Mr. Monk Helps Himself (23 page)

“Not well,” she had to admit. “The two of them used to show up at town meetings, but only when it was about zoning or beach access.”

“What was she like? Was she as inspiring as they say?”

“She was nice.” Darlene paused, perhaps torn between her need to be pleasant and her need to gossip. “When she was speaking or really interested, you could see her energy. It was just like watching her on TV. But at a town meeting, with all the local characters—you can imagine—there’s a lot of downtime. If you looked at her then, it was like a lightbulb turned off. Seemed a little phony, if you know what I mean.”

“You could say that about anyone,” I suggested.

“You’re right,” Darlene said. “Who am I to judge? The poor woman had her demons.”

I was all set to argue the point, a silly, pointless argument. But I was saved by a ding to my phone on the table. “Excuse me.”

Okay, I hate it as much as you when someone interrupts a conversation to look at their phone. But this was different. This was a text. And it was Ellen. “I just have to see . . .”

“By all means,” said Darlene.

They were close-up photos, four of them. A row of vitamin bottles in a mirrored medicine cabinet. A hand towel, monogrammed MGB, on a bathroom rod. A close-up of a round pink pill on the white tile of the bathroom floor. At the end of the third was a caption. “From the Hers bathroom. Woo-hoo!!!!”

“What the hell is she doing?”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. But now Darlene was eyeing me quizzically. “Sorry,” I said. “A friend of mine is actually at the Sanctuary this weekend. She just texted me some photos.”

“Inappropriate photos?”

“No,” I lied. They weren’t inappropriate in a sexual sense, only in a legal one.

Darlene’s brow furrowed as she processed my situation. “So your friend is at the Sanctuary and you’re here, half a mile away? Without her? On a beautiful weekend like this? You don’t like the Sanctuary?”

“No, I like it a lot. I’ve been there twice.”

“Were they all booked up this weekend?” She frowned, and whispered. “Or is she with somebody else?”

“No, she’s alone. We felt it would be better if she went alone.”

“I understand,” Darlene said, and laid a comforting hand on my arm. “Relationships are complicated.”

•   •   •

It was maddening, being so near and yet so far away.

My consolation was that I knew Ellen or thought I did. She wasn’t the type to go crazy and endanger herself. On the other hand, she did send three photos from Miranda’s bathroom with four exclamation points.

Her first evening at the Sanctuary had been fairly ordinary. Or so I later heard. She tried her best to blend in, perhaps asking a few more questions than normal and showing a tad more curiosity. By the end of the day, she was growing impatient and promised herself to be a little more proactive the next day.

During the deep meditation part of Saturday’s sunrise yoga, Ellen formulated a plan, one borrowed from a hundred old episodes of
Charlie’s Angels
. She would break into the Bigleys’ private residence on the main building’s second level and see what she could find.

She’d chosen the morning’s Actualization-Visualization session as her cover. Everyone would be there, including Teresa, who was leading the group, and Damien, who would be circling the floor monitoring their progress. Ellen would find a place at the rear, partly hidden behind a pillar, and sneak out during the last half hour, when even Damien and Teresa would be in a lotus position on a mat with their eyes closed, visualizing. Probably visualizing each other naked.

For Ellen, the session went on forever. But finally, all eyes were closed, all voices humming contentedly. Her exit from the back of the room went perfectly, as far as she could tell. Seconds later she was quietly bounding up the stairs, past the red velvet “Staff Only” rope, to a door marked “Residence.” It was the floor’s only residence and was armed, she discovered, with a state-of-the-art keypad system. So much for trusting your trusty followers.

Without even trying her luck, Ellen looked for an alternative and spotted a balcony at the end of the hallway. The French doors were unlocked and revealed a stunning view. In an act of architectural hubris, the entire building had been cantilevered out over the seaside cliff. On the main floor, this was impressive. On the second level, with the support beams extending the floor plan out over the cliff, it was breathtaking.

Ellen emerged onto the small balcony and, looking to her left, saw a matching balcony, less than twenty feet away, that opened off of the Bigleys’ private apartment. She also saw that this balcony’s French doors had been left tantalizingly open. Less than twenty feet away.

What had made Ellen think this was even possible? Maybe she was an experienced rock wall climber. Maybe she’d spent every weekend at Planet Granite in the Presidio, going up from one tiny foothold to another. I doubt it, but maybe. Whatever her rationale, Ellen was over the railing in an instant, climbing sideways across the stacked stone wall, the surf pounding a hundred feet below her.

I don’t mean to diminish the suspense of the next minute or so, but there’s more suspense coming, so let’s cut to the chase. Her foot slipped once or twice on the narrow footholds but she made it across.

Ellen grabbed the iron railing with both hands, pulled her torso over and found herself staring into Miranda and Damien’s spacious bedroom.

After all the derring-do of getting in, the suite itself was a letdown. A king-sized bed provided plenty of room for spreading out. The furniture was Mission style, probably Stickley, probably originals. The suite had two bathrooms, his and hers. Ellen focused on hers, snapped photos of pill bottles and monogrammed towels, and took the time to send them to me.

On a bedside table, she thumbed through a well-thumbed copy of
Spiritual Solutions
by Deepak Chopra and didn’t quite know what to make of it—one self-help guru using another one for her bedtime inspiration. She took another photo, decided not to send it, and proceeded to open drawers.

The very last thing she found made the danger of the climb worthwhile. It was in the top dresser drawer, underneath a pile of Damien’s folded socks. It was an odd place, Ellen mused, to stash a pearl necklace worth a couple hundred thousand dollars. Especially odd since it had last been seen on Miranda Bigley’s neck, vanishing off the edge of a cliff.

