Monk and What He Saw
by Cathy German
cathgerm@aol.com
Chapter Six
Mr. Fredrico Narducci, two-time Five-Star Innkeeper of America award winner, was not pleased with Monk's announcement, even though Disher knew that Monk had taken care to couch it in terms as bland as he could manage.
"Certainly you don't believe that this was planned, Mr. Monk, that an employee planned the abduction of a captain of the San Francisco police department and carried it out under our noses. It's unthinkable!"
"Perhaps not planned," Monk said, frowning into the middle distance and listening to voices that only he could hear. "Perhaps it was a spontaneous act, an opportunistic one. Perhaps it was someone who had dealings with the captain in the past."
"I assure you that our employees go through a rigorous screening process, Mr. Monk, Lieutenant Disher. We don't take hiring lightly."
"I'm sure that you don't, Mr. Narducci," Disher said, trying to calm the inn manager down. They needed his expertise, his knowledge of the Inn and its environs. He didn't want the man to clam up on them.
"And what about all of these police officers?" Narducci said, spreading his arms out to encompass the grounds. "How do you know that it's not one of them behind this? How do you know that someone here at the inn for this seminar doesn't bear a grudge against the captain?"
"Captain Stottlemeyer is not the type to hold a grudge," Monk said, "so it would be peculiar for someone to hold a grudge against him." Randy was happy to hear Monk refer to the captain in the present. "Leland is quick to anger, but quick to forgive and forget." He paused. "And loyal," he added in a whisper that Disher could hardly hear, "he's a loyal man as well."
"Nevertheless," Narducci said, rising and smoothing the vest under his jacket, "you don't know any of this for sure."
"Not for sure, Mr. Narducci," Monk said, raising a tentative finger, "but I must advise you that I'm rarely wrong."
Narducci's eyebrows shot above his curly bangs.
Monk stood. "Please. I have questions about the grounds."
"Of course," Narducci sniffed. "What do you wish to know?"
Monk pointed west, through the dappled sunlight to a group of buildings on a hill that looked to be several miles away, across the valley.
"Those buildings there. What are they?"
"Another winery. The Rusted Nail Winery. Not affiliated with us."
Monk turned and pointed east past the inn buildings at several barns clustered in another copse of trees. There was a road that led to the barns from the Inn, a blacktopped one like the driveway on which the car was parked.
"And that?"
"Winery equipment. Several tractors. Repair and maintenance is there as well. We also keep extra tables, chairs, and large tents in case of rain during an outdoor function."
There was a wide break in the trees to the south, and far across the dusty fields was a low barn in a state of disrepair. Monk pointed.
"And that?"
Mr. Narducci turned and smiled. "That's 'Mecca': The beginnings of The Tended Vine," he said. "Someday we plan on refurbishing the antique equipment there and using it for functions and meetings, to add a sense of history to the inn and the winery. But now," he said, nodding back at the brown and weathered side of it, "we leave it be until we have the means to make that happen."
"Is there any reason for employees to be in either the maintenance barn or ... uh ... 'Mecca'?" Monk asked.
"Oh, of course," Narducci said. "They're in and out all the time."
Monk raised his eyebrows. "Both buildings?"
"Oh, no," the innkeeper said. "Only the maintenance building." He gestured at the old barn. "No one goes out there. We discourage it. It's a safety issue: old wine presses, rust, a risk of fire, liability."
"I see," Monk said, nodding. "Any inn vehicles missing today?"
"None."
"And those ... those golf carts over there?" he asked, pointing at a line of white carts with The Tended Vine logo on their sides.
"In use all day long, for laundry services, supplies, food being moved from the kitchen to The Cellar."
Monk put his hands on his hips, shrugged in his jacket, and pulled his neck away from his collar.
"Thank you, Mr. Narducci. You've been-" Monk coughed and looked at Sharona "-extremely helpful."
The innkeeper gave them a small and less cordial bow than the first he'd given them, and headed back to the office.
"Well?" Sharona said as Monk sat back down next to her.
"Well what?"
"Well, do you know what happened?"
"Yes I know what happened," he said as if she was several slices shy of a full loaf. "You heard what happened. Captain Stottlemeyer was abducted by an employee of The Tended Vine Inn. I'm rarely wrong."
"That's not what I mean!" Sharona shot, and Disher grimaced and backed up in his chair. "I mean where is he right now?"
