Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse Page 8

  “I had a great time,” I said. “A really, really great night.”

  “So did I,” Joe replied. “I hope we can do this again sometime soon.”

  I wasn’t going to leave him hanging. Or myself. “When are you off duty again?”

  He gave me a big smile. “Wednesday.”

  “It’s a date,” I said. “Same time?”

  “Same time.” He gave me a kiss, a little friendlier than the one I had given him.

  I unlocked the door and went inside. I immediately froze. Something wasn’t right. I mean, I was definitely in my house—these were my things—but there was something wrong. Off-kilter. Weird. Like I’d stepped through the door into an alternate universe. It was as if I weren’t standing in my house, but in a brilliant re-creation, like a movie set.

  I blinked hard and looked around again. What was it that was giving me that feeling of being in another dimension?

  Monk came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk. “Did you enjoy your date?”

  “He’s a very sweet man,” I said.

  I told Monk the story about the firehouse and the train robber and the reasons Joe thought Gregorio Dumas was lying about seeing a fireman at the station. Monk mulled all of that for a moment, working out that nonexistent kink in his neck.

  “How did things go tonight with you and Julie?” I asked.

  “We worked the LEGOs for a while.”

  Monk gestured to the kitchen. I looked past him and saw a massive and elaborate LEGO castle, complete with drawbridge, turrets, and a moat, erected on our table. It would have taken me a year to build that.

  “She’s got the touch,” he said proudly.

  “Really?”

  “With the right training and lots of practice, I think she could become a LEGO master.”

  “Like yourself.”

  “I don’t like to brag.”

  “So what did you do with the rest of your evening?” I asked, still feeling unsettled and off balance.

  Monk shrugged. “I straightened up a little bit.”

  So that was it.

  I looked around the room again and saw what I’d only registered unconsciously before. Monk had done exactly what he said: He’d literally straightened the place. He must have taken a T square and a level to everything in the house. All my stuff was still there, only it had been adjusted. Aligned. The furniture was centered and each piece was repositioned at uniform, measured distances from the others. All the pictures on the wall had been rehung, so that the spaces between them were consistent. The knickknacks and framed photos on the tables and shelves were grouped by height and shape and spaced evenly apart. The magazines were arranged by name and stacked chronologically. He’d reorganized my books alphabetically, by size, and, for all I knew, by copyright date as well.

  The living room—and I assumed the entire house—was clean, organized, and utterly sterile. It looked like a model home. I hated it.

  “Mr. Monk, everything in here is level and centered and perfectly organized.”

  “Thank you.” He beamed with pride, which only frustrated and infuriated me more.

  “No, it’s wrong. Don’t you see? You’ve taken all the personality and charm out of my house.”

  “Everything is still here,” Monk said. “Except the dirt, the dust, and half a grilled cheese sandwich I found under the couch.”

  “But there’s no more clutter,” I said. “It looks like robots live here.”

  “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “People live here, Mr. Monk. Eight years of marriage, twelve years of parenting, a mother and daughter living together; that all leaves a trail. I like that trail. It comforts me. It’s the muddled arrangement of photos on the shelf, the half-read book left open on the arm of a chair, and yes, even the forgotten grilled cheese sandwich. Clutter and disorganization, those are signs of life. It is life.”

  “Not mine,” he said.

  Those two words carried an infinite sadness that made me ache and, for a moment, forget my own frustration and think about his.

  Monk’s life was a constant pursuit of order. I’m sure that’s why he became a detective and why he’s so good at solving murders. He notices all the things that don’t fit as they should and puts them into their proper places, creating a solution. Restoring order.

  The only mystery he hasn’t been able to solve is the one at the heart of his own personal disorder.

  The murder of his wife.

  Everything else he did, like organizing my house or making sure my daughter’s shoelaces were even, was a poor substitute for the perfect order he lost with Trudy. That could never be restored.

  But I couldn’t say all that to him. Instead I took his hand in mine.

