Mr. Monk is a Mess (6 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Mr. Monk Gets a Call

T
he bed was incredible. It was soft and warm with lots of fluffy pillows. I could easily have slept in until noon if my cell phone hadn’t started ringing promptly at eight in the morning.

I put a pillow over my head to muffle the ringing until my voice mail snagged the call. The ringing stopped and I started to fall back to sleep. But whoever it was kept calling back every few minutes, unwilling to settle for leaving me a message, repeatedly waking me up just as I was falling off the precipice into sweet slumber.

I finally gave up and reached for the phone before I remembered that I’d left it charging on the desk across the room. That meant that I had to actually leave the bedded bliss of my linen cocoon to go get it.

Now I was pissed.

I got up, marched to the desk, and grabbed the phone, half tempted to throw it across the room, but when I saw the name on the caller ID, it took the edge off my anger.

The caller was Ambrose, Monk’s agoraphobic brother, who’d only stepped out of their childhood home in Marin County maybe four or five times in the last thirty-some years. He’d left once because his house was set on fire and another time because he was poisoned, both instances related to one of Monk’s murder investigations. Ambrose’s most recent venture outdoors was on his last birthday. Monk and I kidnapped him and took him on a road trip in a motor home, which turned out pretty well, even though Ambrose almost got killed again by murderers. It was enough to make an average man never want to leave the house, not to mention Ambrose, but there were no hard feelings. Ambrose even bought the motor home that we’d rented, though he’d yet to venture anywhere in it.

“Hello, Ambrose,” I said.

“I’m so glad I got you, Natalie. I need to see Adrian right away.”

It was an emergency. I knew it because he didn’t bother to say hello and he was always polite and courteous. There was also a frantic undercurrent in his voice.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here,” he said. “But it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Then call 911,” I said. “Don’t wait for us.”

“They can’t help me. Only he can. Please hurry.”

And with that, he hung up.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, wondering what could be wrong, and if the situation was truly so dire, why Ambrose couldn’t tell me about it over the phone.

That raised another question. If he was so eager for Monk’s help, why didn’t he call his brother directly instead of calling me?

And why wasn’t Yuki Nakamura, his live-in assistant and girlfriend, whom he met on our road trip, there to help?

It was odd. Then again, most things involving the Monk brothers usually were.

I checked out of the Belmont, retrieved my car from the valet, and headed straight to a car wash. Whatever Ambrose’s emergency might be, it would have to wait a little while longer. Monk would never get in my messy car if he saw it in the light of day.

Once the car was thoroughly cleaned, I went over to Monk’s place and let myself in with my key.

Monk was going over the entry hall floor with a Swiffer, a dust mop that picks up particles using a dry, disposable cloth. His hands were in rubber dish gloves and he was wearing an apron over his clothes.

“Good morning, Natalie. I hope you had a more restful night than I did.”

I wasn’t surprised that he’d had a rough night. He’d spent most of the day sleeping, thanks to the pills I gave him. His internal clock must have been completely out of whack.

“Did you get walloped by the jet lag?”

“I was thankful for it. I was up cleaning most of the night. I thought I’d never finish getting rid of all the muck,” Monk said, running the mop over the shiny hardwood. “But this is the last of it.”

“The apartment looks exactly the same as it did last night.”

“You were in a state of shock and if that wasn’t abundantly clear before, what you just said proves it and so does this.” He lifted the mop, removed the cloth from the Swiffer head, and held it out to me to inspect.

“Look at that filth,” he said.

It was perfectly clean. “There’s nothing on it.”

“It’s covered with dust particles.”

“They must be microscopic, because they can’t be seen with the naked eye.”

“Why do you always have to be so lewd?” he said and carried the cloth to the garbage can in his laundry room.

I followed him. “It’s an expression, Mr. Monk.”

“It’s a lewd expression,” he said, removing his apron and hanging it on a hook on the wall.

“It means looking at something with just your eyes, unaided by any magnifying device.”

“So say that,” Monk said. “There’s no need to use the N word.”

“
Naked
is not the N word.”

