I didn’t know what to make of it, either. But it was right in front of us, like an old friend. A tin Buddha, one of the quartet that we’d last seen on the second floor of the import warehouse.

  “Does this mean …” A gleam formed in Amy’s eyes. Just when she’d given up. Just when she’d been reassigned to a purgatory of menial work—insignificant breakins, not even burglaries—suddenly she’d stumbled across her big break.

  Monk turned to Chester. “Did this come from East Decorative Imports? Don’t bother answering. It did. How does it open?”

  “How do you know it opens?” asked Chester.

  Monk rolled his eyes. “Everything in this place opens and turns into a bed or a bathroom sink. Tell me if I’m wrong.”

  Chester smiled. “You’re right.” He stepped in front of the Buddha, took its head between his palms, and tilted it back on a hinge. Then he reached in to the Buddha’s folded hands and pulled out. The statue’s front opened like a pair of French doors. “A work of art and a storage space,” he said proudly. “We get them from Japan where they’ve got even smaller apartments.”

  “My people should have found this.” Lieutenant Devlin shook her head. “Is this how he escaped? Please tell me this is how he escaped.”

  I also wanted to believe it, but … “Hardly looks big enough for a grown man.”

  “When did you receive shipment?” asked Monk.

  “A couple of days ago. Monday?” guessed Chester.

  “We saw these in the warehouse on Sunday,” I said. “Even if a person could fit, it’s hard to believe anyone was in here for any length of time.”

  Monk inspected the empty space. He sniffed, looked for any shreds or residue from its earlier contents, then worked the doors, probably to see if they could be closed from the inside. Finally he stood back and held up both his index fingers, the universal sign for “Shut up—I’m thinking.” Everyone seemed to understand.

  “Are there Buddhas like this in your other two stores?”

  “Yeah,” said Chester. “Every store gets the same inventory.”

  “And what happened to the fourth one? The import company shipped out four on the same day. Did you buy them all?”

  “I’ll check the paperwork. But I’m sure we sold one directly to some garden meditation center. Let me check.” Chester took a tablet out of his briefcase and stepped away to the display model of a small desk that folded out into a diaper-changing table.

  “So Noone didn’t use the Buddha to escape?” Devlin asked under her breath.

  Monk shook his head. “Like Natalie said, it would be a hard fit. Plus it doesn’t account for all three stores being broken into.”

  “Do we have a chance at solving this?” asked Devlin. “Come on, Monk. Let’s hear one of your patented percentages. What’s the percentage? This time I’m paying attention.”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Monk said. “Our bad guy broke into these stores, looking for something in one of the Buddhas. We know he didn’t find it in the first or second because he kept looking. We don’t know if he found it here. So our chances of it being in the fourth are fifty-fifty. Slightly less.”

  “Just a minute,” announced Chester from the changing table. “Slow Wi-Fi connection.”

  Devlin was about to ask another question but Monk held up his index fingers again. And then … And then he slowly broke into a smile, his “I got it” smile, the most beautiful expression in the world, in my book. Then, unexpectedly, it turned into a frown.

  “Adrian, what’s the matter? You figured it out, didn’t you? What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? It’s even worse than I thought.”

  “But you have it solved.”

  “I do,” he said faintly. “I know who Noone is.”

  “You know?” said Devlin. “What does that mean? You mean it’s a person we already know? In another identity?”

  “That’s right,” said Monk. “Hidden in plain sight.”

  “How can that be?”

  “It be,” said Monk. “I mean, it is.”

  I was just as confused as Devlin. Not to have recognized Noone’s alter ego right in front of us? How could we be so incompetent?

  “Got it,” said Chester, bringing the tablet back for us to look at. “It’s the Lilly B. Goldberg-Sanchez Zen Garden. It was delivered this afternoon.”

  “The Goldberg-Sanchez Zen Garden?” said Devlin, marveling at the name.

  “I actually know where that is,” I said. “It’s a little public-private Japanese garden. A few blocks south of me.”

  “Let’s go,” said Monk. “Our fifty percent is going down every second.”

