Then Monk pointed to the picture of the Breens leaving the party. “But here, his umbrella is closed under his arm and he’s not wearing his overcoat.”
“Because it’s not raining anymore.”
“So where’s his coat? Why isn’t he carrying it?”
Good question. In light of everything that happened, I could think only of one answer.
“He left it in Esther Stoval’s house,” I said.
“According to the weather report, we know it didn’t stop raining until nine thirty, so he must have been wearing his overcoat when he slipped out of the hotel to see Esther,” Monk said. “She probably asked him to take it off and hang it up when he came in. Then they talked for a minute or two.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of where her body was found. She was sitting on the far corner of the coach, facing the chair where he sat,” Monk said. “She said or did something that provoked him. He flew out of the chair and smothered her with the pillow. After that, all that was on Breen’s mind was covering up the crime, staging the fire, and getting out of that house as fast as possible. It wasn’t raining when he left, so he probably didn’t realize he’d forgotten his overcoat until he was halfway back to the hotel.”
Which would have put him right smack in front of the empty fire station.
“Breen couldn’t risk the possibility that any part of his coat might survive the fire,” Monk said. “If it was like the rest of his wardrobe, it was handmade and had monogrammed buttons. It would point right back to him. He had to go back and get it.”
I bet it was while Breen was standing in front of the fire station, staring in panic at the empty garage, that he came up with the bright idea of how to save himself. When he ran in to get the gear, I’m sure the last thing he expected was that some barking, snarling dog would come charging at him. Wasn’t it enough that he left his coat behind? Did fate have to add a dog to his misery, too?
But Breen survived unscathed, and things went much smoother after that. He slipped into the burning house in his firefighting gear unnoticed by the other firemen, snatched his overcoat, and got out again. He returned the firefighting gear to the station without being seen and without having to fight off any more ferocious animals.
He must have thought the worst was over. And then he got mugged.
Unbelievable. His luck was so bad, I might have felt sorry for him if he hadn’t killed a woman and a dog and if he weren’t such a pompous jerk. Despite all his incredible misfortune, he made it back to the party without being missed. I’m sure he went straight to the bar and knocked back a few. I would have.
It was hardly the perfect murder, but I doubt anybody would ever have known what he did if it weren’t for a twelve-year-old kid hiring a detective to find out who killed a dog.
But I was getting ahead of myself. Breen wasn’t caught yet. We didn’t have enough evidence. We didn’t have the coat.
“So assuming he got his overcoat back,” I said, “what did he do with it?”
“We have to assume the overcoat was burned or damaged by the smoke and that he ditched it somewhere between Esther’s house and the hotel.”
“What about Lizzie Draper’s house?”
Monk shook his head. “Too risky. What if she stumbled on the overcoat before he had a chance to get rid of it? He wouldn’t want her, or anybody else, to be able to connect him to the fire. He ditched it somewhere else, somewhere between the fire station and the hotel.”
Then I knew where we should start looking.
I had an ulterior motive for wanting to start at the fire station. For one thing, I didn’t want to pay for parking at the Excelsior. For another, I wanted an excuse to drop by and see if Joe was okay.
But when we got to the station, it was empty. They were out responding to a call.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Monk said. We were standing outside the firehouse.
“Who?”
“Firefighter Joe. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“No, we’re here to retrace Breen’s steps and look for places where he might have ditched the overcoat.”
“That would be the hard way,” Monk said. “I called Disher before we left the house and asked him to see if the mugger remembers whether Breen was carrying an overcoat or not.”
“Then we didn’t have to come all the way down here,” I said. “We could have waited at home to hear from Disher.”
Monk nodded. “But you wanted to check on Firefighter Joe ever since you read about the warehouse fire in the paper this morning.”
“How did you know?”
“You never read past that article,” Monk said. “And the whole time we were talking, you kept looking furtively at the phone, debating with yourself whether it was still too early to call.”
Sometimes I forget that Monk is a detective. I also forget that when he’s not being the single most irritating person on the planet, he can be a very sweet man.
“Thank you,” I said.
My cell phone rang. It was Disher.
“We had to make a deal with Marlon Tolliver to get Monk the information he wanted,” he said.
“Who is Marlon Tolliver?”
“Your mugger. He got himself a pretty good public defender. We had to agree to drop the assault-with-a-deadly-weapon charge against him in return for his testimony about his dealings with Lucas Breen.”
“So he gets away with putting a knife to my throat?”
“To get him to talk, we had to give him something, and that was all we had,” Disher said. “It was the best we could do without you here crushing his cojones.”
“I’ll be glad to come down and do it,” I said.
“The deal is done, and here’s what he told us,” Disher said. “Breen was holding his overcoat when Tolliver mugged him.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Could you do me a favor?”
“Of course; that’s why I’m here, to do all of Monk’s legwork for him.”
“This is a favor for me,” I said.
“You want me to knee Tolliver in the cojones for you?”
“There was a warehouse fire last night and some firefighters were hurt. Is there some way you could find out if one of them was Joe Cochran?”
“No problem,” Disher said. “I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
I thanked Disher and told Monk the news. “Breen still had the coat when he was in the alley outside the hotel.”
“Then that’s where he ditched it,” Monk said. “Somewhere in the alley.”
We walked to the hotel. It was faster than finding another parking spot and cheaper, too. We passed a few homeless people who, after seeing us the other day, knew better than to ask Monk for a handout. I was glad we didn’t run into the guy who had flipped me off.
The streets were crowded with people, but I still approached the alley cautiously, just in case there was another mugger hiding in the darkness. Monk was also being cautious, only for different reasons. He was trying very hard not to step in anything dirty, which isn’t easy in a filthy, smelly alley.
We walked slowly, looking for places where Breen might have disposed of the overcoat. It soon became obvious to both of us that there was really only one place he could have stashed it out of sight—in one of the trash bins near the hotel service exit.
Without saying anything to Monk first, I climbed up on one of the Dumpsters. Monk freaked out.
“Step away from the Dumpster,” Monk said. “Very slowly.”
I stayed where I was. “It’s a Dumpster, Mr. Monk. Not a bomb.”
“Don’t be a hero, Natalie. Leave it for the professionals.”
“I’m not an expert in police procedure, but I don’t think Captain Stottlemeyer is going to be able to get a forensics team down here to search this Dumpster based only on your hunch.”