I remembered when I looked like that.
She may have been the likeliest suspect, but I had a hard time imagining her getting up off the sofa, much less schlepping into the city, clobbering her husband with a frying pan, and doing the dishes afterwards.
Monk and I sat on a matching sofa across from Emily. He ran his hand appreciatively over the plastic as if it was fine suede. Stottlemeyer and Disher stood while Betty went back and forth from the kitchen, serving us cookies and tea.
Everything about Betty seemed to be starched, from the beehive hairdo on her head to the apron around her waist. Monk watched her carry the tray from her sterile kitchen with something akin to awe.
“You think that I killed him?” Emily asked Stottlemeyer with exaggerated incredulity.
“He left you for another woman and you’re the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.” Stottlemeyer shrugged. “We’d be fools not to consider the possibility.”
“And my daughter would have to be a fool to have done it,” Betty said. “I didn’t raise a fool, except when it comes to love.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Emily said. “That’s exactly what I need right now, another I-told-you-so.”
Betty set a plate of perfectly square cookies in front of us and handed us each a neatly folded cloth napkin with edges so sharp they could have drawn blood. Monk picked up the napkin almost reverentially and set it carefully on his lap without unfolding it.
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. There was something about Betty and this place that was giving me the willies.
“I didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ ” Betty said. “But, for the record, I was against the two of you getting married.”
“There is no record,” Emily said.
Disher held up his pencil and notebook. “Technically, there is.”
“You’re right, I had plenty of reasons to murder my husband, ” Emily said. “But as much as I hated him for what he did to me, to our family, he was still my daughter’s father. I couldn’t have done that to her. I don’t know how I am going to tell her the news. It will break her heart.”
“Better her heart breaks once rather than repeatedly,” Betty said. “He would have disappointed her throughout her life.”
“Darla was his princess,” Emily said. “He never would have hurt her.”
“You think walking out on her pregnant mother and shacking up with another man’s wife doesn’t hurt her?” Betty said.
“Your cookies are very square,” Monk commented.
“Perfectly square,” Betty said. “Aren’t you going to have one?”
“I just like looking at them,” Monk said.
I shivered again.
“His lover was married, too?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“Claire and her husband, Eddie, were our best friends,” Emily said. “We used to play bridge together every Wednesday. ”
“I don’t know what she saw in Clarke,” Betty said.
“I do,” Emily said, as a tear rolled down her cheek. “He was a teddy bear. There was no safer place to be than in his arms.”
After everything he’d done to her, there was still some love left for him in her heart. Or maybe it was just hormones. When I was pregnant, my mood swings gave my husband whiplash.
“Oh, spare me.” Betty quickly handed Emily a tissue from the box on the coffee table and used another to wipe away an errant tear that had dropped onto the plastic slipcover.
She folded the tissue and stuffed it in a pocket of her apron. “He was a child who never grew up.”
I saw Monk watching Betty. He seemed at peace for the first time since yesterday. I felt another chill and couldn’t figure out why.
“You have a beautiful home,” Monk said to Betty.
“Thank you,” Betty said.
“It’s so comforting,” Monk said.
Comforting?
“Where were you last night?” Disher asked Emily.
“I’m seven months pregnant and I have a five-year-old daughter, Lieutenant. Where do you think I was?” she said. “I was at home.”
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“My daughter, I suppose.”
“What time did she go to bed?” Disher asked.
“You think I slipped out after she was asleep?”
“It could happen,” Disher said.
“Look at me. I can barely walk,” Emily said. “And I wouldn’t leave my daughter alone, not even to go murder my husband. What kind of mother do you think I am?”
It was a convincing alibi as far as I was concerned, but I guess it helps to be a mother to really understand that.
“I admire how your napkins are folded,” Monk said to Betty. “Did you iron them?”
“Of course,” Betty said. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“In a perfect world,” Monk said. “If only we could live in one.”
“I do,” she said and gestured to the home around her.
I shivered again and that’s when it hit me. If Mrs. Monk were alive today, she’d probably look just like Betty. And her house would look just like this one, covered in plastic and about as homey as a morgue.
“You could have hired someone to kill him for you,” Stottlemeyer said.
“That would require money,” Emily said. “And Clarke keeps me on a very tight budget.”
“Not anymore,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Where would my daughter find a killer? In the Yellow Pages?” Betty shook her head. “You should be ashamed of yourselves for even asking her these questions.”
“I am,” Monk said. “Deeply.”
“You haven’t asked any yet,” I said pointedly.
“The person you should be talking to is Eddie Tricott,” Emily said. “Claire’s husband. He was furious about the affair and he’s wealthy. Who knows
