Mr. Monk in Trouble (21 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Mr. Monk at the Museum

T
he clip-clop of our footfalls on the plank sidewalk underscored the emptiness of Trouble’s dusty streets. With each step, I felt like I was traveling backward in time to the 1850s. I wouldn’t have been surprised to bump into Artemis Monk and Abigail Guthrie, our historical doppelgangers, in the darkness.

It must have been the drugs working on my brain.

“What else do you know?” Kelton asked, walking at my side. I glanced at him and, for just a moment, I could see Sheriff Wheeler and his raccoon-sized mustache.

“That’s it,” I said.

“There’s got to be more. I can’t solve either crime based on what you’ve just told me and what we already know.”

“Me neither,” I said. “That’s what makes Mr. Monk a genius. He sees things that we can’t. What happened to Clifford Adams?”

“Someone clubbed him with a blunt object and dragged him out to those boulders. He’d been dead since about midnight.”

“So Mr. Monk was right. The killer called me to lure us out there and used Adams as bait to get us to step on one of his booby traps.”

“It certainly looks that way,” Kelton said. “There were several pits out there covered with plywood and dirt. In fact, if you’d walked another few feet, you would have fallen in a pit yourself.”

“Someone was afraid we knew who killed Manny Feikema or that we were close to figuring it out.”

“It had to be Gorman,” Kelton said. “He was the one who lied to us and sent us after Gator Dunsen.”

“Not only that,” I said. “Adams was at the museum last night.”

“He was?”

“We saw him leave right before Gorman arrived. But Gorman saw him go, too. He was standing on this corner,” I said as we rounded it and headed up Second Street. “Maybe Adams knew Gorman’s motive for killing Manny and went there to confront him.”

“You think that’s what got Adams killed?”

“I hope not, because if it was, it doesn’t bode well for Mr. Monk.”

But then it occurred to me that Bob Gorman couldn’t have killed Clifford Adams. Gorman worked nights at the museum and had to log in with several sensors around the property to prove he was doing his rounds on time. Adams lived too far outside of town for Gorman to have gone out there and back without missing one of his rounds.

Gorman must have had an accomplice.

Or Gorman had nothing to do with the murders and had simply been paid to throw us off the trail by the killer.

Either way, there had to be another person in the mix. But who?

Crystal DeRosso immediately came to mind, mostly because her father may have been a train robber and Gorman was in her restaurant when he told us that whopper about Gator Dunsen.

Why would either Gorman or Crystal want Manny Feikema dead? What did Adams know that got him killed?

Just as I was pondering those questions, we reached the Gold Rush Museum. Kelton took a shiny new key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

“You have a key to the museum?” I asked.

“I’m the chief of police,” he said with a smile. Then he opened the door and waved me inside. “After you.”

I stepped into the dark museum. I could hear a strange, metallic scraping sound from somewhere in the shadows.

Kelton took one of those powerful little Maglites from his pocket, turned it on, and swept the area with the beam, briefly illuminating the rockers and sluices, the stagecoaches and carriages. The flashlight beam reflected off of the silver daguerreotypes on the wall and created ghostly faces that flashed in the darkness. It was creepy.

I followed Kelton as he weaved through the displays towards the Golden Rail Express. I was surprised that Gorman hadn’t noticed our presence yet. He wasn’t much of a security guard.

The closer we got to the train, the louder the scraping sound became, though it had an odd, echoish quality to it. It was like someone scratching a nail on the inside of a church bell.

Kelton stopped in front of the train. A light glowed inside.

“Bob,” Kelton said. “I need to talk to you.”

A moment later, Gorman emerged from the engine of the train. He was wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit, a miner’s hat with a light in the center, and there was black schmutz on his cheek and hands.

Why wasn’t he in his uniform? What was he doing mucking around in the train in that getup?

“What the hell is going on?” Gorman said.

Kelton drew his gun. “We’re looking for Adrian Monk.”

“He ain’t here,” Gorman said.

“I think you’re wrong about that, Bob,” Kelton said, then raised his voice. “Monk, this is Chief Kelton. I’ve got Natalie here with me. Come on out.”

