"What are you suggesting, Natalie? That we'd kill our own daughter?" Rochelle Hart shouted at her.
"I told you it would come to this," Adrian commented from the mantle, where he couldn't stop himself from rearranging the Hart's family pictures.
"Well I know you've been fighting a bit lately," Natalie went on, "I overheard Clarissa tell Julie a couple of times she wasn't happy living here sometimes."
"It looks like someone threw something here, perhaps a soda bottle," Adrian pointed to a dark spot on the wall, which he promptly began scrubbing down with a wipe.
Eric sighed. "Yes, Rochelle and I have been going through a few rough spots," he conceded, "But we're intent on working them out. And I repeat what my wife said: we would NEVER hurt Clarissa!"
"Where were you this afternoon?" Sharona spoke up, gently pulling Adrian away from the soda stain.
"Right here, mourning," Rochelle said.
"I see," Natalie examined a tear-soaked picture of Clarissa on the coffee table, "Yeah, I can buy that."
"And if you're going to accuse us of blowing up Monk's brother's house, let me remind all of you that neither of us knows a thing about explosives," Eric reiterated, "Which reminds me, you haven't been working against my wishes, have you Monk?"
He gave the detective a harsh look. "Uh, of course not," Adrian lied, "We're simply following up on…do you know your Christmas tree's crooked here?"
"Leave it!" Eric snapped, but Adrian was already bent over and fiddling with the tree's metallic trunk.
"What've you got against him?" Sharona demanded, "We're all just trying to help, especially him!"
"Mrs. Fleming, if you had to spend twelve years having to spend class with him, watching him rearrange everything, cleaning off your desks, and straightening your clothes for you when you don't ask for it, you'd be fed up with him too," Rochelle told her.
"Well that is a good point," Sharona admitted, "He'd drive me crazy in an hour, so twelve years must be like…"
There was a loud snapping noise from the corner. Everyone turned around to see Adrian holding the entire tree aloft; it had broken off at the base. "Well, I think our work here is done," the detective said quickly, "I think you can fix this, Eric," he said, handing his former classmate the broken tree. Fire burned heavy in Eric's eyes as he watched them leave.
"Nice Adrian, very nice," Sharona grumbled to him as they walked toward Natalie's car.
"It could have fallen over if I didn't deal with it," Adrian said, "At any rate, they're in the clear."
"How do we know that?" the nurse asked.
"Natalie brought up points that cleared them," Adrian gestured to his current assistant, "We'd better tell the captain."
"So it's not them, huh Monk?" Stottlemeyer asked him about an hour later.
"No, Captain, they're kosher," Adrian told him, straightening out the Santa hat Stottlemeyer had put on top of the stuffed duck on his windowsill, "Something tells me there's something else at play here that we haven't taken into account yet."
"Captain," Disher ran into the office, "I've got some big news."
He paused for the longest time. "And don't you think I should know about it, Randy?" Stottlemeyer asked, irritated.
"We got the catering company," Disher told him, "That punch was sent to the school by accident."
"It what?" the captain's expression dropped.
"It was supposed to go to the SUMTER Conference Room at the Best Western in Oakland," Disher said dismally, "They must have misread it and sent it to SUTTER Middle School by mistake."
There was an abrupt silence in the room. "Who was at the Sumter Conference last night?" Stottlemeyer inquired.
"It was…" Disher pulled out a piece of paper, "…a convention of police chiefs from all over northern California."
"Very interesting," Adrian inquired, touching the decorative garland around the window, "You send a bowl of poisoned punch to a police convention. If all of them die, nobody's going to think about which one was the intended target."
"So they were only after one guy then, Monk?"
"Basically, Captain, one of those chiefs was probably onto whoever our guilty party is, and they tried to bump him off, knowing that there'd probably be enough dead bodies in that conference room for us not to think it was a targeted killing…who strung this garland," the detective picked at the strand surrounding the window. Stottlemeyer tried his best not to groan. "So any idea who at the plant is the guilty party, Monk?" he asked.
"None of them really stand out yet; I'll have to get more info on then," Adrian told him.
"Well we've done some looking ourselves, and my money's on our lab boy Jerry Malcolm," the captain said, "It seems he got a month-long suspension about a year ago for taking important stuff home he wasn't supposed to. Reports are he's trying to prove something to his bosses; taking nuclear waste seems right up that alley."
"But why would he poison the police?" Adrian pointed out, "I'd go after his bosses if there's friction there."
He glanced at his watch. "And I can't stay any longer," he informed his former boss, "I told Ambrose to put dinner in; it'll be ready by now."
"I can tell you're going to love having him over for the holidays," Stottlemeyer said with an ill-hidden smirk.
"I'm not sure yet," Adrian conceded, "Like everything else in my life, having him there is a blessing…and a curse. Lovely, isn't it?"
