Mr. Monk on the Road (6 page)

“Was this the first time your sister ate Major Munch Peanut Crunch?” Monk said.

Devlin glared at Monk, silently mouthing the words
shut up
behind Aaron’s back.

“Oh no, it was like comfort food for her. It made her feel better,” he said. “But with her weakened immune system, she might as well have been eating rat poison. Some comfort.”

“Didn’t she know about the nationwide recall of peanut products?” I asked.

The question earned me a nasty glance from Devlin, too.

“I wasn’t around, but I’m sure that all of her attention was focused on fighting the Big C and not the current events of the day.” Aaron unlocked the front door, and I saw his tongue moving against the inside of his cheek. “But even if she did know about it, the chemo brain really messed with her head.”

“Chemo brain?” Monk said.

“You’re on a lot of meds when you’re on chemo, on top of whatever meds you’re taking for your other problems. It scrambles your brain. You don’t know up from down.”

He ushered us into the house. The interior was every bit as eclectic and disorganized as the exterior. There was no logic to how the house was laid out. Hallways went in every direction, taking us through rooms of all shapes, sizes, and heights, as if the occupants included both giants and leprechauns. There were stairs going up that seemed only to lead to another set of stairs going down. Some floors were carpeted, some were hardwood, others tiled. If Aaron hadn’t been there to lead us, it might have taken us hours to find our way to the kitchen on our own.

“I grew up in this house. My parents built it themselves. It was their passion, and they didn’t stop until they died.”

“It is going to have to be demolished,” Monk said.

“Why?” Aaron asked.

“It’s an architectural nightmare,” Monk said. “Nothing is balanced, nothing is square.”

“That was intentional,” Aaron said.

“Were your parents insane?” Monk asked as we followed Aaron up and down stairs and along twisted hallways.

“They had eclectic sensibilities.”

“In other words, they were delirious,” Monk said.

“They saw the house as an ever-changing, residential piece of performance art.”

“It’s an encyclopedia of building code violations,” Monk said.

“I didn’t realize you were a building inspector,” Devlin said to Monk.

“Building codes are laws,” he said. “And that’s what we’re expected to enforce.”

“You aren’t a cop,” Devlin said. “You aren’t expected to enforce anything.”

“Maybe tearing the place down is a good idea,” Aaron said. “Brenda couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else living in the house anyway. She’s lived here her whole life and refused to sell after my parents died. But I walked out the door when I turned eighteen, and I’ve been living on the road ever since, supporting myself as an artist. My home is the highway, my backyard is America.”

Monk cocked his head, telegraphing that he was processing some tidbit of information. “So you’re saying you live in your car.”

“It’s a camper,” Aaron said. “My home goes where I go, like a turtle in his shell.”

“Was it Brenda’s illness that brought you back?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Brenda was very independent. She wanted to fight this battle alone. I wasn’t invited. But once she beat the cancer, she finally relented and let me come down to see her. I guess she figured the worst was over. Three days ago I walked in and found her on the floor in the bathroom. I could tell that she’d been very sick. I’ll spare you the ugly details.”

“You can spare us all the details and save them for the Justice Department investigator,” Devlin said, putting on a pair of gloves. “We don’t want to waste your time or cause you any more pain. We’ll just take the cereal and go.”

The kitchen smelled like death even though there was no corpse in the room. The stench came from the carton of milk that had been left on the kitchen table, along with a bowl of cereal that looked like a Chia Pet, a glass of orange juice that resembled a large urine sample, a toasted bagel slathered with a layer of fungus, and a salt-shaker-size, molded-plastic toy dog wearing a trench coat and fedora.

The sink was full of dirty dishes and cutlery, flies buzzing over everything, giving the kitchen an almost electric hum.

“It looks like she got sick immediately after she had breakfast,” I said.

“I might get sick right now,” Monk said, surveying the scene.

Monk covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and stepped closer to the table, cocking his head as he viewed it from different angles. I didn’t want to get near the table, so I stayed where I was, a few steps away from the sink, where Aaron stood behind me.