  “I have the number for the caretaker,” said Chester, enlarging a detail on his copy of the shipping bill.

  Devlin took the number and started dialing before we even left the store.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mr. Monk Finds No One

  The Goldberg-Sanchez Zen Garden occupied a surprisingly large triangle of land, perhaps an acre, just off Castro Street. A year or so ago, some foundation had built a six-foot stone wall and transformed this scruffy patch into an oasis of rock gardens, wooden bridges over bubbling water features, and miniature stone pagodas. Julie and I had gone there once for a picnic lunch.

  A caretaker named Jeremy was waiting for us in front of the locked gate. He identified himself as a neighborhood volunteer and seemed nervous about a manic police lieutenant flashing her badge and demanding access. Devlin was even more impatient than usual, which didn’t help. “Was a tin Buddha delivered today?”

  “Uh, yes,” said Jeremy. “We didn’t have time to install it. We’re planning to use it to store garden tools. Is that all right?”

  “Why should I care?” said Devlin. “Where is it?”

  “It’s by the northeast corner.”

  “Can you point, sir, or do I need a compass?”

  This was where I took over. Being the most personable and charming member of the team, I smiled, introduced myself, and did my best to ease the situation.

  Somehow I persuaded Jeremy to give us custody of the key. I input his phone number and address into my phone, politely asked him to leave the premises, and promised I would return the key as soon as we were through. I didn’t know quite what to expect in the way of danger, but experience has taught me to get civilians out of the way, even when walking through a Zen garden on a moonlit night. Jeremy watched as we locked the gate behind us and headed off to the northeast corner.

  The fourth storage Buddha was just beyond a lily pond, blanket-wrapped and seated on a wooden pallet. Devlin pulled out a key ring, chose her sharpest key, and dove in, attacking the duct tape like an assassin on a mission. When the blanket was cleared enough to get to the doors, she took a breath and stepped aside. “You do the honors, Monk.”

  “Unfortunately, I know what I’m going to find.” Monk reached into his jacket and pulled out three pairs of plastic gloves, a large for himself and two sets of medium for Devlin and me. How he’d foreseen the need for gloves, I don’t know. But he had them and we put them on. Then he tipped back the statue’s head and pulled apart its folded hands.

  I’d been half expecting to find the shotgun, and I was right. It was in the bottom of the compartment, wrapped in a pair of moving-van blankets similar to the one still half-taped into place around the statue’s shoulders. Monk handed it over to Devlin as if he couldn’t care less and kept fishing. Next he pulled out a blue sweatshirt covered in dry patches of blood. This, too, he handed to Devlin and kept fishing.

  At first glance, it looked like a flesh-colored rubber ball, slightly smaller than a deflated soccer ball. On second glance, I saw it wasn’t complete, not entirely round, with a longer tab in the back and what looked like sideburns. “Is that a wig?” I asked. “A bald wig?”

  Monk twitched in the affirmative and held it out toward my face. “Natalie, meet Wyatt Noone. Wyatt Noone, Natalie Teeger.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Devlin. “Wyatt Noone is someone we know? Someone with hair? Are you saying he carried on two separate lives? Wearing a silly bald cap half the time? I hate to say it, Monk, but this seems far-fetched, even in your world.”

  “Not so far-fetched. Takumi Ito was right. If only he’d given them the raises they asked for …”

  Under normal circumstances, this would have been the start of his summation, the time to settle back and let Adrian Monk lay it out, explaining the inexplicable to us inferior mortals who don’t feel compelled to wash our hands a hundred times a day. But this time he was interrupted.

  If we were in the northeast corner, then the noise was coming from the west, a combination of scrapes and human grunts, but mostly grunts. Monk might have been the first to hear it, but Devlin was the first to raise a hand and signal for silence. “But … ,” Monk protested in a whisper. He hates being cut off in mid-summation.

  The lieutenant kept her hand up and led the way over the stone bridge and the lily pond, around the perfectly raked sand garden and toward the western wall of the triangle. She stopped us behind a pair of flowering dogwoods where we wouldn’t be the first things the intruder would see.

