I unlocked the M&T storefront, turned on the lights and off the alarm. Monk made chamomile tea and we settled into our matching desks, sipping tea and doing what countless other office workers do every Monday morning—discussing what we did on Sunday.

  Monk went first, starting with Stottlemeyer’s unexpected visit and taking me straight through to Henry’s rescue and their confrontation with Sal at the barbershop. I had already been debriefed by the captain, so there weren’t any surprises, except for how much Monk had enjoyed spending the day with his old partner.

  “Leland could have handled it on his own, but I think he really wanted to work a case together, like old times.” Monk was practically beaming and I felt a little guilty about having used the captain as a distraction. “And how about you, Natalie? What did you do?”

  “Nothing much. I hung out with Amy Devlin a little.” I knew as soon as I said it how ridiculous it sounded.

  “You hung out with Devlin? On purpose? Were you working on the No One case?”

  “No, no,” I lied. “We just hung out. We took her car. We walked around.”

  Monk looked like he wanted to pursue this quirky behavior of mine. But then the phone rang, the office phone, and he forgot all about me. His face lit up. “I gave her this number,” he said, and picked it up after the second ring. “Sarabeth, hi. This is Adrian Monk.”

  Okay. I suppose I need to do some explaining.

  After the disastrous tailing attempt on the Seventy-one bus, Devlin and I weren’t sure we would ever see Sarabeth again. Within an hour, the department set up an official, round-the-clock stakeout on the Haight Street apartment, just in case. And the gamble paid off.

  Around six that evening, a detective sergeant in an unmarked vehicle noticed Sarabeth Willow walking east on Haight, returning home as if nothing had happened. This time she didn’t disturb Mr. Simonton on Page Street but came in through her own front door. Noticeably absent was the small green backpack.

  When Devlin found out, she was ecstatic. Not only did this mean that Sarabeth wasn’t on the run—our worst-case scenario—it meant she probably wasn’t aware of having been tailed. Her exit onto Page Street had been merely a precaution, one that she didn’t feel like repeating on her return. Devlin’s only disappointment was the missing backpack.

  “Why don’t I come over now?” Monk said, a little too eagerly. “I made Spam sandwiches for Natalie and me, but I’m sure she won’t mind. Do you like Spam? It’s the perfect food. Great! I’ll see you soon.”

  “I thought we were going to spend the day working the No One case,” I said right after he’d hung up.

  “I am working it. At some point, Sarabeth is going to remember something crucial about our mystery man. It could be when I’m sitting by her bed helping her recover, or when she gets up to make me a snack. And when it happens, I’ll be there to fit the pieces together.”

  I think he actually believed this. And it could happen, given his track record, so who was I to argue?

  I found a legal spot to park on Page Street, directly opposite Mr. Simonton’s house. I escorted Monk around the block and was with him when he rang the bell. Sarabeth answered the door in her floral housedress, genuinely pleased to see my partner and artificially pleased to see me. “Natalie, how nice of you to drop Adrian off.” Drop him off? I could take a hint.

  I remained on the doorstep to the garden-level apartment. I waited until the door had closed behind Adrian and Sarabeth and they’d moved away from the front window. Then I walked across the street and down the block to the red Grand Am. The front passenger door was already open for me, and I got in as quickly as possible.

  Devlin was in street clothes, a Forty-Niners sweatshirt, black jeans, and Nike runners, her spiky hair scrunched up under a baseball cap. She had made room for me. But between the usual garbage and disorder and the supplies for a lengthy stakeout, it was a pretty tight and smelly fit. “Are you having second thoughts?” she asked.

  “No,” I said with some conviction. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I mean the whole point of getting Monk and Teeger committed to this case was Monk. No offense. But he’s the mad genius. It seems stupid to keep him in the dark about Sarabeth. What if he can help?”

  “You don’t know him like I do,” I said. “All we have on Sarabeth is that she sneaked out the back and met a man bearing a resemblance to Wyatt Noone.”

