I left the room and went to the stairwell, getting to the door just as Monk huffed and puffed his way up the final few steps.
“You ought to try the elevator sometime,” I said. “It’s not that bad.”
“If you enjoy the experience of being buried alive in a coffin that moves,” Monk said, catching his breath.
“It’s not like being buried alive.”
“I’ve been buried alive. Twice. Once in a coffin and once in a car. Have you?”
“No,” I said. I vividly remembered those harrowing experiences. On both occasions, he’d come very close to suffocating to death.
“Then I think I know a little bit more about what being buried alive feels like than you do.”
He had me there.
I led him down the hall to the room. He stopped to inspect the maid’s cart and I used the opportunity to open the door, hoping he wouldn’t notice the room number.
The maid looked up at him from inside the other room, where she was stripping a bed.
“You are doing God’s work,” Monk said to her. “I salute you for your bravery, courage, and sacrifice.”
She looked baffled. He turned to face me and stopped cold.
“That’s room seven thirteen,” Monk said, defeating my pathetic attempt at misdirection.
“Yes, it is. It’s where the murder occurred.”
“I’m not surprised,” Monk said. “The room is cursed.”
“You have to come inside,” I said.
“I can see just fine from here,” he said, standing at the threshold.
“Braddock was on the floor, between the bed and the window,” I said. “You can’t see the floor from where you are standing.”
“I don’t need to.” He leaned inside once, angling himself so he could see into the bathroom to his left.
Monk turned and looked back through the open door of the room across the hall. He cocked his head and rolled his shoulders.
Something was bugging him. Well, lots of things were bugging him, like being on an odd-numbered floor in front of an odd-numbered room with patterned, floral wallpaper that probably didn’t match up correctly. What I meant was that something was bugging him even more than all the other things that bug him at any given moment.
He examined the glasses on the maid’s cart. They each had tiny paper lids on top to indicate that they were clean.
Monk picked one of the glasses up and held it to the light.
“What is it?” I asked, still holding the door open.
“Water spots.” He took the lid off and put the glass with the dirty dishes that were in a tub on a lower shelf of the cart. He deposited the lid in the cart’s trash bag.
“That’s it? Water spots?”
Monk went into the room across the hall and quickly peered into the bathroom and then came back to me. The maid watched us warily as she finished making the bed.
“I’m a horrible person,” Monk said. “Despicable, lower than low.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I didn’t believe Captain Stottlemeyer,” Monk said.
“And you do now?”
Monk nodded. “He’s innocent. The evidence is clear.”
“You found evidence without even stepping into the room where the murder occurred?”
“Each hotel room has four glasses,” Monk said. “Two in the bathroom and two on the desk on either side of the ice bucket. All four glasses are identical. But according to the crime scene photos, there were five glasses in Braddock’s room when he was killed. The fifth one was broken on the floor and had the captain’s fingerprints on it.”
“The glass was planted,” I said.
“I think it was the water glass the captain was drinking from when we spoke here at the conference,” Monk said. “But I can’t prove it. So the captain is no better off now than he was before.”
“Yes, he is,” I said.
“I don’t see how.”
“You’re on the case now, Mr. Monk.”
“But I don’t know where to go or what to do next to prove that the captain is innocent.”
“You’ll think of something,” I said. “I have faith. So does Captain Stottlemeyer.”
I was so thankful that Monk had accepted the captain’s innocence that I walked down the stairwell with him instead of taking the elevator.
When we emerged in the lobby, the first thing I saw was Nicholas Slade striding in and, from the look on his face, I didn’t think it was a coincidence that he was there.
He marched straight towards us.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Whenever someone says, “We need to talk,” what they really mean is that they want to tear your head off about something. So you have two choices: You can either brace yourself for a verbal beating or run for the nearest exit.
My instinct, no doubt tied to childhood, when my dad used those same words (though he’d add “young lady” at the end) when he caught me doing something bad, was to run. But I fought back the urge.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked.
“I’m a great detective,” he said.
“Mr. Monk is a great detective,” I said. “You are a very good one.”
It’s probably not too smart to insult your boss with a backhanded compliment when he’s already mad at you, but when I’m forced into a corner, cockiness is how I deal with my worry or fear. I was afraid I was about to see my wonderful health plan and my company car evaporate before I really got a chance to use them.
“I heard what happened to Leland and that you were down there to see him. If I were trying to prove him innocent, the crime scene is the first place I’d go,” Slade said. Score one for me and my detecting instincts. “And you used our corporate card to rent the room.”
“You track our credit card usage in real time?” I said. “That seems a little Orwellian to me.”
“Technically, it’s not your privacy I’d be intruding on, since it’s my credit card you were using. But I didn’t have to go to the trouble. Intertect handles the security for the hotel. I got a call that you were here.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh,” he repeated. “If you’d called me before you came down here, you could have saved the company two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Is that what you’re mad about?” I asked. “The money?”
“I’m not mad,” Slade said. “I’m confused and I’m disappointed. First you tell me that Mr. Monk needs a rest-”
“I don’t need a rest,” Monk interrupted.
“-which I gave him, then I find out that you used that free time to investigate Bill Peschel’s death.”
“Murder,” Monk said.
“Nobody has hired us on that case,” Slade said. “Your fee is three hundred dollars an hour and until someone signs a contract with me and hands us a check for a retainer, you are not to spend a single moment of your time, or anybody else’s in my employ, on that case.”
“I make three hundred dollars an hour?” Monk said.
“Now Leland has asked for your help and you agreed to give it without consulting me first,” Slade said. “Have you forgotten who you are working for, Mr. Monk?”
“I have to help my friend,” Monk said.
“He is my friend, too,” Slade said.
“The captain is innocent, he needs Mr. Monk’s help, and he can’t possibly afford to pay your rates,” I said.
“Leland doesn’t have to,” Slade said. “We’ll help him for nothing. It will be our pro bono case for the year. Consider yourselves assigned to the case. All the resources of Intertect are at your disposal. But you have to promise me that you will stop investigating Peschel’s death.”