“It is in this house,” he said. “Speaking of which, where did you sleep last night?”

“The Belmont Hotel.”

“I pay you way too much,” he said.

“You haven’t paid me in weeks.”

“It’s a good thing I haven’t because you obviously can’t control your spending. You’d just blow right through it, living a lifestyle you can’t sustain. You should be thanking me for keeping your salary safe.”

“I was there one night, in the cheapest room they had, and I wanted to do some digging into the Michelle Keeling case. But I’ll tell you about that later. We have more pressing concerns.”

“Like your inability to hold on to money.”

“Ambrose called and wants to see you right away.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He won’t tell me,” I said. “But he says it’s an emergency.”

“It’s just a ploy to drag us out there.”

“So what if it is? He doesn’t leave the house and you’ve avoided him ever since Yuki moved in.”

“Forgive me for not wanting to hang out with the Hells Angels.”

“Just because she rides a motorcycle, that doesn’t make her a Hells Angel.”

“She has tattoos, the kind that don’t wash off. And she’s an ex-convict.”

“None of that matters. Ambrose wants to see you and we’re going out there.”

“I don’t see why when we could just call him back and make him tell us his problem on the phone.”

Well, at least now I knew one good reason why Ambrose called me and not Monk.

“Because he’s your brother, Mr. Monk. You haven’t seen him in months, and it could be a long time before you see him again. Or have you forgotten why we’re here?”

He looked at me for a long moment. “I did. It completely slipped my mind. How am I going to tell him that I’m moving all the way across the country?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“How did you tell Julie?”

“I haven’t yet,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with walking into my house and finding a dead woman in my bathtub.”

“Maybe after you tell Julie you could tell Ambrose for me.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You’ll be on a roll,” he said.

“Telling your brother that you’re moving away is something you’ll have to do yourself, Mr. Monk.”

“Then maybe I should stay.”

“You’re going to give up your job as a police officer in Summit, and forfeit any future you might have with Ellen Morse, because you’re afraid to tell Ambrose that you’re leaving?”

“That sounds reasonable to me,” he said.

I didn’t feel like arguing with him. Instead, I just went to the closet, took out his coat, and handed it to him.

“Let’s go,” I said.

* * *

On the outside, the Monk family home in Tewksbury looked exactly as it had when the Monk brothers were growing up. It was a handsome, well-maintained Victorian on a tree-lined street with a perfectly manicured lawn. And that’s how I knew something was wrong.

The last time that we were there, Yuki Nakamura’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle and a class C motor home, the kind that looks like a camper-trailer eating a Ford van, were parked in the driveway.

Today, they were both gone.

From that alone, I had a pretty good idea what Ambrose’s emergency was and so did Monk.

“Wipe that smile off your face,” I said while we were still in my car, parked at the curb out front.

“You’re the one who is always telling me to lighten up and look at the bright side.”

“Not at your brother’s expense,” I said. “If you don’t go back to being your miserable self right now, the first thing I will do when I get out of this car is pick my nose.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I’ll wipe my finger on my pants and then I’ll spit on the sidewalk.”

“You’re an animal.”

“Perfect,” I said, pointing at his sour face. “Hold that thought.”

We got out of the car and headed up the front walk. Ambrose was waiting for us with the front door open, but the screen door was closed.

He wore his usual ensemble—an argyle cardigan sweater vest buttoned closed over a long-sleeve flannel shirt, buttoned at the collar and cuffs, a pair of corduroy pants, and a pair of Hush Puppies identical to those worn by his brother. Instead of greeting us with his usual awkward yet endearing smile, he looked distraught.

“What took you so long?” Ambrose said, taking a big step back into the entry hall as we opened the door. “Yuki is missing and time is of the essence.”

“Don’t worry, Ambrose,” Monk said as we came in. “We’ll chase her down. How long ago did she go off with your motor home?”

“Yuki didn’t take it,” Ambrose said. “She moved it to the storage lot across from Beach’s grocery store weeks ago because the neighbors were complaining about it.”

“But how do you know it’s still there?” Monk asked, closing the door.

