Mr. Monk and the New Lieutenant (13 page)

“Things change. And you can't try to force people back the way they were. Randy Disher has moved on.”

“But you hate Lieutenant A.J. as much as I do. And the captain wants Randy back. You saw the way he jumped out of his bed.”

I shook my head. Was he even listening? “I can see why Sharona left town without talking to you or leaving a note.” I didn't want to be cruel, but it just came out. “She had to run. You would have done anything to keep her off that plane. And if you'd succeeded, then you never would have hired me. Think of that possibility. No Natalie. No Monk and Teeger. None of the past decade would have happened.”

But Monk was in his own little world, not even pretending to listen. “Ooh, and the best part of Randy coming back is Sharona would come with him. Isn't that great?”

“Why is that great?”

“Because everything would be the way it was.” He clapped his hands with excitement. “She can be our unpaid intern instead of Julie.”

This time he didn't see it coming. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. “That was totally uncalled for.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mr. Monk and the Mini-Mall

A
fter our evening of potpies and reminiscences, I took Monk back to his Pine Street apartment. When I came home, Randy's door was closed and I could hear him with Sharona, his voice warm and tender. Despite the time difference, they were still at it when I finally closed my door and went to bed. I missed that kind of long, loving phone chat, where you can talk about everything and nothing and never pay attention to the time or that your ear's growing moist from the receiver. When Mitch was away in Kosovo, we used to talk like that.

When I left the house the next morning, there was the gentle sound of snoring coming from Julie's room. I didn't have the heart to wake him.

Monk and Teeger, Consulting Detectives, opened to the public a little earlier than usual. I wanted to get a good start, harassing the records department at the DA's office and the warden at the Pleasant Valley prison. Neither of the Willmott cousins, Colin and Marshal, both barely eighteen at the time of their offense, had received a parole. This seemed odd. Young offenders waiting out nonviolent sentences almost always get a few years shaved off, especially on first convictions.

The DA records came through first, pinging into my in-box. I settled in with my second cup of coffee and read. From years of working through the dry legalese of the justice system, I'd developed pretty good skills at interpreting the data.

First off, both of their juvenile records were sealed. That's never a sign of good citizenship. There was no date associated with this, but there was a numbered code. Being a somewhat experienced detective, I compared this code with two other codes that I happened to know the dates of and came up with a ten-month window in which the record sealing had been filed for and granted.

My next step was using my SFPD passcodes to check the corresponding arrest records in specific neighborhoods, such as Pacific Heights, where the Willmott boys had grown up, and Nob Hill, where their uncle lived. None of this information gathering was foolproof. It was all chance. But my eye was drawn to the Pacific Heights arrest of two juveniles, names withheld, for breaking and entering and grand larceny. Very familiar charges. The unnamed youths in the case had been defended by one of the most expensive law firms in town.

A few more cross-checks showed that this same firm did the legal work for Willmott and Associates, a real estate development company that built high-end malls all over the state. The lawyers, who didn't have much of a record of defending petty criminals, were also the lawyers of record in five other cases involving a pair of juvenile male offenders.

I was a little surprised but not shocked to see that the defense for the last Colin and Marshal case, the one that had sent them away for seven years, was not performed by the
high-end lawyers. The boys had been represented by a San Francisco public defender. I'm no Adrian Monk, but it seemed to me that the Willmott family had finally grown tired of coming to the rescue of their wayward boys—with disastrous results for the boys.

I was still curious about the lack of paroles. But the Pleasant Valley warden had not yet returned my call. While I was waiting, I placed a call to Bethany Oberlin. Sometime during the funeral, between the time we walked into the Episcopalian chapel to view the body and the time Monk stood up and announced her father's murder, Bethany and I had exchanged business cards, just in case she wanted to talk. She'd never taken me up on it—surprise!—but I hoped she would at least not hang up on me.

“Natalie, I'd been hoping you'd call.” The young woman's voice sounded strained and anxious.

“I didn't know if you were still in town.”

