Mr. Monk on Patrol (14 page)

“Bottled water happens to be Mr. Monk’s favorite drink,” I said.

“You’re joking,” she said, following my gaze.

“Nope,” I said. “In fact, he’s a bottled water connoisseur. He can sip a glass and tell you how old the water is, where it came from, and the minerals that it contains.”

“Incredible,” she said.

Monk stopped in front of us and glowered at Morse. “Do you have a twin sister?”

“I’m an only child,” Morse said.

“Are you having an extramarital sex affair with Joel Goldman?”

“Of course not,” she said. “How can you even ask me a question as rude as that?”

“Because anyone who washes herself with poop is clinically insane, has no moral or ethical scruples, and wouldn’t think twice about committing adultery or killing another human being.”

“You may be impolite but at least you’re honest,” she said. “I’m going to change your mind about me yet, Adrian.”

“Not as long as you keep selling excrement.”

“I’d like to invite both of you to my house for dinner tomorrow night,” she said.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” I said.

“I promise that nothing on the menu will be predigested,” she said.

“Gee, that sounds enticing,” Monk said. “But I’d rather have dinner with Charles Manson than break bread with you, and by ‘break,’ of course, I mean cut into even halves.”

“You are adorable,” she said.

“You are reprehensible,” he said.

I spoke up. “All this talk of food reminds me that I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I don’t think Mr. Monk has, either. So if you’ll excuse us, Ellen, I think we’ll head for the nearest set of Golden Arches that we can find.”

I opened the car door for Monk and practically shoved him inside, then got in myself and drove us away. My stomach growled so loudly it sounded like a small animal was in the car with us. Apparently, drinking a cup of hot civet poop hadn’t diminished my appetite. If anything, it had stimulated it.

“Was anything missing in the house?” I asked.

“It appears some jewelry and cash were taken,” Monk said. “It’s consistent with the previous burglaries.”

“But something isn’t sitting right with you.”

“It’s her,” Monk said.

“I don’t think that she’s been burglarizing houses and that Pamela Goldman caught her in the act and was killed for it.”

“Why not?”

“Ellen Morse would have to be awfully stupid to burglarize her next-door neighbor’s house.”

“Maybe she did it because she’s fiendishly clever. She anticipated that someone like you would think that she’d be too smart to burglarize her own neighbor and would rule her out as a suspect. It’s a shrewd ploy and you’re falling for it.”

“You’re forgetting that she has an alibi. She was seen in her store at the time of the murder.”

Monk waved it off. “I’ve heard better.”

I sighed because I knew what was coming and was already tired of it. Actually, I was just plain exhausted all the way around.

“You’re going to mention the guy in outer space again, aren’t you?”

“And the one in the coma. Those were top-notch, ironclad alibis, a lot more clever and challenging to crack than ‘I was in my store all day selling excrement.’”

“Okay, let’s say she was able to be in two places at once.”

“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day.”

“When did she burglarize the other house today?”

“Which other house?”

“David and Heather McAfee’s. The one where you found the washer and the lint. Are you suggesting that after we left her store, Morse went out and immediately burglarized the McAfee house and then hit the Goldman place a couple of hours later?”

“Why not?”

“She’d have to be crazy,” I said.

Monk gave me a look. “I think we’ve clearly established that fact beyond any reasonable doubt.”

I found a McDonald’s and parked out front. I knew
Monk would like the restaurant because it served the same items, in the same way, with exactly the same flavor, no matter which location you visited. He liked consistency.

The only thing that was different was the layout of each individual restaurant, but as disconcerting as that was, he could always depend on them being impeccably clean inside. The place reeked of cleaning supplies and, unfortunately, most of the food tasted like it as well.

I ordered two Big Macs, french fries, and a Coke for myself and got Monk a Big Mac minus the bun (he hated the “chaos of sesame seeds”) and not assembled. He preferred all the ingredients boxed separately. I also got him an order of french fries, which I knew he would trim with his knife and fork so all the pieces were the same size.

For a beverage, he had one of the bottles of Fiji water I kept in my ridiculously large purse, the kind mothers with newborns carry around to lug all of their baby stuff.

The fact was, I had a lot of the same things in my purse that those mothers have in theirs. Disinfectant wipes, baggies, and even some snacks—little packets of Wheat Thins that I’d forgotten all about until that moment. I could have helped myself to Monk’s snacks instead of starving all day.

We took our food to a booth and ate in silence, mostly because I was too intent on devouring my meal. I ate it so fast that I didn’t even taste it, which was probably a good thing, considering where we were dining.

Monk ate carefully and methodically with his knife and fork, as if performing surgery on the food rather than eating it. I could see that the lack of sleep, lack of food, and the stress of his long day were beginning to
take their toll on him. He looked pale, there were dark circles under his eyes, and he was moving more slowly than usual.

“What did you do while I took my nap?” I asked.

“I read through all the files on the burglaries and looked for patterns and inconsistencies.”

“What did you find?”

“That I couldn’t stop thinking about Ellen Morse,” Monk said. “It just shows how corrupt this city really was that she was allowed to open that business on their main street. What I can’t understand is why Randy has gone along with it.”

“See, this is exactly what I warned you about. You’re letting your revulsion of Ellen Morse’s business cloud your judgment. You aren’t going to be able to think clearly, or solve crimes, as long as she’s on your mind.”

“Unless she’s guilty.”

“But what if she’s not? Then your inability to stop thinking about her might give a killer the opportunity to get away with murder and cause Randy to lose his job.”

