Mr. Monk on the Road (14 page)

“Go to hell.” I got up, stuck the sand dollars in a drawer, and slammed it shut.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“You and your brother, that’s what. I’ve had it. Both of you are selfish, insensitive slaves to your individual routines and rituals. Neither one of you will compromise for anyone else, even if doing so would make you both infinitely happier and your lives a lot easier. There’s a reason why both of you are alone.”

“Adrian has you.”

“Because he pays me.”

“That’s not why you’re with him,” Ambrose said, “or why you’re here right now.”

I gave him a hard, angry stare and he wilted under it, shifting his gaze around so it was anywhere but on me.

“If you realize that, Ambrose, then you understood exactly what motivated us to bring you here. You should be ashamed of yourself for calling the police.” I glanced out the window at Monk, who was still standing in place, his hands balled into fists, shifting his weight between his feet. “And if Mr. Monk comes back here instead of returning to that crime scene, then you’d better appreciate the sacrifice he’s making and dedicate yourself to making this trip work. Otherwise, you don’t deserve to have people like us in your life, and I’ll gladly take you back right now to that big empty house where you belong.”

I didn’t wait for him to say anything. I went to the driver’s seat, buckled up, and started the engine.

Suddenly the door to the motor home flew open and Monk flung himself inside as if he were leaping onto a speeding train, which was odd, since the RV wasn’t moving yet.

“Floor it, woman,” Monk yelled, “before I can jump out again!”

I shifted the RV into drive and sped off as fast as I could without getting a ticket from the cops all around us.

Monk sat down across from Ambrose and gripped the edges of the table.

“Someone killed a woman and tried to disguise it as an accident,” Monk said. “And I don’t know who did it and I’m not going to do anything to find out.”

“Is that hard for you?” Ambrose asked.

“No harder than deciding not to breathe.”

“Now you know how I feel leaving the house.”

“Then I guess we’re in this together now,” Monk said.

 

I drove as if we were being pursued by Satanists. I wanted to put as much distance between us and Santa Cruz as I could before we stopped for the night, which I figured would be somewhere around Carmel, since I wanted to make the trip through Big Sur in the daylight so Ambrose wouldn’t miss the stunning coastline and one of the best drives in the nation.

I briefly entertained the notion of parking in the driveway of my parents’ house in Monterey, sleeping in my old bedroom, and leaving the Monks on their own in the motor home for the first night, but that felt like cheating. Besides, I didn’t really want to deal with my parents and their bound-to-be negative, and heavily judgmental, reaction to the Monks, the road trip in the motor home, my job, and my continuing singlehood.

While I drove, Monk and Ambrose thoroughly washed and scrubbed the tabletop so we wouldn’t be poisoned by the deadly germs left by the sand dollars.

It also distracted Monk for a short time from the murder investigation he’d left behind. He was beginning to shake like an addict going through withdrawal.

“It couldn’t hurt to call Captain Simcoe just to see how things are going,” Monk said.

“There is only one cell phone in this motor home, and it’s in the pocket of my pants. I’ve also removed the battery and Sim card and put them in the suitcase with my underwear.”

I might as well have put the components of the phone in canisters of nuclear waste. Monk would never reach into my pocket or go near my underwear.

But I’d told him a lie. The phone was still in my purse. I hadn’t had a chance yet to dismantle my phone. I would do it as soon as we stopped for the night.

“What if they need to reach me?” Monk asked.

“They’ve solved crimes before you got there and they will continue to do so long after you’ve left.”

“Tell that to the millions of people conned by the Mystery Spot.”

“You can contact Captain Simcoe when we get back to San Francisco,” I said. “If they still need your help, they can hire you.”

“What’s the dinner plan?” Ambrose asked me.

“We don’t have one. In fact, we don’t have a plan for anything that’s going to happen over the next few days.”

“Isn’t that reckless?” he asked.

“Yes,” Monk said.

“We’re opening ourselves up to the unknown,” I said. “It’s called experiencing life.”

