Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (20 page)

I couldn’t help wondering what Monk meant when he said that I’d solved half the crime. I couldn’t see how that was true.

One of the most irritating things about Adrian Monk, above and beyond the obvious, is that he makes statements like that and then doesn’t explain himself.

After making that remarkable declaration, he just turned and walked out of the garden, too lost in thought even to say good-bye.

It was frustrating for me, but even more so for Kealoha, who couldn’t understand why Monk would leave him dangling like that.

“He’s doing this to torture me, isn’t he?” Kealoha asked me.

“He does it to everybody,” I said. “He won’t tell us who the killer is until he knows he can prove it.”

“If he tells us who he
thinks
it is, maybe we can help him.”

“That may not be the half he knows.”

“Then I’ll just have to plod along the same way I would if Mr. Monk weren’t here. I’ll see if Martin Kamakele had any enemies and find out what Roxanne Shaw had been doing today.”

“Let us know, okay?”

Kealoha nodded and I headed back to the bungalow. After seeing that cooked corpse, I had lost my appetite for dinner and had doubts I’d ever be able to eat meat again.

When I got there, Monk was sitting at the kitchen table playing a solo game of peanuts, taking apart the pieces and putting them back together again.

I didn’t disturb him. I figured the game was helping him think. So I took a swim in our private pool, called Julie from my bedroom afterward to catch up on things at home, and then went out to say good night to Monk.

He was sitting in the living room in the dark, facing the patio and listening to the surf. His back was very straight and he was looking into the darkness as if he saw something there.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“When Trudy was a baby, her grandmother knitted her a yellow blanket. Trudy was swaddled in the blanket when she was an infant, sucked on the corners when she was teething, and became so attached to it when she was a toddler that she couldn’t sleep without it.”

“It was her security blanket. Every kid has one. Mine was a stuffed fox I called Foxy.”

“Trudy called the blanket her ‘night-night.’ As she got older, the blanket got more and more tattered and frayed. Her parents tried to wean her off of it by having her grandmother knit her a smaller, identical one that was pocket-sized. But Trudy wouldn’t accept it. There was no substitute for her night-night.”

“When did she finally let go of it?” I asked.

“She never did,” Monk said. “She was still sleeping with her night-night when I met her and for all the years we were married. I buried the night-night with her so she’d always be comforted and safe.”

“What made you think of it now?”

“Because that’s still how Trudy makes me feel. She’s my night-night.” Monk sighed, not with sadness, but with contentment. “I’ve never told anybody about her blanket and that I buried it with her.”

“I’m glad you told me.” I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Good night, Mr. Monk.”

“Good night, Natalie.”

I went to bed, leaving Monk alone with his memories and his dreams.

I didn’t know what to expect the next morning. We had only one full day left in Hawaii, and I was hoping to spend it relaxing. But I knew Monk wouldn’t rest until he found Kamakele’s killer and exposed Dylan Swift as a fraud, which meant I wouldn’t be resting either.

I found Monk at the kitchen table, where he was carefully folding in half a letter that was covered with his typewriter-perfect handwriting. He stuck it in his inside coat pocket.

“Good morning, Natalie. Did you sleep well?”

“Like I was hibernating,” I said. “You?”

“I wrote a letter,” Monk said.

It took him twenty minutes to sign his name on a credit card receipt, so I had no doubt it took him most of the night to write an entire letter.

“To whom?”

“Captain Stottlemeyer,” Monk said.

“That’s nice,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

“I’d like to stop and get it notarized on our way to breakfast,” he said. “You think they have a notary on staff?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure a stamp is all that’s necessary.”

“I’d rather have it metered,” he said, and we headed for the door.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” I asked with some reluctance.

“Enjoying Hawaii,” he said.

“What about the murder investigation?”

“It’s half-solved,” he said.

“What about the other half?”

He dismissed it with a wave. “In due time.”

I was stunned. He’d never been so laid-back about a case before.

“What about Swift?” I said. “Aren’t you going to expose him as a fraud?”

“I’ll get around to it.”

It wasn’t like I wanted to talk him into further investigations, but it was such a radical change in his personality that it made me uneasy.

“How can you be so relaxed about things?”

“Isn’t that the whole point of a vacation? You should try it.”

“You didn’t take one of those pills again, did you?”

“Why would I? Besides, I’m saving it for the flight home.”

I decided not to question my good fortune any further and to enjoy the day to the fullest.