  “Plus she’s the only person alive who knows him. Come on, I’ve seen Monk focus on bad guys with less proof.”

  “Not when he’s got a blind spot.”

  “Are you saying he can’t be objective?”

  “Okay,” I said, and settled into my faux leather bucket seat. “Let’s say for a minute Adrian wasn’t on the rebound from Ellen. Let’s say he’s not willing to fall for the next woman to smile his way. Let’s say he’s not afraid that he’ll be spending the rest of his life as a lonely outcast.”

  “Is that how he feels? Wow, I have to start being nicer to him.”

  “I’ll remind you. But even taking all of that out of the equation, Adrian Monk is a terrible liar. Can you imagine him being in there right now, at Sarabeth’s bedside, and not letting it slip that we saw her and Noone together?”

  Devlin sighed. “I’ve done undercover work with Monk. He’s pretty terrible.”

  “Remember the time he went undercover as a clown at a kid’s birthday party? He blew his cover and wound up being kidnapped.”

  “I remember.”

  “The only break we’ve caught is this Sarabeth connection. But if she gets wind of it, if she suspects her phone is tapped and she’s under surveillance, all that goes away. We lose whatever advantage we had.”

  Devlin nodded in reluctant agreement. “It still makes me nervous.”

  “Why? Because it makes you dependent on a mere mortal like me and not on the Einstein of crime?”

  “I think you mean Einstein of crime detection.”

  “Crime detection doesn’t sound as good. Amy, look, I’m nervous, too. But after all these years, I know Adrian’s strengths and weaknesses. When it comes time to bring him in, we’ll do it. But not now.”

  Devlin didn’t answer.

  “Was it Adrian who arranged for Sarabeth to feel free enough to sneak away and get on that bus? No, that was me.”

  “That was you,” she had to agree. “You want a bottle of water?”

  “No, thanks, I’m good.”

  We spent the next two hours sitting side by side, saying next to nothing, staring at the door and front windows of the ground-floor apartment of the painted lady on Haight Street.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mr. Monk and the Scene of the Crime

  “I need to speak to Adrian.”

  I’m not sure if I was doing this out of boredom or because I wanted to move things forward. As long as Monk was in there, I knew our suspect wasn’t going anywhere or making any calls.

  Once again Sarabeth had answered the door in her colorful housedress. From the faint odor on her breath, I could guess they had finished the sandwiches. “Natalie, come on in. You just missed lunch. I have to tell you, Spam is a wonderful thing. I had no idea.”

  Monk was in the little eat-in kitchen, wiping the plastic tabletop clean. “Can we have a moment?” I asked Sarabeth.

  “You can say anything in front of her,” Monk said a tad defensively. “Sarabeth and I don’t have any secrets.”

  “Okay.” Actually, you do have secrets, I wanted to say. At least Sarabeth does. “Adrian, I need you with me in the field. We have two big cases. And we have an obligation to Lieutenant Devlin. She’s not saying anything, but I know the commissioner has set up a review board.” I looked over to Sarabeth. “I’m sorry to drag him away.”

  “But she needs protection,” Monk said. He had finished his second wipe of the kitchen table and was starting his third. “The police, in their wisdom, removed the squad car.”

  “That’s because they no longer consider her in danger.”

  “Adrian, it’s been a delight having you here,” Sarabeth said, all sweetness. “But Natalie’s right. I’ve got good locks now, thanks to you, and I’ll follow all your protocols, I promise.”

  “We can review them once more,” Monk said. “What do you do if you hear a noise in the chimney? I know that’s a trick question since you don’t have a chimney. But if you did have a chimney …”

  “Sweetie.” Sarabeth took him by the shoulders and he didn’t flinch. “Three of my good friends are dead. We need you out there finding Wyatt. I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll stay right here.”

  “Do you promise to stay here?”

  “I promise.”

  Monk wasn’t about to listen to me, but he listened to her. When we stepped out of the house, the Grand Am had been moved around the corner and out of sight—although I’ve never dismissed the possibility of his having X-ray vision.

