Mr. Monk Is Open for Business (15 page)

“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Mr. Monk and the Pawnshop

M
onk and I didn’t have a routine set in stone. My assumption was that I would pick him up five days a week and drive into our little strip mall with the reserved parking space out front and the sign
EMPLOYEES
ONLY
.

I was running a few minutes late that Monday morning. But I knew better than to pull up in front of his apartment and honk. I’d tried that once and had to physically restrain him from calling the Department of Public Health for violation of Article 29. That’s the noise control ordinance that, among other things, prohibits the honking of car horns except in the case of imminent danger. I had to promise that I would voluntarily turn myself in, but I never did.

I called his house phone from my illegal spot on the street. No response. The front bell and the second-floor bell also provided no response. So I retrieved my Subaru before it could be towed and drove the five minutes to Monk and Teeger. Maybe he’s already there, I thought, ready to embrace our new life. Miracles are always possible.

He was there, all right.

To be specific, he was at the storefront on the other side of the strip mall, 24-Hour Holiday Pawn. Monk and the
proprietor and two officers from an SFPD squad car were gathered just inside the dusty establishment, all of them talking and trying to be heard.

“Natalie, thank goodness. Come on, come on.” Monk joined me as soon as I got out and mime-dragged me into the shop. “Please explain to Mr. Wittingham that I need to inspect the premises. There may be a lot more where this came from.” Monk pointed to a gorgeous sterling silver punch bowl taking up the entire countertop by the cash register. Being a detective, I had already clocked the gaping empty space in the front window display.

“What exactly happened?” I asked.

“Since you didn’t call to confirm our schedule, I was forced to walk into work this morning. . . .”

“You have a phone, too, Adrian. You could have called me.”

“Be that as it may, you didn’t call and I walked to work—and you weren’t here. I was forced to look in the window of the pawnshop.”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to go into pawnshops?”

“I didn’t go in. I just looked through the window. It’s your fault because you weren’t here.”

“I wasn’t here because I went to pick you up.”

Monk and pawnshops don’t go well together. It’s not just the dust and the chaos and the fact that everything is tattered and used. Everything also has a story. Monk can look at a set of bowling pins and know that the former owner clubbed his business partner to death with one of them. He can glance at a set of poker chips and know they were used by con men in a blackmail scam. He can also look at a
sterling silver punch bowl and know . . . Hmm. “Okay, Adrian, what’s wrong with this punch bowl?”

“You mean beside the fact . . .”

“Yes, beside the fact that it’s a punch bowl and dozens of unsanitary people make a point of drinking from the same container. What’s wrong with it?”

It looked pretty normal to me—huge, polished, and traditional, with engraved flourishes, the kind of thing rich people get for their anniversaries or when their sailboat wins the annual regatta. Monk pointed to a blank space in the middle of all the flourishes, an oval perhaps eight by six inches. “That,” he said. “That spot is blank.”

“Yes, Adrian. That’s where the engraving goes.”

“And why isn’t there an engraving?”

“Umm. Maybe they didn’t want it engraved.”

“Natalie, open your eyes. It’s a presentation piece. The only reason to spend thousands of dollars on a bowl with a big space for an engraving is to put in an engraving. Yet this one is blank. And don’t say they had the engraving removed. I checked with a magnifying glass. It was never there.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” said I. “Why is there no engraving?”

Monk lowered his voice, even though everyone was still close enough to hear. “The lack of engraving isn’t conclusive. That’s why I called the police. Mr. Wittingham allowed me to use his phone.”

“He actually had the nerve to call the police on my phone.” Wittingham was understandably upset.

“Thank you, sir,” said Monk, then turned back to me. “Since it was in the window, I assumed the bowl was a new acquisition. I asked a sergeant about burglaries at the
high-end jewelry shops. There was a break-in two weeks ago at the Tiffany’s on Union Square. One of the items was a punch bowl, not yet sold or engraved.”

“He’s right,” said one of the officers with a sheepish grin. “It’s the same bowl.”

You see how he does it? A simple observation—something that doesn’t quite fit—then a phone call to confirm it. Yeah? Well, neither do I.

“I had no idea it was stolen,” said Wittingham. “I need to keep my dealer’s license, so I’m always legit. I’ll give you a copy of the seller’s form and the receipt, no problem.”

“A hundred to one the ID is fake,” said the same officer. The other picked up the bowl, ready to confiscate it and eventually return it to Tiffany & Co.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wittingham,” I said. It’s an occupational hazard in the pawn business to be the buyer of stolen property. In most cases, it works out. The broker gets a good price and resells it at a premium without anyone being the wiser. But in most cases, you don’t have M&T setting up an office fifty yards away.

“You’re sorry?” Wittingham said. “What about me? I’m out eight hundred bucks.”

“Eight hundred?” I had to laugh. “And that wasn’t a clue to you that the bowl was stolen?”

“What can I say? The guy was a bad bargainer.”

“Was this the only thing he brought in?” I asked. “No other silver pieces, like the punch bowl cups?”

“Nothing.” The pawnbroker was a small, round man with round-framed glasses and a vintage 1980s rock T-shirt that was spattered with a couple of vintage food stains. He looked
at me seriously, as if for the first time. “Who are you, lady? Are you this guy’s keeper?”

“I am,” I said. “I mean, I’m not. I mean, Adrian and I are co-owners of the detective agency, where the sandwich shop used to be. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve been meaning to drop by. I hope we can all be good neighbors. Natalie Teeger.” I held out my hand and wasn’t surprised when he didn’t shake it.

“Your co-owner is trying to get me arrested.”

“Not arrested,” said Monk. “I’m just saying you should let me inspect the rest of your premises. Who knows what else we’ll find?”

“Not without a search warrant.”

“Search warrant?” I glanced around at the hundreds of items on the shelves in glass-topped displays. “This is a retail establishment, open twenty-four hours. You can’t stop him from walking around and looking.”

“Sure I can,” said Wittingham. “I can ban anyone. In fact, I’m banning the two of you from ever entering my store again. For life. I’ll put up your pictures on the wall. Welcome to the neighborhood.”

“He’s right about banning you,” said the officer who did the talking. “We can take it from here. Thanks again, Monk. This is the easiest case we’ve had all year.”

Seven neighbors to go, I thought as Monk and I walked back across the parking lot to open up for the day. Less than a week and he had already made enemies with one of the eight other shops in our little mall. I wondered which would be next, the Laundromat or the UPS store.

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?”