On our way to the restaurant, we stopped at the front desk, where Tetsuo greeted us. The entire staff, he said, was still in shock about what had happened to their boss, Martin Kamakele. There was talk about permanently canceling the hotel’s luau.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Monk said. “Next you should consider folding your towels instead of rolling them. Turn your back on barbarism once and for all.”

Monk asked if they had a notary on staff. They did, and it was Tetsuo. So while Monk and Tetsuo went into the office to notarize the letter, I went ahead to the breakfast buffet. On my way there I glanced out front and saw Dylan Swift stepping into a limousine that I presumed was taking him to the airport. He smiled and gave me a little wave. I acknowledged his greeting with a nod of my head.

He was getting away easy. Swift probably didn’t even realize just how close he had come to career ruin. By his heading back to San Francisco and staying out of our sight, there was a possibility that Monk might forget all about him.

Monk was in such a relaxed mood that he didn’t even lecture me, or the restaurant staff, about the horrors of buffet dining. On the other hand, after the aborted luau last night, it probably seemed sanitary and civilized to Monk by comparison—or at least like a step in the right direction.

He ate his Wheat Chex and milk while I indulged in an island breakfast of kiwi, pineapple, macadamia-nut pancakes with coconut syrup, and a cup of fresh Kona coffee.

After breakfast we went back to the bungalow, where I changed into my bikini. My back was sunburned, but not my front, so I slathered on some suntan lotion and settled down for some quality sunbathing.

Monk eagerly awaited the arrival of the maids. As soon as they got there, he hustled them into the living room for Housecleaning 101. With Kamakele dead, there was no one to object to his occupying the maids’ time and attention. He began with “Vacuuming Theory.”

“There are three steps to successful vacuuming,” Monk told them. “Survey. Map. Vac. Survey the scene. Map a pattern of attack, and then vac, sticking to the plan despite whatever obstacles are in your path. Let me demonstrate….”

I was able to tune him out until the vacuuming began forty-five minutes later and the noise drove me away from the bungalow. I put on a T-shirt and went for a walk.

My stroll took me past the Whaler’s Hideaway, and I couldn’t resist looking up at Roxanne Shaw’s condo. She was there, sitting on her lanai, looking out at the ocean. Her neighbors were on their lanai, too, sunning themselves. I wondered if the swinging couple had invited her over for a friendly threesome yet.

I continued up the street, following the seawall, stopping once or twice to watch the big sea turtles swimming among the boulders and managing, somehow, not to get smashed against them by the pounding surf.

The street curved toward Koloa Landing, the point where the mouth of the river met the sea. Until the 1900s, that spot was Kauai’s major port for whaling ships and all of the island’s sea trade. The muddy, weedy landing was a popular spot for scuba divers and snorkelers. Where once there had been docks and warehouses, now there was a decrepit rental cabin made of lava rocks and, on the opposite shore, a modest condo complex hugging the edge of the rocky point.

I kept walking, crossing the concrete bridge over the tiny river and heading north in the general direction of Spouting Horn, the geyserlike natural phenomenon up the road, though I had no intention of going that far in my flip-flops. I passed a lot of homes, bed-and-breakfast inns, and condos along the jagged shoreline. There was no beach here, but there were other benefits to make up for it—views that seemed to stretch across the sea into infinity, and the dramatic show of the surf crashing against the rocks in explosions of frothy ocean spray.

I went as far as Prince Kuhio Park, looked at the well-tended grass, the muddy fish pond, and the tidy lava-stone foundations of Ho’ai Heiau, the ruins of a temple. This park was the birthplace of Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole, the last royal heir to the Hawaiian throne, who died in 1922. I tried to imagine what the place looked like a hundred years ago when he was born, but the shabby condo complex adjacent to the park, and the surfers drinking beer and whooping it up on their lanais, killed the mood.

I headed back the way I came, going much slower this time. Whatever exuberant energy had propelled me this far was used up. I was hot and tired, my back itched, and my feet hurt.

Roxanne Shaw was sitting on the seawall across from the Whaler’s Hideaway and facing my direction. I got the feeling she’d been waiting for me to come back.

I walked up and sat down beside her on the wall. I saw the unmarked police car parked at the corner, the sweaty detective in the loud aloha shirt making no effort to disguise the fact that he was watching us.

“I’m under de facto house arrest,” Roxanne said bitterly. I bet that was the first time in her life that she’d ever used the term “de facto” in conversation.