“Of course. I have to stay for the funeral. They just released his body. It's hard to even think about going back to Thailand. I don't want to lose my job, but with Dad still . . . when his murder is still . . . You know what I mean. Not that there's anything I can do to help. Is there? Do you have any news?” Her voice grew excited. “Oh, my God, is that it? Did you catch his killer? Tell me.”

I felt so guilty. For the past few days my focus, all of our focus, had been on trying to prevent the captain's death. We'd almost forgotten the first victim. Judge Oberlin still had a family that needed answers. “I'm sorry, Bethany. I should have stayed in better contact. No, we haven't caught
the killer, not yet. But there might be something you can do.”

I didn't check with my partner since I knew his schedule as well as he did. Bethany and I set up a time—in one of the spaces between Monk's morning “ablutions,” as he called them, and his cleaning schedule and his preparations for meat loaf night. It was Wednesday, after all. We're not savages.

There's never a lot of foot traffic coming by our door. That's both a good thing, in that it's not constantly distracting us, and a bad thing, in that, when it does happen, it's more distracting. When I glanced up to see a car pull into the parking space, I recognized Daniela Grace's silver Mercedes. Like her, the car always looked freshly waxed and detailed. Even though I knew she was on her way next door to Paisley Printing, I went out to greet her. “Daniela. How are you?”

“Not so well, dear.” Daniela was the kind of person who took such questions seriously. “Not that it's your fault. Well, maybe your fault for asking.”

“I hope it's not Peter and Wendy. I know they want to do a good job for you. If you just give them a chance . . .”

“No, Peter and Wendy are fine. They're rolling with the punches.”

“What punches?” For a split second I thought Monk might be up to one of his tricks.

Daniela sighed and held up her leather Prada briefcase. “The IPO we're working on. We've had a security breach at the office. Two similar companies are going public next month and someone leaked information about our deal—
things like the exact offering price, common versus preferred percentages. Profitability forecasts. Those little numbers mean millions. I say it's someone on the client side. The client says it has to be us. Meanwhile, we have to change the documents, just to prove the information false and pretend that the leak doesn't exist. Just a few more days.” With her free hand, she crossed her fingers. “Wish me luck.”

“If you want, Adrian and I could look into it,” I suggested. “That's why you have us on retainer, right?”

“Right.” Daniela cocked her head and laughed. “I'd completely forgotten about that.” A few weeks ago, I had talked Daniela into paying us a tiny retainer so that we would stay available for emergencies like this. I hadn't even gotten around to telling Monk about it. “This is what I'm paying you for, isn't it?”

“You're paying us to be available, yes.” I was already regretting my offer. “But we are a little busy right now.” Why did I have to open my big mouth?

“Which is exactly why we signed that retainer. Rather clever of me, wasn't it?”

“Although we are busy with a murder right at the moment.”

“Please. You're always busy with a murder. But it's good to know you can swoop in on the spur of the moment. Let me think it over and get back to you.”

We were still standing there when the Gerbers happened to see us through their window. They came out, Wendy in a peasant skirt and blouse left over from the seventies and Peter in a tie-dyed shirt that blended into a pair of tie-dyed jeans, almost giving the impression of a jumpsuit. On second
glance, I saw it was a jumpsuit. Tie-dyed. “Ms. Grace.” Peter looked nervous and deferential. “Is there another problem? What can I do you for?”

“Natalie, I'll be in touch.” And with a flourish, Daniela followed the Gerbers through the open doors of Paisley Printing, talking a mile a minute.

I stayed on the street. I was standing just a few feet, I realized, from where I'd first met Sue whatever-her-name-was.

Sue Puskedra non-O'Brien had been loitering at the curb, eyeing the Monk and Teeger storefront. Now she was gone without a trace, as if I'd simply imagined it. I couldn't get my friends on the force to help find her. This wasn't their fault. Nothing she'd done had been illegal, except not paying the bill I never gave her. Believe it or not, there's no statute against claiming to be married to a gay man.