The police assumed the necklace had been torn free, the pearls spread out over the ocean floor. But here it was, safe and sound and lying underneath her husband’s socks.

Ellen laid it out on the bed and was about to take a photo when she heard a soft whir coming from the living room. She assumed it must be the heating system kicking in. A moment too late she realized what it was: the electronic key system.

Rushing to the bedroom door, she was just in time to see Damien Bigley walking in. He must have left early, she thought. But why? Why would he leave an Actualization-Visualization session early?

Bathroom break. It was an educated guess and Ellen faded back into the bedroom and hid behind the open door.

Did I disturb anything? she wondered, frozen in her shoes. Yes, right here. Damien’s sock drawer, gaping wide. It was on the opposite side of the room from his bathroom, so maybe he wouldn’t notice. Through the crack by the hinges, Ellen watched as a large man in a forest green polo strolled past her and toward his bathroom.

Yes! Bathroom break. Just as she thought. Being a detective wasn’t that hard, she reasoned. It was certainly something she could handle. Climbing around a building perched over a cliff. Finding a big clue. Making an escape while the bad guy’s busy in his own bath . . . Oh, no! Damn it, no.

Damien must have seen it out of the corner of his eye. He turned, focused on the drawer, and crossed quickly to the bureau, just a few feet from the open door. Ellen didn’t stop to think through this next part. She just ran.

Startled by the swing of the door, Damien was slow to react.

He was just coming out the door when Ellen reached the top of the stairs and started taking them two by two, steadying herself on the banister. Neither one called out or said a word. By the time Ellen reached the outside, Damien was halfway down the stairs. No one else was in sight.

The grounds, too, were deserted. Ellen didn’t pause to think what her options might be: locking herself in her cabin and calling the police; running for the guard at the gate; trying to bluff her way out. She just ran toward the light and the open space, past the cabins and the great lawn, to where the promontory of land swung around again.

Toward the cliff.

“Miss Morse.” They were out of sight and out of earshot from anyone. Just the surf and the sky and the edge of the world. “Ellen.”

She had stopped running, while he had reduced his pace to a wary walk. “What were you doing?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she shouted back. “I was using the bathroom, like you.”

“How did you get in?”

“It was open.”

“It wasn’t open.” He was getting closer. “Give it back and I won’t press charges. We’ll pretend this never happened.”

It wasn’t until he said this that Ellen realized she was holding the necklace in her right hand. Not her phone, like she’d half thought in all her excitement, but the strand of perfectly matched pearls that could probably prove something, although she didn’t know what.

“No,” Ellen shouted back, then turned to face the unforgiving cliff.

“Miss Morse. There’s no way out.”

And that’s when she jumped.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mr. Monk and the Bullies

I
wasn’t surprised when Ellen didn’t text again. I was relieved. Maybe she was finally listening to me and keeping out of trouble.

After a second helping of apple-cured bacon and a sourdough biscuit, I returned to my room to brush my teeth and figure out how to spend the day.

During a regular day, even on a weekend, my schedule was dominated by Monk, either work related or trauma related or both. Naturally, my thoughts turned to him now and by extension to Devlin and Stottlemeyer. Of the three, only Devlin had a Facebook page.

Her last entry, according to my phone, had been this morning. “I’ve got Cemedrin headache number twenty-two,” it started, playing off the old TV commercials. “Better yet, give Monk a couple of Cemedrins. That would cure things.”

It was a morbid inside joke only the four of us would get. And I couldn’t help thinking it had been aimed my way. You can imagine how curious this made me. But I couldn’t just call up and ask. That would go against my whole idea of a work stoppage.

As I later found out, Monk had arrived at headquarters on his own that morning, shortly after nine. He knew something was up as soon as he entered Stottlemeyer’s office and faced the off-center widow’s peak of Joshua Grooms and the less annoying crew cut of George Cardea, FBI special agents.

Monk’s list of phobias does not include individual humans. If it did, these two would be near the top. My experience with Grooms goes back to a time when he was holding Monk in protective custody in a cabin in the woods. Grooms wouldn’t listen to us about a murder at a nearby cabin, and we wound up escaping by locking him in a bathroom. Our relationship went downhill from there.

The captain and lieutenant were already on the scene, shooting Monk the kind of looks that say, “Keep your mouth shut,” which usually results in Monk saying, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

“Monk.” Stottlemeyer jumped in before they could. “You remember special agents Grooms and Cardea.”

“Monk,” said Cardea in his booming voice. “How’s it going?”

“Living the dream,” Monk said with a shudder. “It’s not my dream, but it must be someone’s.”

“Monk, my man.” Grooms locked eyes with Monk and held out his hand, like a snake hypnotizing its prey. He loved to make Monk shake his hand, just to witness his anguished reaction. “Where’s your perky little assistant with the wipes?”

“Wipe,” Monk shouted. Devlin came to the rescue, giving him a handful from a pack on the captain’s desk. “Natalie is taking a personal day or week or whatever she’s doing. I don’t know.” He finally stopped wiping.

“Our friends at the FBI dropped by to see if they could help us with a case.” The captain was trying to gain some control of the moment. “The Dudley Smith case. Not the other case we’re working on. Just the Smith case.”

“What’s the other case?” asked Cardea.

“It’s none of your business, sir,” said Lieutenant Devlin. “With all due respect.”

“We got a ping from our database about a poison case involving U.S. currency and the U.S. mail. Imagine our delight when your names came up.”

That couldn’t have been a good feeling, knowing that the FBI’s computer system was keeping tabs on your cases.

Stottlemeyer managed a smirk. “Far as I know, the FBI has no jurisdiction. We cleared everything with the Secret Service and the Postal Inspection Service, and they were happy for us to take the lead in what is a local homicide. So, thanks for the visit.”