Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (21 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mr. Monk Finds No One

T
he Goldberg-Sanchez Zen Garden occupied a surprisingly large triangle of land, perhaps an acre, just off Castro Street. A year or so ago, some foundation had built a six-foot stone wall and transformed this scruffy patch into an oasis of rock gardens, wooden bridges over bubbling water features, and miniature stone pagodas. Julie and I had gone there once for a picnic lunch.

A caretaker named Jeremy was waiting for us in front of the locked gate. He identified himself as a neighborhood volunteer and seemed nervous about a manic police lieutenant flashing her badge and demanding access. Devlin was even more impatient than usual, which didn’t help. “Was a tin Buddha delivered today?”

“Uh, yes,” said Jeremy. “We didn’t have time to install it. We’re planning to use it to store garden tools. Is that all right?”

“Why should I care?” said Devlin. “Where is it?”

“It’s by the northeast corner.”

“Can you point, sir, or do I need a compass?”

This was where I took over. Being the most personable and charming member of the team, I smiled, introduced myself, and did my best to ease the situation.

Somehow I persuaded Jeremy to give us custody of the key. I input his phone number and address into my phone, politely asked him to leave the premises, and promised I would return the key as soon as we were through. I didn’t know quite what to expect in the way of danger, but experience has taught me to get civilians out of the way, even when walking through a Zen garden on a moonlit night. Jeremy watched as we locked the gate behind us and headed off to the northeast corner.

The fourth storage Buddha was just beyond a lily pond, blanket-wrapped and seated on a wooden pallet. Devlin pulled out a key ring, chose her sharpest key, and dove in, attacking the duct tape like an assassin on a mission. When the blanket was cleared enough to get to the doors, she took a breath and stepped aside. “You do the honors, Monk.”

“Unfortunately, I know what I’m going to find.” Monk reached into his jacket and pulled out three pairs of plastic gloves, a large for himself and two sets of medium for Devlin and me. How he’d foreseen the need for gloves, I don’t know. But he had them and we put them on. Then he tipped back the statue’s head and pulled apart its folded hands.

I’d been half expecting to find the shotgun, and I was right. It was in the bottom of the compartment, wrapped in a pair of moving-van blankets similar to the one still half-taped into place around the statue’s shoulders. Monk handed it over to Devlin as if he couldn’t care less and kept fishing. Next he pulled out a blue sweatshirt covered in dry patches of blood. This, too, he handed to Devlin and kept fishing.

At first glance, it looked like a flesh-colored rubber ball, slightly smaller than a deflated soccer ball. On second
glance, I saw it wasn’t complete, not entirely round, with a longer tab in the back and what looked like sideburns. “Is that a wig?” I asked. “A bald wig?”

Monk twitched in the affirmative and held it out toward my face. “Natalie, meet Wyatt Noone. Wyatt Noone, Natalie Teeger.”

“I don’t get it,” said Devlin. “Wyatt Noone is someone we know? Someone with hair? Are you saying he carried on two separate lives? Wearing a silly bald cap half the time? I hate to say it, Monk, but this seems far-fetched, even in your world.”

“Not so far-fetched. Takumi Ito was right. If only he’d given them the raises they asked for . . .”

Under normal circumstances, this would have been the start of his summation, the time to settle back and let Adrian Monk lay it out, explaining the inexplicable to us inferior mortals who don’t feel compelled to wash our hands a hundred times a day. But this time he was interrupted.

If we were in the northeast corner, then the noise was coming from the west, a combination of scrapes and human grunts, but mostly grunts. Monk might have been the first to hear it, but Devlin was the first to raise a hand and signal for silence. “But . . . ,” Monk protested in a whisper. He hates being cut off in mid-summation.

The lieutenant kept her hand up and led the way over the stone bridge and the lily pond, around the perfectly raked sand garden and toward the western wall of the triangle. She stopped us behind a pair of flowering dogwoods where we wouldn’t be the first things the intruder would see.