“I close my door and lock it against the unknown and then hide in my bed where it can’t find me,” Ambrose said. “It’s called protecting life.”

“That’s not living, that’s hiding,” I said. “We don’t want to be locked down. We want the freedom and discovery that comes from simply waiting to see what happens. Not knowing what we’re going to have for dinner is the first step.”

“Does it have to be such a big first step?”

He turned to Monk for support, but his brother was curled up in a semifetal position on the couch, clutching the can of Lysol to his chest for comfort.

That’s when I spotted a bunch of fast-food restaurants at the next exit.

“Have you ever had a drive-through meal before?” I asked Ambrose.

“No,” Ambrose said.

“Then here comes another new experience,” I said, and took the exit, pausing at the stop sign at the end of the off ramp. There were lots of restaurants to choose from, so I picked Carl’s Jr., the one with the fewest cars in the drive-through line.

I took a right, turning the motor home in a wide arc, and then made another hard right into the Carl’s Jr. parking lot, clipping the curb and nearly sideswiping a parked Nissan, before sliding into the narrow drive-through lane, stopping just shy of the menu board.

“How does it work?” Ambrose asked.

“You pick what you want to eat from the menu and give your order to the cashier, who will communicate with you via a microphone. Then we drive up to the cashier’s window, we pay him, then we go to the next window, where another person will give us our food in take-out containers. And then you drive off with it.”

“People do this a lot?” Ambrose said.

“It’s great when you want a quick snack on the go and don’t have time to stop in a restaurant.”

“I don’t know why anyone would want to eat in their car,” Monk said. “You have to eat from your lap, and food shouldn’t be anywhere near that bodily zone.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because the lap region is fraught with peril.”

“You make it sound like there are land mines buried there,” I said.

“Worse than that,” Monk said. “It’s like eating your food off a toilet seat.”

“It’s a moot point anyway,” I said. “Since we’re in a motor home, we can eat at the table.”

“That’s far more civilized,” Monk said.

I drove up to the menu board so that the microphone was right outside my driver’s-side window. Excuse me, the
port
side of the RV. The Monk brothers gathered behind my seat and peered out the open window at the menu selections.

“Welcome to Carl’s Jr.,” the cashier asked, his voice sounding scratchy over the bad speaker. “How can I help you today?”

“I’d like the Grilled Cheese Bacon Six Dollar Burger meal with a Coke,” I said.

Ambrose furrowed his brow. “Why is it called Six Dollar Burger if it’s $4.89?”

The cashier answered right away. “Because you are getting a Six Dollar Value for only $4.89.”

“You should call it the $4.89 burger,” Ambrose said, “and charge $4.89.”

“It’s better to charge $6,” Monk said. “It’s an even number.”

“Good point,” Ambrose said. “You should call it a Six Dollar Burger and charge $6.”

“Would you like to order the Six Dollar Burger, sir?” the cashier asked.

“I can’t understand your chicken choices,” Monk said.

“How can I help you?” the cashier asked.

“You can explain to me why you only offer chicken strips in three- or five-piece quantities and not four or six and why you offer children chicken nuggets shaped like five-pointed stars in six- or nine-piece portions instead of a four- or six-pointed star in six- and ten-piece quantities.”

There was a long pause before the cashier spoke again.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Why does he keep saying that?” Monk asked me.

“He wants your order, Mr. Monk.”

“Fine.” Monk nodded, and then spoke in a deeper, more authoritative voice. “I
order
you not to produce chicken stars with an uneven number of points or serve them in odd-numbered quantities.”

“I meant that he’s waiting for you to order what you want to eat,” I said.

“I can’t decide,” Monk said.

“I know what I want,” Ambrose said, then leaned his head toward the open window, careful, though, to remain completely inside the motor home. “Hello, sir. My name is Ambrose Monk, and I would like to have the Six Dollar Burger and I’d like to pay $6 for it. I’d like the patty, the bacon, the cheese, the lettuce, and the bread all packaged separately. Thank you.”

“I’ll have the same thing,” Monk said.

