Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (12 page)

When I emerged from the elevator on our floor, I saw three maids’ carts in front of the open door to Monk’s room. I went inside and found the maids folding bath towels on the bed, with Monk watching over them.

“No, no, Kawaiala, you fold it from left to right, and then from bottom to top. Try it again.” Monk moved to the next maid as she was folding. “Wait, Meilani, make sure the corners touch. If you get that first crucial fold wrong, abort the procedure and go again.”

“What are you doing, Mr. Monk?”

“Showing them how to properly fold a towel instead of rolling it.” One of the maids’ towels caught his eye. “Very good, Lana. You’re getting the hang of it. Let’s do it once more. Practice makes perfect.”

“I found out about the woman we saw last night,” I said. “Her name is—”

“Roxanne Shaw,” Monk interrupted.

“How did you know?”

“I saw her signature on the credit card receipt on the counter as we left the restaurant. She has a very nice, even signature, by the way.”

“Well, her name is not the big news. I found out that she’s from—”

“Cleveland,” Monk interrupted. “Just like Lance and Helen.”

“How did you know that?” I said, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice.

“While we were following her, I noticed she’d covered the driver’s seat with a beach towel to keep herself from getting burned on the hot upholstery. There was a big drawing of Chief Wahoo facing us the whole time.”

“Who is Chief Wahoo?”

“The logo of the Cleveland Indians baseball team.” Monk pulled me aside, out of earshot of the maids. “I learned some things this morning, too. Meilani cleaned Helen and Lance’s bungalow. She says that Helen Gruber loved the pies on the island. She was always bringing pies back to the bungalow. But there was no pie in the refrigerator the morning she was killed.”

“One of the sensations Swift said he was getting from the beyond was the taste of
liliko’i
pie.”

“It was a safe guess,” Monk said. “It’s the most popular pie on the island, and the odds are good that tourists are going to try it while they’re here. But where was her pie?”

“Maybe she ate the last slice at dinner,” I said. “Or with breakfast yesterday morning.”

“But there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and the maids hadn’t come yet.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know,” Monk said.

Kawaiala approached Monk with a folded towel. “How is this?”

Monk smiled. “Perfect. I think you’ve all got it now. Go forth and share your knowledge.”

The maids shuffled out of the room and closed the door behind them, leaving the towels neatly stacked on Monk’s bed.

“You taught the maids how to fold.”

Monk sighed. “It feels so good to give something back to society.”

I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got a golf game in three hours. You can rent clubs and shoes, but you’re going to need to get yourself the right clothes.”

“I’m not renting shoes. That’s like asking me to wear another man’s dirty underwear,” Monk said. “What wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“You can’t go on the course like that. You’ll just draw attention to yourself. And they won’t let you on the course with those shoes.”

“Fine,” Monk said. “Let’s go shopping.”

They sold golf clothes and accessories at the same men’s store where Monk bought his bathing suit. I wish I could say it went as smoothly this time. I won’t make you suffer by describing in painful detail what the next two hours of living hell were like for me. But to give you an idea of what I had to endure, Monk selected his golf shoes by counting the plastic cleats until he found an affordable pair with an even number of them. We went through a lot of shoes. And when the shopping was finally done, it took him fifteen minutes just to sign his credit card receipt.

Want my job? I didn’t think so. How about taking Monk along on your next vacation? I bet your whole body is tensing up just at the thought of it. Now you know how I was feeling.

Monk ended up buying khaki slacks and a short-sleeved, red polo-style shirt. He looked great and I told him so. It seemed to embarrass him, so I didn’t press it. I hoped a little positive reinforcement might convince him to loosen up fashion-wise. Sometimes I want to reach out and unbutton his collar, because just seeing it makes me feel like I’m being strangled.

We drove the two or three miles to the Grand Kiahuna Poipu golf course. And once we got there, I was glad I came along. It was beautiful. The course was immaculately maintained and vividly green, set against the crisp, blue sky, the misty mountain peaks, and a dramatic view of Poipu Bay, the waves crashing against the serrated edge of the black cliffs and the rocks below. I don’t know how anybody could concentrate on golf when there was so much to see.