  “I hope you’re happy,” Monk whined as we walked.

  “Happy’s a relative thing. Where do you want to go? I say East Decorative Imports. If we figure out how Noone left the building, that’ll go a long way to clearing Amy’s name.” Monk didn’t bother to answer, which told me he approved. “Good. I already called Mr. Ito. He’s meeting us there.”

  “Did you investigate the survivors of the victims?” We were driving on Broadway and now heading east, miraculously hitting all the green lights. “Mel Lubarsky’s widow and Katrina Avery’s ex-husband?”

  “Yes,” I answered somewhat truthfully. Devlin’s people had done checks on them both. “Neither one seems to have a connection to our mystery man.”

  “I still think Noone had inside help.”

  “So do I.”

  At the main entrance on Stockton, I rang the office/showroom buzzer. We took the stairs to the third floor and emerged onto a spare, elegant space decorated with statues and soothing rock fountains and drops of blood soaked into the wood-paneled floor. Remnants of yellow crime scene tape hung from a pair of Tibetan prayer wheels on either side of the reception desk.

  Monk took a moment to stand in the middle and absorb it all. He didn’t raise his hands to frame the scene but turned in a slow, deliberate circle. He was just about to move on when something outside the front windows caught his eye.

  They were two large, side-by-side windows, typical of a warehouse, each consisting of nine panels of glass and looking out onto an old, five-story office building on the other side of Stockton. The sun was just beginning to inch its way past the corner and into the street below.

  “What?” I asked. I knew he had seen something. “What’s wrong?”

  Monk wagged his head at an angle, as if shaking loose a drop of water from his left ear. “Nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing. I know your looks. That’s not your ‘aha’ look or your ‘interesting’ look or your ‘something’s not symmetrical’ look. That’s your ‘something doesn’t make sense’ look. What is it? What doesn’t make sense?”

  “You can see the same thing I’m seeing.”

  “Adrian, that’s not fair.”

  “It’s nothing,” he insisted, and forced himself to move on, focusing his gaze onto the floor. We followed the trail of stained wood back to the largest office where Mel, the first victim, had been gunned down.

  “Mr. Monk. Ms. Teeger. Please come in.”

  Takumi Ito sat at a handsome teakwood desk, his tall, lean frame slumped back. Ledgers lay open on either side of the computer screen. “Forgive me for not getting up. I’m not sure I have the strength.” He certainly didn’t look or sound well.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s worse than I thought,” said Ito. “The losses may be three or four million now.”

  “Three or four … How can that be?” I asked. “A company this size? How could no one notice?”

  “It’s absurdly simple,” he said, and held up one of the ledgers. “East Decorative sells original pieces worth tens of thousands U.S. to serious collectors. We also sell copies worth maybe a few hundred apiece to decorators and businesses. Mr. Noone was fulfilling orders for original pieces and substituting copies. Then he listed the sales as copies and pocketed the difference.”

  “And this was easy to do?” I asked. It sounded easy.

  “It was child’s play. That’s the expression, correct?”

  “Child’s play,” I confirmed.

  “Our copies are very skillful, down to the rust and the verdigris. They go through customs with labels confirming them as copies, but it’s not hard to remove the labels. I spent all the weekend comparing receipts and invoices. We’re going to have to make good on everything. As you can imagine, our whole business depends on a reliable reputation.”

  “Could one person have done this?” asked Monk.

  Ito was puzzled. “Of course, one person did it. Are you saying there was someone in addition to Mr. Noone? Who?”

  “You answer my question first. Could it be just one person?”

  “Yes. As I said, child’s play. Being the accountant, he had access to the invoices. And the warehouse is right below us. Now please answer my question, Mr. Monk. Was there someone else?”

  Monk chose his words carefully. As with everything, work life and personal, he likes to be precise. “I don’t know. There are aspects that make it look like a partnership—how Noone got hired in the first place; his ability to keep a low profile; and how he managed to escape the building. But, as you say, the actual embezzlement could have been done by one. And when you’re planning to kill three people, partners are always dangerous.” Monk shrugged. “There’s something I’m not quite seeing.”

