He marched straight towards us.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Whenever someone says, “We need to talk,” what they really mean is that they want to tear your head off about something. So you have two choices: You can either brace yourself for a verbal beating or run for the nearest exit.
My instinct, no doubt tied to childhood, when my dad used those same words (though he’d add “young lady” at the end) when he caught me doing something bad, was to run. But I fought back the urge.
“How did you know we were here?” I asked.
“I’m a great detective,” he said.
“Mr. Monk is a great detective,” I said. “You are a very good one.”
It’s probably not too smart to insult your boss with a backhanded compliment when he’s already mad at you, but when I’m forced into a corner, cockiness is how I deal with my worry or fear. I was afraid I was about to see my wonderful health plan and my company car evaporate before I really got a chance to use them.
“I heard what happened to Leland and that you were down there to see him. If I were trying to prove him innocent, the crime scene is the first place I’d go,” Slade said. Score one for me and my detecting instincts. “And you used our corporate card to rent the room.”
“You track our credit card usage in real time?” I said. “That seems a little Orwellian to me.”
“Technically, it’s not your privacy I’d be intruding on, since it’s my credit card you were using. But I didn’t have to go to the trouble. Intertect handles the security for the hotel. I got a call that you were here.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh,” he repeated. “If you’d called me before you came down here, you could have saved the company two hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Is that what you’re mad about?” I asked. “The money?”
“I’m not mad,” Slade said. “I’m confused and I’m disappointed. First you tell me that Mr. Monk needs a rest-”
“I don’t need a rest,” Monk interrupted.
“-which I gave him, then I find out that you used that free time to investigate Bill Peschel’s death.”
“Murder,” Monk said.
“Nobody has hired us on that case,” Slade said. “Your fee is three hundred dollars an hour and until someone signs a contract with me and hands us a check for a retainer, you are not to spend a single moment of your time, or anybody else’s in my employ, on that case.”
“I make three hundred dollars an hour?” Monk said.
“Now Leland has asked for your help and you agreed to give it without consulting me first,” Slade said. “Have you forgotten who you are working for, Mr. Monk?”
“I have to help my friend,” Monk said.
“He is my friend, too,” Slade said.
“The captain is innocent, he needs Mr. Monk’s help, and he can’t possibly afford to pay your rates,” I said.
“Leland doesn’t have to,” Slade said. “We’ll help him for nothing. It will be our pro bono case for the year. Consider yourselves assigned to the case. All the resources of Intertect are at your disposal. But you have to promise me that you will stop investigating Peschel’s death.”
“Murder,” Monk said.
“It’s not our problem,” Slade said.
“Wasn’t he your friend, too?” I asked.
“Not like Leland, not even close,” Slade said. “Unless the Atwaters hire us, or the Mill Valley police do, or anybody else who’d like to pay our regular fees, we are not getting involved in that investigation.”
“I wasn’t doing much on it,” Monk said. “Nothing at all, really.”
“You went out to question Phil Atwater,” Slade said. “That’s investigation.”
Slade may have discovered we were working on the Peschel case because of the surveillance Danielle had ordered and maybe because she checked the Atwaters’ credit card activity. But the only way Slade could have known we met with Phil was if Danielle had told him. She’d betrayed us.
“By working on the case for free,” Slade continued, “you are actually working against Intertect. You are removing the incentive for anyone to hire us to do the work. It’s self-destructive. It’s like phoning in anonymous tips to the police after they fired you.”
“You knew about that?” Monk said.
“I’m a great detective.” Slade glanced at me. “Correction, a good detective.”
“I don’t know why they bother telling people it’s an anonymous tip line when it’s not anonymous at all,” Monk said. “I’m going to write a very stern letter to the chief of police about this.”
“They aren’t going to be too happy with you when they get it,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Monk said. “I’ll send it anonymously.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Captain Stottlemeyer sat across from us in the interview room at the jail as Monk told him his theory about the glass. He looked as jaundiced as Lucarelli did when he sat in that same chair.
Perhaps it was the yellow glow of those energy-efficient lightbulbs combined with the yellow jumpsuit that created that effect. Or perhaps it was a physical symptom of incarceration in a windowless cell and hours of contemplating your impending lifelong imprisonment.
“My ex-wife won’t let my kids come see me, so the only information they are getting about all this is what they read online or see on the news,” Stottlemeyer said. “But you know what the worst part of this is?”
“The three Velcro strips on your jumpsuit,” Monk said. “It’s a blatant violation of the Geneva convention.”
“Velcro strips didn’t exist when they convened the Geneva convention,” I said.
“Giving a man only three Velcro strips is cruel and inhuman punishment,” Monk said. “Where the hell is that fourth strip? It’s pure, unrelenting psychological torture. I don’t know how you can stand it, Captain.”
“What’s worse is that Salvatore Lucarelli is in the cell across from mine,” Stottlemeyer said. “I have to look at that smug smile on his face.”
“Do you think he’s behind this?” I asked.
“It could be anybody. You make a lot of enemies in my job. Lucarelli is just one of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Monk said.
“What are you sorry about?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“This,” he said. “It’s all my fault.”
You can always count on Monk to make any situation about himself. It’s not that Monk is selfish, it’s just that he needs to believe that the whole world revolves around him. It’s the only way he can reasonably exert complete control over it.
“How is it your fault?” Stottlemeyer said.
“If I’d been more vigilant, I might have seen this coming,” Monk said.
“How? Are you psychic?”
“No,” Monk said.
“Then how could you have seen it coming?”
“A frame is built,” Monk said. “The construction was happening all around us.”
“It doesn’t mean that it happened in front of our eyes,” Stottlemeyer said.
“It had to,” Monk said. “Someone saw the opportunity to frame you and took it. Whoever it was knew you had a motive to kill Braddock.”
“That was obvious to anyone who was at the conference, which is why they swiped the glass afterwards and held on to it,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I have a hard time imagining that another cop did this.”
“Who else could it be?” I asked.
“There’s a large service staff at the hotel,” Stottlemeyer said. “One of them could have been an ex-con or related to someone Braddock put away.”
“Braddock isn’t the one sitting in jail,” I said.
“I’m thinking that maybe this isn’t about me,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’m just the fall guy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Peschel and Braddock were murdered within forty-eight hours of each other. Braddock got tips from Peschel, too.”