“The incubation period for
Salmonella
bacilli is six to thirty-six hours,” Monk said. “She might have been eating her second or third breakfast of contaminated cereal before she was stricken with severe abdominal distress. She probably didn’t realize it was the cereal that was making her sick, so she kept eating it. It was her comfort food, after all.”

“I’m sorry about the mess,” Aaron said. “Like I said before, I haven’t been back to clean up since Brenda got sick. I’ve been spending all my time at the hospital.”

“That’s totally understandable.” Devlin took a large evidence bag from her jacket pocket and placed the cereal box inside of it.

“But there’s so much that isn’t,” Monk said, rolling his shoulders.

“We’re done here,” she said, ignoring his comment.

“Have you confirmed the lot number on the box matches the list of recalled cereals?” Monk asked.

Devlin sighed, took her notebook out of her pocket, glanced at a page, then looked at the box top of the cereal. “Yes, it does. But the FDA lab will compare the DNA of the bacteria in the cereal to the DNA of the bacteria that invaded her bloodstream to confirm the connection to her death.”

“It was murder,” Monk said.

Aaron nodded. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

“You should,” Monk said. “You killed her.”

CHAPTER SIX

M
onk’s comment did not go over well with Lieutenant Amy Devlin and Aaron Monroe. It didn’t bother me any. I was used to Monk accusing people of murder seemingly without any basis at all for his charges. I also had the benefit of knowing that he didn’t make the accusation unless he knew he was right.

And he always was, at least about homicides.

So I wasn’t shocked or offended, and I could afford to be patient, knowing from experience that he’d eventually get around to regaling us with the evidence.

But Devlin was new to this and Aaron was a murderer, so, as I said, neither of them was happy with Monk.

Aaron stared at him in disbelief. “What did you just say to me?”

“I said you murdered your sister,” Monk said.

Aaron shifted his gaze to Devlin. “Who is this crazy son of a bitch? The cereal killed her. The doctors will tell you that.”

“I apologize for Monk, Mr. Monroe,” Devlin said. “He shouldn’t even be here.”

Monk addressed himself to Aaron, as if Devlin hadn’t even spoken.

“Here’s what happened. You were counting on your sister dying of cancer but, much to your disappointment, she survived. But then you heard about the Major Munch recall and managed to snag a box of the tainted cereal before it was pulled off the shelves. You came down to San Francisco, snuck into the house, and found her half-eaten box of Major Munch, which wasn’t one of the recalled lots. You emptied her box and replaced the contents with contaminated cereal. You knew she’d eat the cereal because it was her comfort food and, thanks to her weakened immune system, it would be fatal. Sure enough, she got sick. As soon as she was taken away, you replaced her box with the one that was recalled and that was still half-filled with contaminated cereal. It was nearly the perfect murder. Her death would have been just one more blamed on salmonella-infected peanut paste.”

“I’ll give you this, Monk, it does sound like a clever way to kill somebody,” Devlin said. “You’ve got imagination. What you don’t have is any evidence for your wild accusation.”

“Thank you,” Aaron said, sighing with relief. “I’m glad that somebody is seeing reason and that it’s a police officer.”

“The evidence is right here,” Monk said, picking up the little plastic dog in the overcoat and fedora. “This is Spy Dog, a toy being given away in new boxes of Major Munch. But it’s not the toy being given away in that box.” Monk pointed to the cereal box in Devlin’s evidence bag. “So Brenda must’ve been eating from a new box, and it’s not here.”

“So maybe she had a new box and an old box,” Aaron said. “And she ate the new box before the old one.”

Devlin set the evidence bag down on the table and regarded Aaron warily. “So where’s the old toy?”

I’ll give this to Devlin—neither her animosity toward Monk, nor her pride, prevented her from recognizing that something didn’t fit.

Aaron shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t like the other toy and threw it out. Who knows? She had chemo brain. She hadn’t been thinking straight for weeks.”

Monk shook his head. “You made a mistake. You had the wrong toy in the wrong box. That was your undoing.”

“I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” Aaron said. “Why would I want to kill my sister?”