I didn't even have a picture of her. That's literally what I was thinking when my eye wandered to the storefront at the north end of our strip mall. It was a charming establishment with barred windows and a steel gate, known as 24-Hour Holiday Pawn. My attention wasn't focused on the grimy windows, however, but on the two security cameras poised over the door.

A few months ago, when Monk and I opened up shop, we had a few run-ins with Al Wittingham, the owner. Monk had gotten into the habit of walking by the pawnshop on his way to work. His eye was naturally attracted to the filthy windows and the dusty displays—and, unfortunately for Mr. Wittingham, the items that were on display.

On three different occasions (it could have been four), Monk called the police. The first time it was a sterling silver
punch bowl that he somehow knew was stolen property. The second time it was a Mickey Mantle baseball card. The third time was a forgery, a dozen Morgan silver dollars mounted in a felt display case. Of course it wasn't Adrian's fault that Wittingham occasionally turned a blind eye to customers with stolen goods. But it got to the point where the man had taped pictures of Monk and me on the wall beside the cash register, barring us from ever stepping inside.

“What did I tell you? Hey, don't come in here. You're banned for life.”

“Sorry,” I said to the man behind the counter. “I was hoping you could help me.”

“Help you? Don't make me laugh.” Al laughed anyway. He bore a striking resemblance to a small, dirty owl, with round-framed glasses and permanent stains on his collection of vintage T-shirts from the 1980s. He wobbled out to try to block the door.

“I noticed your cameras,” I said, getting right to the point. “You've got one of them pointed at the street, if I'm not mistaken.”

“One on the door, one out to the street to catch license plates, and three of them inside, all angles, so don't try anything funny.”

“For how long do you keep the footage?”

“What's it to you, Miss Nosy? Now get out.”

“Mr. Wittingham, please. I did nothing wrong. My partner did call the police, yes—”

“Not to mention the EPA. That was the worst. I had an antique tablecloth from Germany, sold to me legitimately by an old widow. How was I supposed to know—”

“It was made from asbestos.” (Four occasions. How could I forget the asbestos tablecloth!)

Asbestos, I learned, had been used for all sorts of things in the bad old days, even clothing. The emperor Charlemagne was said to have had the first tablecloth made of it. At the end of a banquet, he would throw it into a roaring fire and watch as the dirt got burned up but the tablecloth remained unharmed. Like a magic trick.

Wittingham scowled. “Thanks to your friend, they closed me down for a week and made me pay for the whole cleanup. I lost a ton of customers.”

“Well, it was asbestos. You should be grateful you're not sick.”

“I could have sold it,” he snapped. “People were looking at it all the time.”

“Really, people were handling the asbestos tablecloth?”

“No, they weren't,” he shouted. “I misspoke. It's your word against mine.”

I held out my hands in peace. “Mr. Wittingham, I'm not here about the asbestos. I'm here about a woman who was standing in front of your place less than a week ago. I'm hoping your camera caught a glimpse of her. If we check the tapes . . .”

Wittingham smiled a toothy yellow smile. “So you need something from me, huh? You guys nearly ruin my business and now you want something. You don't know how happy that makes me. NO! Not on your life, missy.”

“I completely understand.” It was the answer I'd been expecting. “I just want you to know that, after much effort, I
finally got my partner to come into work from the south side of the parking lot, by the Laundromat.”

“Lucky for them.”

“Yes, lucky for them. But that's another story. My point is that it took some effort, but I did it for you. I could just as easily talk Adrian Monk into taking his old route again—if you don't appreciate all the effort I went through.”

It was an odd sort of blackmail. I'm not sure it's ever been used before, threatening to get someone to change his walking pattern. And I didn't feel guilty about it. If Wittingham didn't keep illegal items in his shop, if he managed to clean his windows so they didn't attract Monk's irritated stare, none of this would be a problem. “He can't really help himself, you know. Once he has you in his line of vision, it's over.”

Wittingham folded his pudgy arms across his pudgy middle. “I can take everything out of the window. How about that? Or I can black it over. Give him nothing to see.”