Mr. Monk Gets Even (16 page)

“Adrian Monk, you are such a prude,” Stella said. “Surely you’ve seen a naked woman before.”

“Do you always answer the door in the nude?” Stottlemeyer said.

“You caught me as I was showering,” she said.

“We’ll wait while you put on some clothes,” the captain said. He glanced back at Monk, who was looking away, and at his two officers, who were unabashedly staring at Stella with goofy smiles on their faces. Those smiles evaporated when they saw Stottlemeyer glaring at them.

“I wasn’t planning on dressing today,” she said.

“I insist,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You can stomp your feet and cry if you like, Captain. But this is my house. I make the laws under this roof. I will wear, or not wear, whatever I please. Are you going to come in, or would you prefer I stand here? Either way is fine with me.”

“We’ll come in,” the captain said.

Stella stepped aside and beckoned the captain in with a sweep of her arm. He frowned at her and walked in.

Stella looked at Monk. “How about you, Adrian?”

Julie turned to Monk, who hesitated, taking a step forward and then immediately one back.

“You know she’s doing this just to mess with your head, Mr. Monk,” Julie said. “Don’t give her the satisfaction.”

“Aren’t you adorable,” Stella said to her. “You go, girl.”

Monk took a deep breath, focused his gaze past Stella, and plunged into the house. Julie followed, Stella closing the door behind them.

The place was clean and smelled of incense. It burned on several tables and shelves around the house, which was decorated straight out of the IKEA catalog. Monk sniffed the air as they came in.

“How did you know who we are?” Stottlemeyer asked Stella.

“I Googled you both ages ago. I had to put faces to the names. Dale has spoken about you many times,” she said, taking a seat in one of the two armchairs facing the couch.

“Warmly, I’m sure,” Stottlemeyer said, taking a seat on the couch across from her.

Stella turned to Julie. “But I don’t know you.”

“How nice,” Julie said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

Stella laughed. “I like you.”

Monk took a seat in the armchair that was beside Stella’s so that he was facing Stottlemeyer instead of her. Julie took a seat on the couch next to the captain so she could watch Monk and Stella.

“So,” Stella said. “What can I do for you?”

“You can put your clothes on now,” Monk said, sniffing some more and staring straight ahead at Stottlemeyer and Julie.

“I could,” she said, “but I won’t. I am much more comfortable in the nude. Besides, this way you can see I am not carrying any concealed weapons and won’t be tempted to shoot me.”

“Where’s Dale?” Stottlemeyer asked.

“At San Francisco General having his tummy tucked,” she said. “Though I must say, I’ll miss those love handles, not that I’ve had much opportunity to handle them.”

Monk squirmed and sniffed some more. The burning incense put off a strong odor.

“He’s escaped,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Good for him,” she said.

“You don’t seem surprised,” he said.

She shrugged. “Dale is brilliant and you’re not.”

“You have been writing him love letters and visiting him in prison,” Stottlemeyer said. “And now you’re putting on this little show in a pathetic and degrading attempt to distract us. Do you really expect us to believe you don’t know anything about his escape and that you didn’t help him pull it off?”

“You’re welcome to search the house for him if you like. Look in the closets and under the bed. Who knows where he could be hiding. But if you think I’m going to help you in any way, you’re dumber than even Dale thought.”

Monk sniffed in her general direction. “You smell like nail polish.”

“I was doing my nails when you arrived.”

“In the nude?” Julie asked.

“I’d just stepped out of the shower,” she said.

“But there’s no polish on your fingernails,” Monk said.

“That’s because I removed it, hence the smell of nail polish
remover
,” she said. “I would have thought a supposedly brilliant detective such as yourself would have made that deduction. You really aren’t very bright, are you?”

“Bright enough to put that fat lunatic Dale in prison,” Julie said.

“But not to keep him there, sweetie,” Stella said.

Stottlemeyer spoke up. “If you helped Dale escape, or had anything to do with that runaway truck in Union Square, you could be the one going to prison, and it won’t be to visit Dale.”

“I had nothing to do with his escape,” she said.

“Do you smell gas?” Monk asked.

“It’s incense,” Stella said. “I bought it at Poop. Perhaps you’re familiar with the place.”

“I’ve never been inside,” Monk said.

“You don’t know what you are missing,” Stella said. “The proprietress is lovely, don’t you think?”

“It seems you’ve taken a very active interest in Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.

“He means a lot to Dale and Dale means a lot to me.” She got up, making a point of standing directly in front of Monk, who immediately turned his head and curled up in a fetal position to avoid the possibility of her naked body brushing his feet or legs. “I’m getting a cigarette. Would anyone else like one?”

“No,” Monk said. “And you don’t want one, either.”

“Of course I do,” she said and walked through the open kitchen door and out of their sight.

“You have to stop her, Captain,” Monk said.

“It’s not illegal to smoke in your own home,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It’s no different than if she pulled a gun on us,” Monk said. “She’s putting our lives at risk.”

“She’s only doing it to needle you,” Stottlemeyer said. “That’s what this whole little show is about, to throw you off your game. It’s a diversion, just like the runaway truck in Union Square. You have to see past it to whatever she’s trying to hide.”

“She isn’t hiding a thing. She’s buck naked and Dale obviously isn’t here,” Julie said to the captain. “Can we go now? She’s creeping me out.”

“Because she’s nude?” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m pretty sure it’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”

“It’s because she’s scary-crazy,” Julie said.

“Of course she is,” Stottlemeyer said. “She’s hot for Dale, a convicted killer. You’re welcome to leave, but I’m not going until we get some information from her.”

“She won’t talk,” Julie said.

“She doesn’t have to,” Monk said. “She’s the accomplice that we’re looking for.”

Stottlemeyer looked at him. “How do you know?”

