mixed-use developments, wanted to demolish those six ugly town houses and build a Victorian-style condominium and retail project. Esther Stoval was the only homeowner on the block who wouldn’t sell, enraging her neighbors, who’d already sold their places to Breen and whose deals were contingent on her selling as well.
“Looks like there’s no shortage of suspects,” I said.
“They all could have done it,” Stottlemeyer said. “They could have stood in a line and taken turns holding the pillow to her face. But we have no way of proving any of them were in that house the night it burned down.”
“Maybe because none of them did it,” Disher said.
“Where are you going with this, Randy?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“I have a theory,” Disher said. “It’s a little out-of-the-box.”
“That’s okay,” Stottlemeyer said.
“What if it’s the cats?” Disher said.
“The cats,” Stottlemeyer said. “How could it be the cats?”
“There was this great Robert Culp movie. There are these scientists doing research in a remote lab in the Arctic on the effects of isolation on monkeys. The scientists are getting killed one by one, and no one knows who the killer is. The surviving scientists are afraid to turn their backs on one another,” Disher said. “Pretty soon, it’s down to just Robert Culp and one other guy and—”
“It’s the monkeys,” Monk said. “They turned the tables on the scientists and manipulated them into killing one another.”
“How did you know?” Disher said.
Stottlemeyer sighed. “Because you started telling us that endless story to support your inane theory that the cats killed Esther Stoval.”
“What if the cats purposely tipped the pillow onto her face and, while one of them sat on it, another one knocked the cigarette onto the newspapers?” Disher said. “What if it was an act of feline rebellion against their cruel master?”
“That isn’t out-of-the-box thinking, Randy,” Stottlemeyer said. “It’s out-of-your-mind thinking.”
“Cats are very clever, Captain,” Disher said.
“Stop,” Stottlemeyer said.
Disher started to speak again, but Stottlemeyer held up his hand to halt him.
“One more word and I’ll shoot you,” Stottlemeyer said, then looked imploringly at Monk. “Now do you see how badly we need you on this?”
7
Mr. Monk and the Buttons
The fog lifted Sunday afternoon, but dark clouds gathered over the city, pushed by a cold wind that made the torn, yellow caution tape outside Esther Stoval’s scorched house dance in the air like party streamers.
Although there wasn’t actually a party going on, the young couple living next door, Neal and Kate Finney, definitely had a skip to their step as they loaded up a U-Haul truck with moving boxes. They lived in one of the five town houses slated for demolition to make way for Lucas Breen’s proposed condominium and retail complex.
“We only had minor smoke and water damage, but now that Mrs. Stoval is dead, there’s really no reason to stick around another day.” Kate wheeled a hand truck stacked high with boxes down to the U-Haul. “The house belongs to Lucas Breen’s company now, which means we’ll finally get our check.”
“Honolulu, here we come,” Neal said from inside the truck. He wore a loud Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts despite the chilly weather. That’s how enthusiastic he was.
“You aren’t even trying to hide how happy you are that she’s dead,” Monk said.
“Nope,” Neal said.
“You were her next-door neighbors. She stood between the building of the new condo complex and your big payday. Now she’s dead and you’re on the next plane to Hawaii,” Monk said. “Aren’t you concerned about how this makes you look?”
“We’ll be sure to leave the police our forwarding address.” Kate wheeled the boxes up to her husband, slid the hand truck out from under the stack, and headed back to the house for another load.
“You have the best possible motive for killing her, and you aren’t even bothering to hide it,” Monk said.
“It’s our best defense,” Neal said as he organized the boxes in the truck. “With all we had to gain, we’d have to be complete morons to torch her place.”
“That could be your cunning plan,” Monk said. “It’s so obvious that you did it that nobody would think you did it, even though you did do it.”
“We were out to dinner at Ruggerios with two other couples when the fire happened,” Neal said. “Had I known what was going on, I would have ordered two more bottles of wine and picked up the check for everybody.”
“A lonely old woman was killed in that fire,” I said. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“You don’t know anything about Esther Stoval or what it was like living next door to her. So don’t judge me, lady.”
I didn’t like these people or their selfishness and unadulterated greed. Did they sell their souls to Lucas Breen along with their home?
I thought about my own house and what it meant to me. Mitch and I found it, fell in love with it, and bought it together. Our daughter was born under its roof. I can still feel his presence in the walls, in the air, in the light streaming through the windows. Next to Julie, it’s the last true attachment to him I have left. I couldn’t sell it, no matter how much my neighbors pressured me.
“Did it occur to you for even one second that she might have refused to sell not just to be obstinate or for the evil pleasure of denying you wealth?” I said. “Maybe her house had deep, sentimental value to her. Maybe she loved living here and didn’t want to move.”
“She could have stayed,” Kate said, wheeling some more boxes out of the house. “The developer offered to give her one of the condos in the new complex rent-free for the rest of her life, in addition to the good money he was paying her for her house. You can’t get much more generous than that. And she still said no.”
“It’s not the same thing.” Disgusted, I walked away until I was out of earshot but still within sight of Monk if he needed me. I couldn’t stand to be near these people for another minute.
Monk stuck around and asked a few more questions. I don’t know what they were. Maybe he asked them what it was like living without a soul. Maybe he asked them what it was like to value money more than another person’s right to happiness. But knowing Monk, he probably asked them to rearrange the boxes in the truck into even stacks of eight with the same sides facing out.
Aubrey Brudnick was a professional intellectual in his forties who worked at a San Francisco think tank and lived next door to the late Esther Stoval.
“I’m paid for my thoughts,” he said, talking through his nose and chewing on his pipe. “If I can’t think, I starve, and that is why I loathed Esther Stoval.”
Judging by his double chins and potbelly, it wouldn’t have hurt him to starve a little. He wore a blue cable-knit sweater over a white T-shirt, brown corduroy slacks, and black leather Ecco running shoes. His feet were up on his book-cluttered desk, which faced a window that looked out on the charred rubble of Esther’s house.
“You couldn’t think with her around?” Monk asked.
“It wasn’t so much her,” Brudnick said. “It was her cats.”
“We heard she took in a lot of strays,” I said.
“There were dozens of them. And they weren’t simply strays,” Brudnick said. “They were exotics. She trolled the shelters looking for rare breeds. Just a few days ago she brought home a Turkish Van, a fluffy breed also known as the White Ring-tail and the Russian Longhair.”
