“Who are you going to ask?”
“Danielle,” Monk said.
“But no one has hired you to investigate this murder,” I said.
“I’ve hired me,” Monk said.
As I drove us back to San Francisco, Monk called Danielle Hossack and asked her to dig up all the information that she could about Bill Peschel, his daughter, and her husband. She promised to get Monk a preliminary report tomorrow.
“I understand why you want background on Bill Peschel,” I said. “But why on the others?”
“You mentioned to me that Peschel made a lot of money from the sale of his bar and some stocks.”
“Carol said he was an early investor in InTouchSpace-dot-com, which is the biggest social networking site on earth.”
Monk looked at me blankly, so I explained what I was talking about.
“It’s an online community where millions of people share information about themselves, their interests, and their hobbies, make new friends, renew relationships with old ones, and play all kinds of games.”
Monk still looked at me blankly.
“Let me put it another way,” I said. “InTouchSpace allows you to socialize with others without ever leaving your house or actually meeting another human being in the flesh. You might actually like it. Julie and I use it. So does Ambrose. He’s very active on it.”
“My brother is talking to strangers with his computer?”
“He’s agoraphobic,” I said. “How else is he going to interact with people?”
“Why would he want to?”
“Because he’s a human being,” I said. “And human beings need relationships.”
“Not if they want to stay healthy,” Monk said. “Relationships aren’t sanitary.”
“They are on a computer,” I said.
“Haven’t you ever heard of computer viruses?”
I could see that this was yet another argument I wasn’t going to win. Besides, we were getting so far away from the subject of Bill Peschel’s murder that I’d almost forgotten the point I’d originally wanted to make.
“Do you really think that Carol Atwater murdered her father?”
Monk shrugged. “Maybe in addition to his stocks, Bill also had a hefty insurance policy. We only have her word about what happened that morning. What if it’s all a lie? It wouldn’t be the first time that greed led to murder.”
“I have a hard time believing that she cracked her father on the head, pushed him into the pool, and then staged the accident with her daughter in the house.”
“It’s easy enough to check out her story. But I have other reasons for learning more about her and her husband. The murder may have had nothing to do with Peschel’s past. It might have been related to something that Carol and Phil are or were involved with. It might have been a warning of some kind. Or maybe Peschel interrupted a burglary.”
“In other words, you have no idea what you are looking for.”
“I’m looking for a murderer,” he said.
Until Danielle got back to us, we had nothing to go on in the Peschel investigation. And since we’d worked through all the open cases at Intertect-well, at least as far as Monk knew-there was nothing else for us to do.
Monk came to this conclusion even faster than I did and asked me to take him to Dr. Bell’s office so he could try to squeeze in some sessions between other patients.
Once again, I dropped Monk off and made a speedy getaway.
I used the time to run some errands for Monk-buying groceries, picking up his dry cleaning, and taking it all back to his place and putting it away. It was actually a pleasure to do those chores without him at my side, turning what should be a painless two-hour experience into a six-hour ordeal.
He called me at six to come get him. When I drove up to the Victorian house where Dr. Bell lived and worked, I found Monk and the doctor sitting on the front stoop together.
I felt my stomach tighten. I knew I was about to get in big trouble, but I put on a smile and pretended that I was oblivious to any wrongdoing.
Monk started for the car but Dr. Bell stopped him.
“ Adrian, I just realized there are only three sharpened pencils on my desk.”
“And you left the office? What were you thinking?”
“I must have been preoccupied,” he said. “I was paying such rapt attention to your troubles that everything else became insignificant.”
“Of course, that’s only natural. Stay here, I’ll handle it,” Monk said, and rushed back inside as if there were a grease fire on the stove.
Dr. Bell came up to the passenger side of the car and leaned in the open window to talk to me. He was nearly bald, with a close-cropped gray mustache and beard. His loose black turtleneck sweater and blue jeans made him seem far more casual than I knew him to be.
“Would you like to tell me what’s going on, Natalie?”
“I’m doing fine, thanks.”
“I’m not,” Dr. Bell said. “Twice now I’ve had Adrian in my waiting room for hours at a time trying to squeeze in five-minute therapy sessions between my other patients or to sit in on their appointments.”
“I guess it means that he really likes you,” I said. “That’s good, isn’t it? I’m sure you were worried about whether he’d learn to trust you the way he did Dr. Kroger. Well, now you know that he does. Congratulations!”
Dr. Bell smiled. “I am his psychiatrist, not his babysitter. You can’t drop him off here every time you want some free time.”
“This isn’t about me,” I said. “It’s about Mr. Monk. He needs you and his new medical plan will cover the extra sessions.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about the comfort and privacy of my other patients,” Dr. Bell said. “If Adrian has free time, perhaps he can find a hobby or his new employer can assign him some additional cases to keep him busy.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “Mr. Monk will work himself to death.”
“That’s a preferable fate to my patients murdering him in my waiting room,” Dr. Bell said. “Or if I do it myself.”
Monk bounded out of the door. “It’s all taken care of, Dr. Bell. Crisis averted.”
“Thank you, Adrian,” Dr. Bell said. “It’s a big relief.”
“So, same time tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Bell said.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to be very busy,” Dr. Bell said, directing his words more to me than to Monk.
“How do you know?”
“Call it a hunch,” Dr. Bell said.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As it turned out, Dr. Bell’s hunch was right. I arrived at Monk’s apartment the next morning to find him already hard at work at his kitchen table, a rolling cart of files at his side.
More cases from Intertect.
Black belt or not, I was going to kick Danielle’s tight little butt into the street.
“Where is she?” I demanded.