The grunts continued, middle-aged and struggling, as
Sarabeth Willow knelt on top of the stone wall, her back to us, and began to lower herself to the ground, grabbing at a few outcroppings as she went. The pain from her injuries must have been excruciating but she didn’t let it stop her.

She spent almost a minute holding her side and catching her breath. She was just dusting off her jeans and getting her bearings when she saw us. Her first impulse was to run. But there were three of us and we were all inside a wall. We surrounded her in the middle of the sand garden. To Monk’s credit, he managed to ignore the chaos of footprints marring the raked patterns of sand.

“Adrian,” said Sarabeth, her hands dropping to her side. “What a surprise. I . . . I . . .” She tried her best to recover. “I came to check the paperwork on the statue we delivered today. The gate was locked, so I guess I’m legally trespassing. You shouldn’t blame Mr. Ito for the paperwork. He’s got the invoices all screwed up and—”

“We looked inside the Buddha,” Monk interrupted. “We know about Wyatt.”

“Where’s Noone? Is he on the other side of the wall?” asked Devlin. “Is he?”

Sarabeth stood for a moment, then turned on her heel and began shouting. “Police! Run, honey, run.”

“Damn,” said Devlin, and took off like a sprinter. I could see her vacillating in her stride, calculating which would be quicker, scaling the wall or unlocking the gate and going around. She chose the wall and vanished around the edge of the lily pond. I felt the urge to join her, like a dog chasing another dog chasing a ball. Monk stopped me.

“Don’t go. I need you here.”

“What about Noone?” I protested.

“Why do you need Natalie here?” asked Sarabeth, all sweetness again. “Do you think I’m going to overpower you or run away?”

“Let’s say I don’t trust either one of us.”

I heard all this but I was too distracted. “What if Noone gets away? He’ll be gone for good.”

“Natalie, there is no Wyatt Noone. There never was.”

“I know that, but . . .”

“I mean never. Not even in the beginning.”

“Then who is Devlin chasing?”

“No one. It was all her.”

The woman in question placed a heartfelt hand to her chest. “Adrian, Adrian. Even if you believe this crazy theory of yours, whatever it is, it’s your word against mine, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” said Monk. “Your prints are probably on the shotgun. And I’m sure you left your DNA on the bald wig. Sweat, hair, skin fragments.”

“What? No.” There were a dozen things I could have said to shoot this down, but the first objection that came to mind . . . “She had her picture taken with Noone at the Christmas party,” I said. And my second objection . . . “Everyone in the office knew him.”

“Like I said, it was Takumi Ito’s fault. Right?”

Sarabeth nodded a reluctant yes. Her shoulders fell. But a gut instinct told me to pull my Glock out of my PBS tote. I made sure she saw it.

Monk continued, his summation back on track. “Business was good for East Decorative Imports. But Mr. Ito kept denying you raises. That had to sting. He gave you permission to
hire a financial manager. But you were already doing the financial manager’s work. Whose idea was it?”

“It was Mel’s,” said Sarabeth. “He said it as a joke. ‘Let’s make up a fake employee and split his paycheck four ways.’ Caleb came up with the name. He got the Social Security number and did all the paperwork. Everyone had to keep it absolutely secret. Not even wives or husbands knew. Not even Paul.”

“Paul didn’t know about it?” asked Monk, a little dubious.

“Of course not,” said Sarabeth. “Otherwise it wouldn’t work. Everyone opened a little savings account, just to keep it secret. We were protecting them as much as we were protecting ourselves.”

“Even Todd Avery?” I asked. “He worked right below you.”

“Todd’s not a very curious person,” said Sarabeth. “And Katrina knew how to manipulate him. Every time someone showed up, we invented some excuse for Wyatt’s not being around. If anyone from Tokyo ever deigned to pay a visit, we could pretend Wyatt had just quit and moved away.”

