Mr. Monk on Patrol (28 page)

Sadness is its own kind of tension and I blasted my way through that, too.

After using enough ammo to repel a commie invasion, we stopped at Evie’s favorite diner, a place that served massive steaks and was frequented by truckers, all of whom seemed to know her and treat her like one of their own.

All in all, it was a fun night and I was grateful to Evie for inviting me.

The only one in the house when I got back was Sharona. She made me a cup of tea and we sat down at the kitchen table together.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Randy is still at the office. I’m lucky he even manages to come home to sleep with all the work he’s got now.”

“And Mr. Monk?”

She shrugged. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since this morning.”

I glanced at my watch. It was after ten p.m. Sharona shook her head and smiled at me over her mug of tea.

“What?” I said. “I’m worried about him, that’s all.”

“He’s not a kid, Natalie. And from what I’ve seen, he’s more capable now of taking care of himself than he’s ever been since the day I met him.”

“He’s still got his problems,” I said.

“Don’t we all,” she said. “But Adrian seems to have
a grip on most of his now. He hasn’t called his shrink once since he got here.”

I hadn’t noticed that until she mentioned it. Yet another milestone reached on this trip.

“A lot has certainly changed for Mr. Monk in the last year or so, especially since he finally solved Trudy’s murder. He says his life is more balanced now. Even his brother, Ambrose, has made some significant changes in his life. He’s got an assistant of his own now. She lives with him.”

“How live-in is she?”

“Same bed live-in,” I said.

“Wow. How has Adrian handled that?”

“Not well,” I said. “It doesn’t help that Yuki’s tattooed and an ex-con. Of course, that was before he met Ellen Morse. If he can accept a woman who sells poop for a living, maybe he’ll be more open-minded about Yuki, too.”

“With all this change going on, do you ever worry that Adrian may stop needing an assistant?”

“It never occurred to me,” I said.

“At least now you know you’ve got other options if that day comes.”

“I wasn’t looking for a backup plan.”

“Well, you’ve obviously been looking for something,” Sharona said. “And I think you’ve finally found it. You seem to like being a cop.”

“It’s only been two days and the reality of it hasn’t sunk in yet, especially since I’m away from home. It feels more like a role-playing game than reality.”

“Even in the mini-mart?”

“Especially then,” I said. “I don’t know how I’ll feel about all this when I get back to San Francisco.”

“Who says you have to go back?”

I was about to press Sharona on what she meant by that when Monk came in the front door.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“I had dinner with Ellen,” he said, trying very hard to be matter-of-fact about it and failing.

“You were alone with a woman?” Sharona said.

“I’m alone with Natalie all the time,” Monk said.

“It’s not the same thing and you know it, Adrian. This was a date.”

“It was a meal,” Monk said. “Not a date.”

“How was it arranged?”

“I happened to run into Ellen on the street as she happened to be walking home and since we happened to be in front of a restaurant when our paths intersected, we decided to dine together.”

“That’s a lot of happenings,” I said. “So what happened over dinner?”

“She talked about her time among the savages in Africa and I talked about my time among the savages in San Francisco.”

“What time was that?” Sharona asked.

“From the day I moved out of our family home in Tewksbury to the moment that I was drugged and put on a plane to New Jersey.”

“Then you should be grateful that I rescued you,” Sharona said.

“Where do things stand now between you and Ellen?” I asked.

“She’s a fine woman, but it’s hard to ignore the elephant in the room.”

“You mean the elephant droppings,” Sharona said.

Monk cringed. “I wish I could convince her to give up her crusade to legitimize excrement.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just accepted it?” I said.
“Or agreed to disagree? Compromise is part of any successful relationship.”

“We don’t have a relationship,” Monk said. “It was just dinner.”

“No, it wasn’t. You didn’t just run into her by accident, you planned it. You made sure you were walking in front of the restaurant at the same time that she’d be passing it on her way home. It’s already a relationship, Mr. Monk. The only question is what kind it’s going to be and if it’s going to last.”

He rolled his shoulders and tipped his head from side to side. “She spends her day in a room full of poop.”

“And her nights alone in her perfect home,” I said.

“With her collection of poop,” he said.

“Maybe that’s only because she hasn’t found the right man yet,” Sharona said.

“It’s not going to happen with all of that poop around,” he said.

“Maybe it already has,” Sharona said and winked at me.

Monk yawned theatrically and looked at his watch. “Oh my, will you look at the time. I have to go to bed.”

“Nice dodge,” Sharona said. “But you aren’t fooling anyone.”

His fake yawn, though, was enough to provoke a real one from me. It’s amazing how contagious yawns are.

“Yeah, but we do have an early shift in the morning and a tough boss,” I said. “We wouldn’t want to get reprimanded for tardiness on our third day on the job.”

“If he ever reprimands you, let me know,” Sharona said. “And I’ll reprimand him.”

When I came into the kitchen the next morning, Monk was already up and dressed, sitting at the table, hunched over an iPad. Disher sat beside him, showing him how to use the device while Sharona made waffles again.

“Surfing the Web, Mr. Monk?” I asked, taking the seat on the other side of him.

“No, I’m on the Internets,” he said.

“It’s the same thing,” I said. “Surfing is another way of saying ‘looking around.’”

“I know what I want to look at,” he said. “Joel Goldman’s seminar.”

“You can look at it a thousand times and it’s not going to change anything,” Disher said.

“We’re missing something,” Monk said. “I kept seeing the video again and again in my head last night.”

“So what do you need to see it again for?” Sharona asked, bringing a plate of waffles over and setting it in the center of the table.

