Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (12 page)
Read Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Online
Authors: Lee Goldberg
Mrs. Davidoff caught the boxes before the stack could topple over. “Be careful,” she said. “These are fragile antiques awaiting shipment.”
“I’m sorry,” Monk said.
Mrs. Davidoff turned to Dozier. “The UPS man should be arriving soon. Will you allow him to pick up these boxes? If they don’t go today, they may never go. I don’t think I can ever come back to this store again.”
“No problem,” Dozier said. “I’ll personally make sure they’re sent.”
“Thank you,” she said and walked out with the other detective.
“Classy lady,” Dozier said. “She’s holding up well now but she’s going to have a hard fall. I’ve seen it before.”
Dozier turned on the TV and hit PLAY on the VCR. The video, taken from above and behind the front desk, was in crisp, clear color. There was no audio. We saw a man every bit as elegant as Mrs. Davidoff sitting at the desk, doing some paperwork. He had a bald spot on the top of his head that he tried to hide with a comb-over.
Monk wasn’t paying much attention to the video; he was busy restacking the boxes according to size. At least it temporarily distracted him from the Styrofoam clinging to his ankles.
I looked back at the monitor just as the robber stepped into the frame. He was tall, with big shoulders, a barrel chest and a ski mask over his face. His turtleneck sweater, ski mask and gloves were all black. Because of where the desk was situated, he was only visible from above the waist.
Mr. Davidoff looked up. The robber held the gun sideways, the way gang members do in the movies, and motioned to the register. Mr. Davidoff opened the register and scooped out the few bills that were inside. The robber kept motioning to the register. The owner lifted out the cash tray, presumably to prove there was no more money there. And that was when the robber shot him. It was startling even without the sound.
I looked back at Monk, who glanced up at the monitor just as the robber was running out of the store.
“It’s a good thing Mrs. Davidoff hasn’t seen this,” Dozier said. “Imagine seeing your own spouse getting killed.”
I could. And I have imagined that. If there’s a tape that exists of Mitch getting killed, I hope I never find out about it.
Dozier fast-forwarded the video to the point where Mrs. Davidoff came out. According to the time code, it was five minutes after her husband was killed. She ran to her husband’s side and screamed, which was even more creepy and powerful in silence.
“Freeze it,” Monk said.
Dozier did. Mrs. Davidoff’s frozen, anguished image on the screen reminded me of Edvard Munch’s famous painting
The Scream.
Hands on her cheeks, eyes wide, mouth open in a wail from the depths of her soul.
The Scream.
Hands on her cheeks, eyes wide, mouth open in a wail from the depths of her soul.
I knew exactly how she felt.
Monk stepped up, stared at the screen and cocked his head one way and then the other.
He’d solved the murder.
I knew it and one glance at the smile on Sharona’s face told me that she knew it, too.
“I know where you can find the man who shot Mr. Davidoff, ” Monk said.
“You do?” Dozier said, incredulous.
“Follow me,” Monk said.
He walked out into the store and led us directly to Mrs. Davidoff, who was sitting on a couch, trying hard not to look at the desk where her husband was killed.
“Mrs. Davidoff, you have Styrofoam on your ankle,” Monk said.
She glanced at her ankle. “It’s the least of my problems.”
“You are so wrong,” Monk said. “It’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you.”
Mrs. Davidoff reared back as if reacting to a foul stench. “My husband was killed today. You honestly think that it’s of less importance to me than some piece of boxing material on my pants? What kind of lunatic are you?”
“He’s Adrian Monk, a homicide consultant for the San Francisco police,” Dozier said, then looked at Monk. “You’ve got Styrofoam on your pants.”
Monk let out a little shriek and started hopping around, wiggling his leg, trying to shake off the Styrofoam.
“He’s a little messed up,” Dozier said.
“So I see,” she said.
At that moment, I hated them both. Who were they to pass judgment on Adrian Monk? Dozier was grotesque and Mrs. Davidoff, despite her terrible loss, was a snooty bitch. They were hardly superior to him.
Then again, Monk was in a gas mask hopping around on one foot. It hardly put him in the best light.
“Arrest her,” Monk said as he hopped around. “She’s the man who shot her husband.”
It was a strange way of saying that she was the shooter, but he made his point. It made me feel justified in hating Mrs. Davidoff.
“That’s insane,” she said. “I was in the back room when he was killed.”
“You saw the surveillance video,” Dozier said. “He was shot by a broad-shouldered man who is at least a foot taller than she is.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Monk said.
He accidentally kicked the coffee table in his hopping frenzy and knocked over a six-hundred-dollar vase. I caught the vase before it could hit the floor and he managed to shake the Styrofoam off his leg.
