“He’s a nut job,” Julie said.
“I thought you liked Mr. Monk and admired his abilities,” I said, and reached into the box for a few crackers. The damage was already done.
“I do,” she said. “But c’mon, Mom, he’s seriously messed up.”
“Aren’t we all,” I said.
“I’m not,” she said.
“Give it time,” I said.
“Gee, thanks.”
“Face it, honey, no one gets out of childhood unscathed, though you have a better shot than most, since you are being raised by the most loving, understanding, and, dare I say it, coolest mother on earth.”
“If that were true, you’d let me get a tattoo.”
“There is no artist good enough to use you as his canvas.” I didn’t want her walking around with a tramp stamp on her lower back.
“You have a tattoo,” she said.
“And I regret it,” I said. “I’m just glad it’s where no one can see it.”
“Not lately,” Julie said. “Speaking of which, how was your date with Stottlemeyer?”
I couldn’t believe how sassy and presumptuous Julie was getting with me. Then again, she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a woman. And she wasn’t stupid, either. Julie knew I wasn’t celibate.
Refusing to let her get a tattoo was my last, desperate stand for parental control. In a few months, she’d be an adult as far as the State of California was concerned and wouldn’t need my permission for anything. She could tattoo her entire body, color her hair purple, drop out of school, join the French Foreign Legion, or run off and marry a guy she’d known for only an hour.
Her imminent freedom to make all kinds of mistakes was something I tried not to think about or I might start hyperventilating. It was better to concentrate on the subject at hand, which was my completely innocent and chaste encounter with Captain Stottlemeyer.
“It wasn’t a date,” I said. “It was two friends having a cup of coffee and it was very nice, thank you. He’s really a sweet, sensitive man under that gruff-cop exterior.”
“He’s too old for you, Mom.”
“I’m not interested in him romantically. He’s someone I can talk to.”
“That’s what your female friends are for,” she said. “Your posse.”
“I don’t have a posse,” I said. “Besides, he knows better than anybody else the unique problems I have to deal with. We share a common bond.”
“You’re both over thirty and single?”
“We both care deeply about Adrian Monk,” I said.
“You’re like two divorced parents who share custody of him,” she said.
“We’re the closest thing Mr. Monk has to a family,” I said.
“What about his brother?”
“He never leaves the house,” I said. “We’re the ones who see him every day. And with that caring and commitment comes a certain amount of responsibility and aggravation.”
“Because he’s a nut job,” Julie said.
“Because he’s special,” I said. “Like you.”
I gave her a kiss on the head and mussed her hair up.
“I’m nothing like Mr. Monk,” she said.
“You don’t think you give me aggravation?”
“Not half as much as you give me,” she said.
“That’s a mother’s job,” I said.
“Then you’re very good at it,” she said, gifting me with a big smile.
It was nice to know I was good at something.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mill Valley is a bedroom community across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco in woodsy Marin County. For much of the seventies and eighties, the town was known primarily for the swinging that went on in those bedrooms, hot tubs, and any other place any number or combination of consenting adults gathered.
The only thing notorious about Mill Valley now was how expensive the homes were. Everything started at a million. I couldn’t even afford a birdhouse there.
Bill Peschel lived with his daughter, Carol Atwater, her husband, Phil, and their two children in a three- bedroom, ranch-style house on a street with landscaping so manicured and sidewalks so clean that they brought a smile to Monk’s face.
Stottlemeyer was leaning against the hood of his police-issued Crown Vic at the curb and chewing on a toothpick when we arrived. I parked alongside the gleaming Mercedes SUV in the driveway and got out. On the back window of the SUV was an inscription in stickered white letters that read, IN LOVING MEMORY OF CLARA PESCHEL.
I don’t understand the point of those automotive memorials. How does buying yourself a nice car celebrate the memory of a loved one? I almost always see those memorials on sports cars or supercarrier-sized SUVs. Does making your Porsche or Hummer a rolling grave marker for your dead family member somehow justify the gas- guzzling indulgence? Or are those memorials actually for people the driver has killed with his car?
To me, those memorials are even stupider than the yellow BABY ON BOARD warning signs, which imply you might have considered smashing into the car if you weren’t alerted that an innocent child was a passenger.
The SUV had one of those signs, too. And two child seats in the back.
“Clara was Bill’s wife,” Stottlemeyer said, following my gaze.
“So why dedicate a car to her?” I asked.
“Maybe her daughter bought it with her inheritance and wanted to acknowledge the gift,” Stottlemeyer said.
“I think it’s weird,” I said. “So who is this guy we’ve come to see?”
“Bill was one of my most reliable snitches,” Stottlemeyer said. “He used to own a dive bar in the Tenderloin. He sold out ten years ago, retired to Sarasota, and then, after his wife died, he moved back here to live with his daughter.”
Monk squatted beside the lawn and admired the neatly trimmed, bright green grass. “I’d like to get the name of their gardener.”
“But you don’t have a yard,” I said.
“I’d just like to compliment him on his fine work,” Monk said.
I turned to the captain. “Do you visit Bill often?”
“I try to make it out here once a month or so.”
“Are you this close to all your snitches?”
“His tips helped me solve a lot of big cases,” Stottlemeyer said. “I might not be a captain today if it weren’t for him.”
I looked at Monk. “Did you know him?”
“I didn’t use confidential informants,” Monk said.
“You didn’t need to,” Stottlemeyer said.
I pointed at him. “There, that’s exactly what I was talking about last night.”
“You saw each other last night?” Monk asked.
I ignored him and pressed my point. “You make self-deprecating remarks like that about your investigative abilities all the time. It reveals your feelings of insecurity and inferiority.”
“I prefer to think of it as stating the facts in a dispassionate and totally candid manner,” Stottlemeyer said,