“My guess is money. It’s obvious you’re broke. Your jacket is frayed, your glasses are held together with the wrong-size screws, your watch crystal is cracked, the registration on your truck is expired, the soles of your shoes have been repaired twice, and you’ve been rolling your tongue over a bad tooth because you can’t afford to see a dentist to have it fixed.”

“So my cash flow is a little crimped,” Aaron said. “That doesn’t make me a killer. That makes me just like everybody else in America right now.”

I spoke up. “But now that your sister is dead, you’re next in line to inherit the house, one that she wouldn’t give up.”

To my surprise, my remark didn’t earn me a nasty look from Devlin. She was standing very still, expressionless, her eyes on Aaron, her arms loose at her sides. She reminded me of a sheriff waiting to draw on a bad guy on a dusty western street.

“I don’t know, maybe I do inherit the house now,” Aaron said. “I haven’t thought about that. I don’t really care about material things. Isn’t that obvious from the way I live? But even if you’re right, and she was murdered the way you say she was, you can’t prove I had anything to do with it.”

“I don’t have to,” Monk said. “You’ve already proved it for me.”

“I may not be a fancy dresser or have perfect teeth, but that doesn’t make me a murderer.”

“Your key chain does,” Monk said. “You belong to a bunch of supermarket discount clubs, and you’re too cheap not to use them. They track all of your purchases. It shouldn’t be hard to find out when and where you bought that box of tainted cereal.”

What happened next happened very, very fast.

In hindsight, I wonder whether Devlin wasn’t expecting something to happen from the instant she set down the evidence bag with the cereal box in it. She instinctively wanted her hands free in case Aaron made a move.

And he did.

Aaron grabbed me from behind with his left arm, snatched a butcher knife from the sink with his right hand, and held the blade to my throat as he pulled me tight against him.

Devlin whipped out perhaps the largest gun I’d ever seen from somewhere underneath her jacket and aimed it right at me. She might have shot me if Monk wasn’t standing directly in the line of fire.

“Back off or I will slit her throat,” Aaron said to them. His arm was across my chest and his knife was pressed so close to my neck that I was afraid to swallow for fear it would cut me. I wasn’t the only one who was afraid. I could feel his heart pounding against my back.

Devlin’s stare was cold and steady. I’m not even sure she heard what he’d just said.

“You don’t want to do this,” I said to Aaron.

“I didn’t want to kill Brenda, either,” he said. “But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to survive.”

“You won’t survive. I can guarantee that,” Devlin said. “I always shoot to kill, and I don’t miss.”

“Did you hear what I just said?” Aaron yelled. “I will slice her head clean off.”

“It won’t be clean,” Monk said. “That’s a dirty knife. It’s been sitting in the sink for three days.”

“Who cares?” I said. “Getting an infection is the least of my problems right now.”

“Be reasonable,” Monk said to Aaron. “Put the knife down.”

“The hell I will.” Aaron looked past Monk to Devlin, who was in a firing stance, her aim steady, her gaze unwavering.

“Your death will be instantaneous,” she said. “But you can forget about an open casket, Aaron. The top of your head will be blown clean off.”

“Put the gun on the floor and step away from it now, or I will kill this woman,” Aaron said. “I have nothing left to lose. You don’t want to mess with me.”

But she didn’t move.

“For God’s sake, drop the knife,” Monk said, “and take this clean one instead.”

Monk grabbed a knife from the knife rack on the counter and took a big step toward us.

“Get away from me.” Aaron took a step back, dragging me with him. “Do you want her to die?”

“We can switch knives,” Monk said.

“No, we can’t,” Aaron said.

“Of course we can. It’ll be quick and easy,” Monk said. “You’ll thank me later.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What difference does it make if I get my throat cut with a clean knife or a dirty one? I’m dead either way.”

“Shut up!” Aaron said.

“It makes a huge difference, Natalie,” Monk said. “Why do you think they disinfect scalpels before surgery? If he even nicks you with that disgusting knife, you could die from a staph infection or something even worse whether he slits your throat or not.”