Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (29 page)

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Authors: Lee Goldberg

BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants
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Stottlemeyer glared at him. “Do you have anything helpful to share?”
 
 
Monk frowned and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “No.”
 
 
“What about everything we’ve learned today?” I said.
 
 
“It’s not relevant,” Monk said, sulking.
 
 
“Of course it is,” I said.
 
 
So I told the others about our talk with Father Bowen at Mission Dolores, where Ronald Webster, or whoever he really was, attended mass every day to ease his guilt over running down Paula Dalmas and fleeing the scene. I told them that Webster had confessed his crime to Father Bowen and had been anonymously sending cash to Dalmas for years.
 
 
“I couldn’t make this stuff up,” Ludlow said, shaking his head with amazement.
 
 
“I wonder if Father Bowen knows more than he told,” Disher said.
 
 
“We’ll ask him, officially this time,” Stottlemeyer said, then nodded to me. “Go on, Natalie.”
 
 
I told them about Dr. Dalmas’ claim that she didn’t know the identity of the hit-and-run driver and that she’d never spent any of the money that he’d sent.
 
 
“But she admitted that she’d seen him stalking her a few times over the years,” I said. “Her husband and her son are in San Diego this week. She said she spent Thursday night at home and took a bath.”
 
 
“Maybe she did,” Disher said, “with Ronald Webster and an alligator.”
 
 
“Get search warrants for her home and office,” Stottlemeyer said.
 
 
“What do you hope to find?” I asked.
 
 
“Any evidence that she was at Baker Beach or that she might have had an alligator around.”
 
 
“Maybe her husband and son aren’t really in San Diego,” Disher said. “Maybe they were eaten.”
 
 
“This is exciting,” Ludlow said.
 
 
“You’re wasting your time,” Monk said. “Dr. Dalmas didn’t kill Ronald Webster.”
 
 
“Then who did?” Ludlow asked.
 
 
“Someone else,” Monk said.
 
 
“Brilliant deduction,” Ludlow said.
 
 
Monk deserved that.
 
 
“We’re not going to find the answers here,” Stottlemeyersaid, rising to his feet and bringing the meeting to an end. “I can think of only one place to start.”
 
 
On the way to Ronald Webster’s place, I got a call from Julie asking if she could upgrade her playdate into a sleepover at her friend’s house. I said it was fine, and since her friend was on the Slammers, that meant Julie would also get a ride to the game on Sunday morning.
 
 
A sleepover worked out great for me, since it meant I wouldn’t have to worry about finding someone to keep an eye on Julie if I had to work on Sunday, which was looking likely.
 
 
It also meant that I might actually have a night to myself—something rare and to be savored, perhaps with a certain firefighter, if he wasn’t working.
 
 
I wasn’t reconsidering my decision not to get involved with Firefighter Joe. This wouldn’t be an involvement. This would be a
revolvement
—temporary involvement that revolved back to the uninvolvement.
 
 
That made perfect sense to me, or at least I was trying to convince myself that it did as we made our way across the Mission District toward the 101 Freeway and the industrial waterfront.
 
 
There’s a booming market in warehouse-to-loft conversions in San Francisco, and if there is one thing there’s no shortage of in our city, it’s abandoned and decrepit industrial spaces. I don’t really see the appeal of living in an old factory building in a decaying neighborhood, but there are people willing to spend millions for the privilege.
 
 
Ronald Webster lived in a very recent warehouse-to-loft conversion, the only redevelopment in this otherwise rottingcorner of the Mission District. A big billboard on the side of the building featured an artist’s rendering of the luxurious lofts that were available for sale and immediate occupancy inside.
 
 
Again, I’m not quite sure what the allure is of living in a place that’s gorgeous on the inside but ugly on the outside, but I’m not a rich urban sophisticate. I’m not even a poor urban sophisticate.
 
 
I didn’t think Ronald Webster was, either, but that dull man was full of surprises.
 
 
There was a freight elevator up to the second-floor loft, but since Monk has elevator issues, we took the iron staircase up the narrow, grimy stairwell instead.
 
 
“There are four units in this building, two on each floor, three unoccupied and awaiting buyers,” Stottlemeyer explained as we trudged up the two flights of stairs. Disher and Ludlow took the freight elevator.
 
 
“So no one would have heard anything if there was a struggle,” I said.
 
 
“You could have brought an alligator, a lion and a walrus in here and nobody would have noticed,” Stottlemeyer said.
 
 
On the second-floor landing, one of the two fire doors was open to a vast living room of chrome and glass and marble, which combined to make a striking contrast to the exposed beams and rough bricks of the original factory. The entire space was bathed in light from the uncurtained windows that lined one wall and the skylights above.
 
 
The rooms were essentially cubicles, set apart by rolling stainless-steel-and-frosted-glass partitions, making it possible to reconfigure the living space in a number of different ways. There was also a large rolling bookcase full of hardcovers that acted as a room divider. The only rooms that were permanently located were the kitchen and the baths, though some of their walls were on wheels, too.
 
