I guessed her age to be about sixty, though it was hard to tell. The inside-out aliens on Beyond Earth looked more human than she did.
I tried hard not to scream.
“Most people don’t usually start a conversation with me by offering an alibi,” Stottlemeyer said. “Guilty conscience?”
“I like to get right to the point,” she said.
“So do I.” Howard turned around, carrying a drink for himself and one for Arianna. “Do you regard my client as a suspect?”
He was younger than his client by a decade, trim and tailored, wearing a crisp pin-striped double-breasted suit and a black patch over his left eye. He could have stepped right out of a glossy magazine advertisement for Jack Daniel’s.
Monk ducked behind Stottlemeyer like a frightened child.
“Your client doesn’t seem very heartbroken by her husband’s murder,” Stottlemeyer said, glancing over his shoulder at Monk.
“Ex-husband,” Arianna corrected and sipped daintily at her drink.
“They are legally divorced,” Howard added.
“But you were married for some time,” Stottlemeyer said, sidestepping away from Monk, who followed him.
“I was a devoted and loving wife for thirty years, through good times and bad, through his adultery, drinking, chronic unemployment, and countless other embarrassments and betrayals. The last few years were especially hard when all we were living on was the proceeds from his Beyond Earth convention appearances. I finally had enough. I had my needs.”
She stopped sipping so daintily and drank half the contents of her glass.
“So why did you come here?” I asked.
“To kill him,” she said.
“She means that figuratively, of course,” Howard said.
Stottlemeyer took another step to one side, but Monk shadowed him again. Annoyed, the captain turned to look at Monk, who shielded his eyes with his hand.
“There’s an entire hotel room here, Monk. Do you really have to stand right behind me?”
“Yes,” Monk said.
“Do you mind telling me why?”
Monk gestured to the lawyer. “He’s wearing a patch over one eye.”
“I lost my eye in a car accident,” Howard said.
“You should go and look for it,” Monk said. “Right now. Don’t come back without it.”
“I’m afraid it’s long gone, Mr. Monk,” the lawyer said. “The accident happened twenty years ago.”
Stottlemeyer faced Arianna, and Monk ducked back behind him again.
“Why did you want to kill your ex-husband?” Stottlemeyer asked. “Figuratively speaking, of course.”
“Two weeks after our divorce was final I opened up the Hollywood Reporter and there was a big article announcing that UBS Network had signed a multimilliondollar deal to bring Beyond Earth back as a new TV series,” she said. “Conrad never mentioned that anybody was interested in reviving the show while we were dividing our assets and negotiating our divorce settlement. He waited to close the deal until our divorce was final so he could cheat me out of my fair share of the windfall.”
“He perpetrated a fraud,” Howard said. “We came here to apprise him of that fact and attempt to reach an amicable financial settlement.”
“And failing that?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“We’d sue his scrawny ass into oblivion. For the last twenty years, his career was in the sewer. Nobody in the business returned his calls. All he had was Beyond Earth and those fans who thought he was some kind of god,” Arianna said. “I knew he was sleeping with Earthies at those conventions. I put up with it because it was the only thing keeping him going, the only way he could maintain his self-respect. But I’ve got self-respect too and it reached the point where I had to walk away from the marriage to keep it.”
The point probably came when she realized that no amount of plastic surgery would make her as attractive to her husband as an adoring Earthie. And, of course, the more she went under the knife, the more conventions he had to attend to pay for it all, and the more Earthies he’d bed down.
It was a sad story that was written all over her body.
“I’ll tell you this,” she said. “I didn’t put up with Conrad for all those years to get screwed when the galactic gravy train finally docked at our space station.”
Arianna finished her drink and held out her empty glass to Howard for a refill. He dutifully took the glass from her and went to the wet bar.
Monk peeked out from behind Stottlemeyer now that Howard’s back was turned to us.
“Have you considered wearing a patch over your other eye?” Monk asked the lawyer.
“No,” Howard said as he poured Arianna another drink.
“You should,” Monk said.
“But I wouldn’t be able to see anything,” Howard said.
“Maybe you could get one of those see-through patches.”
“There aren’t any.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck,” Monk said.
“I’m not the one with the problem,” Howard said, returning with Arianna’s drink. “You are.”
“I have both of my eyes,” Monk said, ducking back behind Stottlemeyer. “You don’t and the rest of us have to see it. Try to show some sensitivity to others.”
“Me?” Howard said.
“Ignore him, Mr. Egger,” Stottlemeyer said, and looked over his shoulder at Monk. “Just once, I would like to conduct an interview without being constantly interrupted because you’re distracted by some minor detail like a can of 7-Up or an eye patch. It throws me off my game.”
“That’s exactly what they want,” Monk said.
“You think he plucked out his eyeball just so you’d be distracted and irritate the hell out of me?”
“He’s a lawyer,” Monk said. “They’re cunning. And who knows how far he’d go to protect his lover from a possible murder charge?”
“I didn’t murder anyone and we’re not lovers,” Arianna said.
“So why are your lip balm and hand cream on one nightstand?” Monk said. “And the suction cup and hydrogen peroxide he uses for removing and cleaning his acrylic eye, the one he’s chosen not to wear