“Could be worse,” I said. “You could be sharing a cell with your lover.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Yeah, he’s Mr. Innocent. He doesn’t kill women; he just marries them for their money and waits for them to die.”

“So we aren’t perfect,” she said. “But we aren’t evil. The old ladies got something out of it. You don’t think they loved having a buff boy toy of their own?”

“We’ve been over this already. You didn’t wait here to tell me again about what humanitarians you two are.”

“Monk is wrong. Lance didn’t kill Helen and stage everything in such an elaborate way to create an alibi. He’s not that smart.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve said that I believe. Maybe you’re the brains.”

She shook her head. “I get by on my great rack and perfect ass, not my intellect.”

“Hey, that’s good. Tell that to the jury,” I said. “I’m sure it will go over big. Don’t forget to flash some cleavage while you’re at it to really sell the point.”

“You have to help us,” she said imploringly.

“Give me a reason. You could start by telling me who killed Martin Kamakele.”

She shrugged. “I never heard of him until yesterday, when the detectives came to question me again. All I know is that Kamakele brought Helen and Lance some champagne on the day they arrived.”

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.

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 stains.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Monk said. “These
are
Brian’s stains.”

“Who is this slob Brian?” Kealoha asked. “And why would he steal your car?”

I explained to Kealoha that we’d come to Kauai for my friend Candace’s aborted wedding, that Brian was her jerk of an ex-fiancé, that his rental car had been vandalized, and that he’d left the island days ago.

“I’m confused,” Kealoha said.

“So am I,” I said. “How could these stains be the stains from Brian’s car?”

We both looked at Monk.

He looked back at us. “Let’s rent another car.”

Monk didn’t bother to explain himself. He insisted that we take him to the nearest car-rental agency, preferably one we hadn’t rented from before.

I argued that we had only one more night left on the island and that it was insane to rent another car now. But Monk didn’t care.

Kealoha gave us a ride to AutoPlanet, the one big rental company left that didn’t know us. He waited around while Monk put the attendant through the ordeal of finding him a convertible that was as close to factory fresh as possible.

We ended up with another Mustang, identical to the ones we had before.

“Where to now, Mr. Monk?” I asked after all the papers were signed and all the insurance options had been accepted.

“The police station,” Monk said.

“You didn’t need a rental car for that,” Kealoha said. “I could have taken you there. What do you want at the station?”

“A knife,” Monk said. “The sharpest one you have.”

We followed Kealoha back to the police station and parked in the lot. Kealoha went inside and came back out holding one of those ugly blades Rambo used to carry around. It was so sharp, I was afraid I could get cut just looking at it.

“We took this off a drunken marine in Kapaa,” Kealoha said, showing us the knife as we got out of the car. “He never came back to claim it.”

“You could cut a tree down with that thing,” I said.

“He said he used it for slicing apples.”

Monk motioned to me for a wipe and I gave him one.

“If you will recall, someone smashed the windshield and tore the soft-top of Brian’s car.” Monk took the knife from Kealoha and thoroughly cleaned the handle with the wipe as he spoke. “When it came back from the body shop, not only were the windshield and soft-top fixed, but the seats were replaced, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“But the carpets were still dirty. I thought it was odd. Now I don’t.”

He gave me the dirty wipe, opened the driver’s-side door of the car, and slashed the seat with his knife.

“Mr. Monk!” I ran up beside him. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t do that!”

He looked up at me. “You took the insurance, didn’t you?”

“It doesn’t cover you for this!”

Monk shrugged and continued slashing the seat cushions as if nothing had been said about it.

“Is this your way of removing difficult stains?” I asked, not bothering to hide my exasperation.

Kealoha joined us. “I’d like to know, too, since technically I’m witnessing a crime here.”

“Brian’s rental car was brand-new, just off the boat,” Monk said as he slashed. “When we went to the rental company for the first time, a couple was there returning a brand-new Mustang that had been damaged in an accident. The next day our car was stolen.”

“Yes, I know all that,” I said. “What I don’t get is why you’re ripping up these seats.”

He stopped slashing and looked at his handiwork. He’d shredded the upholstery, exposing the stuffing and the springs. Hacked-up bits of foam padding were all over the floor.

“After our car was stolen, we rented another new Mustang. A few hours later someone sideswiped us,” Monk walked around to the other side of the car.