Monk straightened himself, tugged on his sleeves and faced us. I knew what was coming. He was going to deliver his account of how the murder had actually occurred.
It was a necessary ritual for him.
He didn’t do it to show off or to humiliate anyone. He did it for himself.
It was the one moment when he could feel that he’d set everything right and brought order to the universe. It was the only time he was truly free of his anxieties and his sorrows. It made him whole, at least for a moment or two.
But then he’d notice something out of place, or realize he was vulnerable to a germ, or remember that he hadn’t solved his wife’s murder, and all his anxieties would come back in full force. And once again, he’d be struggling to restore order in a world that defied it.
“Here’s what happened,” Monk said.
He explained that Mrs. Davidoff waited in the back room until the construction workers started using their jackhammers. Then she strapped down her breasts with Ace bandages, put on a set of shoulder pads and slipped her feet into shoes with lifts. This hid her femininity, gave her broad shoulders and added height. She covered her hair with a ski mask and wore a turtleneck sweater to cover her throat. Otherwise her Adam’s apple would have been a telltale giveaway of her sex. She left the store through the alley, pulled down the ski mask over her face when she came in the front door and shot her husband. She ran outside again, returned to the back room, removed her disguise and then came out to wail for the camera.
Dozier stared at Monk once he finished his summation. “That is the most preposterous story I’ve ever heard,” Dozier said.
“That was nothing,” Sharona said. “Adrian once accused a guy of murder who was in a coma at the time of the killing.”
“And people still take him seriously?” Dozier said.
“He was right,” Sharona said.
“He was?” Dozier said.
“It’s irrelevant,” Mrs. Davidoff said. “I find his accusations insensitive, outrageous and thoroughly despicable.”
“Murderers usually do,” I said.
“You’re out of line,” Dozier said to me and then turned to Monk. “And so are you. There isn’t a shred of evidence to back up what you said.”
“There’s that.” Monk pointed to the Styrofoam on Mrs. Davidoff’s leg.
“That?” Dozier said.
“This?” Mrs. Davidoff said.
“The Styrofoam is charged with static electricity. It’s sticking to everyone and everything that passes through the back room,” Monk said. “You should have watched the security camera video before the police got here.”
“I never want to see it,” Mrs. Davidoff said.
“That was your big mistake. If you’d watched it, you would have noticed a piece of Styrofoam sticking to the shooter’s sweater. That meant that the killer came from the back room. And you were the only one back there. So the video you thought would exonerate you as a suspect is practically a confession.”
“I’ve walked back and forth to the showroom all day,” she said. “I probably tracked the Styrofoam out with me before, just like I have now, and that’s how it stuck to the monster that shot my husband.”
“Makes sense to me,” Dozier said to Monk. “It’s what we in the detective trade call the ‘commonsense explanation.’ And even if you were right, which you’re not, where’s the disguise and the murder weapon?”
“Packed up and ready to go to Madison, Wisconsin. That’s what’s in those boxes that UPS is coming to pick up,” Monk said. “That’s why Mrs. Davidoff was so insistent about those packages getting out of here today.”
Dozier turned to look at Mrs. Davidoff, who was glaring at Monk with such hatred that I was afraid she might launch herself at his throat.
“Shall we open the boxes and prove him wrong?” Dozier asked.
She didn’t say a word. She just glared.
“Mrs. Davidoff?” Dozier insisted.
She blinked hard and looked at Dozier. “You can address any further questions to my lawyer. We’re done talking.”
Dozier’s jaw dropped. Really. His mouth just hung open in slack-jawed shock. It took him a moment, but he managed to regain his composure. He waved over the other detective.
“Read this lady her rights. Then call Judge Mooney,” Dozier said. “We’re going to need a search warrant to open up those boxes in the back room. And make damn sure the UPS guy doesn’t take them first.”
Sharona put her arm around Monk’s shoulder. He cringed all over at her touch, but she didn’t seem to care.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen you nail a murderer that I’d forgotten how much I liked it.”
“What’s not to like?” Monk said.
"I can think of a couple of things,” Mrs. Davidoff muttered.
CHAPTER TEN
Mr. Monk Had a Little Lamb
It was getting dark by the time we got to Ellen Cole’s house in Santa Monica, just a couple miles west of the antiques store.
Ellen lived in a tiny Spanish-revival bungalow with white stucco walls, arched windows and a gabled, red-tiled roof. Decorative tiles with a flower pattern lined the arched front doorway. The bungalow was adorable.
The front yard had become wild and rangy since her gardener was sent to jail, but it didn’t take much imagination to envision how nice it must have looked when everything was trimmed.
“It’s a crime.” Monk stood on the sidewalk, facing the house and shaking his head. The gas mask was so tight on his head, it was a miracle any blood was getting to his brain.
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