  The grunts continued, middle-aged and struggling, as Sarabeth Willow knelt on top of the stone wall, her back to us, and began to lower herself to the ground, grabbing at a few outcroppings as she went. The pain from her injuries must have been excruciating but she didn’t let it stop her.

  She spent almost a minute holding her side and catching her breath. She was just dusting off her jeans and getting her bearings when she saw us. Her first impulse was to run. But there were three of us and we were all inside a wall. We surrounded her in the middle of the sand garden. To Monk’s credit, he managed to ignore the chaos of footprints marring the raked patterns of sand.

  “Adrian,” said Sarabeth, her hands dropping to her side. “What a surprise. I … I …” She tried her best to recover. “I came to check the paperwork on the statue we delivered today. The gate was locked, so I guess I’m legally trespassing. You shouldn’t blame Mr. Ito for the paperwork. He’s got the invoices all screwed up and—”

  “We looked inside the Buddha,” Monk interrupted. “We know about Wyatt.”

  “Where’s Noone? Is he on the other side of the wall?” asked Devlin. “Is he?”

  Sarabeth stood for a moment, then turned on her heel and began shouting. “Police! Run, honey, run.”

  “Damn,” said Devlin, and took off like a sprinter. I could see her vacillating in her stride, calculating which would be quicker, scaling the wall or unlocking the gate and going around. She chose the wall and vanished around the edge of the lily pond. I felt the urge to join her, like a dog chasing another dog chasing a ball. Monk stopped me.

  “Don’t go. I need you here.”

  “What about Noone?” I protested.

  “Why do you need Natalie here?” asked Sarabeth, all sweetness again. “Do you think I’m going to overpower you or run away?”

  “Let’s say I don’t trust either one of us.”

  I heard all this but I was too distracted. “What if Noone gets away? He’ll be gone for good.”

  “Natalie, there is no Wyatt Noone. There never was.”

  “I know that, but …”

  “I mean never. Not even in the beginning.”

  “Then who is Devlin chasing?”

  “No one. It was all her.”

  The woman in question placed a heartfelt hand to her chest. “Adrian, Adrian. Even if you believe this crazy theory of yours, whatever it is, it’s your word against mine, isn’t it?”

  “Not quite,” said Monk. “Your prints are probably on the shotgun. And I’m sure you left your DNA on the bald wig. Sweat, hair, skin fragments.”

  “What? No.” There were a dozen things I could have said to shoot this down, but the first objection that came to mind … “She had her picture taken with Noone at the Christmas party,” I said. And my second objection … “Everyone in the office knew him.”

  “Like I said, it was Takumi Ito’s fault. Right?”

  Sarabeth nodded a reluctant yes. Her shoulders fell. But a gut instinct told me to pull my Glock out of my PBS tote. I made sure she saw it.

  Monk continued, his summation back on track. “Business was good for East Decorative Imports. But Mr. Ito kept denying you raises. That had to sting. He gave you permission to hire a financial manager. But you were already doing the financial manager’s work. Whose idea was it?”

  “It was Mel’s,” said Sarabeth. “He said it as a joke. ‘Let’s make up a fake employee and split his paycheck four ways.’ Caleb came up with the name. He got the Social Security number and did all the paperwork. Everyone had to keep it absolutely secret. Not even wives or husbands knew. Not even Paul.”

  “Paul didn’t know about it?” asked Monk, a little dubious.

  “Of course not,” said Sarabeth. “Otherwise it wouldn’t work. Everyone opened a little savings account, just to keep it secret. We were protecting them as much as we were protecting ourselves.”

  “Even Todd Avery?” I asked. “He worked right below you.”

  “Todd’s not a very curious person,” said Sarabeth. “And Katrina knew how to manipulate him. Every time someone showed up, we invented some excuse for Wyatt’s not being around. If anyone from Tokyo ever deigned to pay a visit, we could pretend Wyatt had just quit and moved away.”

  “Who did Noone’s voice on the phone calls?” asked Monk. “The Southern accent?”

  “That was Caleb. The boy fancied himself an actor.”

