Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (15 page)

Here’s what I’ve learned about Hawaiian sunsets. Just when you think you’ve seen the most beautiful one ever, a golden sun falling behind burnt-amber clouds, along comes one even more spectacular the next day, with brilliant streaks of purple chasing across a cobalt-blue sky.

It was dusk when Monk and I started our walk, and my third Hawaiian sunset was every bit as breathtaking as the previous two. The sky was pink. The sun and the yellow clouds seemed to float on the dark purple ocean swells like a school of dolphins leaping to catch the last few rays of light.

Tourists and locals lined up on the beach and along the Hoonani Road seawall in front of the Whaler’s Hideaway to watch the sunset and capture it forever, if not in their memories, then in photos and videos, thus saving their brain cells for more ATM codes and Web site passwords.

We stood at the seawall watching the sunset, but I knew Monk was a lot more interested in the view of Roxanne Shaw’s condo behind us. But her shutters were closed, frustrating his efforts to spy.

Just as the sun was about to drop below the horizon, a shirtless Hawaiian man holding a torch ran out from the Grand Kiahuna Poipu and onto the lava rocks that jutted out into the bay. Hidden speakers strategically placed on the hotel grounds played a song with lots of pounding drums and lyrics in native Hawaiian. I had no idea what the singers were saying, but I’m sure it was something reverential and spiritual and not “Baby One More Time.”

The man with the torch moved so deftly across the sharp, slippery rocks, it was almost ethereal. He stopped at the tip of the promontory, lit a standing torch with his own, then dove into the sea to symbolize the belief that the spot is the jumping-off place for souls into the next world (I knew that much from reading the guidebook).

If that was true, perhaps there was more than marketing savvy behind Swift’s decision to produce his program at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu. If he
did
talk to spirits, it couldn’t hurt to have his studio adjacent to the big door to the great beyond.

It got dark very quickly. I would have liked to linger for a while longer, but Monk was impatient and started walking toward the Whaler’s Hideaway condos without me.

I hurried and caught up with him.

“Why are you so antsy?” I said.

“Murder does that to me.”

“Do you know how Lance did it?”

“No.”

“But you know
something,
don’t you?”

“I always know something; that’s not the problem. It’s all the missing somethings between the somethings I know or I think I know and the somethings that aren’t somethings yet but I’m pretty sure
will
be.”

What frightened me was that I understood exactly what he was saying. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant about my own psychological and emotional health, but it couldn’t be good.

We stopped outside Roxanne’s door. There wasn’t a doorbell, just a ceramic tile with a notice painted on it asking us to leave our shoes outside so we wouldn’t stain the carpets with red dirt.
Mahalo.

Monk knocked on the door. After a moment or two it was opened a crack by Roxanne Shaw. She was wearing a bikini top and denim shorts.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Good evening, Ms. Shaw. I’m Adrian Monk, and this is Natalie Teeger. We’re working with the police on the investigation of Helen Gruber’s murder.”

“Who?” she said, trying her best to look confused.

“The wife of your lover, Lance Vaughan, aka Curtis Potter. We know he’s here. Those are his sandals beside the mat.”

She looked down at the flip-flops, and before she could muster a lie, Lance stepped from behind her, shirtless and wearing aloha-style board shorts.

My breath caught in my throat. I usually don’t go for the muscled, six-pack-abs type of guys, but he was perfect. Muscled, but not
too
muscled. He was incredibly attractive as long as he didn’t say a word, but he had to go and break the spell.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Lance said. “We met on the catamaran tour and then ran into each other on the beach this evening. She invited me up to dinner. I didn’t want to be alone in my grief, that’s all.”

“Spare us the lies, Lance,” I said. “We saw you both together last night. We know she’s from Cleveland and that she was Helen’s hairstylist at the Rose.”

“They go back together much longer than that,” Monk said. “Lance and Roxanne have been lovers since they were teenagers.”

“How do you know that?” Roxanne said.

“God, Roxy, would you please
think
before you speak?” Lance groaned. “He was guessing.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. The story of your lives is written on the tattoos on your bodies. You have a barbed-wire tattoo on your left arm, but not your right, that you said you got when you were eighteen.”