We rented two sets of clubs and a golf cart and met Kealoha at the first tee. He was dressed, as usual, in an oversize, untucked aloha shirt and shorts and had his own set of clubs in a bag that looked as if it had been dragged across several continents.

“This is what I call police work.” Kealoha grinned.

There were four tee boxes set at different distances from the hole. The black box was for championship players, the red box was for women, the white for the average golfer, and the gold was what they called the resort box, for occasional golfers looking for an easier, more relaxed game.

We all lined up to tee off from the white box and put on our gloves. Monk put one on each hand.

“Do you play a lot of golf, Lieutenant?” I asked Kealoha.

“Surfing and golfing are about all there is to do here,” Kealoha said. “But it’s a pricey hobby. I share this set of clubs with four other bruddahs.”

“You’d never notice,” I said.

“What about you?” Kealoha asked. “You play?”

“When I was growing up. My father belongs to a lot of country clubs,” I said. “I haven’t played in years, but when I did, I was pretty okay at it.”

“Pretty okay.” Kealoha nodded. “What’s your handicap?”

“Eighteen.”

“What about you?” Kealoha said to Monk.

“It’s my game,” Monk said, wiping down his club with an antiseptic wipe. “I don’t have a handicap.”

“You’re only supposed to wear one glove,” Kealoha said. “You’re right-handed, so it would be on your left hand.”

“Nobody wears just one glove,” Monk said. “Except maybe Michael Jackson, and he’s very strange.”

The first hole was a par four. About 380 yards away, the putting green was ringed with sand bunkers. Luxury homes lined one edge of the dogleg-shaped fairway, and on the other was a grove of trees and a man-made lake.

We each teed off, me first, followed by Monk and Kealoha. Our balls ended up at roughly the same place, where the fairway curved toward the green.

We climbed into the golf cart, Kealoha at the wheel, Monk up front, me in the back, and we tooled down the fairway.

“I heard from the Cleveland PD this morning,” Kealoha said. “Lance stands to inherit millions this time.”

“
This
time?” Monk said.

“Helen Gruber isn’t the first old biddy Lance has married and outlived,” Kealoha said. “She’s the third. There was Elizabeth Dahl, age seventy-six, in Philadelphia, and Beatrice Woodman, age sixty-eight, in Seattle.”

A lumberjack holding a porcelain doll.

Woodman and Dahl.

Once again, two more images from Swift were on the money. Could those other spirits Swift said were trying to communicate with him about Lance have been Elizabeth Dahl and Beatrice Woodman?

I tried to give Monk a look, but he wouldn’t look back at me, so I nudged him. He still ignored me. He knew what I was thinking and didn’t want to deal with it. Either Swift did a lot of very quick digging into Lance’s past or he was getting good information from the beyond.

I knew what Monk’s explanation would be.

But what could it hurt to go back to Swift and ask what else the spirits were telling him? Even if Swift were a fraud, he could save us some time repeating research he’d already done.

But I didn’t want to say any of this to Monk, at least not in front of Kealoha.

“Were Dahl and Woodman murdered?” Monk said.

“Cleveland cops tell me they died of natural causes.” Kealoha brought the cart to a stop not far from where our golf balls lay on the grass. “Lance sure knows how to pick ’em, though Helen was his youngest and healthiest wife yet. She was also the richest.”

“Maybe he got tired of waiting for nature to take its course,” I said.

“You said you’re talking to the other guests on the Na Pali catamaran trip,” Monk said. “Have you spoken to Roxanne Shaw yet?”

Kealoha shook his head. “Nope, which one is she?”

“The one with the G-string,” I said.

“Oh, yeah,” Kealoha said. “I remember her from the video.”

“I bet you do,” I said.

Kealoha stopped the cart a few yards from our golf balls and we got out.

“I was looking forward to talking with her,” Kealoha said. “Snorkel Rob says she only bought one ticket. Meaning she’s traveling alone. There’s nothing lonelier than being by yourself in paradise. I was thinking maybe she’d like some companionship from a lovable Hawaiian while she’s on the island.”

“I don’t think so,” Monk said, his back to us as he looked at the homes along the fairway. “We saw her with Lance last night. And she’s from Cleveland.”