"Hello honey, I'm home," Adrian said half-jokingly as he reentered the apartment following his ride back.
"Welcome back, Adrian," Ambrose said from the sofa, where he was busy at his typewriter, "Any luck."
"On your house or the case?"
"Either or both."
"We now think the killer wanted to assassinate a police chief," Adrian explained, pulling out a can of disinfectant and randomly spraying surfaces around the living room, "As for your house, we're still working on it. How've you been doing?"
"Oh just fine," Ambrose told him, "I finished the manual for the All-Start Car Battery about thirty minutes ago. Now I'm onto the Silver Blade Slicer; this'll take a little longer."
"Slicers and dicers are that complicated, huh?" Adrian gave the coffee table a healthy dosing down. "What, you still don't trust me?" Ambrose protested, "I haven't spread any germs, honest!"
"It's not that I don't trust you, Ambrose, it's just…I don't trust you," Adrian wiped the table clean, then entered the kitchen and begun scrubbing down the sink with liquid cleaner.
"Oh and by the way, this was in one of the papers I managed to save," Ambrose pulled it out of its file and brought it over to his brother, "You said the union chief at the nuclear plant was an Angela Moreno? Well two of her former workers swore under oath last year that she ordered them to disable company trucks in order to get more leverage during their last bargaining agreement. They could never quite pin it down on her, but that's the story. It's not enough to convict, I know, but I hope it helps."
"Oh it helps, Ambrose, that it does," Adrian told him, "I don't think it's her, though. Something tells me I should look elsewhere. I might want to call it in to the captain, though."
"I'd rather you leave the line open," Ambrose suggested, "I know Dad's going to call any moment now."
"Oh really, Ambrose?" Adrian raised his eyebrows.
"Trust me, he'll call!" Ambrose said sharply, "When he was still with us, he always called, didn't he?"
"Well, true but…"
"Just you wait and see, mister, he'll show you wrong this time!" Ambrose said, "And he WILL call; he never just popped up unannounced."
For a moment the two of them stared at each other. Then Ambrose decided to change the subject. "So, are you going to put up any decorations?" he asked, gazing around the essentially barren and unadorned apartment.
"Well, I thought about thinking about putting them up," his brother said, pulling out his vacuum and starting it up, "But you know me and decorations; they'd have to be absolutely perfect…could you not stand there, Ambrose? The lines on this carpet are all diagonal."
Ambrose complied, plopping back on the couch. "Not to sound like I'm intruding, but you want to be normal, right?" he asked.
"I try, believe me, I try," Adrian said, his eyes concentrating on the rug.
"Trust me on this, you'll look more normal if you put them up," Ambrose said, "And if you're not up to it, I can assist you." He looked right at his brother and said, "By the way, what is it about today's explosion that you're not going to tell me about?"
Adrian shut off the vacuum. "What am I not telling you?" he asked, poorly feigning ignorance.
"When you told me in the car about the details of the bomb, you had that look on your face that you have when you're keeping something," Ambrose told him, "So as your brother, I'd like to know, what is it about that bomb that's so important?"
Adrian sighed. Since Ambrose had considered himself responsible for Trudy's death for so many years, he hadn't wanted to introduce a situation where his brother might start feeling guilty again. But Ambrose's iron stare was too much for him to bear. "That bomb was similar to the one that killed Trudy," he admitted, "Now please don't think it's you again, Ambrose, because it's not—at least I hope not—but I'm sure whether it's a coincidence or not."
He couldn't quite register what Ambrose was thinking in response to this, as his expression was completely neutral. Ambrose strolled ever so slowly over to the window and glanced out into the setting sun. "Well then," he said slowly, "There's only one thing I have to say to that: if it is them, Adrian, I want you to nail them good. Take them down as hard as you can ethically. They stole from me too when they took Trudy away from us."
"I know," Adrian joined him at the window, "They stole her from a lot of people."
He sighed. "You know, for a little while there, Trudy actually made me able to enjoy Christmas," he admitted, "When I was with her, I didn't mind it if the lights were crooked or the tinsel was out of control. Now it's worse than ever, and that's why I don't decorate."
"Yeah, and you never really liked Christmas that much before you met her either," Ambrose reminisced, "You weren't really Scrooge, but you weren't Crachit either. I remember the one time it actually did snow, and all the kids in the neighborhood were building that snowman out front, and you stood at the window and watched them all day, looking like you really wanted to…"
"Well, I think the pork chops are almost ready," Adrian said quickly, not willing to dive too deeply into unpleasant memories, "I'll go get it ready for us, and then I'll clean it off afterwards, so you don't have to worry about it.
He hurried off into the kitchen and took it out of the oven. He conceded Ambrose's point; Christmas was not one of his favorite holidays, for a number of unpleasant reasons.