I got up. “If I were you, I’d start looking for the rich old geezer you’re going to marry and the young stud you’re going to have on the side.”
“I’m not a whore.”
“That’s right, you’re not. It’s your lover who is. You’re the pimp with the great rack and perfect ass.”
I turned my back on her and walked away. By the time I returned to our bungalow, the maids were gone and Monk looked very happy with himself.
“Did you have a good time?” I asked.
He nodded. “I feel like I’m really contributing something useful to the people here and, in my own humble way, stoking the flames of the cultural revolution that will sweep this backward country and bring it into the modern age.”
“Hawaii isn’t another country, Mr. Monk; it’s part of the United States.”
“Are we sure about that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Kealoha called while you were gone. He discovered that Kamakele gambled heavily on island cock-fighting and was deeply in debt. Kealoha’s working theory is that Kamakele was killed for not paying the loan sharks.”
“Do you believe that’s what happened?”
“A dead man can’t pay his debts. He was more valuable to them alive.”
“So this gambling thing isn’t the other half of the mystery you were talking about.”
Monk shook his head.
“Are you going to tell me what it is?”
“You’ll know when I solve the case,” he said.
“Why not tell me now? What are you waiting for?”
“The right moment.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“The moment when I solve the case,” he said.
25
Mr. Monk Finds a Stain
Although we had our own private pool, I didn’t want to hang around the bungalow for the rest of the afternoon. I wanted the energy that comes from being in a crowd and to enjoy the fun of people-watching.
So I put on another coat of suntan lotion, grabbed one of the paperbacks I brought, and left to lounge by the big pool. On my way out the door, I saw Monk carefully removing the artwork from one of the walls.
“The maids were just here, Mr. Monk.”
“They were cleaning,” he said. “I am straightening up.”
I knew from experience that he meant that literally.
“We’re leaving tomorrow. Do you really intend to spend your last day in Hawaii inside this bungalow making sure all the pictures and paintings are even, centered, and straight?”
“I’m allowed to have fun, aren’t I?”
“What’s wrong with getting a little sun?”
“Take a look at your back.”
“Mr. Monk, this is Hawaii, one of the most beautiful places on earth. Most people consider it paradise.”
“They don’t know about the reptiles crawling all over the restaurants, the mud shirts, or people exhuming dead pigs from the ground and ripping them apart with their bare hands.”
The phone rang. Since I was standing by it, I picked it up. It was Kealoha. They’d found our stolen rental car in the parking lot of the Kukio Grove mall in Lihue. I relayed the news to Monk.
“I want to see it,” he said.
Kealoha had heard Monk. “I figured he would, which is why there’s a patrol car outside your bungalow waiting to bring you here.”
Kukio Grove was the beginning of the end for Kauai—a deadly cancer that had already metastasized. The open-air mall, anchored by a Macy’s on one end and a Kmart on the other, could have been anywhere else in America. There was nothing about the shopping center that fit in with the local environment or culture. Over the years, other bland, homogenous franchises and box stores had been built around it in an ever-widening radius. Burger King and Borders. Home Depot and Wal-Mart. I was glad I had the chance to see the island before it became a Los Angeles suburb.
The Mustang was parked in a far corner of the lot, closer to the street than to the mall. The only other cop around besides Kealoha was the officer who picked us up at the hotel. This was not a major crime scene.
“The car was spotted by mall security because it was parked here overnight,” Kealoha told us. “When they called us to have it cited and towed, we ran the vehicle’s license plate and it came up as stolen.”
Monk walked around the Mustang, peering at it from every angle as if it were a meteor instead of an automobile. The car looked like every other Mustang on the island to me. I couldn’t have said whether it was our rental car or not.
“This is definitely our car,” Monk said.
“As I said, we matched the plates.”
“Someone could have switched the plates and put them on another car. But they didn’t. I remember the vehicle identification number.”
“You do?” Kealoha said. “Why would you memorize that?”
“It’s the first thing you do when you rent a car,” Monk said. “It’s no different from learning your room number at a hotel. Everybody knows that.”
“I guess I don’t travel enough.”
“If you’re going to be an effective investigator, you need to become more of a man of the world,” Monk said.
“Like you,” I said.
“Let’s not create a goal that’s completely out of his reach,” Monk said. “People only strive for what they think is possible to achieve.”
“That’s good to know,” I said.
“I guess I can stop dreaming of being a jockey,” Kealoha said, and gestured to the car. “The Mustang obviously wasn’t stripped, so I figure some kids were looking for a slick ride for the day at the expense of some haole tourist.”
Monk pressed his face as close to the driver’s-side window of the car as he could without making physical contact with the glass.
“The seats are stained,” he said. “They weren’t stained before.”
“If we catch the kids,” Kealoha said, “we’ll charge them with grand theft auto and make them wash the car, too.”
“I’ve seen these stains before,” Monk said. “They were in the car that Brian rented.”
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “I’m sure a lot of cars here have the same kind of
