Mr. Monk in Trouble (6 page)

“Two, definitely two,” I said. “And they need to be even-numbered rooms.”

“Of course. I’ll catch up with you later,” he said and walked away. I watched him for a moment. I hoped he’d catch me soon.

Monk had reached the Box House and stopped to admire it. Randisi was right—it was hard to miss. It was a log cabin with square windows and a wraparound porch that was supported by four posts on each side. Not only that, the cabin was perfectly symmetrical, with two windows on each side and a back end that looked just like the street-facing facade.

I know this because the cabin was surrounded by a parking lot and I followed Monk as he walked all the way around it in admiration. That’s also how I know that the property was square, too, each corner marked by a tree.

“It’s a work of art,” Monk said as we stepped up to the front door.

He stopped to count the logs. There was an even number of them from the ground to the roof. And the square windows were placed so that the top and bottom of the frames touched even-numbered logs.

“Exquisite, isn’t it?” he said.

“It’s too boxy,” I said.

“There’s no such thing as too boxy,” he said. “That’s like saying something is too perfect.”

Monk opened the door and I followed him inside. It was like a mini-version of the museum that was filled with prospecting tools and old photographs. There was also a display of brochures, pamphlets, and books about Trouble and the surrounding area.

There was a woman in her sixties sitting at the front desk. She had a beehive hairdo, a Wilma Flintstone necklace, and a pair of glasses hanging on a thin chain around her neck.

Her eyes went wide when she saw us. She stood up slowly and, with shaking hands, put on her glasses.

“Good day,” Monk said. “Are you Doris Thurlo?”

She nodded nervously.

“Mr. Monk?” Doris said, her voice quivering. “Is that really you?”

“In the flesh,” he said. “And I’ve come here for you.”

She let out a little shriek and fainted.

CHAPTER SIX

Mr. Monk and Mr. Monk

D
oris Thurlo crumpled at the knees, but I managed to reach her before she hit the floor and eased her back into her chair.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Abby?”

“Are you okay? Would you like me to get a doctor?”

She looked over my shoulder at Monk, who stood behind me, and she shuddered. “Am I still alive?”

“I think so,” I said.

Doris looked into my eyes. “Are
you
alive?”

She seemed pretty disoriented. I was afraid that perhaps she’d had a minor stroke or something.

“Maybe I’d better call an ambulance,” I said, reaching into my purse and taking out my cell phone.

“Wait,” she said, grabbing my wrist. “If you were Abby, you wouldn’t have a cell phone.”

“I don’t know who Abby is. My name is Natalie Teeger. I work for Adrian Monk.”

“Adrian?”
she said, staring at him.

“Have we met?” Monk asked. “Or do you recognize me because I am a world-famous detective?”

I looked back at him. “When did you become world famous?”

“They know me in France and Germany,” he said.

“That’s not the entire world,” I said.

“Word gets around,” he said.

“Mr. Monk is a consultant to the San Francisco Police,” I said. “We’re helping Chief Kelton investigate the murder of Manny Feikema, the security guard at the Gold Rush Museum.”

“Oh my,” Doris said, sitting up straight. “You must forgive me. When he walked in and said he was here for me, I thought he’d come to take me to Jesus.”

“You thought he was the Grim Reaper?” I said.

Monk’s reputation must have preceded him. Corpses seemed to show up wherever he went. That was one of the reasons he never got invited to any parties, weddings, or anything else. I could certainly understand why people, in a town as small as this, would be afraid to see him walk through their door. The pool of potential murder victims was much smaller here than in a big city.

“I thought you were ghosts and that my time had come,” Doris said.

“You thought I was a ghost?” I said.

“I’ve never seen a picture of Abigail,” she said, “but he’s the spitting image of Artemis.”

“I don’t spit,” Monk said. “Nobody should. I think it’s disgusting and wrong.”

“So did Artemis,” she said. “He hounded the sheriff and saloon keepers to outlaw tobacco spitting. Artemis was fortunate that the town needed an honest assayer or the prospectors would’ve hung him for it. The prospectors didn’t have many pleasures and tobacco chewing was one of them. They weren’t about to let Artemis deprive them of it. But they put up with a lot of his other nonsense out of respect and necessity.”

“Who is this Artemis you keep talking about?” Monk asked.

“Artemis Monk, of course,” she said. “This cabin was his home and office.”

I felt a chill of recognition go down my spine. It was no wonder the cabin was a perfect square made up of an even number of logs or that it was built in the center of a square lot or that the streets of Trouble were laid out in a rigid, tic-tac-toe pattern.

It’s exactly what Adrian Monk would do if he’d lived in the Old West.

Doris got up and led us over to a photo on the wall. It was a daguerreotype portrait—a monochrome photo on a scratched silver-coated, copper plate—that was about the size of a compact disc sleeve and set in a wooden frame.

