Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (8 page)

It was very tasty, whatever it was.

“What’s poi?” I asked Kealoha, waving my fork over the pasty stuff.

“Fermented and mashed taro. You eat it like this.” Kealoha dipped two fingers into the poi, scooped up some of the paste, and stuck it in his mouth with delight.

While Monk was still gaping at him in disgust, I slopped some poi up with my fingers and sucked them clean.

Monk stared at me. “Have you lost your mind?”

The poi tasted like Elmer’s glue, but just to be cruel, I stuck my fingers into the poi for another helping and offered it to Monk.

“Want to try?” I asked, my fingers dripping poi.

“Have you been sneaking some of my drugs?”

“What kind of drugs do you have?” Kealoha asked casually.

“Mind-altering but strictly nonrecreational,” Monk said. “There’s nothing the least bit fun about them.”

“Especially for whoever is around him when he’s taking them,” I said, eating the poi.

“I have a prescription,” Monk said.

I pointed to the relish with my wet fingers. “What’s this?”

“Gecko,” Monk said with authority.

“Kimchi,” Kealoha said. “Spicy pickled vegetables, garlic, and chilies.”

Monk leaned down and whispered in my ear. “You have only his word for that.”

“Dems ‘ono grines,” Kealoha said, “but don’t smooch nobody after.”

I scooped some up with my fingers and put it in my mouth. The kimchi was spicy and heavy on the garlic, but I liked it. My breath was going to be awful, but the odds of my getting close enough to anybody who’d notice were nil.

Kealoha grinned at me. “We eat dat wid a fork.”

I shrugged. “You can’t take me anywhere.”

The zapper crackled and Monk jumped back, startled, colliding with the empty chairs at the table behind him.

“Okay, that’s it, enough of this charade,” Monk said, pointing his finger accusingly at Kealoha. “We didn’t have anything to do with Helen Gruber’s murder.”

“Who said we did?” I asked.

Monk tipped his head toward Kealoha. “He thinks that’s why I knew so much about the murder. He took us to this godforsaken hellhole to protect the crime scene and keep an eye on us while his officer called Captain Stottlemeyer.”

I glanced at Kealoha, who was busy chewing. “Is that true?”

He shrugged indifferently. “I took you to lunch. I could have taken you to the station instead. But this is how we do things here, easygoing and friendly.”

“Is that what you call trapping us in this reptile-infested insect pit?” Monk said. “This sort of police brutality would never be tolerated in America.”

“Dis
is
America, bruddah.”

Kealoha’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open and answered the call, rising from his chair and stepping out of earshot. Even so, I noticed he stood between us and the door in case Monk wanted to make a mad dash for freedom.

“Why are you putting yourself through this?” I said to Monk as I continued eating.

“I didn’t ask to come to this house of horror,” Monk said, wincing as the zapper claimed another insect.

“You intruded on their homicide investigation.”

“They wouldn’t have known it was a murder if it weren’t for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know they’ll never solve it by themselves,” Monk said.

“This is your vacation,” I said. “You’re here to relax, remember?”

“Solving murders is how I relax. It’s when I don’t have a murder to solve that I become tense.”

“Then read a murder mystery,” I said. “Have you ever tried that? Besides, the Kauai police haven’t asked for your help.”

“Look how they live. Do you really think they can handle a homicide investigation? You heard what he said. They rarely deal with murders here. They need me.”

Kealoha stepped up to Monk. “Captain Stottlemeyer says you’re a fraud, that Adrian Monk would never go to Hawaii.”

“Let me talk to him,” Monk said.

The detective held the phone out to him.

“Wait.” Monk turned and reached his hand toward me, palm up. “Wipe.”

I gave him a wipe. Monk reached for the phone with his wipe, but the cell slipped through his moist grip and fell on the floor.

“I need another wipe,” Monk said, waving his hand at me. “Stat!”

“That wipe is still good,” I said.

“No, it’s not.”

“You didn’t touch the phone.”

“The wipe made contact,” he said.

“Yes,
it
did.
You
didn’t.”

“But now there’s less wipe on the wipe,” he said. “I need full wipe. Open your eyes, woman.
There are lizards on the walls.
This is a full-wipe situation.”

Kealoha picked up the phone and held it to his ear. “Still there, Captain?” He listened for a moment, smiled at me, then nodded. “Yes, I will.”

He snapped the phone shut and slipped it back into the pocket of his shorts. “The captain says you are definitely who you say you are, and he expressed his sympathies for Mrs. Teeger.”

“Now that we’ve established who I am,” Monk said, “Can we get out of here?”

“Better than that,” Kealoha said. “We can talk to Helen Gruber’s husband.”

Lance Vaughan sat on the edge of a chaise longue, elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, his shoulders heaving as he cried softly. His board shorts were wet, and his short-sleeved red surf shirt clung to his hard body like a second skin. He had curly brown hair that was made for a woman’s fingers to comb, and tug, and twirl. I could see in an instant why Helen Gruber married this guy. I was tempted to propose myself. I felt a sudden, desperate need for a breath mint.