“Not that again,” Lance said.

“Ms. Shaw has a barbed-wire tattoo around her right ankle,” Monk said. “Those tattoos are a set that symbolizes your bond to each other.”

I looked down at her ankle, noticing the tattoo for the first time. I resolved to be a lot more observant.

Another young couple, carrying groceries in both hands, came up the path behind us and headed to the condo directly next door. They were about the same age as Lance and Roxanne and were dressed in silk aloha shirts and shorts.

“Maybe you’d better come in,” Roxanne said to us, opening the door wide and stepping aside to let us pass.

I slipped off my shoes, and walked in.

Monk started to follow, but Roxanne stopped him.

“You have to take off your shoes.” She tipped her head toward the notice on the door.

“That’s only a suggestion,” Monk said.

“It’s the rules. There’s white carpet all over this apartment. If you stain it, we’ll get charged for the cleaning and possible replacement.”

“I can vouch for that,” said the woman next door as she kicked off her sandals. “That’s brand-new carpet in that unit, and the last tenants had to pay for it. They tracked red dirt all over the place.”

“I don’t have dirt on my shoes,” Monk said.

The man set down the grocery bags and fumbled in his pockets for his house keys. “Yes, you do.”

Monk lifted up one of his feet and saw the rust-colored dirt on his sole.

“So, I’ll just wipe my feet.” Monk began wiping his feet on the welcome mat. “I’m a great wiper.”

“That’s not good enough,” Roxanne said.

“You’re letting in all the mosquitoes. Take off your shoes and get inside already,” Lance said. “What’s the big deal?”

“You’re a deeply troubled man,” Monk said, dragging his feet across the mat. “You abide by an arbitrary and crackpot rule about shoes but you have no problem indulging in casual adultery.”

The couple next door stared at Lance and Roxanne.

“You’re into swapping?” the woman said.

“They are and they aren’t,” Monk said, continuing to wipe his shoes. “She picks out older women for him to sleep with. I don’t know if she sleeps around or not, but I don’t think so.”

“Would you please come inside?” Roxanne whined, deeply embarrassed.

“You see that heart on her breast?” Monk asked, almost running in place. The neighbors leaned in close and stared at the tattoo. “The heart symbolizes her love for Lance, the wings her willingness to let him go and have affairs with other people.”

“Cool,” the man said.

“What about you two?” the woman asked, shifting her gaze between me and Monk.

“Us?” I said. “We aren’t involved.”

“We’re investigating them,” Monk said, motioning to Lance and Roxanne. He was getting a little breathless from his shoe wiping.

The woman nodded knowingly. “I totally get it. We like to investigate, too.”

Monk smiled and turned to me. “See, I’m not the only one who does it on vacation.”

“That’s the best time.” The man winked at me and unlocked their door. “When you four are done, you’re welcome to come over for drinks. We’re up late.”

They went inside their condo and closed the door.

“What a nice couple,” Monk said to me. “It might be nice to talk shop with them later.”

He may be a brilliant detective, but there are times when Monk is completely clueless. I shoved him off the welcome mat, picked it up, and set it down on the carpet.

“Get in and stand on this,” I said, pointing down at the mat. It was an order, not a suggestion.

Monk seemed to sense that. He took a big step from the door onto the mat, careful not to touch the carpet. I slammed the door shut behind him.

“Okay, what the hell is going on here?” I asked.

“Here’s what happened,” Monk said, and started wiping his shoes on the mat again. “Lance and Roxanne fell in love and were a couple until greed got the better of them. Somehow they came into contact with Elizabeth Dahl, a wealthy widow who fell for Lance. They saw a chance to exploit that attraction for money.”

“You can stop with the shoes,” I said. “You’re inside now. You’ve probably got no soles left anyway.”

“Oh.” He stopped cleaning his feet, rolled his head, adjusted his shoulders, and continued talking. “Roxanne agreed to let Lance marry Elizabeth Dahl, as long as he got a healthy allowance that she could share and they continued to see each other on the side.”

“You make it sound so tawdry,” Lance said.

“And it isn’t?” I said incredulously. “I think the word was created specifically to describe the two of you.”

