Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (28 page)

“You too, Captain,” Monk said. “In fact, there’s something you can do for me right now.”

“Retie my shoes? Adjust my belt to a different loop? Change the license plate on my car so all the numbers are even?”

“Yes, that would be great,” Monk said. “And when you get a moment, could you also arrest Mrs. Throphamner?”

I glanced back at Mrs. Throphamner, who was coming out of her backyard with the hose.

“Don’t you think you’re going a bit overboard, Mr. Monk?” I said. “She fell in your lap by accident.”

Stottlemeyer looked past me. “That’s Mrs. Throphamner?”

“Yes,” Monk said.

“And she was in your lap?”

“Yes,” Monk said.

“Maybe it’s you I should arrest,” Stottlemeyer said.

Monk scowled at Stottlemeyer and went over to Mrs. Throphamer, who was rolling up the hose.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Throphamner?” Monk said. She turned around. “You’re under arrest for murder.”

“Murder?” I said. Actually, Mrs. Throphamner, Stottlemeyer, and I all said the same thing in unison. We sounded like a chorus.

“Her husband isn’t in a fishing cabin near Sacramento,” Monk said. “He’s buried in her backyard. That’s why she planted the most fragrant roses she could find and kept changing them—to hide the smell of his decomposing corpse.”

I knew that he was always right about murder, but this time he just had to be wrong. Mrs. Throphamner, a murderer? It was ridiculous.

Mrs. Throphamner sagged and let out a weary sigh. “How did you know?”

“It’s
true
?” I said, utterly shocked.

Mrs. Throphamner nodded. “I’m glad you found out. I’m so tired of tending the garden, and the guilt was driving me mad. I loved him so much.”

“I know you did,” Monk said. “That’s why you couldn’t entirely let go. That’s why you kept his teeth.”

“His teeth?” Stottlemeyer said.

“His dentures,” Monk said. “She’s got them in her mouth right now.”

“She
does
?” He narrowed his eyes and stared at her mouth, but she closed her lips and turned her head away. “How could you possibly know that, Monk?”

“When she babysits, Mrs. Throphamner likes to set her dentures on the table beside her while she watches TV,” Monk said. “I had the chance to examine them. They’re obviously male dentures. The maxillary lateral incisors are prominent and large, while a woman’s are narrower. Also, a male’s alveolar bone has a heavier arch, and the internal portion of the dentures—”

“Okay, okay,” Stottlemeyer interrupted, still watching Mrs. Throphamner’s face, waiting for a glimpse of her husband’s teeth. “I believe you. What tipped you off?”

“The flowers that Firefighter Joe brought on his date with Natalie,” Monk said. “He said they were to cover any lingering smell on him from the dump. That got me thinking about Mrs. Throphamner, and it all fell together after that.”

It took me a second, but then it all fell together for me, too.
That was two days ago.
I felt my whole body tighten with anger. My fists clenched. I think my toes did, too.

“Milton was cheating on me after forty years of marriage; can you believe that?” Mrs. Throphamner said. “The only thing he was fishing for in Sacramento was hanky-panky. I had to kill—”

“Wait a minute,” I snapped, cutting her off. I turned to Monk. “You’ve known since
Wednesday
that she’s a murderer and you didn’t tell me?”

“I was distracted by a lot of other things,” Monk said defensively. “I had three unsolved murders on my plate. We were both very busy.”

“You let me leave my daughter alone with this monster?”

“I knew how badly you needed a babysitter while we were on the case.”

“She’s a murderer!”
I yelled.

“Well, yes. But other than that she’s very dependable,” Monk said.

“Dependable?” I took a step toward him, and Monk took five steps back. “She’s sucking on her dead husband’s teeth!”

“That’s exactly my point,” Monk said. “She only kills husbands. One husband, actually. She hasn’t had a second one yet. And she probably won’t. So Julie was safe.”

“You aren’t,” I said, and turned to Stottlemeyer. “Take Mr. Monk with you. Get him away from me before
I
kill him and bury him in
my
garden.”

As I stomped off, I heard Monk say something to Stottlemeyer then that any court in the land would agree was a reasonable and excusable provocation for murder.

“Women,” Monk said. “They’re so irrational.”

I had to leave the house at five a.m. to make my eight-o’clock flight to Honolulu. I drove to the airport, stowed my car in long-term parking, and took the shuttle to the terminal. I stood in a long line at check-in and another long line at security and still got to the gate with twenty minutes to spare before boarding.

Adrian Monk was the furthest thing from my mind as I settled into my narrow economy-class seat for the five-hour trip.

The flight attendants were all Hawaiian or Polynesian women wearing floral aloha shirts and red hibiscus flowers in their hair.

A video of palm trees, waterfalls, and pristine Hawaiian beaches screened on all the plane’s TV monitors. Hawaiian music—that gentle rhythm of ukulele, ukeke, steel guitar, and native chants flowing like the tide, lapping at the white sand—played softly throughout the cabin.

I closed my eyes and sighed. The plane was still on the tarmac at LAX, but mentally and emotionally I was already more relaxed than I’d been in weeks. The clatter of passengers getting settled, the murmur of conversation, the wail of babies crying, the hum of the engines, and even the sweet Hawaiian music all faded away.

And before I knew it, I was sound asleep.