“Because I’m not recognizing something that I’ve seen or my subconscious wouldn’t be harassing me.”

“Okay, I’ve got you on the site,” Disher said, bringing up the Web page with the screencaps from all of Goldman’s seminars. “The iPad works with a touch screen. All you’ve got to do is touch the screencap you want with your finger and it will play the video.”

“What’s a screencap?” Monk asked.

“It’s a still image taken from the video that you want to watch,” Disher said. “In this case, it also doubles as a button to start the playback.”

Disher tapped the screencap from Joel Goldman’s most recent video and it began to play.

“If you want to pause the video, fast-forward, or do any other playback functions, just tap the bottom of the screen and the controls will come up.”

Goldman started talking about interest rates, derivatives, and mortgage-backed securities, and some brilliant way to manipulate all of them to become rich enough to live on his street in Summit.

Monk peered intently at the screen. “Are those smudges?”

“It’s on the screen,” Disher said. “Not the video.”

“So your screen is thick with finger grease,” Monk said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Disher said.

“Of course it does. You know what those smudges are? Billions of virulent germs, transforming your iPad into an electronic petri dish of disease. When was the last time you cleaned it?”

“I don’t know,” Disher said.

“It’s disgusting.” Monk took a Wet One out of his pocket, tore open the packet, and started to clean the screen with the tissue.

“Wait, wait,” Disher said. “Don’t!”

But Monk was already wiping, his touch causing multiple screens, each with a different Goldman video,
to pop up, one on top of the other, like overlapping sheets of paper.

“You’ll thank me later,” Monk said, wrapping the Wet One in a napkin and handing it to Sharona. “We’ve saved lives today.”

“It’s just like old times.” Sharona frowned and tossed the wipe into the trash. “I’d forgotten the thrill.”

The smudges were gone, but now a different video occupied the screen, and a cacophony of Goldmans was coming out of the iPad’s speakers.

“It’s a touch screen, Monk. Your wiping clicked open every video on the page,” Disher said. “Now I have to close all of these windows to get you back to the original video.”

Disher reached for the iPad but Monk grabbed his wrist.

“Not yet,” Monk said, staring at the video.

“But you’re watching the wrong video,” Disher said. “That’s not the one from the day of the murder. Can’t you see? He’s not even wearing the same shirt. That’s a major fail for a guy with your eye for detail.”

“Let me see the next one,” Monk said.

Disher closed the window and the one underneath appeared. “That’s not it, either. Visually, they’re all the same, except for what he’s wearing. Nothing else changes.”

Monk scrutinized the video, getting his face so close to the screen that the tip of his nose almost touched it. “Okay, now let me see the broadcast from the day of the murder.”

“I can’t with your face in the way,” Disher said. “Unless you’d like to tap that tiny X with your nose.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Monk leaned back and allowed Disher to tap the various screens closed until he got back to the right one.

“This is it,” Disher said. “Knock yourself out.”

Disher dug into his waffles while Sharona and I continued to watch Monk, who rolled his shoulders, tipped his head from side to side, and smiled.

Sharona smiled, too. And so did I. For Adrian Monk, in that brief moment, the entire universe was in perfect balance and everything fit where it was supposed to.

But Disher missed it all. He was too wrapped up in devouring his breakfast.

“Whenever you’re not rolling on dispatcher calls today,” Disher said, “I want you two out talking to the day laborers around the Home Depot.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Monk said.

Disher looked up. “Why not?”

“Because Adrian already solved the murder,” Sharona said.

“He did? When?”

“Just now,” Sharona said.

“So who killed Pamela Goldman?”

“Her husband did,” Monk said.

Disher dropped his fork on his plate and took a deep, calming breath. “We’ve been over this already a dozen times. The video has been analyzed by experts. There’s no trickery involved. Joel Goldman was in his office, doing a live broadcast minutes before the murder.”

“Yes, he was,” Monk said.

“This video proves that.”

“Absolutely and irrefutably.”

“So the video proves he couldn’t have killed her,” Disher said.

“No,” Monk said. “It proves that he
did.
”

Disher rubbed his brow. “One of us here is losing his mind and I don’t think it’s me.”

I knew the feeling. But I also knew—from long, painful, and repeated experience—that I had to surrender
and roll with it, that everything would become clear once Monk got around to giving us all the details. I also knew that he would take his sweet time. He enjoyed our confusion.

“Look at this and tell me what you see.” Monk tapped the screen, brought up the controls, and hit
PAUSE
on the playback.

We all gathered around him and looked at the screen and the still image. Goldman was behind his desk, pointing into the camera to underscore some point he was making. Behind him were the bookcase and the paisley wallpaper.

“I see Joel Goldman in his office doing a live webinar and interacting with people from all over the world,” Disher said. “What do you see?”

“I see Joel Goldman in his office doing a live webinar and interacting with people from all over the world,” Monk said. “But I also see something else.”

“What?”

“The wallpaper,” Monk said. “It’s green with a paisley pattern that’s repeated every twenty-one inches on a twenty-and-a-half-inch-wide roll.”

“I see it, too, only without the exact measurements. So what?”

“There are inevitably going to be seams when the wallpaper is applied and it’s imperative that the installer makes sure the patterns line up whenever possible.”

“Okay, if you say so, but what does any of that have to with the murder?”

“The seams and the patterns on his wallpaper line up in the other videos shot in his New York office,” Monk said, “but not in this one.”

“But you just agreed with me that this was shot in his office,” Disher said.

“It was,” Monk said. “In the office he re-created in his backyard in Summit.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence as all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place for me, Sharona, and Disher.