 
It was impressive. And looked expensive.
 
 
“How does a lowly shoe salesman afford this?” I asked.
 
 
“He doesn’t,” Stottlemeyer said, putting on a pair of gloves. “There’s a lot more to the late Ronald Webster than we think.”
 
 
“This gets more incredible with each passing hour,” Ludlow said. “I am always amazed at what you find when you scratch the surface of any ordinary person’s life. Who would ever have thought that this shoe salesman could have so many secrets?”
 
 
Monk stopped and sniffed. “It smells like gasoline.”
 
 
Stottlemeyer sniffed. So did I, but I couldn’t smell anything.
 
 
“Diesel, regular or unleaded?” Stottlemeyer asked.
 
 
“I can’t tell,” Monk said.
 
 
Stottlemeyer shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Monk.”
 
 
“Me, too,” Monk said. “It’s that LA air. It’s ruined my sense of smell.”
 
 
“I was joking,” Stottlemeyer said. “No one can be expected to tell the grade of gasoline from the smell.”
 
 
“You’re just being nice,” Monk said.
 
 
Ludlow drifted toward a generic pizza box on the kitchen counter. There was a cash register receipt taped to the box. Using the tip of his pen, he lifted the lid of the box to reveal a dry, fungus-covered pizza, three slices missing.
 
 
Dr. Hetzer certainly knew his way around stomach contents.
 
 
“Now we know where he got his last meal,” Ludlow said, glancing at the receipt. “Sorrento’s Pizza. I wonder if he ate alone or if his murderer was with him.”
 
 
Julie and I were in Sorrento’s on Thursday night. Was Webster there at the same time that we were? Maybe we saw him and didn’t know it.
 
 
Maybe we brushed shoulders with his killer and didn’t know that, either. It gave me the shivers to realize that we’d stepped under that cloud of death.
 
 
I know that sounds overwrought and melodramatic, but think about how you’d feel if you were me. There was a killer, and there was a victim, alongside the two of us in that restaurant. There were a lot of other people, too, but still it was chilling to know that we were in close proximity of such evil and didn’t sense anything more than the smell of garlic and hot cheese.
 
 
It made me think about fate and how cruel and unpredictable it could be. Of course, if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t call it fate. They’d call it luck.
 
 
So I guess it was fate that got Ronald Webster and luck that saved Julie and me.
 
 
Monk was browsing Webster’s bookcase, as if we were guests at a dinner party instead of working a possible homicide scene.
 
 
“Webster was a fan of your books,” Monk said to Ludlow. There were five or six Ludlow titles lined up on a shelf in clear plastic dust jacket protectors.
 
 
“He and millions of other readers,” Ludlow said.
 
 
“How else could you afford your Mercedes?” Monk said.
 
 
“I owe a lot to my fans but they expect a lot from me in return,” Ludlow said. “A good mystery every ninety days, for one thing.”
 
 
“Webster doesn’t have your latest book,” Monk said. “He was killed before he got a chance to read it.”
 
 
“Maybe if he had,” Stottlemeyer said, “he would have known better than to let someone into his house with an alligator.”
 
 
Disher stepped out from behind a frosted-glass partition, which I assumed walled off a portion of the bathroom.
 
 
“Check this out,” Disher said.
 
 
We followed him around the partition to see a Jacuzzi on a platform tiled in travertine. It was enough to make me seriously consider switching to a career selling shoes.
 
 
Disher leaned over the rim of the tub. “I think there’s some dried blood caught in the grout,” he said, pointing with his gloved finger. “And a ring of salt around the drain.”
 
 
“Common grocery store sea salt is my guess,” Ludlow said. “The granules are larger.”
 
 
Monk groaned louder than was necessary, not that he really needed to groan at all.
 
 
“I think we’ve just found the spot where Ronald Webster was fed to the gator,” Stottlemeyer said. “Let’s get a forensics team down here pronto.”
 
 
Disher took out his cell phone and made the call.
 
 
Monk crouched beside a pair of parallel black smudges on the tile floor in the middle of the bathroom. There was another pair of identical smudges closer to the Jacuzzi.
 
 
“This is odd,” Monk said.
 
 
“They look like scratches,” Stottlemeyer said. “Maybe from the soles of someone’s shoes.”
 
 
“The marks are side by side,” Monk said. “If they came from shoes, they’d be staggered and further apart.”
 
 
“Whatever it is,” Stottlemeyer said, “we’ll make sure the lab guys check it out. I’m sure when they spray that tub with luminol and light it up, it’s going to glow.”
 
 
Luminol is a chemical that reacts to hemoglobin and makes it luminescent. Hemoglobin sticks to surfaces long after all the visible signs of blood have been washed away. I knew that less from actual experience around homicides than from watching reruns of
CSI
.
 
 
Monk squinted at a spot on the floor. “What’s this?”
 
 
We all squatted around him to check out the spot.

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