“Now you’re accusing me of murdering a dog, too?” Breen said. “This is outrageous. Do you have any proof to back up this fantasy of yours?”
“The mugger said you reeked of smoke,” I said.
“Reeked? He sounds like my wife. My God, everybody is antismoking now, even the muggers. Like I said before, I was having a cigar. That’s what he smelled. The wonderful aroma of a Partagas Salamones.”
Breen looked past me, something outside catching his eye. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a bum walking past the window. It was the same bum whom Monk had gifted with a couple dozen Wet Ones, shuffling by in his overcoat, pushing a rickety grocery cart overflowing with garbage. He saw me watching him and flipped me off.
Breen turned to Stottlemeyer, and when he spoke, his tone was much harder than before. “You’ve taxed my patience long enough with this inane inquiry. Make your point and get it over with.”
“Monk is right. You killed the lady and the dog, and you’re going down for it. All four of us sitting here know that,” Stottlemeyer said. “The thing is, since you’re such a booster of the police department and all, I thought I’d give you the chance to cut a deal before we both spend a lot of needless time and expense on this.”
“I heard you were a rising star in the department, Captain, and that you, Mr. Monk, were a brilliant detective. Obviously I was misinformed. I’m deeply disappointed in both of you. We’re done here.”
Breen rose from his seat, acknowledged me with a tip of his head, and walked back to the elevator.
“He’s disappointed in us, Monk.” Stottlemeyer finished his coffee. “I’m crushed; how about you?”
“He’s going to make life hard for you, Captain,” Monk said.
“Not as hard as I’m going to make it for him,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ll get search warrants tonight, and we’ll ransack his home and office for that little item he went back to Esther’s house to get—just as soon as you tell me what that little item is.”
“Something very, very incriminating.”
“Which is . . . ?” Stottlemeyer said.
“Something that points directly, irrefutably, and conclusively to him as the killer.”
“Yes, I get the concept of incriminating,” Stottlemeyer said. “But what is it, exactly, that I should tell the judge that we’re looking for?”
Monk shrugged.
Stottlemeyer looked at Monk, then at me, then back to Monk. “You don’t know?”
“Something so unbelievably damaging to him that he’d literally walk through the red-hot flames of hell to get it back.”
“Well, there go my search warrants,” Stottlemeyer said. “So what you’re basically saying is, we’ve got bupkis.”
“Actually,” Monk said. “It’s probably less than that.”
13
Mr. Monk Does His Homework
Stottlemeyer drove us back to the Excelsior and used his badge to get my car out of the parking lot for free. It must be nice to have a badge and be able to park wherever you want without worrying about fees or tickets.
I made Monk promise not to say anything to Julie about the attempted mugging. She’d lost her father, and I didn’t want her worrying every time I left the house with Monk that she might lose me next. If Monk had a problem with my lie of omission, he didn’t say anything.
When we got home, lugging in our Pottery Barn purchases, Julie was at the table working on her homework, and Mrs. Throphamner was on the couch watching TV. Mrs. Throphamner’s dentures were on a napkin on the coffee table, facing the TV so they, too, could enjoy Diagnosis Murder.
I introduced Monk to Mrs. Throphamner. “He’s staying with us for a few days.”
She popped her teeth back into her mouth and offered her hand to Monk. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Monk took one look at her hand, which was covered with blisters, and shook the air between them instead.
“Yes, it certainly is,” Monk said, shaking the air enthusiastically. “What happened to your hands?”
“I’ve been tending my roses,” she said. “It’s hard work, but I love it.”
I paid Mrs. Throphamner twelve dollars for babysitting. She stuffed the bills in her cleavage, blew a kiss to Julie, and went home in a hurry so she wouldn’t miss a second of Dick Van Dyke’s sleuthing.
“Mrs. Throphamner’s such a sweet woman,” I said after she left.
“She’s a witch,” Monk said. “Did you see those gnarled hands and her puckered, toothless face?”
Julie giggled happily. She happened to share Monk’s opinion. I thought they were both being cruel.
“She’s old and lonely; that’s all. Her husband spends most of his time lately at their fishing cabin up near Sacramento. She’s had nothing to do the last few months except tend her garden and watch TV.”
Of course, that was also very good for me, because it coincided with my newfound employment with Monk and made her available almost anytime for babysitting. I liked to believe that Mrs. Throphamner and I were doing each other a favor.
I heated up a frozen pizza for dinner, set the table with paper plates, and talked to Julie about her day at school while Monk disposed of the napkin Mrs. Throphamner had rested her teeth on. He put on rubber dish gloves and used a pair of barbecue tongs to pick up the napkin and take it to the fireplace, where he incinerated it. Then he disinfected the coffee table and the air around it with enough Lysol to eradicate every germ within a square mile. I had to open the window in the kitchen so we wouldn’t be eradicated, too. Julie watched him closely, amused and fascinated at the same time.
“I can still smell her,” Monk said.
“It’s her flowers you’re smelling,” I said. “I opened the kitchen window. She spends so much time tending her garden that she picks up the fragrance of her roses.”
He studied me, trying to discern whether I was telling the truth or not, then decided to believe me and put away the Lysol and threw out the gloves. I would have washed the gloves and used them again, but I’m not Adrian Monk.
As soon as the pizza was ready, Monk cut it into eight even slices. We sat down to eat, and I gave Julie an edited account of our day, leaving out the mugging and the identity of Sparky’s killer, but said we were close to getting the culprit. I know that was being overly optimistic, but I had a lot of faith in Monk.
After dinner, Julie went back to her homework while I unpacked and washed all the new dishes and silverware. I know Monk would have been glad to do the washing for me, but Julie had other plans. She asked him if he’d help her with her homework.
“That’s very nice of you,” Monk said. “But I don’t want to intrude on your fun.”
“You think homework is fun?” Julie said.
“Homework was my second favorite thing about school.”
“What was your favorite?” Julie asked.
“The tests, of course. You know what was almost as much fun? Deducing days in advance exactly when the next surprise ‘pop’ quiz was coming up. The teachers pretended like this irritated them, but it was really their clever way of encouraging me to challenge myself. Boy, does this bring back memories. I used to love aligning the rows of desks each day. Do you ever do that?”
“No,” Julie said.
“You aren’t being aggressive enough,” Monk said.