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

backyard.
    The backyard was nothing but a rectangular lawn running the length of the ranch-style house and going back perhaps fifty feet. There was no patio or garden to interrupt the perfection, just a flat, weed-free lawn with every blade of grass in place, cut to exactly the same height. At the end was a white picket fence and beyond it a large, unruly field, also a piece of Pickler property, purchased decades earlier when prices were cheap and Henry’s parents were concerned about protecting their privacy.
    “This was at night,” Monk thought out loud, “when a decent person like Henry would have his curtains closed—unless he happened to hear some commotion outside. Then he would open them.” Monk pointed toward the vacant lot. “Out there. That’s the crime scene, isn’t it?”
    Two minutes later, we were outside, walking along the edge of the brush of the large lot. The crime scene tape hadbeen taken down but parts of it still dangled from a few trees. Monk led the way and we followed in his footsteps.
    As we walked, Julie took it upon herself to recite facts from the report she’d stolen from my coffee table. “Esteban Rivera was shot with a nine millimeter, probably with a silencer on the barrel. The body wasn’t moved, except for a few yards by Henry Pickler. The San Mateo County coroner estimates the time of death at less than half an hour before the patrol car passed by and caught Mr. Pickler. The gun and silencer were never found.”
    “The police combed this field thoroughly,” Daniela told us. “They haven’t dug it up because there were no signs of recent digging. And because Henry’s shovel showed no signs of use.”
    “I’ll bet it was a perfectly clean shovel,” said Monk. “Polished and shiny.”
    “It was,” said Daniela. “Is that a clue?”
    “No. Just a sure bet.”
    “I have a theory,” said Julie.
    Julie was allowed to have theories, of course. But it was always intimidating to voice one around Monk, especially for an intern who hadn’t been hired yet. I was kind of proud of her. “Go ahead, sweetie.”
    “Thanks, Mom.” Julie stood up straight and spoke clearly. “What if Pickler was looking out his window and saw the murder go down in his field? After the killer leaves, taking the gun, Pickler goes out with a shovel to bury the body.” Her posture began to deflate almost as soon as the last words were out of her. “That doesn’t make sense, does it?”
    “Why would he bury someone else’s victim?” asked Daniela. “On his own property? Why not just call the police?”
    Julie was still thinking. “Maybe the killer already buried the body and Pickler just dug it up?”
    “With a clean shovel? And a clean corpse? Not to mention a field with no holes in it?” Monk shrugged his shoulders. “Even your mother comes up with better theories. No offense.”
    “None taken,” Julie said.
    “None taken,” I said. We said it pretty much in unison and it made us smile, the first smile we’d shared since I got here.
    Monk had not moved from the field’s edge. There were probably bristles in there and dead leaves and insects and soil, better known to my partner as dirt. He turned slowly in a tight little circle, three hundred sixty degrees. “That’s an apple tree,” he said, indicating a gnarled, unpruned tree not far from the picket fence.
    “I believe it is,” said I. “Do you want me to pick you an apple?”
    “Just commenting on nature,” he said, then made another tight three sixty, this time looking farther into the distance.
    Surrounding the overgrown lot were a dozen or so houses, all with a comfortable amount of privacy and on decent-sized lots. In the middle of his second three sixty, Monk stopped and focused on one house in particular. It was a modern white construction, modern in the old-fashioned sense with square angles and big square windows. From the eighties, I would have guessed. It was set on a mound slightly higherthan the others and,