“Mr. Vaughan?” Kealoha said. “I’m Lt. Ben Kealoha of the Kauai police.”

Lance looked up and I saw the tears running down his stubbled cheeks and the pain in those blue eyes. He wiped the tears away with the palms of his hands. It struck me as a very masculine gesture. I would have wiped tears away with my fingertips. I would have wiped his away if it weren’t for my astonishing powers of self-control.

Kealoha gestured to us. “This is Adrian Monk, a private detective who consults with the police department, and his associate, Natalie Teeger. We’re deeply sorry for your loss.”

“It’s a cruel joke, isn’t it?” Lance said.

“What you mean?” Kealoha said.

“How many times did Gilligan get conked with a coconut? Every damn week, and it always got a laugh,” Lance said. “Helen was a strong, proud, beautiful woman. She deserved better.”

“A better way to die?” Kealoha said.

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Something with dignity. Something that would have given her a chance to fight back. It’s like she got killed by a pie in the face.”

“Is that barbed wire tattooed on your wrist?” Monk asked.

Lance ran his finger over the tattoo on his left arm. “I got it when I turned eighteen to go along with this garage band I was in. Helen thought it was sexy. I had to talk her out of celebrating our engagement by getting a matching tattoo of her own. Could you see a woman in her sixties with a tattoo like that? That’s the kind of woman she was. She didn’t care what anybody thought about anything. She grabbed what she wanted in life. She did things her way, without apology or regret, and I loved her for it.”

“You live like that,” Kealoha said, “you make a lot of enemies.”

“You think she was killed by bad karma?”

Kealoha shook his head. “I think she was killed by a bad man.”

It took a moment before the meaning sank in. Lance’s hands curled into fists and he looked Kealoha in the eye. “You’re saying she was
murdered
? Why would anyone want to kill my wife?”

“Das what we’re going to find out,” Kealoha said. “We need to ask you some questions.”

“Why don’t you have a tattoo on your right wrist?” Monk asked.

Kealoha regarded Monk with bewilderment. I’m sure Kealoha was trying to figure out what that question had to do with the investigation. Poor guy.

“I guess I never got around to it,” Lance said.

“Don’t you think it’s time you did?”

“Where were you this morning, Mr. Vaughan?” Kealoha said.

Lance glared at the cop. “I know what’s going on here. You look at me, you see a man much younger than Helen, and you immediately assume I married her for her money. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“It’s happened before,” Kealoha said unapologetically.

“I bet there are tattoo parlors all over Kauai,” Monk said. “You could get it done today.”

Kealoha gave Monk a hard look. Monk ignored it; he was too busy giving Lance a hard look of his own.

“Two years ago I was a personal trainer in Cleveland. Women threw themselves at me,” Lance said. “I had my pick of twenty-two-year-old, surgically enhanced blond bimbos, but you know why I fell in love with Helen?”

“Because she was rich?” I said.

“Rich in character, Ms. Teeger. Rich in intelligence. Rich in her no-holds-barred appreciation of life. She was authentic. A real woman in every sense. She ignored her age, and so did I. She was the sexiest woman I’ve ever met.”

“And probably the wealthiest, too,” Kealoha said.

Monk took a pen out of his pocket. “Use this.”

“For what?” Lance said.

“To draw barbed wire on your wrist until you can get into a tattoo parlor. You’ll thank me later.”

“Are you crazy?” Lance said.

“I’m not the one with mismatched wrists,” Monk said.

“Where were you between the hours of eight and eleven
A
.
M
., Mr. Vaughan?” Kealoha interrupted.

“Snorkeling on the Na Pali Coast,” Lance said. “I was on a Snorkel Rob cruise with two dozen other people. Snorkel Rob can tell you. I made the reservation two days ago.”

“Why didn’t your wife go with you?”

“She said if she wanted to look at goldfish, she would have gone to a pet store instead of flying all the way to Hawaii. But she didn’t want to stand in the way of my having a good time,” Lance said, choking up again. “If only I’d stayed, maybe I could have saved her.”

“I could draw the barbed wire for you,” Monk said. “I’m not much of an artist, but then again, neither was the guy who did your tattoo.”

“Can you think of any reason why someone would want to kill your wife?” Kealoha said, as if Monk hadn’t spoken at all.

He shook his head.

“Is anything missing?” Kealoha asked.

“A tattoo on his right wrist,” Monk said. “Am I the only one who can see it?”

“Jewelry, money, important documents, something of value?” Kealoha elaborated.

“I don’t know,” Lance said. “I haven’t looked.”

“Would you mind taking a look-see now?” Kealoha waved over an officer. “Go through the house with Mr. Vaughan, okay?”

Lance got up and led the officer into the house.

Kealoha turned to Monk. “What do you think?”

“He’s dangerously unbalanced,” Monk said.

“You think he’s violent?” Kealoha said.

“I think he’s got a tattoo on one wrist and not on the other one,” Monk said. “A man who is capable of that kind of insanity is capable of anything.”

While Kealoha checked out Lance’s alibi, I was determined get down to the beach and soak up some of the Hawaiian sunshine. I didn’t care what Monk wanted to do with the rest of the day.