Kealoha whistled, impressed. “You one sly mongoose, Mr. Monk. I’ll check her out and we can talk to her together. But her alibi is as good as his.”

I followed Monk’s gaze. I could see some gardeners at one home, a pool man at another.

“Did the Cleveland PD check Lance’s bank accounts?” I asked.

Kealoha nodded. “If Lance paid someone to kill his wife, the money didn’t come from his account or his wife’s. I’ll ask the Cleveland PD to look at Roxanne’s piggybank, but I gotta wonder if maybe we’re looking in the wrong direction.”

“Lance is the only one with a motive to kill his wife,” Monk said.

“But how could he have done it without hiring someone else? He wasn’t on the island at the time of her murder, and neither was Roxanne. Their alibis are confirmed by videotape and the other haoles on the boat.”

“I know,” Monk said.

“Maybe it was a thief who did it,” Kealoha said.

“One who didn’t steal anything?”

“It could happen.” Kealoha carefully selected a three iron from his bag. “Maybe he freaked after clobbering her.”

I wasn’t worried about Lance’s perfect alibi. After all, in Monk’s last case, the suspect was having open-heart surgery at the time of the murder. And Monk
still
proved she did it. So I had faith, even if Kealoha didn’t, that Monk would find the fatal flaw or the trickery in this alibi, too.

“You don’t want to use that club,” Monk said.

“Why not?”

“It’s a three,” Monk said. “Use a four or a six iron.”

“But a three is better for this shot,” Kealoha said.

“Three is never better,” Monk said. “Trust me on this.”

Kealoha gave me a look, put the three iron back, and took out a four. He went over to his ball and made his shot. The ball flew low and landed well short of the green. He scowled at Monk.

“I’m gonna start looking into the thief theory for the murder,” Kealoha said.

“It’s a waste of time,” Monk said.

I also used a four iron and didn’t do much better than Kealoha. Monk used a four and ended up landing in the sand bunker.

“Tough one.” Kealoha suppressed a smile and climbed into the golf cart.

I couldn’t resist rubbing it in myself. “Run into many sand traps around those windmills, Mr. Monk?”

We got back in the cart and drove up to the green. Monk was quiet, his gaze on the homes. Someone was installing a satellite dish on the roof of one of the houses. Monk checked his watch.

At the green, we each approached our golf balls and assessed the shots we had to make. Monk walked around the perimeter of the bunker. His ball sat in the center of the smoothly raked sand.

Monk stood there at the edge of the bunker, staring at the ball as if it were atop quicksand. I knew what he was thinking: How could he get to his ball without disturbing the raked sand? He was starting to sweat.

Kealoha, meanwhile, made his play. It took him one swing with an iron and three putts to get his ball into the hole for a score of two over par.

“Pretty okay,” he said. “For me.”

I glanced back at Monk, who wasn’t paying any attention to either of us. He stepped gingerly across the bunker to his ball, a sand wedge in his hand.

Kealoha and I both stopped to watch him now.

Monk looked at the hole, then looked at his ball and swung. The ball shot up out of the bunker in a spray of sand and landed on the green, rolled, and stopped about one putt short of the flag.

“Excellent shot, Mr. Monk,” I said, genuinely impressed.

But Monk was scowling. He backed out of the bunker, placing his feet in his old footprints, and marched up to the green.

“What were they thinking?” Monk said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Whoever designed this course. Didn’t they realize what would happen if they put sand so close to the putting green?”

“Yeah. They created a hazard.”

“I think they did it intentionally. They should be ashamed.” Monk squatted at the edge of the green, faced the bunker, and started blowing sand off the carpet of grass.

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t you see there’s sand all over the grass?”

“It’s okay,” I said.

“It’s not okay,” Monk said. “Grass and sand do not coexist.”

I looked back at Kealoha, who was staring at Monk in disbelief. “What are we gonna do?”

“I’m going to play on,” I said, taking an iron out of my bag. I managed to finish the hole at three over par, and was quite happy with myself.

I turned to gloat, but nobody was paying attention to me. Kealoha was watching Monk, who’d blown and wiped as much sand off the green as he could and was now attempting to rake the bunker.

“It’s your turn, Mr. Monk,” I said.