Monk and What He Saw
by Cathy German
CathGerm@aol.com
Chapter 5
Sharona left Monk at the car and headed to the Tended Vine Inn office to check in on Stottlemeyer and Disher. She knew Adrian's methods when he got to a new place. He would want to get a lay of the land, just in case anything were to happen.
She wasn't sure still how much of Monk's vision she believed. She had "visions" all the time: Benjy breaking a leg, Monk forgetting to pay her, accidents, premonitions ... women's intuition, maybe. Most of the time they never happened. They were just islands of worry in the sea of a sometimes worrisome life, and she had never lent much credence to them.
But she'd learned to pay attention to her boss. He was rarely wrong.
As she opened the wide oak door, she stumbled into Randy Disher coming out.
"Sharona," he said, wide-eyed, grabbing her by the upper arms, "is Monk here with you?" Without waiting for an answer, he buried her in an almost painful hug. "I can't believe you're here," he said, his voice cracking. "I can't believe it." Her response was muffled by the shirt on his chest. "Randy. Randy ... what-" She pulled herself back and looked up at him. "Oh my God," she said as she had the chance to study him: ghost-pale, his hands on her arms cold and clammy, dark smudges under his eyes. She put a hand to his cheek. "Are you all right?" And her words and hand fell away as she guessed why Randy looked as if he'd camped at the gates of hell.
"Oh my God. Stottlemeyer. Is he ... "
He looked down at the ground. "Missing," he said, and looking back up: "Where's Monk?"
She turned and pointed. In typical Monk fashion he was standing in the grass near the driveway, and he was doing his peculiar tai-chi dance: a cocked head this way, a hand held up to the west, a short walk to a fountain, a squint at the sky. Randy nodded, swallowed, and strode towards him, Sharona following at a trot. Monk was staring out into the surrounding dry and fallow fields when Disher came up behind him.
Adrian turned, and when Sharona saw his grim face she held a breath.
He knew.
"Monk," Randy said with no preamble, "Stottlemeyer is missing." And then, in a sad whisper that broke her heart: "I lost him."
Adrian Monk didn't move. Five seconds stretched to ten, and he finally said, devoid of emotion, as if he were stating the current temperature: "That may mean the death of him."
Sharona was mortified. "Adrian!" she cried. Disher rocked back on his heels as if struck, and Monk, all innocence, raised his eyebrows.
"But it may."
Incensed, Sharona pushed past Disher and smacked Adrian on the cheek. She was both embarrassed and satisfied to see the blood rise to where her hand met his skin. After a moment of shocked silence, he snapped his fingers.
"Wipe."
"Oh yeah! Wipe! Yeah," she muttered, digging into her bag. "You need a wipe. God only knows where my hand has been." She pulled out the box and tossed a wipe at him. Then another. Then two more at once. She couldn't pull them out fast enough to match her anger. Frustrated, she threw the whole damn box at him. "Knock yourself out! Sit right there on that bench and just wipe yourself to your heart's content. Randy," she said turning to him, "you come with me."
She sat Randy on a bench in the shade and went into the office for some ice water. When she came out, Disher, in the bench nearest her, was leaning over, elbows on knees, head in his hands, and Adrian, on the bench out in the sun, was trying to control the free-range wipes as a breeze swept through the gardens.
Watching both of them and thinking of an absent Stottlemeyer, she idly considered opening a day care.
She'd certainly had the experience for it.
"Here," she said, sitting and handing the bottled water to Randy. "Drink this."
He waved it away. "Can't. I don't think I can keep anything down."
"C'mere," she said, and he obediently turned in her direction. She checked his eyes, his pulse.
"I think I was probably drugged," he admitted.
"I think you're probably right," she said.
Randy threw a remorseful look towards Monk as she nursed him, and her heart went out to him. Usually she and Disher were like unruly siblings on a long car trip, but her sympathy for him brought tears to her eyes.
"Randy," she said, taking his hands in hers. "You have to drink something. You're probably close to dehydration."
He grimaced. "I can't-"
"Listen to me. I know what I'm talking about. You have to make yourself drink something. Little sips. Otherwise you're gonna end up in the hospital. Then what good are you going to be able to do the captain?"
"What good have I done him so far?" he asked bitterly, pulling his hands away and rubbing at his face.
She sighed. "Look, Randy," she said, gesturing towards her boss who was studiously wiping the metal arm of the bench, "you can't let him get to you. You know how he is, how he can be."
Disher ground out a dark laugh. "He didn't say anything out loud that I hadn't thought in my head already."
"Still, Randy. Think about it. You've worked with him. You know how he is when he's on a case. And you know the history that he and the captain share, and what he's lost already. He doesn't ..." she shook her head, searching for the words " ... he doesn't cope very well emotionally. Or cope very well with anything." She tried for a smile, leaning over and patting his leg. "He's not mad at you. It's the circumstances. And he's working on this already in his head, I can tell. He'll figure this out."
Randy looked at her and allowed some hope to shine through his red-rimmed eyes. Sharona handed him the bottled water.
"Drink," she said. "I mean it. And bring out the inn manager. That's who Monk will want to talk to first."
"Uh, Sharona," Disher said, grabbing her arm as she rose. "You need to know: The manager thinks Monk is crazy."