I heard some rustling behind us. Kelton aimed his flashlight at the prospecting diorama.

Monk emerged from the faux log cabin. He’d been hiding in there just like Manny’s killer did. He was wearing his signature outfit and made his way around the mannequin miners and stuffed donkeys and over to us.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said.

“You look awful,” Monk said. “You should have stayed in bed.”

“You shouldn’t have left me,” I said. “I was worried about you and it turns out I was right to be. What were you hiding in here for?”

“I wanted to catch Gorman in the act.”

“Of doing what?”

“Robbing the Golden Rail Express of its gold,” Monk said.

I looked back at Gorman and then at the train. What Monk was suggesting didn’t seem possible.

“It’s
still
on the train?”

Monk nodded. “Slocum told us the truth. The third man was DeRosso. But what Slocum didn’t know was that the boiler man and engineer were in on the robbery, too. DeRosso fell off the train after delivering the bags of cash and gold to Leonard McElroy and Clifford Adams in the engine.”

“What did they do with it?” I asked.

“They threw it in the furnace, of course,” Monk said. “That’s why the bags were burlap, so they’d burn quickly.”

I looked at Kelton, but he didn’t seem shocked by Monk’s explanation at all.

“It’s really not as crazy as it sounds,” Kelton said.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “Throwing the bags in the furnace would have burned up all the money, too.”

“They didn’t care about the cash,” Kelton said. “It was the gold that they wanted.”

“How did they get the gold by throwing it in a furnace?”

“They melted the gold and lined the furnace with it, then hid it under a layer of black soot,” Monk said. “But it wasn’t necessary. It never occurred to anybody that the robbers would incinerate the loot.”

“Until now,” Kelton said.

“It wasn’t until I read about how Artemis Monk, Trouble’s legendary assayer back in the 1860s, solved another robbery on the Golden Rail Express that it all came together for me,” Monk said. “In that case, the robbers hammered the gold coins into dust in a scheme to salt a mine. The plan got me thinking about Clifford Adams, his poorly performing mine, and something he said about how malleable gold is.”

“Maybe it’s the drugs I’m on,” I said. “But I still don’t understand why they burned the bags and melted the gold.”

“The train was supposed to be scrapped after that last run. They were planning to recover the furnace afterwards, scrape the gold out, and make it appear as if it came from Clifford Adams’ mine,” Monk said. “Nobody would have known that the gold actually came from the train robbery.”

I could see now why reading Abigail Guthrie’s journal made everything fall into place for Monk. And it was happening in my mind, too. All the pieces of the puzzle fit together. I could almost hear them snapping into place.

“Their plan might have worked except for one unforeseeable twist of fate,” I said. “The robbery made the Golden Rail Express famous, and instead of being decommissioned, the train continued in operation for another twenty years. They couldn’t get the gold off the train.”

“They were screwed,” Kelton said, nodding in agreement. “But they weren’t going to give up. They had the gold. They just had to wait things out. So they kept on working. McElroy shoveled coal into that golden furnace year after year until the soot finally killed the poor bastard.”

“But there was still one more cruel twist left,” I said. “All those years of protecting their treasure and waiting were for nothing. When the train was finally scrapped, the museum snapped up the engine and there was no way that Adams could ever recover his gold.”

“What a bunch of losers,” Gorman said.

I’d almost forgotten that Gorman was still standing there. Monk pointed at him.

“You killed Manny Feikema so you could get his job and spend your nights scraping the gold out of the furnace,” Monk said. “But there was only one way I could prove it.”

I glanced at Gorman’s dirty hands and remembered him washing the soot off at the restaurant. The answer had been right in front of us all along.

Then again, it usually was.

I never would have guessed that Gorman was smart enough to solve the Golden Rail Express mystery. Monk had taken a huge, and very stupid, risk setting his trap.

“If you wanted to catch Gorman in the act,” I said to Monk, “why did you come alone? Why didn’t you bring Chief Kelton with you?”

I glanced back at Kelton. And that’s when I noticed that the gun that he held wasn’t actually aimed at Gorman.

It was aimed at me.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mr. Monk and the Surprise

I
felt shocked, betrayed, stupid, and angry all at once.