“Who did Noone’s voice on the phone calls?” asked Monk. “The Southern accent?”

“That was Caleb. The boy fancied himself an actor.”

“What about the photos?” I asked.

“We got pretty drunk at the Christmas party,” said Sarabeth. “We put Mel in makeup and a bald wig and different clothes. It all added to the realism.”

“I told you Wyatt looked like Mel,” Monk reminded me.

“You did,” I admitted. “I should have taken that seriously.”

Monk forgave me with a sideways tilt of his head. “It was all a petty scam, relatively harmless, until Sarabeth got greedy.”

“I’m not greedy,” she said indignantly. “I have a husband with cancer. There are treatments. Expensive treatments.”

“Plenty of people have husbands with cancer,” I said. “They don’t embezzle millions and . . .” The Glock trembled in my hand as the cold-blooded reality of what she had done suddenly hit me. “And murder three people. Your coworkers, your friends. To walk into the office in that silly disguise and open fire on your friends . . .”

“Friends,” Sarabeth scoffed. Her normally soft face hardened. “I was their menial assistant. I did three-quarters of Wyatt’s work for one-quarter of the money. And none of them ever made my life easy. When Paul got sick, no one cared. No one came to visit or even sent flowers. The bastards.”

Monk was mesmerized by Sarabeth’s flinty expression, as if a panda bear had just morphed into a grizzly, which was pretty much the situation.

“I asked for a bigger cut, for Paul’s sake. But they didn’t care.”

“And so you started embezzling,” I said. I’m always the one who fills up the dead space in a social conversation. Otherwise things can get uncomfortable. “And when embezzling wasn’t bringing in enough, you graduated to sending out copies as originals.”

“These were things we could blame on Wyatt,” said Sarabeth. “When we found out Mr. Ito was scheduling a visit, that’s what I told them. Blame it on Wyatt.” She laughed, and both Monk and I winced. “But oh no! They were too high and mighty for that. I’ll tell you what they were. Pissed. Pissed that meek little Sarabeth figured out how to make some real money and not them.”

“So you were looking at jail time,” said Monk, his voice softening. “Just when your husband needed you the most.” I could see him trying to rationalize this, but it was an uphill battle.

“It wasn’t that big of a step,” said Sarabeth. “Mentally at least. From blaming Wyatt for embezzlement to blaming him for murder. I’m a lot smarter than they thought.”

Monk seemed to agree. “The clothes in the stairwell. That was very smart. You needed to give the police some theory of how Noone got out of the building. And shooting yourself, Sarabeth . . . That took real guts.”

“I was hoping I could give myself a flesh wound. But my hand was shaking. I misjudged.”

“Still it took guts. All in all, a smart plan.”

Sarabeth’s lips curled sadly. She looked human again. “Not quite smart enough. I didn’t recover the shotgun and the wig in time. I tried, but . . . Imagine how I felt when I discovered the Buddhas had already been shipped.”

“I can imagine,” said Monk.

“And, of course, it’s always the last place you look. If it had been shipped to any one of the stores, there’d be no evidence now.”

“A bad break,” said Monk.

“Adrian!” I punched him in the shoulder, just to get his attention. “She murdered three people.”

“But she did it for her husband. You’ve got to give her points for that.”

“Points? I can’t believe you just said that. She is not getting points.”

“You could be nicer about it.”

“Don’t blame Natalie,” Sarabeth said, her sweetness returning. “If you blame anyone, Adrian, blame me. It’s my fault.”

“Of course it’s your fault,” I shouted. “You killed three people.” And I raised my Glock just for emphasis.

“If things had only been different,” Sarabeth almost purred. “I really liked you, Adrian.”

“Thanks, Sarabeth.”

“It wasn’t just for show, if that’s any consolation.”

Not to the three people you killed. No consolation to them!
That’s what I wanted to say. Instead, I just let them have their moment.