The cashier repeated our order, then added, “Do you really want your hamburgers served with all the ingredients packaged separately, or was that a joke?”

“The joke would be eating it with it all combined,” Ambrose said.

“I don’t see the humor,” Monk said.

“Because you don’t have a sense of humor,” Ambrose said. “I do. A rather sophisticated sense, I might add, which is why I can appreciate the humorous aspects of the menu.”

“There are jokes on the menu?”

“Just look at the Western Bacon Cheeseburger. It’s described as a charbroiled all-beef patty, two strips of bacon, melted American cheese, two crispy onion rings, and tangy barbecue sauce on a toasted sesame seed bun. Nobody would ever eat that. It’s a complex, subversive, satirical comment.”

“A comment on what?” Monk asked.

“Gluttony and sloth,” Ambrose said. “This Carl Jr. fellow has a wicked wit.”

I drove forward to the cashier’s window, and to my surprise and delight, Ambrose paid for our food, proving that being a penny-pinching tightwad didn’t run in Monk’s family. What didn’t surprise me was that Ambrose insisted on paying six dollars for the six-dollar burgers, much to the dismay of the startled teenager manning the register. I told the cashier to consider it a tip for his patience.

We got our food in nearly a dozen bags, and I parked the RV in the lot so we could eat while the food was still warm.

The three of us sat at the table. The Monks stared at me incredulously while I ate my hamburger, and I stared at them with the same sentiment as they ate their hamburgers, the components of which were spread out over a dozen cardboard boxes.

Ambrose studied me as if I were performing some strange and primitive ritual. “I don’t know how it’s even physically possible to eat a hamburger in your lap.”

“Certainly not the way you do it,” I said, motioning to all the boxes for their hamburgers.

“What other way is there?” he asked.

“Like this.” I demonstrated by taking a big bite out of my hamburger, nearly squirting the lettuce and secret sauce from the other end.

Ambrose glanced at his brother. “I’m beginning to think that
you
are the one assisting
her
, not the other way around. How does she get along without you?”

Monk shrugged. “It’s one of the few mysteries I haven’t been able to solve.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
he Sandy View Trailer Park was a few miles off the highway on a densely wooded bluff of pine and eucalyptus trees above a narrow strip of beach.

We drove in just before dark, which was a good thing, since the fifty or so RV spots were nestled amid the trees at the edge of a cliff. I didn’t want to risk plowing into the water and power hookups, or grazing a tree, or going over the edge on my first visit to a trailer park.

There was a small gatehouse and store, built out of an odd mix of wood and neon that made it look like a log cabin that aspired to be a 7-Eleven, just past the gate. I ran in quickly, paid the rental fee, and got a Xeroxed map to our campsite from the clerk, a fat-cheeked, big-eyed guy in a checked flannel shirt, overalls, and a cap. He could have been a woodsy Satanist, but I didn’t get a good look at him because I was in a hurry to get parked before the sun set.

I managed to park us in our spot without smashing the picnic table or sideswiping the RV parked on our port side, an old Winnebago that even in the waning light looked as if it had seen a lot of road. Our neighbor’s Winnebago was a class A, meaning it was one unit rather than a cab-over camper grafted onto a recognizable truck or van, and had a tattered, retractable awning extended over its campsite picnic table. The back end of the rig was wallpapered with bumper stickers from all the states, cities, and attractions that the owner had visited.

I hit the leveling control button on the dashboard. Our motor home shimmied gently as the vehicle hydraulically settled itself into a perfect balance on the uneven surface.

Monk and Ambrose clutched their seats during the process as if we were on a boat that was being violently tossed by stormy seas.

“Relax,” I said. “The motor home is just leveling itself.”

“It can do that?” Monk said, sharing a look of awe with his brother.

“Yes,” I said, “it can.”

“Amazing,” Ambrose said.

I knew they’d like that.

“I don’t understand why all vehicles aren’t equipped with this sensible feature,” Monk said.

“Why stop there?” Ambrose said. “They should install it on beds, chairs, desks, tables, bookcases, and file cabinets, too.”