“You?”
I said to him.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Kelton said. “If it’s any consolation, I’m not too proud of myself, either. I never anticipated things spiraling out of control like this.”

“Then how did it happen at all?”

“I had a lot of time on my hands when I got to this hellhole. At first, I was just trying to find a way out of the boredom that didn’t involve looking at the bottom of an empty bottle of Scotch. So I started investigating the robbery. I’m a pretty good detective when I’m sober.”

“You had some help from my distant relative,” Monk said. “I talked to Doris Thurlo today. She told me that you’d read Abigail Guthrie’s journal a few weeks ago.”

“I did. And it wasn’t long after I read it that I figured out what happened to the gold,” Kelton said. “But if I told the museum about it, I wouldn’t get to keep any of it. I didn’t think that was very fair. So I thought of a way to get the gold without the museum knowing that it had ever been there.”

“Did you go to Manny first with your scheme?” I asked.

“There was no point,” Kelton said. “I knew Manny well enough to know that he’d never go for it. That’s a shame, because if he wasn’t going to help me, that didn’t leave me much choice.”

“You could have given up the idea of keeping the gold for yourself,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” Gorman said. “Are you on drugs?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I am.”

It was probably the only reason I wasn’t terrified, even though the homicidal chief of police was holding a gun on me.

“So you went forward with it,” Monk said to Kelton. “But since you couldn’t get the gold yourself, you had to draft an accomplice for the grunt work.”

“I resent that,” Gorman said. “I’m nobody’s grunt. This is a full partnership.”

“That’s true,” Monk said. “You are both murderers. You killed Manny Feikema and the chief killed Clifford Adams.”

“How did you make that leap?” Kelton said.

“I found this on the road to Clifford Adams’ place.” Monk reached into his jacket pocket and came out with a piece of white, decorative rock pinched between his thumb and index finger. “You parked behind Gator’s car in the gravel driveway and got this stuck in one of your tire treads. It was knocked loose when you hit that pothole on your way to kill Clifford Adams.”

I felt my face getting hot as the full implications of Monk’s words sunk in. I glared at him, hoping he could feel the full heat of my fury from the look in my eyes.

“You knew that Kelton was the killer since this morning and you didn’t say anything to me?”

“I’ve actually known he was guilty of at least one murder since yesterday at Gator Dunsen’s house,” Monk said. “But I couldn’t prove it.”

“That makes it even worse!” I yelled.

Kelton stuck his gun in my back. “Quiet down.”

“You didn’t just keep me in the dark,” I said in the loudest, angriest whisper I could manage. “You lied to me.”

Gorman grinned at Kelton. “Can you believe these two?”

“I knew you were attracted to him,” Monk said. “And I couldn’t risk you inadvertently tipping him off about my suspicions during one of your intimate dinners.”

“Intimate!” My face was so hot with anger that it was a wonder that I didn’t spontaneously combust. “We had a cheeseburger at the Chuckwagon. There wasn’t anything remotely intimate about our dinner and I sure as hell wasn’t the least bit interested in him.”

“Yes, you were,” Kelton said.

I whirled around to face him. “You wish.”

Kelton smiled. “Then why did you feel so betrayed when Monk told you I was behind this?”

“Because I trusted you,” I said.

“Because you wanted me,” Kelton said. “I knew it, Monk knew it—”

“I knew it,” Gorman added. “Crystal knew it.”

“The burros on the street knew it,” Kelton said.

The infuriating thing was that he was right. I was attracted to him, damn it. Not that I would have acted on it. But even so, it was pretty humiliating to have been interested in a killer and then to have him mock me.

I looked down at the gun he was pointing at my abdomen and it focused me back to what mattered. I was standing with a killer who probably had no intention of letting us walk out of this museum alive.

Our best chance to survive was to keep him talking until Monk or I figured out a way to escape. We couldn’t really hope that the police would come to our rescue, not with the corrupt police chief holding a gun on us. Maybe there was a superhero in the neighborhood who would realize our deadly predicament and come crashing through the ceiling at the right moment.

There wasn’t much hope for us, but I was going to stall anyway.