“This is Artemis, circa 1855,” she said. “He was a very important man in this town.”

I studied the picture.

Back when Julie was a baby, before my husband was killed flying a mission in Kosovo, we went to the Monterey County Fair and visited a booth where we dressed up in vintage clothes from the Old West and a photographer took an “old-fashioned” family portrait of us. We used the picture for our Christmas card that year. That was what the photo of Artemis Monk reminded me of. It looked like Adrian Monk had visited one of those booths for a novelty photo. Or one day he’d stepped into a time machine, visited the past, and had his picture taken without telling me.

Monk and the man in the photo could have been identical twins. Their clothing was similar, though Artemis wore clothes distinctly nineteenth century in the cut and materials. Artemis even buttoned his shirt right up to the collar.

“Amazing,” I said and turned to Monk. “Did you know you had an ancestor who lived in the Old West?”

“What makes you think I’m a descendant of his?”

I stared at him, hoping my expression would be enough to convey the message. It wasn’t. So I spelled it out.

“You both demand that things be even, straight, and symmetrical. You dress the same. He was an assayer and you like to shine rocks—”

“In other words,” Monk interrupted, “he was a normal, well-adjusted, rational person, and so am I. That hardly makes us related.”

“You have the same name.”

“There are a lot of people named Monk that I am not related to,” Monk said. “Thelonious Monk comes to mind.”

“You look identical.”

“You’re just seeing what you want to see,” Monk said. “If she hadn’t told you his name was Artemis Monk, you wouldn’t have seen any resemblance at all.”

“Didn’t you say that you’re a detective?” Doris asked.

“A world-famous detective,” Monk said.

“It must run in the family,” she said. “Artemis had a remarkable talent for ferreting out crime and solving mysteries. The sheriff, who was a brave and dedicated lawman but hardly a deductive genius, often called upon Artemis and his assistant, Abigail Guthrie, to aid him in his investigations.”

“Artemis Monk had a female assistant?” I said.

“Without her, Artemis would have been lost,” she said. “He was the most peculiar man who, despite his brilliance, had trouble dealing with the basics of everyday life.”

The similarities between the two Monks were giving me the creeps. “What can you tell me about Abigail Guthrie?”

“I’ll let her tell you her own story.” Doris went to a display case full of old, leather-bound books, pulled one out, and handed it to me. “Abigail published a journal of their adventures. Only a few copies are known to remain in existence. You might find it interesting.”

It was entitled
The Extraordinary Mr. Monk
. I held the book out to Monk for him to see.

“Isn’t this incredible?”

Monk shook his head. “I’m more interested in the Golden Rail Express robbery and the men who committed it.”

“So are most of the people who come to Trouble,” Doris said. “They all want to find the gold.”

“Mr. Randisi told us you are the town historian,” Monk said. “What can you tell me about the robbery?”

Doris told us basically the same story that Edward Randisi did, but she added some details. The two robbers who were caught, George Gilman and Jake Slocum, claimed that they were hired by the conductor, Ralph DeRosso, to pull off the robbery and that they brought the burlap bags of cash and gold to him. They claimed that they didn’t know what happened to the loot after that or how DeRosso fell from the moving train. It was Gilman’s fingerprint that was recovered from the gun.

“Mr. Randisi didn’t mention the conductor’s possible involvement in the robbery,” Monk said. “He told us that the robbers never revealed who their co-conspirators were.”

“Ed was being respectful of the DeRosso family, who are very well liked here in town,” she said. “The prevailing opinion at the time was that it was easy for Slocum and Gilman to put the blame on Ralph DeRosso, since he was killed the night of the robbery and wasn’t around to defend his good name. Most people felt Gilman and Slocum were lying to cover for someone else.”

Doris went on to say that Leonard McElroy and Clifford Adams, the boiler man and the engineer of the train that night, continued to operate the Golden Rail Express in the years that followed the robbery. McElroy died of lung cancer six months before the train was finally scrapped in 1982, but Adams worked until the very last day.

I’d heard too many names in too short a time and I wasn’t taking notes. I couldn’t keep track of who was who and what was what, but I knew that Monk could, and that was all that counted.

Doris must have read the confusion on my face because she handed me a thin pamphlet entitled
The History of the Golden Rail Express.

“Most of the story is in here,” she said. “We also offer a hiking tour through the forest to the tracks. The guide shares the various theories about what happened to the loot and talks about some of the unsuccessful efforts to find it.”

The pamphlet folded out to include a map of the railroad that highlighted the length of the track where it is believed that the robbery occurred.

“Are any of the robbers, witnesses, or railroad employees who were on the train that night still alive?” Monk asked.

