Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (26 page)
Read Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Online
Authors: Lee Goldberg
Walnut Creek was once a quaint little town on the banks of a tiny creek that wound through the walnut groves under the shadow of Mount Diablo. In the sixties and seventies, the groves were mowed down and the creek diverted to make room for thousands of tract-home communities with names like Walnut Acres, Walnut Grove and Walnut Walk.
By the new millennium, downtown Walnut Creek had been demolished and rebuilt so that it had become a Disneyesque shopping center designed to evoke memories of small-town America instead of actually
being
small-town America.
being
small-town America.
Dr. Paula Dalmas had an orthodontics practice in a medical complex downtown that perfectly reflected the ethos of the new Walnut Creek. Her practice was in a collection of offices that looked like a shopping center and had a tract-home-community name: Doctors’ Park. The only thing missing was a Panda Express, though the panda in the logo would have needed a stethoscope around its neck to fit in.
Dr. Dalmas was open one Saturday a month for patients, most of whom were children and teenagers, who couldn’t make a regular weekday appointment, probably because there wasn’t a parent around to drive them.
I could appreciate that. I wished my daughter’s orthodontist had weekend hours. I was thinking that it might even be worth schlepping Julie out to Walnut Creek to take advantage of Saturday appointments.
Given Monk’s fear of dentists, I thought I was going to have a hard time getting him into Dr. Dalmas’ office. But much to my surprise, he didn’t seem at all reluctant. He practically bounded inside.
The waiting room was warm and comfortable, painted in soothing earth tones and furnished with inviting overstuffed chairs. If it weren’t for the framed posters of teeth before and after orthodontics, the issues of
Highlights for Children
scattered on the coffee tables and the requisite aquarium full of tropical fish, you could have mistaken the place for someone’s living room.
Highlights for Children
scattered on the coffee tables and the requisite aquarium full of tropical fish, you could have mistaken the place for someone’s living room.
There were two children waiting with a parent to see the doctor or one of her associates. Looking at those kids, and the transparent, barely perceptible braces on their teeth, filled me with bitterness and jealousy.
When I had had braces, I was stuck with a mouthful of wires, rubber bands and gleaming silver that made me ashamed to smile. I had to put wax on the wirework in my mouth so it wouldn’t scratch the inside of my cheeks. You can imagine how attractive that made me. That wasn’t even the worst of it. After school, I had to attach my braces to elaborate headgear from the Tower of London collection that made my face look like it was being slowly pulled off my skull.
Twenty years later, I was still feeling the shame, so much so that I resented these kids for not having to endure what I did. I’m obviously a woman with a few issues to work out.
While I presented myself to the receptionist, Monk went over and admired one of the posters. He stood in front of it, hands clasped behind his back, intently studying the vivid pictures of crooked yellow teeth and how they looked after they had been straightened and whitened. You would have thought he was in the Louvre.
“Magnificent,” he said.
He took out a magnifying glass from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and examined the before-and-after pictures on the poster.
“Extraordinary,” he said.
The receptionist motioned to me. “The doctor is just finishing up with a patient,” she said. “You can go back and see her if you like.”
“Thank you,” I said.
When I turned, I saw that Monk was holding a tape measure up to the teeth in the poster. I have no idea what he was measuring, but he was nodding with approval.
“Exquisite,” he said.
“Mr. Monk, the doctor can see us now,” I said.
“One minute.” Monk put the tape measure back in his pocket and went up to the receptionist.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Do you know where I could purchase that work of art?”
“What art?” the receptionist said.
Monk gestured to the poster. “It’s a marvelous piece, true genius.”
“You mean the pictures of the teeth?” she asked.
“It would look fabulous in my living room,” Monk said, “though I imagine it’s probably way, way out of my price range.”
“That thing?” she said. “I think it was some promotional junk that came with one of our orders of dental picks.”
Monk smiled. “No, really. I’m serious.”
“It’s a freebie,” she said. “They give it away.”
“I get it. The doctor doesn’t want everyone to know how much she paid.” Monk lowered his voice to a whisper. “It wouldn’t help business for her to flaunt her wealth in front of the patients. I admire your discretion.”
Monk followed me back into the examination area. The hallway was decorated with candid photographs of Dr. Dalmas’ smiling patients, some with braces, some without. Monk moved past them slowly, trying to look at them all. It was obvious from the expression on his face that he was impressed by what he saw.
The exam area was one big room with four dental chairs facing a large picture window overlooking the hills.
There were teenage girls in two of the chairs, one having her teeth brushed by a dental hygienist, the other having her mouth examined by a woman I presumed was Dr. Dalmas, since she was the only one wearing a lab coat.