“I don’t care whether it is or not. It’s Yuki that I’m worried about.”

Even though Ambrose and Yuki had been living together for several months now, nothing inside the house had changed, at least not downstairs. The living room was still full of file cabinets, which contained every piece of mail that had come to the house over the last forty years, as well as tidy stacks of newspapers, magazines, and books.

“We’ll bring her to justice,” Monk said. “What did she take?”

“She didn’t take anything. Everything of hers, except her motorcycle, is still here.”

“What about everything of yours?”

“You aren’t listening to me,” Ambrose said. “Yuki is gone. She went to Beach’s grocery store yesterday afternoon and didn’t come back.”

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

“Of course I did. But they were no help. They wouldn’t do a thing. They never do when I call. They think I’m a crank.”

“That’s because you call them six or seven times a week,” Monk said.

“About legitimate violations of the law,” Ambrose said. “I’m a good citizen and I’m vigilant. You wouldn’t believe the things I see from my window. It’s a jungle out there. People would be much better off if they just stayed in their homes.”

“I hate to say this, but maybe she was in an accident,” I said. “Did you try calling local hospitals?”

“Of course,” Ambrose said. “I’m relieved to say that she’s not in any of them.”

“Did you call the biker bars?” Monk asked.

“Why would I do that?” Ambrose replied.

“It’s good to know you haven’t completely lost your senses,” Monk said. “So she’s gone. It was bound to happen. All things considered, you came out of this entire sordid episode unscathed. You’re better off without her.”

Ambrose folded his arms across his chest and glared at his brother. “Are you better off without Trudy?”

Monk flinched. It was a low blow, bringing his dead wife into this, but he deserved it.

“It’s not the same thing,” Monk said. “Trudy wasn’t a tattooed, ex-convict biker chick who I picked up on the road. Her skin was unblemished by ink, she was law-abiding, and she was my wife.”

“Meeting Yuki is the best thing that has ever happened to me, Adrian. She’s completely changed my life.”

“She has? How?” Monk said. “You’ve been living in this house for forty years and you’re still afraid to step out the door.”

“But can’t you see that everything else about me is different?” Ambrose said.

“You look exactly the same,” Monk said. “You’re even wearing the same clothes.”

“Inside, Adrian. I’m a totally different person inside.”

“Ipecac and an enema will have the same effect,” Monk said. “Though I’d rather kill myself.”

“Mr. Monk,” I said, giving him a stern look, “Ambrose is trying to tell you something important.”

“It’s okay, Natalie,” Ambrose said. “I’m used to Adrian’s indifference. That’s one of the reasons Yuki is so special. She lets me know every moment of every day that what I feel, and what I think, and what I do matter to her.”

“Of course she did,” Monk said. “You were her meal ticket.”

“I love her, Adrian, and I know that she loves me.”

“Then why did she leave you?” Monk said.

“Mr. Monk!” I could have slapped him. “How can you say something so cruel to your own brother?”

“Because I’m trying to knock some sense into him,” Monk said. “It’s called tough love.”

“Adrian asked a valid question, Natalie,” Ambrose said. “And here’s my answer. She
wouldn’t
leave me. That’s why I know that she’s in trouble. You have to find her. I wish I could go out there and do it myself, but I can’t. I’m a miserable excuse for a man. I don’t deserve her.”

I went over to Ambrose and gave him a hug. And for the first time ever, he didn’t go rigid with discomfort, which was all the evidence I needed that Yuki had changed him. I stepped back, but kept my hands on his shoulders.

“You’re a good man, Ambrose. We’ll find her.”

“Thank you, Natalie,” he said.

“But there’s something I have to know first,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “What if we find her and she doesn’t want to come back?”

“Then at least I’ll know that she’s okay,” he said. “If she’s happy, then I will be, too.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” I said.

“‘Good riddance’ is what I wanted to hear,” Monk said.

“That’s heartless,” I said to him.

“It’s better than mindless. I appear to be the only person in this room who is thinking clearly,” Monk said. “Let’s be honest about this, Ambrose. What do you really know about this woman?”