She narrowed her eyes. “Are you after the treasure, Mr. Monk?”

“I’m after a resolution. Fifty years is too long for a robbery to remain unsolved. It leaves things unbalanced and that has consequences. All you have to do is look outside at what is going on in this town to see that. I have to set things right.”

“You don’t live here,” she said. “You could just leave it be.”

“I wish I could, but I can’t.” Monk rolled his shoulders. “It’s a curse.”

She nodded, as if he’d given her the answer she was hoping to hear.

“I don’t know anything about the passengers, gamblers, or security guards who were on the train. George Gilman died in prison, but Jake Slocum was paroled in the early nineties. I don’t know where he ended up. Clifford Adams still lives out at the old McMurtry mine. Ralph DeRosso’s wife died a few years back, but his daughter, Crystal, still lives here in town. She’s a waitress at the Chuckwagon.”

We thanked Doris for her help and I promised to take good care of the book that she’d let me borrow.

It was dark and a little chilly when we left the Box House and walked towards Main Street. I noticed that it was quiet and still, something I never experienced in San Francisco. The stars were much brighter, too, unobscured by the glare of tens of thousands of city lights. The street was lit by only a few dim lampposts and the glow from a couple of storefront windows.

“I’ll watch the way ahead,” Monk said. “You keep a look-out behind us.”

“What am I looking out for?”

“Burros, coyotes, mountain lions, goats, grizzly bears, rattlesnakes, wild boars,” Monk said. “There could be all kinds of vicious creatures stalking us.”

“Not to mention dandelions and tumbleweeds.”

Monk quickened his pace. “It’s a miracle that Manny Feikema is the only one who has been killed here lately.”

“How’s that investigation going?”

“You’ve seen and heard the same things I have,” he said. “You tell me.”

“It looks like we have nothing to go on,” I said. “But I always think that. For all I know, you’re just one tiny clue short of solving it.”

“I’m not,” he said sadly.

“So where do we start?”

“We ask Captain Stottlemeyer to find out where Jake Slocum, the surviving train robber, is these days.”

“What does he have to do with Manny’s murder?”

“Nothing,” Monk said.

“So shouldn’t you be concentrating first on the murder that was committed a couple of days ago rather than a crime that happened in 1962?”

“The Golden Rail Express robbery isn’t solved,” he said.

“Two men were caught, tried, and punished for their crimes,” I said. “Justice was done. Case closed.”

“But there may have been other robbers who got away unpunished with all the cash and gold.”

“If there was anybody else involved, they’re probably dead and the money long gone. But Manny Feikema’s killer is definitely still out there and very much alive.”

“I’m going to solve both mysteries,” Monk said.

“So why not start with Manny’s murder? The other one can wait; it happened nearly fifty years ago.”

“Because I don’t have anything to go on and you won’t let me leave this savage wasteland until we solve the case. So we might as well accomplish something in the meantime.”

“This savage wasteland could be your ancestral home.”

“Be serious,” he said. “The streets aren’t paved. The sidewalks are made of wood. They might not even have running water or electricity. Can you imagine a man like me living here?”

“I don’t have to,” I said, hefting Abigail Guthrie’s book. “I’ve got this.”

“Artemis Monk has nothing to do with me.”

“How much do you and Ambrose know about your family heritage?”

“Nothing,” Monk said.

“So now you’ve got another mystery you can solve while you’re here.”

I called Captain Stottlemeyer’s office on my cell phone as we walked. He wasn’t in, so I left a message on his voice mail asking him if he could track down Jake Slocum, the surviving robber, for us. I didn’t mention that this had to do with a crime that happened in 1962. I figured he’d move faster if he assumed that it had something to do with Manny’s murder.

We stopped by the police station. My car was parked out front, gleaming in the floodlights as if it had just rolled off the assembly line.

“I told you it was a lost cause,” Monk said.

“The car is sparkling, Mr. Monk,” I said.

“They only did a superficial wash.”

“It was only superficially dirty,” I said.

“A cake tainted with poison still looks delicious,” Monk said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t kill you.”

“It was the exterior that got dirty, not the interior.”

“I’m sure it seeped in,” Monk said. “It always seeps. It’s a seeping thing.”

I didn’t bother arguing the point and went inside the station to get my keys while Monk waited outside.

Chief Kelton was away but the receptionist had my keys. She told me that our rooms were ready at the motel down the street and handed me the card keys.

I thanked her for her help and went back outside. Monk was squatting in front of my car, peering into the grill.

“I see a suspicious fleck in there,” Monk said, pointing. “I think it’s the remains of a dead butterfly.”

“So what?”

“It could get sucked into the fan and out an air vent into the car, where I could inhale it and die instantly,” Monk said. “Do you want that on your conscience?”