He reached for a large book on his desk, found the page he was looking for, and passed it to me. It was a book on cat breeds, and he’d turned to the listing for the Turkish Van, a white cat with a cashmere-like coat.
“You kept track of her cats?” Monk said.
“It’s a failing of mine. If a bird flies by, I need to know what it is. If a car is parked out front, I need to know its history. If I hear someone whistling a tune, I need to know the name and the complete biography of its composer,” Brudnick said. “My intellectual curiosity is my great failing as well as my gift.”
“I know the feeling,” Monk said.
“That’s one of the reasons I found her cats so distracting. Every time I saw one, I had to research the damn animal,” Brudnick said. “The other thing, of course, was the smell. Her house was like an enormous litter box, and on breezy days the smell carried, along with all that dander.”
“Did you do anything about it?” Monk said.
“I spoke to her,” Brudnick said. “But she told me to mind my own business, which, coming from her, I found rather ironic.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the old crone was always peeking in my windows, sorting through the mail in my box, and reading my magazines,” Brudnick said. “I started walking through my house naked just so I could get a little privacy.”
Monk shuddered at the thought, and so did I.
“You never thought about taking more direct action?” Monk said.
“You mean like burning her house down?”
Monk nodded. Brudnick smiled.
“I thought about it every day,” Brudnick said.
“Instead I sold out to Lucas Breen and looked forward to a new home in the near future, far away from Esther and her feline menagerie.”
“So Esther wasn’t just making your life a living hell,” I said. “She was also standing between you and a fortune.”
“She wasn’t my favorite neighbor on the block; that’s true. But I didn’t wish any violence upon her.”
“Where were you between nine and ten P.M. on Friday night?” Monk asked.
“Enjoying a hot bath and the latest issue of
That was an image that would haunt me.
“Were you alone?” Monk asked.
“Sadly, yes,” Brudnick said. “It’s been some time since I’ve found a lady who’ll share a bath and
He looked at me and smiled. I think it’s a credit to me and my astonishing powers of self-control that I didn’t vomit or run screaming out of his house at that moment.
“Did you see or hear anything unusual that night?” Monk said.
“Not until her house went up in flames,” Brudnick said. “That was certainly unusual.”
It was depressing. Esther’s other neighbors on her side of the street had the same attitude about her as the Finneys and Brudnick did. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody cared. They were all eagerly awaiting their checks and the wrecking ball.
We went across the street to see what the other neighbors had to say, the ones without the sales of their homes on the line, who didn’t profit quite so directly from Esther’s death.
We found Burton Joyner, a scrawny, unemployed software engineer, in his garage, working under the hood of an old AMC Pacer, a car that looked like a pregnant Ford Pinto—which was, by the way, the first car I ever owned, until my dad heard they could explode if a bug hit the windshield and bought me a Plymouth Duster instead. Joyner also had an AMC Gremlin and an AMC Ambassador parked at the curb.
“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Monk. I’m glad she’s gone,” Joyner said, tightening something with his wrench.
“She’s not gone,” I said. “You make it sound like she moved to Palm Springs. She was murdered.”
“Esther was a victim of the bad karma she created,” Joyner said. “She was a mean, vindictive person who made life unpleasant for everybody in the neighborhood. You can feel the difference on the street already. The stress level has gone way down.”
“And the property values will go way up,” Monk said. “Once the new development is built.”
“The development isn’t really important to me. It won’t change my circumstances much, so I’ve stayed out of it. I’m the kind of guy who likes to get along with people.” Joyner leaned back and wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing them with grease. “Live and let live is what I say.”
“Me too,” Monk said. “You wiped your hands on your pants.”
“Esther wasn’t like you and me. She’d sit at her window with binoculars, taking notes and pictures, intruding on things that were none of her business. She saw me watching a ball game on ESPN, so she called the cable company and ratted me out for hijacking their signal with an illegal converter box.”
“Were you?” I asked.
“That’s not the point,” Joyner said. “How was sitting in my recliner in my living room, watching a ball game on TV, hurting her?”
“You stained your pants,” Monk said.
“It’s okay; they’re my work pants,” Joyner said.
“I’ll give you another example. My hobby is collecting and restoring old AMC cars. I’ve had to sell a couple of them to create some cash flow until I can find another job. Esther took pictures of people buying cars from me and filed a complaint with the city clerk, who fined me two thousand dollars for operating a business out of my home without a license.”
“What did she have against you?” Monk said.
“Absolutely nothing. I never did a thing to her. She treated everybody that way. She had a certain view of life and expected everyone to conform to it. How crazy is that?”
“Super crazy,” Monk said. “You can go change your pants. We’ll wait here.”
“I don’t want to change my pants.”
“You really should,” Monk said.
“I’m fine in these.”
“You’ll thank me later.”
“No, I won’t,” Joyner said. “Do you have any more questions? I’d like to get back to my work.”
“Where were you Friday night between nine and ten P.M.?” Monk asked.
“I was here at home, doing my laundry.”
“I see,” Monk said. “So you don’t deny you have a pair of clean pants you could change into?”
“What’s the matter with you?” Joyner said.
“Think about the karma your pants are creating,” Monk said. “Did you see anybody visit Esther Friday night?”
Joyner shook his head. “I don’t spy on my neighbors; I don’t keep track of who comes and goes or what they’re watching on TV.”
He wiped his hands on his shirt—deliberately, I think—picked up his wrench, and got back to work.
“Why did you do that?” Monk said to him. “Now you have to change your shirt, too.”
“Let’s go, Mr. Monk,” I said. “We have other neighbors to talk to.”
“But we can’t just leave him like that,” Monk said.
“Let’s go.” I tugged on his overcoat and led him away.
Monk came along, but he wasn’t happy about it. He kept looking back at the house we’d just left. “I don’t know how you can turn a blind eye to other people’s suffering.”
“He’s not suffering,” I said.
“I am,” Monk said.
After hearing Joyner’s story, and those of his neighbors, I was beginning to wonder if I was being too hard on Neal and Kate Finney. It appeared that Esther Stoval didn’t do much to encourage warmth and understanding from