  Not quite seeing? I liked the sound of that. It meant he was keeping an open mind, maybe even open enough to think about Sarabeth.

  “Mr. Ito?”

  Todd Avery stood in the office doorway, dressed for work—work gloves, back-support belt, a clipboard in his hands. “Hello,” he said, looking a bit surprised to see us. “Monk and Teeger, right? Good to see you. Mr. Ito?” He returned his focus to his boss. “I had a few questions about the deliveries.”

  “You’re back at work?” I asked Todd. “So soon?”

  “Todd is our foreman,” said the company president. “He was gracious enough to come in. Our business can’t stop or it may never restart. We have some local deliveries that were due last week. Todd, I’ll meet you at the loading dock in a few minutes.”

  “Thanks,” said Todd, but he didn’t move from the doorway. “How’s the investigation? I’m sorry for interrupting but the police aren’t saying much. Are you going to catch this bastard? That’s all I want to know.”

  “We’re getting close,” I said, partly to calm him down and partly to gauge his reaction.

  “That’s good,” he said. “I never thought I was into revenge. But you want things to make sense. A man kills your ex-wife, the woman you once planned to spend your life with. Then he disappears. There has to be more to it than that.”

  “I agree,” said Monk. He has a special place in his heart for the husbands of murdered wives. “That’s what we do, try to make sense of things.”

  Ito nodded and I nodded. We all seemed to want to make sense of this. “Todd, I’ll meet you on the loading dock.”

  We waited until the foreman left, listening for the door to the stairwell to close behind him. “Is there anything more I can do for you?” Ito asked. “I wish I knew more myself.”

  “We’d just like to look around,” I said. “The first time we were here, the place was in lockdown. We didn’t get to take our time.”

  Ito waved his hand across the space. “Please feel free. Nothing is off-bounds. If you have any questions, I’ll be on the ground level with Todd.”

  For the next ten minutes, after Ito left, Monk wandered the offices and the showroom displays. I tried to stay out of his way. But I noticed that he kept gravitating to the reception area. Katrina’s office, then reception. Mel’s office, then reception. Caleb Smith’s office … And on each return, he seemed to be pulled toward the large front windows facing the receptionist’s desk.

  I waited until his next gravitational pull. “What?” I asked again. “What are you looking at?”

  “I told you before, nothing.”

  “You know I’m going to bug you until you tell me.”

  “It’s just a little discrepancy, nothing big.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me?”

  “You’re a detective, Ms. Detective. Figure it out.”

  “Okay, I will,” I said, but without much conviction. I hate these little challenges of his.

  Monk stepped away from the window just as I stepped up. Stockton Street looked exactly the same as it had on a dozen other occasions. The windows of the office building opposite us were tinted for privacy or energy efficiency or both. Street traffic was relatively heavy. The tops of a dozen or so heads paraded below me. Another dozen were crossing at the corner and one was jaywalking. If only I knew what I was looking for … A third of the way down the block, a Dumpster was positioned not far from a fire hydrant. Did it have something to do with the Dumpster? I wondered. Could Wyatt Noone have escaped into the Dumpster? Not with half of the San Francisco police force looking on.

  I stayed at the window, not wanting to give up. And that was when I saw the red Grand Am pulling in behind the Dumpster.

  “It’s not a clue,” Monk said from across the room. “Just a discrepancy. I’m sure there’s an explanation.” He must have been saying something like that, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too focused on Lieutenant Devlin sitting behind the wheel of the Grand Am.

  What is she doing? I asked myself. She’s supposed to be on stakeout. She wouldn’t have left except in an emergency. Even in an emergency … The only reason why a hardnose like Devlin would drive away from a stakeout … I glanced directly below to the street in time to see a glint of light as the front door to East Decorative Imports swung shut.

  “What are you doing? Natalie?”

  What I was doing was gingerly opening the door to the stairwell, just enough to stick out my head and listen. “Shh.”

 

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