  “Your life is a lot messier than you think. I’m a big mess and I’m part of it, aren’t I?”

  “You and Julie,” Monk said. “And I’m glad you are.”

  “Me, too, Mr. Monk.”

  “Actually, I’ve loosened up quite a bit.”

  “You have?”

  “I haven’t always been the easygoing guy you know today,” Monk said. “There was a time when I was very uptight.”

  “I can’t imagine that.” I gave his hand a squeeze and let go. “Please don’t straighten up my house anymore.”

  He nodded.

  “Good night, Mr. Monk.”

  “Good night, Natalie.”

  I went to my room. It wasn’t until I was in bed, and nearly asleep, that I realized that I’d held his hand and he didn’t ask for a wipe. Even if he sanitized his hands later, at least he didn’t do it in front of me. That had to mean something, and whatever it was, I think it was something good.

  9

  Mr. Monk and the Thirtieth Floor

  Straightening up the house must have exhausted Monk because on Monday morning Julie woke up before he did and managed to beat him to the bathroom by a few seconds. They nearly collided at the door at six o’clock.

  “I need to use the bathroom first,” Monk said.

  “Is it number one or number two?”

  “I think I have a constitutional right not to have to answer that question.”

  “I need to know how long you’re going to be,” Julie said, holding the door possessively with one hand, her school clothes draped over her arm.

  “No longer than usual.”

  “I can’t wait that long,” Julie said. “School starts at eight fifteen, not noon.”

  She closed the door on him. He stared at the door for a moment, then looked at me. I was standing outside my bedroom, not bothering to hide my amusement.

  “Does she have to use the bathroom so often?” Monk said.

  “Would you prefer she didn’t bathe at all?”

  “But it was ready for me. I cleaned it last night.”

  “You cleaned everything last night,” I said, and padded past him into the kitchen.

  The LEGO castle was gone. Monk must have dismantled it and put all the pieces back in their proper boxes before he went to bed. No wonder he’d overslept. I opened the pantry to get myself a bagel and noticed that Monk had rearranged all the boxed and canned goods by food group and expiration date.

  Monk came in and reached past me for his box of Chex. The cereal was made up of almost perfect squares of shredded wheat. The imperfect squares would be sorted out of his bowl before he poured in the milk.

  I opened the cupboard to get him a bowl and was shocked to find it empty. There wasn’t a single bowl, plate, or dish inside, just barren shelves.

  I turned to look at Monk, who was sitting at the table carefully selecting Chex one at a time from the box and eating them.

  “What happened to all my dishes?”

  He wouldn’t look up at me, pretending instead to concentrate on the difficult task of selecting Chex. “It’s a little complicated.”

  “I don’t see the complication, Mr. Monk. I had dishes last night and now I don’t. Where are they?”

  “You had seven bowls, which
isn’t right. You should have six or eight, but not seven. So one bowl obviously needed to go. But you had eight plates. You can see the problem.”

  “I can see that I don’t have any dishes; that’s the problem.”

  “Everyone knows you can’t have six bowls and eight plates, so two plates had to go. But then I noticed that some of the bowls and plates were chipped, and not all of them in the same places. You had a matching set of dishes that didn’t match at all. I was faced with a situation that was spiraling out of control into total chaos. The only reasonable thing to do was to get rid of them all.”

  Monk looked up at me then, clearly expecting sympathy and understanding. He sure as hell wasn’t going to get it from me.

  “Reasonable? You call throwing out all of my dishes reasonable?”

  “ ‘Thoughtful,’ ‘conscientious,’ and ‘responsible’ also came to mind,” Monk said. “But I thought ‘reasonable’ said it best.”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do today before you solve any murders or catch any bad guys,” I said. “As soon as you are showered and dressed, we’re going to Pottery Barn and you’re going to buy me a new set of dishes, or you can eat your next meal in this house off the floor.”

  I reached for the silverware drawer for a knife to cut my bagel, but I stopped before opening it.

  “Do I want to open this drawer?” I asked.