“Why did you kill Adams?” I asked.

“After you two talked to him, he got suspicious,” Kelton said. “So Adams came to the museum to stick his head in the furnace and check on his gold. He saw that somebody had started scraping out the gold and he put the whole thing together. At least, that’s what I think happened. When Bob saw him leaving the museum last night, I had to assume the worst and stop the old fool from doing something stupid.”

“It wasn’t hard for the chief to kill Clifford Adams,” Monk said. “He was an experienced murderer by then. He’d just killed Gator Dunsen and tried to frame him for Manny Feikema’s murder.”

“It would have worked.” Kelton glanced at Gorman. “If somebody hadn’t screwed up the pictures and left the pick out of the diorama.”

“Oh,” Gorman said, realizing his mistake. “Well, you’re the detective. You should have noticed that the pick wasn’t there when you reviewed the photos. It’s your fault, not mine.”

For an instant, it looked like Kelton might shoot Gorman instead of me and all of this stalling would have paid off. But the moment passed.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Kelton said. “Nobody but Monk caught the mistake and he’s not going to be around to tell anybody about it.”

“How did you plant the file of photos in Gator’s house?” I asked.

“He didn’t,” Monk said. “Gorman did. He was already in the house when we arrived.”

“He was?” I said.

“He’d been there for a while,” Monk said. “My guess is that Gorman forced Gator at gunpoint to drink himself into a stupor and then bound him with duct tape. It was Gorman who shot up the front door. Once we took cover, and Kelton was in the house, all the gunshots we heard, except the one that killed Gator, were for show. They used the time to stage the scene, take the duct tape off of Gator, and cover Gorman’s escape out the back door.”

“Gator’s bleeding lips,” I said. “That’s how you knew his mouth had been taped.”

Monk nodded. “He had chapped lips. When they ripped the tape off his mouth, it tore off the dry skin.”

“There, now you have closure,” Kelton said. “That’s one less thing for you to worry about in your final moments, which will be coming shortly.”

“You’re going to shoot us right here?” I said. “You’ll have a hard time explaining that away.”

Kelton shook his head. “You’re going to die in a terrible car accident tonight on your way back to San Francisco. You never should have let Monk drive, Natalie. At least, that’s what everybody will be saying at the funeral. But I’ll speak up for you and remind everyone what terrible shape you were in, physically and mentally.”

“How considerate,” I said.

“Don’t worry, Natalie,” Monk said. “We aren’t going to be hurt.”

“How do you figure that?” Gorman said.

“Because the moment Chief Kelton stepped into the museum, a special weapons and tactical unit from the California State Police moved into position,” Monk said. “They’ve got the building surrounded.”

Kelton grinned. “Are you sure it’s just the California State Police? Maybe the FBI and National Guard came, too.”

“They couldn’t make it,” a familiar voice said, filling me with relief. “But the San Francisco Police showed up.”

The lights came on in the museum and I saw Captain Stottlemeyer inside the stagecoach behind Kelton and aiming his gun at the chief.

“And we’ve got everything on tape,” Lieutenant Randy Disher said, bursting out of the back office with Detective Lydia Wilder and several California State Police officers. All of them had their weapons out and trained on Kelton and Gorman.

Of course, that left Monk and me in the cross fire, but I didn’t think too much about that. In the tense moment that followed, I thought about those calls Monk made from my cell phone to the museum and Captain Stottlemeyer. Now I knew what they were about and why I couldn’t reach the captain when I tried to call him—he was busy hiding out in the museum with Monk.

I should have known that Monk would never have tried to take on Gorman alone. I blamed the painkillers for impairing my ordinarily sound judgment.

Kelton dropped his gun and put his hands on his head. Gorman raised his hands, too. Stottlemeyer climbed out of the stagecoach and took out his handcuffs.

“You’re both under arrest for the murders of Manny Feikema, Gator Dunsen, and Clifford Adams,” the captain said.

“I want to make a deal,” Gorman said.

Kelton chuckled ruefully. “That’s got to be a new speed record for one crook selling out another.”

“I’ll be sure to notify the Guinness people,” Stottlemeyer said and handcuffed Chief Kelton.