We heard Lieutenant Devlin before we saw her as she opened the gate, swung it shut, and shuffled slowly down one of the gravel paths.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she said, panting out each of the words. “Noone got away.”

Monk paused before speaking. It must have been hard. “No, he didn’t get away.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Mr. Monk and the Surprise

A
week later, I was dropping off the president of East Decorative Imports at San Francisco International.

He’d had a busy week, keeping the company running on both sides of the Pacific while hiring four employees, including a replacement for Sarabeth, who would not be returning to work for the rest of her natural life. He also had to deal with the publicity, which couldn’t have been easy. He’d be lucky to make it through security without some lurking news crew trying to get a statement.

I don’t know for sure if Takumi Ito felt guilty about helping to create Wyatt Noone. He already blamed himself for making them hire an accountant, so I imagine, yes, he blamed himself. I never asked. As a wise person once said, “You can only be responsible for your own actions.” I actually think that was someone speaking at an AA meeting. I’m going to miss those.

I pulled up at the drop-off curb and immediately disobeyed the signs by getting out to say good-bye. Ito didn’t hug. I’m quite used to not hugging, given the crowd I hang out with. But he looked like he wanted to say something that couldn’t be said. So I hugged him.

He hugged back, respectfully, then lifted the hatch and removed his briefcase and two pieces of luggage. From out of the briefcase came a gift-wrapped bottle that looked suspiciously like champagne. “I know Mr. Monk doesn’t drink. But this is for you to celebrate. I wish I could stay an extra day and drink it with you.”

“Celebrate what?”

Ito reacted with a blush. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Please take this as a thank-you. Promise me you’ll drink it on a special occasion.” I promised.

After the airport, I wasn’t in the mood to go back to the office. But Monk needed a ride to do some afternoon errands—he’d reminded me twice—and Luther Washington didn’t seem to be available. As I pulled out of the airport and onto the 101, I saw the exit sign for Millbrae, which started me thinking about Henry Pickler and the very first case of Monk and Teeger, Consulting Detectives.

I don’t know what I’d been expecting: to spend our first two weeks without customers, watching Monk vacuum the office all day? Or perhaps the other extreme, having a glamorous widow walk in, asking us to find her husband’s killer, like some old Humphrey Bogart movie? I have to admit, this had been a great start, and we’d made enough to pay our salaries and expenses for another month or two.

But now what? We’d gone almost a full week just mopping up after the Willow and Pickler cases, making statements for the DA, helping with the evidence, dealing with the media blitz. Monk had taken Sarabeth’s arrest pretty well. But at some point, maybe this afternoon, he would rebel again, refusing to come into the office or to take on a new case. I had
to expect this, I knew, although expecting never makes it easier.

I was in my own little world as I pulled into our mini-mall. The first thing I noticed was the lack of any parking spaces. The second thing I noticed was the crowd milling around the opening doorway of Monk and Teeger. The third thing—slow-on-the-uptake Natalie—was the red and white banner draped above the windows:
GRAND OPENING
.

I pulled up, blocking Luther’s black Lincoln, Devlin’s Grand Am, and Stottlemeyer’s Buick. Julie was the first to run outside. “Surprise!” she shouted.

“A surprise grand opening?” I had to laugh.

“It was Adrian’s idea. I told him a surprise was exactly the opposite of a grand opening. But he wouldn’t listen. He said you’d appreciate it.”

“It’s perfect,” I said, still laughing. Leave it to Monk to organize a surprise publicity event where next to no one shows—just a few invited friends who had probably been warned not to stay too long.

“Surprise!” the mini-throng began shouting as soon as everyone recognized the Subaru. They crowded around as I got out, no more than two dozen in total, almost everyone a friend. I reached back in the car for the champagne, suddenly aware of the reason behind Takumi Ito’s embarrassed little gift.