I headed straight back to my room with Monk in tow and already fidgeting with nervous energy. He was anxious to investigate something,
anything,
but he had nothing to go on until he heard back from Kealoha. I for one hoped that wouldn’t happen for another couple of days.

I went into my room, slammed shut our adjoining door, and changed into my bikini, still simmering over the fact that Monk managed both to ruin my friend’s wedding and stumble on a murder on his first full day in Hawaii.

The wedding part I could almost forgive him for, since he saved Candace from marrying a pathological liar and would-be bigamist, but I deeply resented the corpse.

Most people can go their whole lives without getting involved with a murder. Monk is lucky if he can go outside and get his morning paper off his stoop without tripping over a dead body. Murders happen around him with such astonishing frequency that it’s long since gone beyond coincidental and borders on supernatural.

I guess on some level I knew the moment Monk showed up on the plane that it was inevitable that, one way or another, I’d get dragged into a homicide investigation in Hawaii. All I could hope for now was that Monk would find the killer quickly or that things would move slowly enough to leave plenty of time for me to lie in hammocks, take long walks on the beach, and float lazily in the pool.

I was slathering on suntan lotion, and continuing to bemoan my sad situation, when I heard Monk’s voice on the other side of the door between our rooms. He was talking to someone.

I put on a bathrobe, out of temporary deference to Monk’s timidity when it came to exposed female flesh, and opened the door to his room.

Monk stood at his refrigerator with one of the assistant managers from the front desk. The young man in the hotel’s uniform floral shirt and khaki pants looked exasperated, but as if he were trying his best to be polite. His name tag identified him as Tetsuo Kapaka.

“I don’t see the problem, sir,” Tetsuo said, acknowledging me with a polite nod.

“There are two Toblerones in the refrigerator but one of everything else,” Monk said.

“Yes,” Tetsuo said.

“That’s the problem,” Monk said. “I’m sure other guests have complained about it.”

“You’re the first, sir,” Tetsuo said.

“I ate the last one, just to get some peace, but while I was out the maid replaced it,” Monk said. “Can you believe that?”

“She was replenishing the minibar,” Tetsuo said.

“Is that what you call it?”

“It’s how the minibar system works.”

“It’s a corrupt system,” Monk said. “Because now there are two Toblerones again.”

“You could eat one.”

“Aha!” Monk exclaimed. “That’s exactly what you’d like me to do, keep eating those extra bars at six dollars apiece.”

“You don’t have to eat it, sir. You could ignore it.”

“Yeah, right. That’s like expecting me to sleep when there are towels in the bathroom that are rolled instead of folded.”

Tetsuo’s brow wrinkled with confusion. “Do the towels make noise?”

“Not that you or I would hear,” I said. “Not even dogs can pick it up.”

“I’ll instruct the maids not to replenish your minibar for the duration of your stay,” Tetsuo said to Monk.

“Admit it, this is just a clever scam by the management to force people into eating Toblerones at outrageously inflated prices.”

“No, sir.”

Monk lowered his voice. “Are you afraid of reprisals if you talk? Is that it? I’m a detective consulting with the Kauai PD. I can get you witness protection. We can rip this thing wide-open.”

“If there’s nothing else, Mr. Monk, I’ll be going.”

“How many Toblerones did Mrs. Gruber have in her SubZero refrigerator?”

“I don’t know sir,” Tetsuo said. “That wasn’t among her complaints.”

“What
was
she complaining about?” Monk said.

“Noise,” Tetsuo said. “She said she couldn’t get any peace with all the people screaming and yelling day and night all around her.”

“There must have been a lot of parties going on if she could hear them,” I said. “She wore hearing aids.”

“That’s the thing,” Tetsuo said. “Those bungalows are very quiet and secluded. She could barely hear me while I was talking to her. If she was hearing voices, they were in her head.”

“So what did you do?”

“I referred her to our manager, Martin Kamakele,” Tetsuo said.

Monk narrowed his eyes. “Is he the mastermind behind the Toblerone plot?”

“I don’t know, sir.” Tetsuo turned to the door. “Have a nice stay, and don’t hesitate to contact me if I can be of service.”

Monk stared after Tetsuo as he left. “That’s a man who lives in fear. There weren’t any Toblerones in Helen Gruber’s refrigerator. There wasn’t any candy at all.”

“Maybe she stumbled on the insidious Toblerone conspiracy and was killed to keep her quiet.”

“You’re joking, but those six-dollar bars add up,” Monk said.

“You work on that,” I said. “I’m going down to the beach.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’re in middle of a murder investigation.”

“I’m going to the beach.”

“I don’t think you’re going to have the time.”

I opened my bathrobe and let it drop to my feet. Monk threw his arm up in front of his eyes and turned away like a vampire facing a crucifix. At least he didn’t hiss.

“Mitch used to love this bikini. I haven’t worn it in years. What do you think of it?”

“There’s not enough of it,” he said from behind his arm.

“Good,” I said, and I left. As long as I was in a bikini, Monk wouldn’t get near me.