Mr. Monk in Trouble (11 page)

“From what?” Asper yelled.

“An ant,” Monk said.

“So you shot it?” Asper said.

“It was about to crawl on your head,” Monk said.

“Couldn’t you have just asked us to move?” Ewing said.

“It might have pounced on someone else.”

“Ants don’t pounce,” Asper said.

“That’s like saying that gold doesn’t grow on trees.”

“It doesn’t,” Asper said.

Monk stepped up and squinted at the tree. “Then why is this bark sparkling with gold?”

Ewing and I joined Monk and examined the trunk. Sure enough, the tree glittered with specks of gold.

Asper turned and ran to his horse. But one of Ewing’s men tackled him before he could get there and pinned him down. Everybody except Asper, who was facedown in the dirt, turned to look at Monk for an explanation.

“What in blazes is going on here?” Ewing said.

“If you send some men up on the ridge,” Monk said, “you’ll find a sack full of dead rattlesnakes and one of Asper’s men running away.”

“You’re not making a lick of sense,” Ewing said.

“Here’s what happened,” Monk said. “Lute Asper wasn’t carrying the shotgun to protect us from snakes. The buckshot was laced with gold dust. Asper was just waiting for someone to get close to one of the ridges so he could pretend to spot a snake. As soon as he fired his shotgun, one of his men tossed a dead snake over the edge for him to find.”

Ewing nodded with a frown. “It was just a scheme to salt his claim, make it appear richer than it actually was, and get a higher price out of me.”

“I’m afraid so,” Monk said. “The snakes were also meant to unsettle me so I couldn’t concentrate.”

Ewing frowned and faced his men. “Tie Asper up and throw him in the back of my buggy. We’re taking him in to the sheriff. Looks like I wasted a trip here.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Monk said and led Ewing off to one side for a private chat. I didn’t hear what they said, but I could see Ewing nodding.

After a moment, Ewing headed back over to Asper, who was being hog-tied by two men.

“I’m going to give you a choice, Asper, and it’s only good for thirty seconds,” Ewing said. “You can sell me this claim for the price of passage back to Philadelphia and your promise never to return to California or you can go to jail, where you’ll probably be hanged.”

“I’ll take the ticket,” he said.

“I thought you might,” Ewing said. “Sign the claim over to me now and let’s be done with it.”

Monk started to walk away. I hurried after him, more than a little confused.

“What did you say to Mr. Ewing?”

“I told him that Asper didn’t need to salt the claim,” Monk said. “From what I can tell looking at the burned color of those ridges, they’re rich with iron oxide and manganese, which are likely indicators of the presence of gold-laced quartz. I’m certain that the claim is worth everything he says it is and probably more.”

“Do you think Asper knows that?”

Monk shook his head. “If he did, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of concocting this scheme.”

“It’s poetic justice,” I said. “But if Asper’s claim is genuinely as rich in gold as he boasted, what tipped you off to the scheme?”

“He shot at the snake before I finished what I was going to say,” Monk said.

“Which was?”

“I thought it was a good place to build a cabin because it was the one spot on this claim where you probably
wouldn’t
find any gold.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mr. Monk Has Breakfast

I
knocked on Monk’s door at nine a.m. on the button.

He was dressed and ready to go, as I expected him to be.

“Good morning,” he said.

I looked over his shoulder. The bed was made and nothing in the room seemed to have been disturbed at all.

“Did you sleep last night?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very well, thank you.”

“In the bed?”

“Where else would I have slept?”

“I don’t know, but it looks like the room hasn’t been occupied.”

“That’s how everybody should leave their hotel rooms,” Monk said, stepping out and closing the door behind him. “Which reminds me, we should tell the manager not to let the maid into mine.”

“Because there’s nothing to clean,” I said.

He nodded. “And I don’t want to have to clean it again.”

“Do you think she’d come in and make a mess?”

“Everybody makes a mess.”

“Except you,” I said.