In the hour and a half since I’d left the shop, Luther and Julie, under Monk’s supervision, had put up the sign, filled up exactly ten white helium balloons, and arranged two symmetrical tables of identical munchies. From a distance I guessed them to be sliced Spam squares on Triscuits. It was
as festive an event as possible—for a man who equated the words
festive
and
chaotic
. I was honestly touched.

The captain popped the cork as soon as the bottle was out of my hands and Monk’s therapist, Dr. Bell, handed me a full glass from a previously popped bottle. “Congratulations,” he said with a rueful smile that told me this party had been the topic of a lot of discussion on his couch.

Looking healthier and happier than she had in a while, Lieutenant Devlin stepped forward and toasted. “To Monk and Teeger.” Everyone around me raised a glass and seconded the motion.

“Are you mad at me?” Monk asked. He had been hanging around the rear and only stepped forward after the third toast. “I know you wanted a grand ‘grand opening,’ but this was the best I could do. I am what I am, Natalie.”

“It’s wonderful, Adrian. It is. Thank you.”

“It’s not wonderful.”

“Look, have you ever thrown a party for anyone in your life?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

“Then it’s wonderful. And it’s for our business, which makes it extra wonderful.”

“Julie told me to do it.”

“No, she didn’t.” I was as sure of that as I was of anything. “It was your idea and I’m grateful. It means a lot.”

Monk cricked his head to one side and rolled his shoulders. “No one’s eating the Spam. I need to go push the Spam.”

It’s always a little hard to calm down after being surprised. It took me until my second glass of champagne to start
relaxing and getting into the moment. It was the perfect gathering, I decided. No police commissioner or politicians or cameras. Just a handful of friends and coworkers, the people Monk was least uncomfortable with. I did notice one gate-crasher. Mr. Wittingham of 24-Hour Holiday Pawn held a glass of bubbly in each hand, silent and stone-faced as he toured the premises, paying particular attention to the California State PI license hanging behind my desk.

Even Yuki was there, hard-edged and petite, nibbling at the corner of a Spam Triscuit. “Ambrose sends his best,” she said. “He couldn’t be here because . . . Well, he’s not on his honeymoon and his house isn’t on fire.”

“Understood.”

“So it’s just me. Takumi is on his way back to Tokyo?” she asked, sounding just a little too casual.

“He is,” I said. “Any regrets?”

She bristled. “Any regrets about what? About what happened between Takumi and me? No, because nothing at all happened that night. I dropped him off at the hotel. Any regrets that things didn’t happen between us? No. Any regrets about marrying Ambrose? Absolutely not.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I’m not sure what I meant, come to think of it. But . . . Well, something seemed to be happening with you two.”

“I was practicing being a good hostess,” said Yuki. “A little role playing.”

“So you really didn’t enjoy his company?”

“Just between us?” Yuki took a breath and lowered her voice. “It was tempting, of course. You think about someone handsome and rich and successful, who can actually leave
the house and have dinner or see a movie. But Ambrose has done so much for me. He rescued me. We rescued each other.”

“That’s not a strong basis for a relationship.”

Yuki rolled her eyes. “It’s not just that and you know it. There’s no one else for me. Ambrose and I are damaged in different ways, but in complementary ways, like two jigsaw pieces you force together. They don’t fit at first. But each piece gives a bit and soon they fit perfectly. And nothing else can fit in those notches now, even if you break them apart.”

“I’m not sure if that’s sad or wonderful.”

“It’s wonderful,” she assured me. “Love isn’t about having someone who’s perfect. It’s about having someone who’s perfect for you.” Her smile seemed genuinely happy as she toasted me with the Triscuit and walked away.

“I brought a little something,” came Daniela’s voice right behind my ear.

I spun around, with my first instinct to hide my champagne. She saw my reaction and laughed. “It’s going to be hard getting used to,” I said.

“Me, too. When someone filled your glass, I had to stop myself from yelling.”

“Don’t be mad if I show up to a few more meetings.”

“You’re always welcome.” She held out a small, flat, wrapped package. “Here. Every office should have one.”