“Lizzie knew exactly what the deal was.”

“Easy for you to say now that she’s dead,” Monk said.

“It was Lizzie’s idea,” Roxanne said. “She came to us and made us an offer. If I would share Lance with her, she would share her money with us. Liz got what she wanted out of it. She got to share Lance’s body and his love with me.”

“And you got her money,” I said.

“There was nothing cruel about it,” Roxanne said. “It made her happy.”

“It made us all happy,” Lance said. “No harm, no foul.”

“Until she died and the money left to you wasn’t quite enough to set you up for life,” Monk said. “So you went searching for someone else with whom you could repeat the lucrative arrangement.”

Monk started to take a step toward them, but Roxanne wagged her finger at him as if he were a misbehaving child. He stepped back onto his little island.

“You moved to Seattle,” Monk continued, “where no one knew you and you could look for a wealthy new benefactress for Lance to marry. His job as a personal trainer and yours as a hairstylist gave you an opportunity to screen plenty of potential lovers for him. Like Beatrice Woodman, whom I’m certain we’ll find was a client at the hair salon before she became Lance’s personal-training client and, eventually, his wife.”

“That’s not how it was. We didn’t set out to find someone. Someone found me,” Lance said. “Beatrice was a bright, vivacious, but lonely woman who longed for companionship and passion in her life again. I knew I had enough love in my heart for her and Roxanne. Lizzie taught me that, and I knew that doing this would honor her memory and the special relationship we had.”

“But as soon as Beatrice Woodman died, you moved to Cleveland and found another widow to seduce,” Monk said. “You started the scheme all over again.”

“So he’s a professional, live-in boy toy and she’s his pimp,” I said. “How romantic.”

“Roxanne is the love of my life,” Lance said, slipping his arm possessively around her waist.

“And yet you marry other women for their money,” I said, then glanced at Roxanne. “What could you possibly see in this jerk?”

“His compassion,” Roxanne said. “His heart.”

“Mega dittos, baby, right back at you,” Lance said to her. “Roxy wants older women who are at the end of their lives to have one last chance to experience the joy and passion that she has with me every moment…and that they’ve never had. It’s an act of unselfish kindness, and I love her for it.”

“No, honey, it’s you that’s making the sacrifice,” Roxanne said. “And I love
you
for it.”

I thought I was going to puke. Roxanne kissed Lance on the cheek, then looked Monk in the eye.

“If you ask me,” she said, “he’s an angel.”

“Of death,” Monk said.

“I had nothing to do with their deaths,” Lance said. “But I had everything to do with the happiness my wives experienced before they passed on.”

“I doubt Helen Gruber would agree,” Monk said.

“I didn’t kill her,” Lance said.

“You’re the one with the best motive,” Monk said.

“And Roxanne is the runner-up,” I added.

“We were both on a catamaran on the Na Pali Coast when Helen was murdered,” Lance said. “There’s no way we could have killed her, and you know that.”

He seemed awfully proud of the alibi, to me. “Did Helen know you brought your little love honey with you to Hawaii and that you were off playing together?”

“Of course,” Lance said. “Helen knew all about Roxanne.”

“We know you’re lying,” I said.

“Really?” Lance said. “How?”

I almost said,
Because Helen told us,
but I caught myself.

“Because your story is a bucket of crap,” I said. “You go from city to city, seducing lonely old women and draining their bank accounts, and you think that makes you a humanitarian.”

“Lieutenant Kealoha will want to talk with you both,” Monk said. “So I wouldn’t start looking for a new city and another rich old woman just yet.”

“Nobody wants Helen’s murderer brought to justice more than I do,” Lance said. “We’re here to help for as long as it takes.”

By then, I had had more of those two than I could stand.

“I’ll notify the Nobel committee.” I opened the front door and walked out, lingering a moment on the path to wait for Monk.

He stepped off the mat onto the carpet, then lifted his foot.

“See?” Monk said. “No stain.”

He turned and walked the remaining two steps to the door on the carpet before closing the door behind him.

“Can you believe those people?” I said to him as he joined me and we started walking back toward the hotel.

“I don’t believe anything about them. Except the part about seducing old women and taking their money.”