  “It depends what you’re looking for.”

  “A knife would be nice,” I said. “Actually, how about any silverware at all?”

  Monk shifted in his chair. “You don’t want to open the drawer.”

  “You can add silverware to the list of things you’re buying me today,” I said, and went to the refrigerator. I picked up the carton of orange juice and took a drink from it.

  Monk cringed, as I knew he would. “You really shouldn’t drink from the carton.”

  “Fine.” I turned and pinned him with the coldest, cruelest, most accusatory glare I could muster. “Do I still own a glass I can drink from instead?”

  He shifted in his seat.

  “I didn’t think so.” I took the carton with me and slammed the refrigerator door shut. “I hope your credit card is paid up, Mr. Monk, because it’s going to get a real workout today.”

  I stomped back to my bedroom with my bagel and orange juice and left Monk alone in my dish-less, knifeless, cupless kitchen.

  The streets were damp, and fog completely obscured the skyline on that Monday morning, but the city was bustling. The downtown sidewalks were jammed with young professionals wearing the latest fashion accessory—something electronic in the ear.

  There wasn’t a naked ear in sight.

  Everyone except us seemed to be wearing either a pair of white iPod earphones or one of those Bluetooth cell phone units that looked like the radio Q-tip that stuck out of Lieutenant Uhura’s ear on the original Star Trek.

  It was after twelve by the time we finished shopping for dishes, silverware, and glasses at Pottery Barn.

  I’ll never admit this to Monk, but once I got past my initial anger, I was glad he threw my stuff out. I’d been ashamed to have people over to eat because we had chipped dishes and silverware that had been mangled in the disposal. But I couldn’t afford to replace any of it. Now Monk was buying me new kitchenware, and I was thrilled. (It wasn’t until he suggested we browse the cookware that I discovered he’d thrown out my pots and pans, too.) Here’s how awful I am: I actually began to toy with the idea of “accidentally” letting him see the mess in my closet so he’d buy me a new wardrobe, too.

  To make shopping as painless as possible for both of us, I picked solid colors for the dishes and let him open all the boxes in the store to inspect each piece for imperfections. Every so often while this was going on, I’d feel a pang of guilt, like I was taking advantage of him or something. But then I’d remind myself that he was the one who went into my kitchen and threw out all of my dishes. And then my anger would come back and beat the crap out of my guilt and I was fine with myself all over again.

  We’d just finished loading up the back of my Cherokee with all my goodies when Stottlemeyer called. The captain was on his way to interview Lucas Breen, the developer who planned to demolish Esther Stoval’s block, and asked if we wanted to join him. We did.

  Breen Development Corporation was in a thirty-five-story Rubik’s Cube that had shouldered its way between two other buildings in the Financial District for a view of the bay. The lobby was a glass atrium that had its own florist, chocolatier, and a small outpost of the Boudin Bakery, which makes the best sourdough bread in the city, maybe even the world.

  Stottlemeyer, sipping a cup of coffee from Boudin, was waiting for us in front of Flo’s Floral Designs. The smell of fresh sourdough was making me swoon.

  “Morning, Natalie. Monk. I heard you talked to everybody in Esther’s neighborhood. You come up with any clues we missed?”

  “No,” Monk said.

  “That’s depressing,” Stottlemeyer said. “What about your other case, the one with the dog; how’s that going?”

  “I think I’m on to something,” Monk asked.

  That was news to me. But Monk doesn’t always share with me what’s going on in his mind, and, I have to say, most of time I’m deeply thankful for that.

  “Want to trade cases?” Stottlemeyer said.

  “I don’t think so,” Monk said. “Though you could do me a favor. Could you ask Lieutenant Disher to find out everything he can about a notorious robber named Roderick Turlock?”

  “It’s the least I can do. What’s Turlock notorious for?”

  “Robbing trains,” I said.

  “Do people still do that?”

