Mr. Monk Is Open for Business by Hy Conrad Page A

meetingand no one could make heads or tails of it.” Daniela smiled. “He wanted to help. That’s how it is with the children of alcoholics. They have this need to take care of their parents.”
    Great, I thought. On top of being an alcoholic, I’m a bad mother.
    “I didn’t do much illegal,” Julie insisted. “I found an unlocked side window, so there was no breaking, just entering. And I wasn’t taking anything. I just wanted to look around, the way Adrian does.”
    “The house has motion sensors and a silent alarm,” explained the lawyer. “Since Henry’s in jail, I’m listed as the alarm company contact. The police called me as they were on their way. Luckily, I live in Hillsborough. I arrived shortly after they did.”
    “So there won’t be any charges?” I asked. That was a relief.
    “No charges,” said Daniela. “Between my presence here and the call from your captain . . .” Her smile was mischievous. “Julie had your permission to be here; you had my permission; and I had Mr. Pickler’s.”
    “Good,” I said, ignoring the lie about Julie having my permission. “So, long story short, we’re free to look around.”
    Monk was already a step ahead of us. This time he didn’t have his hands up. He was walking slowly through the rooms as if under a trance. “Beautiful,” he said again and again. “This man has excellent taste.”
    I knew exactly where Monk was coming from. He hated change. His earliest memories centered on the sixties and seventies, which fit in perfectly with Henry Pickler’s décor. Monk wouldn’t call it nostalgia, but I would. The problemwith living in the past, of course, is maintenance. But the Pickler house had been eerily and spotlessly maintained.
    “We’re acting under attorney-client privilege,” Daniela warned us. “The upside is that we have his permission to go through the house. The downside is that nothing we find pertaining to the death of Mr. Rivera can be turned over to the police. Nothing at all relating to motive or means or opportunity.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” said Julie. “What are we even doing here?”
    “Acting in the interests of our client,” said Daniela. “That’s what happens when you work for a lawyer.”
    “Not to worry,” said Monk. “Henry Pickler couldn’t be involved with that drug runner. Just look at this place.”
    Monk restarted in the living room, hands raised this time. He made a slow, clockwise circle through the split-level, interrupting his inspecting every now and then for an appreciative little grunt or nod. “It goes much faster when everything’s perfect,” he murmured.
    “I know,” I said. “But when everything’s perfect, you don’t get clues.”
    “It’s a trade-off,” he acknowledged. Then he stepped into the kitchen and came to a halt, his eyes almost bugging out. To me it looked like a normal kitchen—if you took into account Pickler’s affinity for harvest gold and yellow Formica and linoleum floor tiles. But to Monk, it was like he’d been slapped in the face. “This must be where it happened.”
    “The murder?” Julie asked. “Cool.”
    “Not murder. But whatever made him go outside and do whatever he did. It happened here.”
    “How do you know?” asked Daniela.
    “Because it’s a disaster. Look.” And he circled the room clockwise. “Smudge on the microwave handle; one whole-wheat crumb under the toaster; plate in the sink, sponge not properly wrung out; dinette stool number two out of alignment. The Henry Pickler I know would never leave it like this unless there’d been an emergency.”
    “You can tell that the crumb is whole wheat?” Daniela asked. That was such a newbie question. Of course he could.
    “What type of emergency?” I asked Monk, and began to list the possibilities. “Phone call? Someone at the door? An alarm going off? Hearing something outside?”
    Monk crossed to the window above the sink. The floral chintz curtains were open to a view of the