“You’re right,” Monk said.

“I know I am.”

“She has to go.”

“That’s not what I was getting at.”

“We have to run her out of town for the good of the community,” Monk said. “Unless I can arrest her for burglary and murder first.”

“I don’t think you’re getting my point.”

Monk yawned. “But all of that will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m too tired to restore the balance of the universe tonight. Do you mind if we go back to the hotel?”

“Not at all,” I said.

We dropped the police car at the station. It was a
nice night and we walked to the Claremont Hotel in comfortable silence.

We said our good nights and went up to our rooms.

The effects of the flight, the spotty bits of sleep since then, the periodic jolts of caffeine and adrenaline in between, and the junk food binge all worked together to completely screw up my internal clock and my metabolism.

I was dead tired yet wide-awake.

I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it wasn’t.

My eyes burned and my body was exhausted but my mind was too jacked up to sleep. I could almost hear the neurons firing in my skull.

I tossed and turned in bed in my tank top and panties for what felt like an eternity before I finally gave up and turned on the TV, flipping the channels through endless reruns of various versions of
CSI
and
Law & Order
, feeling nostalgic for the time when there used to be other shows on the air besides those two and their procedural, character-free progeny.

But somehow the kaleidoscope of
CSI
and
Law & Order
had a hypnotic effect on me and after a time—it could have been minutes or hours—I found myself locked in a strange trance, floating somewhere between consciousness and sleep, caught in a seemingly endless loop of heavy-headed David Caruso whipping off his sunglasses and Sam Waterston shaking his shar-pei face in dour disapproval.

And I might have stayed that way forever, my eyes wide, my jaw hanging open, drool running down my chin, if not for the rainstorm.

In my room
.

I didn’t even hear the explosion, or feel the fire, that made the sprinklers in the ceiling go off.

I just felt the cold water, which snapped me out of my stupor and into another one: several long seconds of extreme disorientation as I tried to figure out who I was, where I was, why it was raining indoors, and what that shrill alarm was that was making my ears hurt.

And then it all clicked.

Fire
.

And then something else clicked.

Monk
.

I threw off the sheets, ran to my door, and opened it. The hallway was thick with smoke and as I turned toward Monk’s room, I saw fire licking out of what remained of his door.

Oh my God, no!

I ran in terror to his room. I was almost there when the door to the hotel room between his and mine flew open, releasing a blast of hot air, and Monk tumbled out fully dressed and wide-eyed, soaking wet and shaken, flames nipping after him like angry dogs.

That’s when I remembered.…

He had two rooms
.

Without saying a word, I grabbed his hand and ran with him to the stairwell.

We rushed down the two flights as fast as we could and out the emergency exit to the parking lot, where a dozen other soaked hotel guests had already gathered and stood staring at the flames coming out of the windows of what had been Monk’s rooms.

He looked at me. “I definitely would not recommend this hotel to other travelers.”

The first police officers to arrive, our friends Walter Woodlake and Raymond Lindero, were on the scene moments later, followed in short order by the fire trucks, an ambulance, and Randy Disher.

Monk covered me with his jacket, heavy and soaked with water, less out of courtesy than his own extreme discomfort at my near-nakedness.

Officer Lindero didn’t have a problem with it, though. He couldn’t resist leering at me and making a comment before running into the hotel with Officer Woodlake to help evacuate the guests.

“Last night you were wrestling women, tonight it’s the wet T-shirt follies. What’s it going be tomorrow? You’re like a one-woman Pussycat Lounge.”

My response was a profanity that amused the officers and shocked Monk, who asked, “Are you suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder?”

I turned to him.

“I was awakened last night by an intruder and tonight by a fire and both times I had to endure obnoxious
remarks from those two police officers while I was half-naked. How do you think I should have responded?”

“Those remarks could have been avoided if you hadn’t gone to bed in an indecent state.”

“This is how I sleep,” I said.

“What you do in the privacy of your home is one thing, and still something you should reconsider, but when you’re traveling, you need to change your behavior.”

“I am not going to go to bed fully dressed,” I said.

“Then you have no reason to complain,” he said. “If you dress like a stripper, you will be treated like one.”

“Thanks for the understanding,” I said.

The paramedics began handing out blankets to all of the drenched and shivering hotel guests in the parking lot. I gladly took one and gave Monk his jacket back.

Because the fire department got there so quickly, they were able to quash the flames within minutes and limit the actual fire damage to the rooms that Monk had occupied. But the water and smoke damage was extensive. Nobody would be sleeping in that wing of the hotel for a while.

Monk and I leaned on the hood of a police car for the next hour or so and watched the firemen mop up as the officers took statements from the hotel guests.

Disher huddled with the fire chief, presumably getting briefed on the details of the fire. There was no question that the blaze was intentional or who was supposed to get incinerated.

We’d had a very hectic twenty hours, causing far more trouble for Randy than we’d resolved. I’m sure Randy was thinking the same thing and asking himself whether it had been such a great idea to invite us to Summit after all.

Sharona drove up and rushed over to us carrying a laundry bag over her shoulder.

“Are you both okay?” she asked.

“We’re wet, but we’re fine,” I said.

“I brought you some clothes,” she said, handing me the bag. “They might not fit just right, but they’re better than nothing.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I am not wearing someone else’s clothes,” Monk said.

Sharona glared at him. “They’re clean, Adrian.”

“Not if someone else has been wearing them.”