Mr. Monk is Cleaned Out Read online

  “Dinner is ready,” I said, standing in the doorway to her room.

  “Can I eat in here?” she asked without looking away from her screen.

  “We need to talk. In person. Face-to-face, the way it was done in the olden days.”

  “Can’t we talk later? I’m busy.”

  “Now,” I said. Call me old-fashioned, but I liked to eat dinner together whenever possible.

  She dragged herself into the kitchen as if she was facing a root canal. Her attitude only made what I intended to say to her that much easier.

  “Thanks for embarrassing me in front of my friends,” Julie said, dropping into her seat at the table. She looked at the pizza in front of her like it was a plate of dog poop.

  “Were they in the room? I didn’t see them there.” I took a bite out of my pizza. I wasn’t going to let her ruin the meal for me.

  “That’s not funny,” she said. “You know they were on the computer. They could see and hear everything. You need to be aware of that when you enter my room.”

  “You do. I don’t,” I said. “If you saw them in person instead of on the computer, I could say whatever I wanted in your room without any risk of embarrassing you.”

  “You could just stay out of my room,” she said. “That would solve the problem.”

  I could still remember how sweet and loving my daughter used to be before her hormones started kicking in. She still could be sweet but it was a rare event. I found myself having to assert my authority more and more and I hated it.

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” I said. “I’m your mother. I could solve the problem by taking that computer away from you.”

  “It’s mine,” she said.

  “But I pay for the electricity it runs on and the Internet connection that allows you to chat with your friends,” I said. “Your computer isn’t going to be much use to you if I shut that stuff off, is it? This brings me to what I wanted to talk with you about. We’re going to have to cut back on our spending around here.”

  “We don’t spend anything as it is,” she said.

  “It may mean doing without some things,” I said. “The police department is in a budget crunch, so they had to let Mr. Monk go.”

  “That’s great,” she said. Suddenly even the pizza looked good to her. She picked up her slice and started eating.

  I found her reaction perplexing.

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  “Last time he got fired you got a Lexus as a company car.”

  Ah, so that was it.

  Julie saw this as a chance to get my crappy Buick.

  She thought Monk’s firing meant he’d get a better- paying job with a big detective agency like last time and that her car problems would be solved.

  She was so wrong, and she deserved the disappointment she was about to experience for being so self-centered. All she was thinking about was her own needs. What about our needs as a family? What about Monk’s needs?

  It occurred to me that teenagers are a lot like Monk. They think the whole world revolves around them, their troubles, and their needs.

  Julie was in for a wake-up call from life tonight.

  “This time it’s different,” I said. “There’s no job waiting for him anywhere. He’s out of work and so am I. All we’ve got to live on is my last paycheck.”

  “So you’re fired, too.”

  “That’s right. No new car. No new anything. Because there’s no money.”

  She set down her pizza and looked at me. I saw some genuine concern in her eyes. For a moment, the sullen, insolent, and hormonal Julie was gone and my loving daughter was back.

  “This is the longest you’ve ever held one job,” she said.

  “It’s also been the most interesting, exciting, surprising, challenging, frustrating, exhausting, and aggravating one I’ve ever had.”

  “And the most dangerous,” Julie said.

  “And the lowest paying,” I said.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Look for something else.”

  “What about Mr. Monk?”

  “I’m going to try to find a job for him that we can do together,” I said. “And if I can’t, then he’s on his own and so am I.”

  “Can he even function without you?”

  “I’ll never abandon him entirely. He will always be a part of our lives, no matter what happens.”

  “Whether we like it or not,” she said.

  “I like it,” I said, surprising myself as much as Julie with the admission. “I don’t think I would have stayed with him this long if I didn’t. I like who I am when I am with him. In fact, it wasn’t until I started working for him that I even knew who that was.”

  “You’re not making any sense at all,” Julie said. Sullen, disapproving, hormonal Julie was back. It was like my daughter had a split personality disorder.

  “What all of this means for you,” I said, “is that you are going to get a job.”

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “You’re going to work this summer. Things are tight around here and you’re expensive to maintain. So you’re going to start paying some of the costs. I’ll pay for food, utilities, medical care, all of the essentials. But if you want to go to the movies, or buy new clothes that you don’t really need, or send twenty-five hundred texts on your cell phone, or download some songs from iTunes, you’re going to pay for it.”

  “With what?”

  “The money you earn,” I said. “Working.”

  She stood up, her face reddening with anger. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s summer,” she said.

  “That’s when kids work,” I said. “That’s why they are called summer jobs.”

  “Maybe that was true in the Dark Ages, but not now.”

  “These are the Dark Ages for us,” I said. “That’s what I am trying to tell you.”

  “You can’t put children to work.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s wrong—that’s why,” she said. “There are laws against it. They’re called child labor laws.”

