to pick up the box of cereal,” she said. “The Justice Department is handling the case.”

“Has the crime scene been secured?” Monk asked.

“I’ve left everything as it was, if that’s what you’re asking.” Aaron reached into his pocket, took out a key chain festooned with supermarket discount club cards, and led us up the winding brick path to the door. “I haven’t been back since the paramedics took my sister to the hospital.”

“Tell us what happened,” Monk said.

“You really don’t have to, Mr. Monroe,” Devlin said. “We only need the box.”

“I want to. Brenda beat her cancer after months of grueling chemotherapy and radiation, only to be killed by a bowl of Major Munch. It was a cruel joke, and I want the bastards responsible for it to pay dearly.”