Read Online Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg - Free Book Online

Monk.

    “I don’t do that,” he said.

    “So show us what you do,” I said.

    “This is it,” Monk said.

    “You aren’t doing anything,” Stottlemeyer said. “Haven’t you noticed anything since you got here?”

    “I’ve blinked thirty-eight times since I walked in the room,” Monk said.

    “About the murder,” Stottlemeyer said.

    Monk glanced at the body, then at the apartment. “Like what?”

    “Like to get in the building, you have to have a key or get buzzed in. Like there are no signs of a struggle,” Stottlemeyer said. “Like the killer must have been someone that Trotter knew or was expecting or didn’t consider a threat, like a pizza delivery guy.”

    “Sounds like you have it covered,” Monk said.

    “I don’t have anything, Monk. I was hoping you might give me something more to go on. You’ve solved dozens of more complicated and bizarre murders than this in less time than it has taken you to blink forty times.”

    “Forty-two,” Monk said.

    Stottlemeyer sighed. “This is going well.”

    “Can I go home now?” Monk asked him.

    “No, you can’t,” Stottlemeyer said. “You’re going with me to question our likeliest suspect.”

    “If you have a suspect already,” he asked, “what do you need me for?”

    “I need you to be you,” Stottlemeyer said.

    “I am.” Monk groaned. “God help me.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

    Mr. Monk and the Likely Suspect

    We found Emily Trotter, Clarke’s estranged wife, having lunch at her mother Betty’s house in Sausalito, a self-consciously and premeditatedly picturesque village across the bay from San Francisco.

    The house was a contemporary Victorian-style home pinned uncomfortably between two identical condominium complexes with wood-shingle siding and cottage-style decks. The manicured front lawn was such an intense green, and the flowers were in such glorious bloom, that I had to touch the plants to convince myself that they were real.

    Emily was profoundly pregnant, her bulging belly looking as if it might burst open at any moment, which might be why the sofas in her mother’s immaculate house were clad in thick plastic slipcovers. The widow had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her hair looked like dry tumbleweed.

    I remembered when I looked like that.

    She may have been the likeliest suspect, but I had a hard time imagining her getting up off the sofa, much less schlepping into the city, clobbering her husband with a frying pan, and doing the dishes afterwards.

    Monk and I sat on a matching sofa across from Emily. He ran his hand appreciatively over the plastic as if it was fine suede. Stottlemeyer and Disher stood while Betty went back and forth from the kitchen, serving us cookies and tea.

    Everything about Betty seemed to be starched, from the beehive hairdo on her head to the apron around her waist. Monk watched her carry the tray from her sterile kitchen with something akin to awe.

    “You think that I killed him?” Emily asked Stottlemeyer with exaggerated incredulity.

    “He left you for another woman and you’re the beneficiary of his life insurance policy.” Stottlemeyer shrugged. “We’d be fools not to consider the possibility.”

    “And my daughter would have to be a fool to have done it,” Betty said. “I didn’t raise a fool, except when it comes to love.”

    “Thanks, Mom,” Emily said. “That’s exactly what I need right now, another I-told-you-so.”

    Betty set a plate of perfectly square cookies in front of us and handed us each a neatly folded cloth napkin with edges so sharp they could have drawn blood. Monk picked up the napkin almost reverentially and set it carefully on his lap without unfolding it.

    I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room. There was something about Betty and this place that was giving me the willies.

    “I didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ ” Betty said. “But, for the record, I was against the two of you getting