  “You aren’t a child and, up until now, you haven’t done any labor,” I said. “Tomorrow morning you’re going to start looking for work. This isn’t open to debate. It’s an edict.”

  “What if someone sees me working?” she said. “They’ll think we’re poor.”

  “We are,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  She pointed her finger at me like it was a weapon.

  “This is all your fault. You’ve failed and now I have to suffer for it.”

  “You don’t know anything about suffering,” I said. “But you’re about to learn some things about sacrifice and hard work and what it really means to be an independent adult, which you keep telling me is how you want to be treated. Well, congratulations, sweetheart, your wish just came true.”

  “You are the worst mother ever,” Julie declared.

  She was lashing out, desperately trying to hurt me. She’d have to raise her game to do that.

  “I’ve been wearing that crown for a while now,” I said.

  “You’re out of work, we’re broke, and you can’t support us, so now I’ve got to get a job so we can eat,” she said. “What would Dad think of you right now?”

  Julie stormed out of the kitchen, and it’s a good thing that she did. Because if she’d been near me, I would have slapped her right across the face and earned my crown.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mr. Monk Is Cleaned Out

  Julie didn’t show up for breakfast the next morning. I knew she was up, though, because I could hear her moving around in her room behind her closed door.

  I didn’t know whether she was sulking over having to find work or avoiding me because she regretted the hurtful things that she’d said.

  Either way, I was content just to eat my Grape- Nuts cereal, drink my Trader Joe’s instant coffee, and read the Chronicle withou
t any confrontations or icy silences.

  I opened the paper expecting the lead story to be all about the police closing the Clasker murder case, a clipping I’d hoped to use to get Monk some work. The story was there, but it was buried at the bottom of the page and no reference was made to Monk’s role in solving the case. Stottlemeyer would be hearing from me about that.

  The big story on the front page, and most of the others, was about Bob Sebes and a financial scandal that was being compared to the Bernie Madoff case.

  While Bob was locked up in his mansion, his wife, Anna, ventured out every day, not the least bit intimidated by the paparazzi on the street. She strolled past them to her black Mercedes like a supermodel showcasing the latest designer fashions, which, in fact, she unabashedly was doing, too.

  Anna Sebes looked positively elegant in an old-fashioned, movie star kind of way, evoking Bette Davis or Joan Crawford at their peak. She wore a scarf or a hat, huge dark sunglasses, and her signature gloves, which hid her arthritis-gnarled hands.

  “My husband is under arrest,” she said to reporters. “Not me. Why should I stay locked up in that dreary house? I’m not accused of any wrongdoing.”

  Maybe so, but prosecutors were moving fast to freeze her assets, claiming they were the spoils of her husband’s swindles. In fact, their yacht was put in her name and $10 million had been transferred to her personal account only days before the Ponzi scheme was revealed.

  Along with the news stories, there was a profile of Bob and Anna Sebes’ long marriage, their active roles in local charities, and his recent near-death experience from an allergic reaction to alcohol while partying on his yacht on the high seas, hundreds of miles from a hospital.

  I guess that story was meant to humanize the Sebeses, but it didn’t stir any sympathy for them with me and I’m sure it didn’t with anybody else.

  My hunger for salacious gossip and scandal now sated, I finished my breakfast, left the Classifieds section open to the jobs page for Julie, and headed to Monk’s place. I brought my laptop along with me so I could search the Internet for a job for us.

  I was walking up to Monk’s door when my cell phone rang. It was Ted Drysdale, the manager of my bank.

  Teddy and I had dated briefly a few years back and he was very sweet, but we just didn’t click as a couple. Neither one of us was hurt in the breakup and he’d sort of watched over me ever since, turning a blind eye if I occasionally had overdrafts and waiving the late fees if my mortgage payments were tardy.

  After a few pleasantries, he said, “I’m sorry to call you so early, but I wanted you to know that there’s a problem with your checking account.”

  “Don’t worry about the low balance, Teddy. There won’t be any overdrafts. I deposited my paycheck yesterday.”

  “That’s what I’m calling about. It bounced.”

  “My check from Adrian Monk? Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am. He has the only checks I’ve ever seen where all the numbers are even, including the check number, the account number, and the payment amount. So don’t write any checks, use your credit card.”

  I already owed so much on my credit card that the interest charges alone had long since surpassed the principal debt.

  “Thanks, Teddy. I appreciate it,” I said. “I owe you coffee at McDonald’s.”

  “Did Starbucks close?”

  “No, I just can’t afford it anymore.”

  I hung up and took a few deep breaths to calm myself before seeing Monk. I didn’t want to march in angry and say something I might regret. It might not be his fault. There could be a perfectly innocent, reasonable explanation for Monk writing me a bad check. But if there wasn’t, he wouldn’t have to worry about dying from dehydration. I’d kill him with my bare hands.

  I opened the door and walked in, announcing myself as I always did.