  I didn’t think it would help our cause to mention that Turlock was captured in 1906. Apparently Monk agreed with me, since we both treated Stottlemeyer’s question as a rhetorical one. We must have been right, because Stottlemeyer didn’t wait for an answer.

  “So, Monk, you ready for this?” Stottlemeyer tipped his head up.

  Monk looked up, searching for whatever it was the captain was talking about. “For what?”

  “To see Breen,” Stottlemeyer said. “He’s a rich, powerful man. He’s not going to appreciate either one of us suggesting he might have been involved in Esther Stoval’s murder.”

  “He’s up there?”

  “Thirtieth floor,” he said. “Rich guys love to look down on everybody.”

  Stottlemeyer approached the security guard, a beefy guy with a boxer’s nose who manned a marble-topped counter in front of the elevators. Stottlemeyer flashed his badge, introduced us, and said we were there to see Lucas Breen. The guard called up to Breen’s office, then nodded to the captain.

  “Mr. Breen will see you now,” the guard said.

  “Great,” Monk said. “When’s he coming down?”

  “He’s not,” Stottlemeyer said. “We’re going up.”

  “It would be better if he came down.”

  Stottlemeyer groaned and turned to the guard. “Could you ask Mr. Breen if he’d mind meeting us for a cup of coffee in the lobby? My treat.”

  The guard made the call, spoke for a moment, then hung up. “Mr. Breen is very busy and can’t leave the office at this time. If you want to see him, you need to go to his office.”

  “I tried, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said. “So let’s go.”

  We headed for the elevators, but Monk dragged behind. “I have an idea. Let’s take the stairs.”

  “Thirty floors?” I said.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “It’ll be fatal,” Stottlemeyer said. “I can talk to Breen without you. You really don’t need to be there.”

  “I want to be there,” Monk said.

  “I’m taking the elevator,” Stottlemeyer said. “Are you coming or not?”

  I looked at Monk. He looked at the elevator, took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  The three of us got into the elevator. Stottlemeyer hit
the button for the thirtieth floor. The doors closed. Monk covered his finger with his sleeve and hit the button for the second floor. And then the fourth. And then the sixth. He hit the button for every other floor all the way up to the thirtieth.

  Stottlemeyer rolled his eyes and sighed.

  The instant the doors opened on the second floor, Monk stepped out, took several deep breaths, then came back in.

  “I think this is going very well,” he said.

  On the fourth floor he burst out with a cry, startling the people in the waiting room at the Crocker Advertising Agency.

  “It’s a living hell,” he told them.

  Monk took several hungry breaths of air and then leaped back into the elevator as if he were plunging into deep water.

  The instant the elevator reached the sixth floor, he threw himself out into the lobby of Ernst, Throck, and Fillburton, Attorneys at Law, and screamed something about the “injustice and inhumanity” of it all.

  By the eighth, Stottlemeyer and I were resigned to our fate, leaning against the handrails and doing our best to relax. We played Tetris on Stottlemeyer’s cell phone screen while Monk paced, and groaned, and cried, and pulled at the imaginary leeches in his hair.

  Stopping at every other floor, it took us forty minutes to reach Breen’s office on the thirtieth. I won six games and Stottlemeyer won eight, but he’s had a lot more practice, working on his technique during stakeouts. When the elevator doors opened, Monk staggered out, gasping for air, his face drenched with sweat, and collapsed onto the black leather couch in the waiting room.

  “Sweet Mother of God,” he whined. “It’s finally over.”

  I gave him a bottle of Sierra Springs water from my purse—which, by the way, is about the size of the baby bag I lugged around when Julie was an infant. It’s full of water, Wet Ones, Baggies, even some Wheat Thins in case he gets hungry. The only thing I’m not carrying with me that I carried then are diapers.

  Stottlemeyer went up to the receptionist, a disarmingly attractive Asian woman who sat behind a sweeping desk that made her look like the anchorwoman on the eleven-o’clock news. Except that the breathtaking view of the city behind her wasn’t a backdrop; it was the real thing.