“Ah, Daniela, thank you.” I tore open the tasteful beige paper to reveal a sterling silver picture frame with a dollar bill centered under the glass.

“I actually underpaid you by a single dollar, just so I could do this. The first dollar made in your new venture. You hang
it on your wall and every day you’ll be reminded just how far you’ve come.”

I held the framed bill at arm’s length. “It’s perfect. If worse comes to worst, I can spend the dollar and sell the frame.”

“It will never come to that,” she warned. “Don’t be maudlin.”

I was still nursing my second glass, wondering whether to treat myself to a third. Julie was still there, having a laughter-filled conversation about something with Luther. My guess was the two of them were comparing Monk stories, whether it was his behavior in moving vehicles or his supernatural skill. I hoped they weren’t sharing Natalie stories, but that was always possible.

My decision about a third glass of champagne was made for me when Amy Devlin walked up and traded my empty for a new one.

“Is everything back to normal?” I asked.

“What do you mean, normal?”

On the morning after the Zen garden, the media had been full of the story, featuring Lieutenant Devlin’s arrest of the suspect. The police commissioner’s review board was canceled that same morning and Devlin was reinstated to full service as Captain Stottlemeyer’s number two. That’s what I meant by normal. It seemed a reasonable question.

“It’s never normal after something like this,” said Devlin. “People all over town, even officers and FBI agents, still think of me as the idiot who let a triple killer escape. You can’t change that.”

“Yes, you can. People are proved innocent all the time. They redeem themselves.”

“But I did nothing wrong. Look, what do you think when I say the name Joan Crawford? Be honest.”

“Joan Crawford? The actress?” Honestly, I hadn’t thought about Joan Crawford in decades. “I don’t know.
Mommie Dearest
?”

“You see?” I guess I’d proven her point. “Here’s a woman who made maybe a hundred films. She won an Oscar. And the first thing anyone thinks about is a scandalous book written by her adopted daughter that may or may not be true. No wire hangers!”

“That’s a pretty great line,” I had to admit. “They still show the movie on TV.”

“That’s what I’m saying.
Mommie Dearest
is the first thing people think of with Joan Crawford. With Amy Devlin, they think about that news video. Me standing dim-witted outside an empty warehouse. I tell you, Natalie, it’s got me thinking about quitting the force.”

“Quitting?” I was shocked. “Amy, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m not un-serious. If I wouldn’t be letting the captain down, and letting you down and Monk . . .” She lowered her voice even more. “I have family on the Boston force. They’re always looking for tough, experienced minority officers.”

“Minority?”

“I’m a woman.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to go off. You asked if things were back to normal, so I guess the simple answer is no, not quite.”

* * *

By the time Luther and Julie finally left, all traces of the party had been removed. They’d taken the Grand Opening sign
with them, along with the last of the guests. The champagne bottles were in the recycling, and the majority of the Spam Triscuits were in double-wrapped plastic bags at the curb, waiting for tomorrow morning’s pickup.

As expected, Monk was vacuuming the office floor. I was leaning back at my desk, feeling good from the whole experience and idly trying to think of a way to break his vacuuming cycle. If I didn’t, he might go on all night.

“Why do they call it a vacuum cleaner?” I asked, just loud enough to be heard.

“What?” He switched it off.

“It’s not really a vacuum,” I pointed out. “It’s just a fan that pulls air and dirt into a bag. The air comes out the other side, so there’s no vacuum being created at all. They should call it a fan cleaner instead.”

“A fan cleaner? That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s always been called a vacuum. Always. Ever since before the Civil War.”

“They had vacuums in the Civil War?”

“I know that’s surprising, considering that it was such a dirty war.”

“Well, maybe the machines operated on a vacuum system back then, but not now.”

“Natalie!” He pulled the plug from the wall and started wrapping the cord. “You just managed to ruin the whole experience for me. I hope you’re happy.”

It should always be so easy.