Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (22 page)

“I was totally onto you,” Disher said. “I was just playing the dupe to set the trap.”

“You were lulling him into a false sense of superiority, is that it?” Stottlemeyer said.

“Exactly,” Disher said, though his face was bright red with embarrassment.

“But cold reading isn’t the only trickery you use,” Monk said to Swift. “You tape your shows at hotels, knowing that many of your guests will stay there. That’s important, because all their rooms are bugged with listening devices.”

This news moved through the audience like a wave. People rustled in their seats, whispering to one another and shaking their heads in shock and anger. The cameras panned over them, capturing it all on-screen.

“That’s not true,” Swift said.

“Here’s what happened. Kamakele was the manager of hotel operations here at the Belmont and planted the devices for you. He also supervised the remodeling of the Grand Kiahuna Poipu and made sure the rooms there were bugged, too,” Monk said. “Your scheme was going smoothly until an elderly woman named Helen Gruber rented the bungalow next to yours. She complained to the hotel staff that she was hearing voices. They thought she was delusional, but you knew the truth. You knew that her hearing aids were picking up the transmissions from the listening devices. Like this one I found in the bungalow.”

Monk reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny transmitter about the size of an M&M. So that was what Monk was doing on our last day on Kauai. He wasn’t straightening up; he was searching for the bugs.

The listening devices explained how Swift knew all about my trip to Mexico with Mitch and the details about my husband’s death in Kosovo. He’d overheard me tell Monk about it in my hotel room.

“You couldn’t take the chance that Helen would figure out what she was hearing. You were already planning to kill her when you saw me at the hotel. That’s when you realized you could capitalize on her killing by helping me solve her murder. But you’d have to frame somebody else for it first. You’d overheard everything that had been said in Helen’s bungalow, so you knew all about Lance’s affair. He made the perfect fall guy. You waited until Lance went snorkeling; then you crept into their bungalow. You hit Helen over the head with a coconut and stuffed her in the refrigerator for a few moments to leave enough forensic clues behind to create the impression that she’d been kept inside all night. You then put her in the hot tub and carefully staged a scene you knew I’d recognize was faked.”

“Why did he kill Martin Kamakele?” I asked.

“Because when the news broke about Swift’s involvement in solving the murder, Kamakele figured out what really happened,” Monk said. “He met with Swift in the luau garden and blackmailed him. Swift was outraged, grabbed the shovel, and killed him, then buried him with the roasting pig. That’s how Swift got the blister that’s healing on his hand.”

“This is all absurd speculation and completely false,” Swift said. “You can’t prove any of it.”

“I don’t have to. You proved it for me,” Monk said. “Since you can’t speak to the dead, the only way you could have known the things you told me and Lieutenant Kealoha was if you committed the murder yourself. The Kauai police will find the listening devices and the recording equipment in your bungalow. They will test Helen Gruber’s hearing aids and discover they pick up the transmissions. That should be enough for a jury.”

“They’ll never believe it,” Swift said.

“Are you kidding?” Stottlemeyer said. “There are people who believed you could talk to the dead with far less evidence than this. I’m not worried. But you should be. Look at your audience.”

Swift glanced at the people in the bleachers and saw the anger, betrayal, and disgust on their faces. And for an instant, I saw on his face his horrifying realization that Stottlemeyer was absolutely right.

Lieutenant Disher stepped forward, taking out his handcuffs. “Dylan Swift, you’re under arrest for the murders of Helen Gruber and Martin Kamakele.”

The producers of Dylan Swift’s show, realizing they were now out of a job, sold the footage to the local and national media within minutes of his arrest. A little over an hour later, people from San Francisco to Bangladesh, from Walla Walla to the Galapagos Islands, saw Swift’s humiliating ruination.

Stottlemeyer wasn’t thrilled about it, and neither was the district attorney, because the wide exposure of the tape was going to make it difficult to find an unbiased jury anywhere on the planet.

Lance Vaughan was released from jail, and the last I heard, he and Roxanne Shaw had sold the book rights to their story to Penguin Group (USA), and a movie version was in the works at HBO. The couple sued the Kauai Police Department for false arrest, defamation, and a host of other indignities. The case is still in litigation, and probably will be for years to come, but as a result, Lieutenant Kealoha didn’t get his promotion.

None of that really mattered to me or to Monk. He’d figured out the puzzle, righted the wrongs, and accomplished what he’d set out to do. Order was restored, and that was what he cared about most.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the immediate aftermath of the show, something was still nagging me about the case.

We slipped out the back exit of the hotel before the press showed up, and walked back to my car, which was in a parking structure a few blocks away.

“I believed that story you told about the night-night,” I said as we strolled along.

“If I didn’t convince you, I never would have been able to convince him. I knew he was listening to everything we said.”

“I still believe that story.”

“Even though it’s a lie?”

“I don’t think it is,” I said. “You told it with too much emotion, and you aren’t that good an actor.”

Monk was quiet for a long time. “It wasn’t Trudy who had the night-night. It was my mother.”

“You buried her with it, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Monk said. “But I had it dry-cleaned first.”

Of course he did.