I was awakened seemingly an instant later by the gentle nudge of a flight attendant asking me if I wanted breakfast.

“You have a choice between a cheese-and-mushroom omelet, macadamia-nut pancakes, or a fruit platter,” she said, pulling out trays from her cart and showing me the entrees.

All of the choices looked gross to me. Even the fruit looked as if it had been soaked in grease.

“No thanks,” I said. I glanced at my watch and was surprised to discover I’d actually slept through takeoff and had been snoozing away for forty-five minutes.

“If she’s not going to have it, I’ll take it,” a man said. I knew the voice, but I had to be wrong. It couldn’t possibly be who it sounded like.

“You already have a meal, sir,” the flight attendant said. I tried to see who she was talking to, but I couldn’t see past her cart.

“But I’m almost finished with my omelet, I’m still hungry, and I’d like to sample the pancakes,” he said. “If she’s not going to eat her meal, what difference does it make who does?”

No, it wasn’t him. He’d never say what I’d just heard. He’d never get on a plane. And he’d certainly never sit in an odd-numbered seat in row thirty-one.

What I was hearing was my guilt tormenting me. Yes, that had to be it.

The stewardess forced a smile, took a tray of pancakes, and handed it to the passenger on the other side of the cart.

“Mmmm,” the familiar voice purred. “Looks mighty tasty. Thank you, sweetheart.”

She pushed her cart along, and Monk smiled at me from across the aisle, his mouth full of pancakes.

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said. “This is delicious.”

I blinked hard. He was still there.

“Mr. Monk?”

“Hey, we’re off the clock, sister. The Monk says, let’s keep it casual.”

“The Monk?”

“You’re right, still too formal. Call me Chad.”

“Chad?”

This was too much, too fast. I was either still asleep and dreaming this whole encounter or, worse, I was awake and delirious.

Monk leaned into the aisle and whispered, “Chad is more tropical than Adrian, don’t you think?”

“What are you doing here?” I whispered back.

“Going to Hawaii, of course,” he said.

“But you hate to fly.”

He ignored me and nudged the heavyset man sitting beside him. The passenger was wearing a too-tight bowling shirt and plaid Bermuda shorts.

Monk motioned to the man’s breakfast plate. “Are you going to finish that sausage?”

The man shook his head. “It’s too salty and I’m on a restricted diet.”

Monk speared the half-eaten sausage with his fork. “Thanks.”

The man stared at Monk in shock and so did I.

“You’re not going to eat that,” I said in disbelief.

He sniffed the sausage. “It smells good. I think it’s smoked.”

And with that, he chomped half the sausage and offered the remainder to me across the aisle.

“Want the rest?”

I shook my head and pushed his hand away. The sausage fell off the fork and landed on the floor. Monk snatched it up.

“Two-second rule,” he said before plunking it into his mouth.

Now I was convinced that this couldn’t really be happening. I turned to the child in the seat beside me. She was about ten years old and was listening to her iPod.

“Excuse me,” I said.

She pulled out her earphones. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Do you see a man in the seat across the aisle from me?”

She nodded.

“Could you describe him?”

“He’s a white guy wearing a dress shirt that’s buttoned up to his neck and a sport coat,” she said. “Isn’t he going to be awfully hot in Hawaii?”

“What’s he doing?”

She looked past me and giggled. “Sticking his tongue out at me.”

I turned and looked at Monk, who was pulling his mouth open wide with his fingers, wiggling his tongue, and rolling his eyes at the girl.

I swatted him.

“What is the matter with you?” I asked.

I was relieved to know I wasn’t nuts. But that didn’t explain Monk’s bizarre behavior or what he was doing on my flight to Hawaii.

He licked his lips and smacked them a couple of times.

“My mouth is dry,” Monk said and turned to the passenger beside him. “You’re right, that was a salty sausage. I need a drink. You mind?”

He picked up his tray and held it out to the passenger to hold for him. The man took it.

“Thanks.” Monk lifted up his tray table and went down the aisle toward the back of the plane. I looked over my shoulder and saw him taking a drink out of the water fountain.

I bolted out of my seat and hurried down the aisle after him. “Are you insane, Mr. Monk? That’s the deadliest water you can drink.”

“People drink out of water fountains every day.”

“Drinking airplane water is like drinking out of a toilet.”

“Dogs do it without a problem,” Monk said. “Doesn’t kill them. Chill out, hotcakes.”

“Mr. Monk,” I said firmly, hoping to get his complete attention. “Are you on something?”

“I thought we agreed you were going to call me Chad.”

“You
are
on something.”

“It’s a prescription Dr. Kroger gave me once to relieve my symptoms in extreme circumstances.”

“What symptoms?”

“All of them,” he said. “As long as I’m up, I think I’ll use the restroom.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. Wherever we were in San Francisco, he always made me drive him home to go to the bathroom.

“Where else would you suggest I relieve myself?”

He edged past me, opened the restroom door, and went inside. Monk was using a public lavatory. I would never have believed it could happen.

I continued back to the galley and asked the flight attendant for a drink.

“What would you like?” she asked.

“A scotch,” I said.

Monk emerged from the bathroom a moment later, not caring at all that he was trailing a piece of toilet paper from his shoe.

“Better make it two,” I said.