“It takes a lot of concentration and effort. I seem to be the only one willing to make the investment.”

“I know at least one other person,” I said as we headed towards the manager’s office.

“My brother?”

“Okay, make that two people.”

“Certainly you’re not thinking about yourself,” Monk said.

“No, it’s not me.”

“Because you’re a tornado of filth.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’m talking about Artemis Monk.”

“A fictional character,” he said.

“A real person,” I said. “Your ancestor.”

“Please, let’s not start that silliness again.”

“I read more of Abigail Guthrie’s book last night. You’re obviously a descendant of his. He hated nature and was afraid of tumbleweeds.”

“That’s like saying I’m related to him because I eat food, drink water, and breathe air.”

“He did this,” I said and mimicked Monk’s Zen dance. I rolled my shoulders, tipped my head, did a few pirouettes, and held my hands in front of me like I was framing a camera shot.

Monk stared at me. “What are you doing?”

“I’m doing you,” I said.

“I don’t do that.”

“Yes, you do,” I said. “And so did Artemis Monk.”

I went into the office and asked the manager to have the maid skip Monk’s room and spend the extra time on mine since I am such a tornado of filth. He eyed me suspiciously.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We aren’t hiding any blood on the walls or bodily organs on ice in the bathtub.”

“I didn’t say anything,” he said.

“But you thought it.”

“I might be thinking a lot of things,” he said. “You see it all in this business.”

“I don’t want to know,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You don’t.”

After that creepy conversation, Monk and I walked down to Dorothy’s Chuckwagon for breakfast. Two of the four booths were occupied but nobody was at the counter, though there was a plate with the remains of two fried eggs and a stack of hotcakes.

I took a seat at the counter, a few stools away from the dirty plate because I knew it would unsettle Monk to be close to it. Monk remained standing behind me.

“I’d prefer a booth,” he said.

“It will be easier for the waitress to talk to us if we’re here.”

“Why would I want to talk to her?”

“She’s Crystal DeRosso, the Golden Rail Express conductor’s daughter.”

“She can talk to us in a booth,” he said.

“But then only three of the booths would be occupied,” I said. “The balance of the universe would be totally disrupted.”

“You’re right,” Monk said and immediately took a seat next to me. “What was I thinking?”

“You’re hungry,” I said.

“That must be it,” he said. “Thanks to you, we narrowly averted disaster.”

“I bet you’re sorry about that tornado of filth remark now.”

“No,” he said. “Why would I be?”

We heard a toilet flush and then Bob Gorman, the new security guard at the Gold Rush Museum, came out of a side door and took a seat at the counter in front of his unfinished breakfast. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and jeans that showed off his lean physique.

“Hey, it’s the detectives,” Gorman said. “How’s it hanging?”

“What’s hanging?” Monk bolted up from the stool and began frantically brushing his clothes. “Where is it? Is it still there?”

“Relax, buddy, nothing is hanging,” Gorman said. “It’s an expression, like ‘hi.’ ”

Monk sat down and rolled his shoulders. “Right. Of course I knew that. I’m groovy with that jive. But you can never be too careful where things that hang are concerned. You dig?”

“Sure,” Gorman said and reached for his fork.

“Stop!” Monk said.

“What?” Gorman said, a bit startled by Monk’s outburst.

“Don’t pick up that fork,” Monk said.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s your hands,” Monk said. “They’re disgusting. You didn’t wash them.”

It was true. There was black stuff worked in deep around his fingernails and on the back of his hands.

Gorman examined his hands. “This? It’s nothing. It comes with the job with grease monkeys.”

“You were handling monkeys?” Monk said. “Greasy ones?”

“The problem with being a mechanic is that the grease, grime, and oil don’t come off no matter how hard you scrub. That’s one reason I’m glad to have this new job. I’ll have clean hands again someday.”

“Make it today,” Monk said and motioned to me for wipes. “Try scrubbing with soap, water, and some of these.”