“You’re cursed,” Kealoha said. “And, if I may say so, a little crazy.”

“That may be.” Monk opened the passenger-side door, leaned inside, and began slashing the seats again. He acted as if it were the most normal thing in the world to be doing. “But that’s not the reason our first car was stolen or why a truck crashed into our second one. In fact, all these car accidents, thefts, and acts of vandalism have one thing in common: Each rental car involved was just off the boat.”

Monk leaned back and smiled. I recognized it as the smile he gets when everything fits and order is restored, like when he organizes the items in a grocery store dairy case by expiration date. Or when he solves a murder.

Kealoha and I walked around the car and peered inside. The back cushion of the passenger seat was torn apart. Monk had cut away the vinyl and padding to reveal that the seat was stuffed tight with bags of white powder.

I had a hunch it wasn’t sugar.

“I figured it would be drugs,” Monk said. “I think you’ll find that the rate of car thefts and accidents increases considerably after a new fleet of cars arrives on the island and are distributed among the rental agencies.”

“How did you know the cars were being used to smuggle cocaine?” Kealoha asked.

“I didn’t until I saw Brian’s stained seats in our stolen car. Then I remembered something you said—that virtually everything on the island, from cars to peanuts, has to be shipped in. I figured that fact of life must also apply to illegal goods as well.”

“So they’re smuggling cocaine onto the island by hiding it in the seats of new rental cars,” Kealoha said. “They have inside men at the rental agencies who let them know when the cars are rolling off the lot and with whom. Then they vandalize, crash, or steal the cars so they can remove the hidden drugs.”

“Those were Brian’s seats in our stolen car. Because all the seats look alike, they just swapped out the ones with the drugs,” Monk said. “They put Brian’s seats, now emptied of drugs, into the next drug-laden car that came in.”

“Why not just break into the cars while they are on the lot?” I asked. “Why wait until they are rented?”

“To avoid getting caught in the act and to draw less attention,” Monk explained. “The lots are under constant surveillance and there are people around them twenty-four hours a day. Not only that, but if they always hit the newest cars on the lot, it would be noticed right away. But when it’s seemingly random accidents and thefts of rental cars out on the road all over the island, something that happens every day here, neither the rental agencies nor the police are likely to make the connection.”

“He’s right,” Kealoha said. “And there’s one body shop in Kapaa that gets most of the rental car repair work.”

I remembered the rental agent at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu telling us that. Now it all made sense.

Monk handed Kealoha the knife. “Something tells me that car repair is not their primary business.”

“I wonder how many years this has been going on right under our noses?” Kealoha shook his head in amazement. “I’ll bust the shop tonight. You wanna come along?”

Monk glanced at me. “I don’t think so. This is our last night in Hawaii, and a drug bust doesn’t seem like the right way to spend it.”

I smiled at Monk. “Thank you.”

He shrugged.

“I’m gonna miss you, Mr. Monk. You are one hell of a detective,” Kealoha said. “How come you aren’t on the SFPD anymore?”

“Creative differences,” I said.

“You ought to move here,” Kealoha said. “We’d hire you in a heartbeat.”

“Really?” I said.

“With him on the payroll, we could lay off half the force,” Kealoha said. “We’d save a fortune on manpower, not to mention lowering the crime rate by half.”

Monk did one of his full-body shivers. “As appealing as that job offer is, I’ll pass.”

“Excuse us a moment.” I pulled Monk aside so we were out of earshot of Kealoha. “You really should seriously consider this, Mr. Monk. He’s offering you your dream. Don’t you want a badge again?”

“I have no desire to be the sheriff of hell,” Monk said.

“What if I moved here with you?”

“You’d do that for me?”

“I’d do it for myself and Julie. If someone paid me to live here, I’d jump at the chance. It would be an adventure in paradise.”

“You’d live someplace where your daughter had to wear mud shirts and eat food off the ground?” Monk said. “Who are you kidding? I would never expect you and Julie to endure that kind of hardship just so I could be a cop again.”

“It wouldn’t be a hardship; it—”

He interrupted me. “That’s very kind of you, Natalie, and I’m touched. But come on, look at this place.”

Before I could argue, he turned back to Lieutenant Kealoha. “It was a nice offer, Lieutenant. But my life is in San Francisco.”

“Well, I hope you’ll come back to visit us soon,” he said.

“I certainly will,” Monk said, and then added in a whisper that only I could hear, “when dogs start using restrooms.”