  “What about the photos?” I asked.

  “We got pretty drunk at the Christmas party,” said Sarabeth. “We put Mel in makeup and a bald wig and different clothes. It all added to the realism.”

  “I told you Wyatt looked like Mel,” Monk reminded me.

  “You did,” I admitted. “I should have taken that seriously.”

  Monk forgave me with a sideways tilt of his head. “It was all a petty scam, relatively harmless, until Sarabeth got greedy.”

  “I’m not greedy,” she said indignantly. “I have a husband with cancer. There are treatments. Expensive treatments.”

  “Plenty of people have husbands with cancer,” I said. “They don’t embezzle millions and …” The Glock trembled in my hand as the cold-blooded reality of what she had done suddenly hit me. “And murder three people. Your coworkers, your friends. To walk into the office in that silly disguise and open fire on your friends …”

  “Friends,” Sarabeth scoffed. Her normally soft face hardened. “I was their menial assistant. I did three-quarters of Wyatt’s work for one-quarter of the money. And none of them ever made my life easy. When Paul got sick, no one cared. No one came to visit or even sent flowers. The bastards.”

  Monk was mesmerized by Sarabeth’s flinty expression, as if a panda bear had just morphed into a grizzly, which was pretty much the situation.

  “I asked for a bigger cut, for Paul’s sake. But they didn’t care.”

  “And so you started embezzling,” I said. I’m always the one who fills up the dead space in a social conversation. Otherwise things can get uncomfortable. “And when embezzling wasn’t bringing in enough, you graduated to sending out copies as originals.”

  “These were things we could blame on Wyatt,” said Sarabeth. “When we found out Mr. Ito was scheduling a visit, that’s what I told them. Blame it on Wyatt.” She laughed, and both Monk and I winced. “But oh no! They were too high and mighty for that. I’ll tell you what they were. Pissed. Pissed that meek little Sarabeth figured out how to make some real money and not them.”

  “So you were looking at jail time,” said Monk, his voice softening. “Just when your husband needed you the most.” I could see him trying to rationalize this, but it was an uphill battle.

  “It wasn’t that big of a step,” said Sarabeth. “Mentally at least. From blaming Wyatt for embezzlement to blaming him for murder. I’m a lot smarter than they thought.”

  Monk seemed to agree. “The clothes in the stairwell. That was very smart. You needed to give the police some theory of how Noone got out of the building. And shooting yourself, Sarabeth … That took real guts.”

  “I was hoping I could give myself a flesh wound. But my hand was shaking. I misjudged.”

  “Still it took guts. All in all, a smart plan.”

  Sarabeth’s lips curled sadly. She looked human again. “Not quite smart enough. I didn’t recover the shotgun and the wig in time. I tried, but … Imagine how I felt when I discovered the Buddhas had already been shipped.”

  “I can imagine,” said Monk.

  “And, of course, it’s always the last place you look. If it had been shipped to any one of the stores, there’d be no evidence now.”

  “A bad break,” said Monk.

  “Adrian!” I punched him in the shoulder, just to get his attention. “She murdered three people.”

  “But she did it for her husband. You’ve got to give her points for that.”

  “Points? I can’t believe you just said that. She is not getting points.”

  “You could be nicer about it.”

  “Don’t blame Natalie,” Sarabeth said, her sweetness returning. “If you blame anyone, Adrian, blame me. It’s my fault.”

  “Of course it’s your fault,” I shouted. “You killed three people.” And I raised my Glock just for emphasis.

  “If things had only been different,” Sarabeth almost purred. “I really liked you, Adrian.”

  “Thanks, Sarabeth.”

  “It wasn’t just for show, if that’s any consolation.”

  Not to the three people you killed. No consolation to them! That’s what I wanted to say. Instead, I just let them have their moment.

  We heard Lieutenant Devlin before we saw her as she opened the gate, swung it shut, and shuffled slowly down one of the gravel paths.

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she said, panting out each of the words. “Noone got away.”

  Monk paused before speaking. It must have been hard. “No, he didn’t get away.”

 

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