Dr. Dalmas was tall and slender and wore her hair in a ponytail that made her look almost as young as her patients.
“Looking good, Mariska,” Dr. Dalmas said. “But you have to wear your retainers more often or you’ll be back where you started.”
“But the retainers look so yucky,” she said.
“Not as yucky as your teeth looked before,” Dr. Dalmas said, peeling off her rubber gloves.
“You should listen to her, young lady,” Monk said. “She’s doing God’s work.”
Dr. Dalmas smiled at Monk. “That’s quite a compliment coming from someone I’ve never met.”
“You’re turning chaos into order,” Monk said. “You’re saving people’s lives.”
“I’m only straightening their teeth,” Dr. Dalmas said.
Monk shook his head and looked at me. “Can you believe this woman’s modesty?”
She rose with difficulty from her stool and walked awkwardly to the counter where the hazardous waste container was kept and she stuffed her gloves inside.
I glanced at Monk and saw him watching her as she moved. I knew her uneven gait probably disturbed him. Balance and symmetry meant a lot to him. But the look on his face perplexed me. There was tenderness in his eyes but his cheeks were taut with anger.
The doctor washed her hands and turned to us and the expression on Monk’s face vanished, but I saw the effort that went into accomplishing it. He didn’t want her to see whatever it was that he was feeling.
“So you have a child that needs orthodontics?” she said.
“I do,” I said, “but that’s not why we’re here.”
Dr. Dalmas looked confused. “Then what can I do for you?”
“We’d like to talk with you about Ronald Webster,” Monk said.
“Who is he?” she asked.
"The man who has been sending you envelopes full of cash,” he said.
She looked Monk in the eye. He didn’t flinch. “Let’s go in my office,” she said.
She hobbled past us, leading the way. Monk got that strange look on his face again as we followed her.
Her office was bright and airy. The pillows on her couch were made from a floral fabric. She had fresh flowers in vases and pictures of her husband and young son. Her degrees were framed on the wall, along with more pictures of her family. It was a very welcoming, female space. She sat down at her desk, and we took the two matching guest chairs in front of her.
“You don’t look like IRS agents,” she said. “Are you detectives?”
“He is,” I said. “He’s Adrian Monk. I’m his assistant, Natalie Teeger.”
“Who are you working for?” she asked.
“I’m a consultant with the San Francisco police department, ” Monk said. “I’m helping them investigate Ronald Webster’s murder.”
She thought about that for a moment. “He was the hit-and-run driver.”
Monk nodded. “How did you know?”
“I always figured it was guilt money,” she said. “I could only think of one person in my life who might have that much guilt.”
“When did the money start coming?” I asked.
“I can’t remember exactly, maybe a year or two after he hit me,” she said. “I was in and out of the hospital a lot during that time. I’ve lost track of all the surgeries it took to put me back together. They did an okay job.”
“You look great,” Monk said.
I glanced at him. I couldn’t remember ever hearing him compliment a woman on her appearance. He’d certainly never complimented me.
“You can’t see my scars,” she said. “I hide them.”
“Everybody has scars and everybody hides them,” he said. “You do it better than most.”
“I’m not being metaphorical,” she said. “These scars are real.”
“So are the other ones,” he said.
“One day, when I was still living in Oakland, a fat envelope with my name handwritten on it arrived in the mail,” she said. “There was no return address, just a San Rafael postmark.”
“How much money was in it?” I asked.
“A couple hundred dollars,” she said. “Envelopes came every month or so after that, always with a different post-mark from somewhere in the Bay Area.”
“He didn’t want to be traced,” Monk said.
“A few years after I was hurt, I left Oakland to go to school in San Diego. Not a single envelope showed up at my old address after I left,” she said. “But there was one waiting for me in San Diego when I arrived. And the envelopes have continued to arrive everywhere that I’ve lived since then.”
“So he was watching you,” I said. “That must have creeped you out.”
“It did,” she said.
“But you never went to the police,” Monk said.
“I couldn’t be sure the money was from him,” she said.
“Besides,” I said, “you were spending it.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “There’s no amount of money that could compensate me for what I lost. My face had to be reconstructed. My hips were shattered and he robbed me of my ability to have children. We had to adopt. So tell me, how could I spend a dime of his money? The thought of doing it made me sick.”
“Then what did you do with all the cash?” I asked.
“After a while, I didn’t even bother opening the envelopes anymore. I just tossed them all in a box as they came in,” she said. “I still have every single one of them.”
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