Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

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.