That’s when Stella returned with a pack of Marlboros and a silver lighter. She walked past Monk and sat down in her chair. He turned away from her and that amused her.

“I bet you won’t even look at yourself naked,” she said.

She was probably right about that.

“You were in the hospital today,” Monk said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You came in pretending to be a victim of the terrible accident that you instigated,” Monk said. “Your only hope of being spared the death penalty is to cut a deal and help us find Dale.”

She lit her cigarette with her lighter. “What am I supposed to do now, confess?”

“That would be appreciated,” Monk said, then sniffed. “I still smell gas.”

She blew smoke at Monk, who nearly gagged. “Isn’t it customary before making an accusation to actually confront me with some kind of evidence?”

“I thought it was obvious,” Monk said, his hand over his nose and mouth. “It’s all over you.”

“I am not wearing anything,” she said.

“You’re wearing a Band-Aid,” he said.

“That’s all you noticed about me?” she said. “What about my birthmark?”

“It’s on your inner elbow, the area known as the antecubital fossa.”

“Wrong. It’s a lip-shaped mark above my left nipple. It looks like someone with lipstick kissed my breast. Just ask the captain—he’s been sneaking glances at it since you got here.”

Stottlemeyer wasn’t embarrassed or thrown by the remark, but Monk was.
Nipple
and
breast
were two words he didn’t like to hear, much less think about. He did a full-body cringe, much to Stella’s delight.

“I’m talking about your Band-Aid,” he said. “It’s on the spot on your arm that is the preferred location for starting an IV. Medical professionals choose that spot because the antecubital vein is very easy to raise with a tourniquet.”

“That’s a wonderful little factoid. You must have been an avid viewer of
Diagnosis Murder.
But what does any of that have to do with me, or Dale, or the price of yams in Bermuda?”

“Here’s what happened: You sent that truck rolling down Powell Street. You purposely timed it so the truck would hit the cable car and bus, causing the most damage, injury, and confusion possible. You then insinuated yourself among the injured. You probably covered yourself in their blood to appear more injured yourself, which is why you had to shower as soon as you got home and why you are naked now. You fooled the paramedics in Union Square into believing you were, at the very least, in shock, so they started an IV of saline and administered a bolus where you have the Band-Aid now,” Monk said, then cocked his head. “Do you hear a hiss?”

“What I hear is a lot of babble,” she said. “A Band-Aid on my arm proves nothing except that I have an owie. Is that all you’ve got? My expectations of you were so much higher. You’re disappointing me, Adrian.”

“The ER doctor at San Francisco General uses a pen to put triage marks on the arms of all his patients,” Monk said. “There’s still a fleck of green on your wrist, despite your efforts to remove the indelible ink with nail polish remover. Green indicates that you arrived in the ER complaining of soft-tissue injuries and the doctor determined you were not a priority case. But all you really wanted was to get into the hospital, and you succeeded. You then stole an orderly’s gown and, in all the confusion in the ICU, wheeled Dale down to the morgue to make your escape.”

“The puncture in your arm for the IV and the mark prove you were in the hospital,” Stottlemeyer said.

“I definitely hear a hiss.” Monk stood up and began walking around the room, cocking his head, trying to pinpoint the sound.

“They prove nothing,” she said, answering the captain’s comment but looking over her shoulder at Monk.

“We also found your fingerprint on the runaway truck that you stole,” Stottlemeyer said. “And the attendant in the hospital morgue ID’d you from a photo as the woman from the nonexistent mortuary who came to pick up a body.”

That was an outright lie, of course.

Stella kept her eye on Monk. “If you had all of that, you would have arrested me when you walked through the door.”

“To be honest, I’m just waiting for the green light from the ADA to arrest you, but I thought we’d have a friendly chat in the meantime,” Stottlemeyer said. “What you ought to be asking yourself is this: Do you really want to be rotting away in prison while the thin, new Dale is sunning himself on some tropical island with a new girlfriend?”

That’s when three things occurred, almost all at once.

The first thing that happened was that Monk looked into the kitchen. What he saw was a lit candle on the counter, two open gasoline cans on the floor, and the dials on the gas stove turned to full blast, but no flames were flickering on the burners.

The second thing that happened was that Stella bolted up from her chair with a scream of fury, flicked on her lighter, and threw it into the kitchen.

The third thing that happened was that Monk yelled
“Run!”
with sufficient horror and authority that Stottlemeyer and Julie didn’t second-guess his command and ran with him to the front door.

Monk and Julie got outside but Stottlemeyer was still passing through the doorway when the kitchen full of flammable gas ignited and the explosion blew the house apart, the fireball blasting out the windows and splitting the roof.

The concussive force of the blast blew Monk and Julie off their feet, while the flaming edge of the fireball kicked Stottlemeyer through the air and set the back of his jacket ablaze.

The captain hit the lawn hard and cried out with pain. Monk looked up, saw the fire on Stottlemeyer’s back, and quickly sprang to his feet, taking off his coat and smothering the flames with it.

Julie joined Monk and together they pulled off Stottlemeyer’s jacket, rolled him over, and then gently sat him up.

“Are you all right?” Julie asked. Her ears were ringing and she was trembling all over.

The captain was dazed. The hair on the back of his head was singed, his nose was bleeding, and he clutched his right arm close to his chest. But he nodded affirmatively, gazing past them to the burning house.

“Holy crap,” Stottlemeyer said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mr. Monk and the Surprising Accusation

S
tottlemeyer sat on the back bumper of the ambulance and watched as the fire department crew extinguished the last of the hot spots in Stella’s charred but still standing house while a paramedic splinted his arm.

Another paramedic tended to Julie, who’d wrapped herself in the blanket that the firefighters gave her and leaned against Stottlemeyer’s car.