I handed Gorman some wipes.

“If that doesn’t work,” Monk said, “try steel wool.”

“Won’t that strip off my flesh?” Gorman said.

“At least you’ll be clean,” Monk said. “You should go now, before the monkey germs spread. Monkeys have Ebola.”

I met Gorman’s eye. “He won’t give you any peace if you don’t.”

Gorman sighed, gathered up the wipes, and returned to the bathroom.

Monk shook his head in disgust. “Greasy monkeys, wild burros, this place is hell.”

Crystal came out, carrying some plates. She acknowledged us with a glance and took the plates to one of the booths, setting eggs, bacon, biscuits, gravy, and pancakes down in front of two couples. Then she came back behind the counter.

“What’ll it be?” she asked.

I wanted another cheeseburger and a shake, but I restrained myself. It wasn’t easy. “Two pancakes, four strips of bacon, and some coffee, please. And could I have the pancakes and bacon on separate plates?”

I made that last request to score some points with my boss.

“Sure, it just means an extra plate to wash for no good reason,” she said and turned to Monk. “And you?”

“Do you have Chex cereal?”

“No,” she said.

“How about Cap’n Crunch?”

“No,” she said.

“Then I’ll have toast with the crusts cut off.”

“Will that be all?”

“He also has some questions,” I said. “This is Adrian Monk, the detective I mentioned last night.”

“How’s it hanging?” Monk asked. “As in hello, not as in there are things hanging from you.”

She gave him a withering look. “Let me put your order in and I’ll be right back.”

Crystal returned to the kitchen. Gorman came out of the bathroom. His hands were much cleaner, but not perfect. Monk scowled and turned to me.

“Do you have any steel wool?”

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“Sandpaper?”

“Sorry, all out.”

“What’s the matter with you? You shouldn’t venture out into the world without essential supplies. You need to be better prepared. Our survival could depend on it someday.”

“Steel wool and sandpaper,” I said. “I’ll put them on the checklist.”

“I’d like to see your checklist.”

“I don’t have one,” I said. “It’s also going on the checklist.”

“You’re putting a checklist on your checklist.”

“It will be the first thing on it,” I said. “I promise you that.”

Gorman picked up his fork, cut into his pancakes, and ran the morsel through the egg yolk. He was about to eat it when Monk yelled out:

“Don’t!”

Gorman froze. “What’s wrong now?”

“You have yolk on your pancakes,” Monk said.

“I like it,” Gorman said.

“You can’t,” Monk said.

“Why not?”

“Because you aren’t allowed to mix entrées together,” Monk said. “They are separate entities. Think of them as continents. What would happen if North America collided with Europe? The earth would be ripped apart. That’s your plate.”

“You should let him eat, Mr. Monk.”

“I can’t stand idly by while a man commits suicide,” Monk said.

“Look, buddy, everything gets mixed together in your stomach anyway,” Gorman said and ate the morsel off of his fork. “It’s like shoveling coal into the boiler of a train. There aren’t compartments in there.”

“The stomach knows,” Monk said.

They might have argued the point further, but that’s when Crystal came out and stood in front of us.

“What do you want to know?” she asked Monk.

“How can you serve food to someone who lets yolk touch his pancakes?” Monk said, tipping his head towards the security guard.

Crystal glanced at Gorman, who made a show this time of smearing his piece of pancake through the yolk, butter, and maple syrup before eating it. Monk did a full-body cringe, which made Gorman grin and only encouraged him to continue.

“There’s no law against it,” she said.

“Would you let him drink and drive?”

“We don’t serve alcohol here,” Crystal said. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?”

“He’s curious about your father,” I said.

“I don’t remember my dad at all,” she said. “I only know him through pictures in an album and the stories my mom and people in town have told me over the years. He used to come here and eat breakfast every morning before work.”

Monk glared at Gorman. “I bet you take drugs.”