Sharona gave a sardonic laugh. "Great. We'll start a club and charge dues. You and I can retire young." Disher rewarded her with a weak smile in response, and she headed for her charge, who was still rubbing at a stubborn spot on the bench arm. He looked up as she walked towards him. She took the seat next to him on the bench.
"You're mad at me again," he said.
"Gosh. Do ya think?" she shot.
"Yes," he said solemnly, missing the joke in it. "I do."
Sharona sighed and dropped her head. It was like being angry at Benjy when he was a year old and didn't know any better. Anger was wasted here. She cleared her throat.
"Adrian, do you remember what we talked about after the elephant scared me at the circus, about being more in tune to other people's feelings?"
"Yes," he said, nodding his head and worrying the wipe in his hands. "I do."
She gestured towards the bench where Randy had been sitting. "What you said to Lieutenant Disher ... Adrian, it was horrible thing to say."
"But ... but it was the truth," he said with great earnestness.
"Adrian, sometimes the truth-"
"Hurts. Yes. Sometimes the truth hurts."
"Especially from you!" she cried. "Put yourself in his shoes. Think about how Randy must be feeling. Now think about what you said and how awful it must have made him feel to hear it. You know that he wouldn't have let this happen if he could have stopped it. Whoever did this drugged him. It could have happened to any of us."
Under his frown, Monk's dark eyes were somber, sadder even than usual.
"Adrian, sometimes a little white lie is not a bad idea. You can think the truth, but if it's going to harm someone, please think it, but don't say it." She looked past Monk at Disher, who was headed their way with a curly-headed rotund man in tow. She patted Monk's leg. "Now be good. Please."
He nodded and set his jaw, determined.
"I will try."
Randy Disher had already gotten over Monk's pronouncement. Adrian Monk was here in the flesh, and that was all that mattered, no matter what he said. He would save the day, and for that, Disher could take plenty of verbal abuse and more.
"Mr. Narducci, this is Adrian Monk and this is Sharona Fleming. Monk, Sharona, this is the general manager of The Tended Vine Inn and Winery."
Sharona shook Narducci's hand and pulled a wipe from the box on the bench and handed it to Monk in a fluid, practiced motion. Narducci shook Monk's hand and watched the wipe relay with fascination.
"Mr. Monk. Ms. Fleming," he said, bowing at the waist. "I wish we were meeting under more pleasant circumstances."
"Uh ... yes. We would wish that as well," Monk said as if English was a second language. "And ... um ... Lieutenant Disher is a very good and competent man, as you might have noticed." Monk nodded. "And decent. Did I mention decent?" Sharona rolled her eyes and tugged at the arm of Monk's jacket.
"Enough," she whispered.
Randy pulled two lawn chairs in front of the bench and the four of them sat, three of them looking expectantly at Monk. He took a deep breath and they leaned forward.
"Lieutenant Disher, could you please tell me everything that has happened since you arrived."
And so he did. He left out the part about Grace Martin and he sharing a quick kiss behind the barrels at The Cellar, and the part about him weeping like a baby when Stottlemeyer put him to bed. When he was done, Monk asked for it again, but only the end of it: the walk to their room.
"Did you observe anyone in the hallway? Anything peculiar?"
"No. I can't say that I saw anything out of the ordinary." He looked down at the grass, embarrassed. "But then I couldn't see straight last night. I was pretty clumsy. I stumbled and we fell into the room service cart, and then the captain unlocked the door and ... um –" he squinted out towards the fields – "put me to bed."
"So did you break any dishes?"
"Hunh?"
"The cart," Monk said, and he shook an imaginary box in front of him. "Did anything break? Rattle?"
Disher pictured the moment in his mind: his near-pratfall, Stottlemeyer taking his weight, the cumulative weight of both of them hitting the cart, and ... no sound. He shot an astonished look at Monk. "There was nothing. No sound."
"Mr. Narducci, did anyone order room service last night at the inn?"
The manager shook his head. "No. This seminar has booked the whole facility. We have no guests other than the police officers here for this function. Even if someone had ordered it, we wouldn't have had the personnel available to fulfill it." He pointed a finger at The Cellar entrance. "Our staff was fully consumed with serving at the wine-tasting and buffet in The Cellar."
"Randy," Sharona asked, "did the captain ever show up at the wine-tasting after he took you back to your room?"
"No. No one saw him again."
"You questioned the staff?" Monk asked Narducci.
The manager stiffened in the chair. "Of course. Straight away, every one of them. No one saw anything."
"Anyone on the staff missing today? Or last night?"
Narducci shook his head. "All present and accounted for," he said with a hint of pride.
"For every minute?" Monk said.
Narducci's face fell.
"Well that's impossible, Mr. Monk," he said. "Everyone has their jobs here, and they go about them independently. The Inn would be impossible to manage if workers couldn't be trusted to operate on their own."
Monk considered this and looked out of the corner of his eye at Sharona, appearing to Disher to be nervous about what he was about to say.
"Uh ... please understand, Mr. Narducci, that I intend no ... um ... disrespect. And I'm sure that you run a fine, fine organization here at The Tended Vine Inn, but I'm afraid ... well, I think that it's highly possible-"
"Oh shit," Sharona said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Spit it out."
"I think someone who works at The Tended Vine Inn has taken Captain Stottlemeyer."