He wasn’t. By the time I got back to dreamland, Daniel was gone and the Bahamas had washed away, too. I found myself in some postapocalypse hell, living in a subterranean bunker filled with Diaper Genies, Wet Ones, and evidence Baggies. All I had to eat were Wheat Thins and Sierra Springs bottled water.
I woke up after nine, sticky with sweat, my throat dry and my right arm numb from being crooked at an odd angle under my pillow.
Ah, what a glorious morning.
I dragged myself out of bed. Julie had gotten herself to school somehow and had kindly left her half-eaten bowl of cereal, crusts of toast, and an empty coffee cup on the table for me or a member of our household staff to clean up.
I guess I deserved that for being such a bad mother.
I wasn’t much of an assistant, either. I was late for work but I was in no hurry to make up for lost time. Monk had no one to blame but himself for my tardiness.
I refilled Julie’s cup of coffee with what she’d left simmering in the pot, put a frosted cinnamon Pop-Tart in the toaster for my breakfast, and sat down to browse the
When it comes to reading a newspaper, I’m kind of Monkish-I like all the sections folded and in order so I can start at the front page and work my way through. I gathered up all the sections and put them back together.
The front-page section was the last one that I came to, and when I did, I got an unpleasant surprise.
The Judge Carnegie story had made the front page. This is how it began:
Police arrested Rhonda Carnegie, the wife of Judge Alan Carnegie, and charged her with the murder yesterday of her husband and the gangland-style execution of Judge Clarence Stanton in Golden Gate Park earlier this week. Judge Carnegie was gunned down half a block from his home while walking his dog and Judge Stanton was shot multiple times the day before while jogging. Sources within the department tell the Chronicle that the investigation, led by Captain Leland Stottlemeyer, was focused on reputed mob boss Salvatore Lucarelli, who was facing trial this week before Judge Stanton. After that jurist’s murder, Judge Carnegie was slated to take his place at the bench. A new trial date has not been set. The crucial break in the investigation came from famed detective Adrian Monk, who was a consultant to the police department until his contract was suddenly dropped a few days ago. Monk was immediately hired by Intertect, a San Francisco-based private detective agency. “Mr. Monk was deeply shocked by this attack on our judiciary system and took an immediate interest in the case, but his assistance was spurned by the police,” said Nicholas Slade, president and founder of Intertect. “Undeterred, and with the full support of our experienced professionals, he pursued the case and found compelling evidence that the police missed in their blind zeal to prosecute Mr. Lucarelli.” Capt. Stottlemeyer confirmed that Monk’s participation in the investigation “played a decisive role” and led to Mrs. Carnegie’s arrest at her home, a short distance from the scene of her husband’s murder a few hours earlier. She is being held without bail pending trial. Capt. Stottlemeyer refused to comment any further or divulge any additional details regarding the investigation or the nature of the evidence against Mrs. Carnegie. The captain was criticized on the opening day of the Conference of Metropolitan Homicide Detectives this week at the Dorchester Hotel for his division’s reliance on Adrian Monk and their poor case-closure rate if the consultant’s contributions are factored out of their annual statistics.
I couldn’t read any more of the article. It was too painful.
If that was Slade’s idea of going easy on Stottlemeyer and sparing him embarrassment, I shuddered to think what his comments would have been like if he hadn’t held back.
While I was angry with Slade for what he’d done, I had to admire the way he spun the story to make Intertect appear efficient and community-minded and to cast Lucarelli as a victim.
I wondered why Slade chose not to disclose that Lucarelli had hired Intertect to prove he was innocent of the murders of the judges.
Perhaps Slade was worried that it would taint Monk’s success if people knew he was not motivated by outrage at the heinous crime but rather that he’d been paid by Lucarelli to clear him of the killings.
It was a testament to Stottlemeyer’s devotion to Monk, even at his own expense, that he didn’t challenge Slade’s version of events. Then again, perhaps that had less to do with sparing Monk than it did with protecting his case against Mrs. Carnegie from being muddied by any doubt. After all, both Slade and Stottlemeyer agreed that Monk was right and neither one of them wanted Mrs. Carnegie to walk.
After reading that article, I was glad I’d forgotten to watch the news the previous night. They’d probably lambasted Captain Stottlemeyer on all the local channels.
I ate my Pop-Tart (and told myself it was healthy because it was made of flour and cinnamon, both of which are found in nature and not created in a test tube), took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed over to Monk’s place.
I kept the file drawer in my car, took four bulging files from it, and carried them with me. My plan was to carefully dole the cases out to him in small batches.
So you can imagine my surprise and anger when I walked in the door around ten thirty and saw Monk at his dining room table, another rolling file drawer at his side, papers and crime scene photos spread out in front of him. Danielle was sitting at the table, too, facing her laptop computer and typing away.
Monk was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the day before. But that didn’t necessarily mean he hadn’t changed clothes since I’d last seen him. He bought his clothes in bulk specifically so he could wear the same thing every day if he wanted to. His clothes weren’t wrinkled either but he never allowed his clothes to wrinkle.
Even so, I was convinced that he hadn’t slept and hadn’t changed. He was going on two days without sleep and that couldn’t be good.
“Good morning, everyone,” I said with intentionally false cheer.
“Good morning, Natalie,” Danielle said, so perky and energetic that I wanted to smother her with one of Monk’s two identical square throw pillows. But that wasn’t the only motive behind my totally justifiable desire to kill her. There was the matter of that second file drawer.
“It’s about time you got here,” Monk said without looking up from his work. “I thought you’d gone on vacation.”
“You’d know if I were on vacation, Mr. Monk, because you’d be there, too, and people would be dropping dead all around us.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t a smart-ass remark. It was the truth. I’m probably the only tourist to Hawaii, Germany, and France whose vacation scrapbook includes crime scene photos. Murder follows Monk like an obsessed fan. We could take a trip to an uninhabitable ice floe in the North Pole and we’d probably stumble on the Abominable Snowman with a dagger in his back.
“Did you hear the news?” Danielle said. “The police found a gun in Mrs. Carnegie’s house and ballistics positively identified it as the murder weapon. They also found the bicycle and the hooded jacket there. She took a big risk keeping all of that.”
“I guess it never occurred to her that the police would suspect her so soon,” I said.
“They didn’t. Mr. Monk did,” she said proudly. “He’s solved nine cases already this morning.”
“Ten,” Monk said, closing a file and sliding it over to her. “The bus driver is the kidnapper. A real bus driver would have stopped at the railroad tracks and opened the door. He didn’t.”
“Amazing,” Danielle said. “Isn’t he?”
“You should see him leap tall buildings in a single bound,” I said.
“Mrs. Carnegie was having an affair with a man twenty years younger than her,” Danielle said. “I guess she didn’t want to go through the trouble of a divorce.”
“Murder does cut down on legal fees, unless you get caught,” I said, turning to Monk. “Where did you get all these files?”
“You and Julie wouldn’t help, so I called Danielle and she brought them over.”
“At two thirty in the morning?” I said.
“It was two thirty-five by then and she’d told us that she was available any time of the day or night.”
“I meant it, too. And Mr. Slade didn’t mind me waking him up, either, or going down to the office to collect some additional open cases.”
I wasn’t surprised, considering all the success and positive publicity Monk had brought Intertect in the last twenty-four hours. “Danielle, could I talk to you privately for a moment?”