“Never touch the stuff,” Gorman said. “I don’t drink or smoke either.”

“But this is how it starts,” Monk said. “Yolk and pancakes today, hooch and weed tomorrow. No wonder you think nothing of cavorting with greasy monkeys.”

“Mr. Monk,” I said. “Don’t you have some questions for Crystal about her father?”

Monk looked at her. “Did your mom ever talk about the robbery?”

“Of course she did,” Crystal said. “What kind of stupid question is that?”

“A simple one to get you focused on the specific topic that I am interested in,” Monk said. “Perhaps I should have been more direct. Was your father one of the robbers of the Golden Rail Express?”

Crystal glowered at him. “That train was his life. He loved trains. Ever since he was a kid he wanted to work on the Golden Rail Express. He started at the bottom and worked his way up to conductor. He wore that uniform with the pride of a four-star general. Working for that railroad was the only job he ever wanted and the only one he ever had. So no, Mr. Monk, he couldn’t have robbed that train. He was devoted to it, probably even more than he was to Mom and me.”

“If he knew the train so well,” Monk said, “how did he fall off of it?”

“He didn’t,” Crystal said. “He was thrown off. He was murdered just like that poor security guard, for putting up a fight.”

“Did anyone see him get pushed?” Monk asked.

“Nobody saw what happened to him,” she said. “He wasn’t on the train when it arrived in Trouble, so they went looking for him. They found his body along the tracks.”

“Maybe he died jumping off with the loot and was left behind by his uninjured accomplices,” Monk said.

“They didn’t find any coins or money near him,” she said. “If the fall was hard enough to kill him, don’t you think it would have broken the bags of money and gold? Or at least spilled some of what was inside when he let go of the bags?”

Monk shrugged. “I suppose so. But I can still see why people suspected him of being involved.”

“Nobody in town did, only people who didn’t know him,” Crystal said. “Leonard McElroy and Clifford Adams kept running the Golden Rail Express and gave my mom a portion of their paychecks every week for twenty years. They wouldn’t do that if they thought Dad was one of the robbers, would they?”

Gorman spoke up as he cleaned the last of the yolk and maple syrup off his plate with a piece of toast. “What does any of this matter now anyway?”

“It’s unsolved. Unfinished. Incomplete,” Monk said. “It’s a missing piece of history.”

“That’s all it is, history,” Crystal said. “What about the here and now? What about poor Manny?”

“I’m working on that, too,” Monk said.

The cook rang a bell in the kitchen and Crystal went back to get the food.

“So why aren’t you asking us about him?” Gorman said.

“Do you know something about his murder?”

“No, but a few days before he was killed, a guy came by the garage asking about him,” Gorman said.

“Did you tell the chief about it?” I said.

“The chief never asked me,” Gorman said. “The guy said he was an old friend just passing through and remembered that Manny lived around here. He asked if I knew him and if I could give him directions out to his place.”

“Why did he come to you?” Monk said.

“I worked at the only garage in town,” Gorman said. “It’s the only place you can go if you need to get your car fixed. So I know everybody and everybody knows me.”

“Did you tell him where Manny lived?”

“I didn’t see the harm,” Gorman said. “I offered to call Manny for him but the guy wanted to surprise him.”

“He certainly did,” I said. “Did he tell you his name?”

“Nope, but he drove a red 1964 Ford Thunderbird,” Gorman said. “I remember it because it was in mint condition. You don’t see many of those around here. Did you know the sixty-four had a swing-away steering column? It swung to the center of the car to make it easier for the driver to get in and out. That feature never caught on, though. They have steering wheels that tilt up and down, but not side to side.”

“That’s really interesting. I could talk steering wheels all day,” I said. “But you need to go see Chief Kelton right away and give him a description of the man and his Thunderbird.”

“Maybe I’ll stop by on my way to work.” Gorman picked up his plate and, looking straight at Monk, he licked it clean. “Now I need some sleep. I’ve been up all night.”