Monk sighed and looked down at his shoes. Disher was glad that Monk didn't lean all the way over to wipe the mark off his right shoe that Disher could see from his vantage point. He didn't think it would sit well with Sharona at the moment.
"I don't know," Monk said, leaning over and rubbing out the offending smudge with his thumb.
"You don't know?" Sharona asked. "Can't you ... can't you see where he is? You saw him before."
"It doesn't work like that."
"Well exactly how does it work then, Adrian?" she said, and sarcasm dripped off her every word.
Disher could stand it no longer.
"Please, please," he said moving the chair closer to them. "Please. This is getting us nowhere. Monk." He waited until Monk made eye contact. "Monk. What do we do now?"
Monk stood.
"We walk."
And so Monk walked, with Disher and Sharona behind him; walked as only Adrian Monk could walk: stutter-step/pause/look up a tree/lean to the right and look up it again/jump away from a dragonfly/see something in the dirt and lean over to examine it. Disher was a bundle of nerves, ready to leap out of his skin, and he could see that Sharona was too, but he'd seen the man work before, and he could be content to walk behind him and silently observe.
For about maybe five more minutes before his head blew up.
He noticed scattered groups of police officers on break from a session, pointing over at them and conversing. He felt the color rise on his own cheeks, and noted matching twin blushes on Sharona.
"Have you ever driven one of these?" Monk asked Randy, pointing at the carts.
"You mean have I played golf? Yeah."
"Me, too," Monk said. "Once." He began walking down the line of them. "I hated it."
"Big surprise," Sharona said to Disher out of the corner of her mouth.
And then Monk froze and made a humming sound. Afraid to break his concentration, Randy and Sharona silently crept closer to him.
He was looking down at the pavement under a specific cart. No, Disher realized, not the pavement. He was squinting at the wheels of the cart. Disher moved closer and stared at the wheels as well.
There was a layer of golden dust covering the small tires.
Disher's eyes followed the pavement from under the cart out to their left as it stretched like a smooth, black river to the maintenance barn, and then he looked back at the wheels, then at Monk, and then Sharona.
As one, they peered past the Tended Vine Inn buildings at Mecca, a distant, rarely-visited island in a sea of dusty fields.
Monk slid in the front of the cart and looked at Disher.
"You drive," he said, gingerly touching the wheel, and then to Sharona, who squeezed in beside him: "Wipe, please."
Sharona coughed as the waves of dust rolled through the cart.
"Please," Monk admonished putting up a hand between them. "Turn your head away."
"As if it matters," she said, waving her hands at the grit that covered them all. And they were only half-way there.
"Monk," Disher said as if he were afraid to ask. "Is this the place?"
Monk, sitting stiffly, his hands on his thighs, shrugged.
"I don't know. I mean from a deduction standpoint, I'm positive. But whether Leland will still be here, or still be ..." He let that hang dark and heavy in the air. "But I think you should hurry."
Sharona knew that there was only one speed on a golf cart, in this case Slow and Dusty, but Disher leaned forward as if his desire and momentum might help. Ten more minutes of chugging over the furrowed land and they were at their destination: the original Tended Vine barn, and they parked on an apron of cement that spread from the large, rolling double door.
"Don't ask for a wipe, Adrian," Sharona admonished, getting out and brushing a hand over her hair. "They're all gone, and a suitcase full wouldn't do us any good now."
Monk wasn't listening. He and Disher were already at the barn door, and Disher was testing it, tugging at the handle there. After a few hard pulls and a grunt, the door began to open. Sharona joined them at the threshold and shaded her eyes with her hands as she tried to acclimate to the dimness within.
"What is all this stuff?" Disher asked, taking a few steps in.
"Wine-making equipment," Monk said in a voice filled with wonder and appreciation. "Antique equipment, used for making wine the old-fashioned way." Sharona glanced at his spellbound face and was reminded that her boss had a mind like a steel trap, and not just for crime, but for the world and everything in it, big and small. He was sometimes, and in the best possible way, like a child, and she loved it when she saw that.
"These things haven't been used for years," Monk said softly.
"Are you sure?" Randy asked, and he pointed towards the round barrel closest to them. "Is that wine?"
Sharona and Monk looked to where he was pointing: at a pool of liquid on the floor that could barely be seen under the edge of a platform that girded the barrel. Although it didn't seem possible, it did, indeed, look like wine.
Red wine.
In all the time she'd been with Adrian Monk, she'd never heard him swear, and she didn't hear him this time, because they all said the same two words at the same time:
"Shit. Blood."