  “It’s me, Mr. Monk,” I said.

  Monk was in the kitchen cleaning his toothbrush with boiling water, part of his morning ritual, but he was mewling while he did it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I had to use four teaspoons of Summit Creek to clean my toothbrush,” he said. “That puts me four teaspoons closer to death.”

  “Before you die, I’d like you to pay me for last month’s work.”

  “I did,” Monk said. “On my deathbed.”

  “You were on the couch.”

  “Aha!” he said, pointing his finger at me accusingly, as if I was a murderer he’d just caught in an incriminating slip of the lip. “So you know I already wrote a check. You are trying to take advantage of my dehydration to double dip. That’s a betrayal of my trust and tantamount to embezzlement. Natalie, I am surprised at you.”

  I could play the guilt game, too.

  “And I’m hurt that you’d even think for a millisecond that I would take advantage of you that way,” I said. “How could you after all these years and everything we’ve been through together? You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Then why do you want me to pay you twice?”

  “Because the check you wrote me yesterday bounced.”

  “How could it bounce?”

  “Either you called the bank and canceled payment”—which was what I suspected he did—“or you don’t have enough funds in your account to cover the check.”

  “I didn’t call the bank and I have plenty of money in my account,” he said. Then he caught himself. “By plenty, I mean barely enough to survive.”

  “Then there’s a problem,” I said. “And we’re going to the bank right now to solve it.”

  Carly Tran frowned at her computer.

  She was a young, very energetic woman who’d introduced herself to us as our personal banking officer. Monk explained to her that a check that he’d written had bounced even though there was an adequate, if not sizable, amount of money in his account. She gave us a big smile and said it would be her pleasure to take care of the matter.

  Now she was frowning. I took that as a bad sign.

  “I’m afraid that your current account balance is zero,” she said, turning the screen around in case Monk didn’t take her word for it.

  “How can that be?” he asked.

  “On the first even-numbered business day of each month for the last several years, you received a regular transfer from your investment manager into your checking account,” she said. “That transfer didn’t occur for the last three months, so your funds were depleted.”

  I turned to Monk. “You have an investment manager?”

  “Yes,” Monk said. “He also pays some of my recurring bills for me, like my rent, utilities, that sort of thing.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I don’t discuss my personal finances with my underlings.”

  “We need to talk to this guy,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “His name is Bob Sebes,” Monk said.

  Carly Tran stared at him in shock. So did I. Monk looked between us both and smiled.

  “Impressed, aren’t you?” Monk said, clearly pleased with himself. “You didn’t think I moved in those rarified circles. Not everyone is invited to participate in the Reinier Fund. Just special people like me.”

  Carly and I shared a look and then I faced Monk.

  “You honestly don’t know?” I said.

  “Don’t know what?” Monk said.

  “That Bob Sebes was arrested for orchestrating one of the largest frauds in American history.”

  “You must be mistaking him for someone else,” Monk said. “Bob Sebes is a highly respected member of the financial community and an absolute genius with numbers. He’s delivered a consistent twelve percent return with his Reinier Fund for years.”

  “It was a lie. There were no investments,” I said. “It was a massive Ponzi scheme. He used the money from new investors to pay dividends to his earlier ones. It all fell apart when the economy tanked and people started withdrawing their money. There’s two billion dollars missing.”

/>   “Pyramid schemes always fail—it’s inevitable. Bob Sebes is far too smart for that.” Monk shook his head and glanced at Carly. “You’re a financial professional—you tell her.”

  “She’s right, Mr. Monk. It’s been all over the news. Private individuals, charities, universities, and banks all over the world were swindled by him, including ours,” Carly said. “Have you been in seclusion somewhere?”

  “No more than usual,” Monk said.

  “How much of your money did he have?” I asked.

  “All of it,” Monk replied.

  Carly cleared her throat. “Obviously, you shouldn’t write any more checks until you have replenished your checking account. But under the circumstances, I’m afraid we will have to put a ten-day hold on any deposits you make to this account for the time being.” She smiled again. “Is there anything else I can do to serve you today?”

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  I don’t know what I was thanking her for. She’d only given us bad news and placed new restrictions on his account.

  “Please feel free to stay here as long as you like.” She got up from her desk and walked away to give us some privacy.

  Monk shook his head. “There must be some kind of mistake. Bob Sebes would never do something like this to me.”

  “Why did you give him your money?”

  “For all the right reasons. I was impressed by the Reinier Fund’s steady, even returns and I trusted his good name.”

  “His good name? What do you know about high finance and hedge funds?”

  “Nothing,” Monk said.

  “So why did his name mean anything to you?”

  And then it hit me. He didn’t know anything about Sebes’ reputation. “Oh my God. You mean his ‘good name’ literally, don’t you? I can’t believe it. You invested with him because his name and the name of his fund are palindromes, the same spelling forward and backward.”