Mr. Monk Goes to Germany by Lee Goldberg (general ebook reader .TXT) 📕

reassuring to see him at work. It meant that he hadn’t totally lost his grip. Maybe now that he had something to occupy his mind and his time, he might be less overwrought about the six-fingered guy he thought he’d seen at the market.

Stoffmacher looked at me. “What is he doing?”

“Solving your homicide,” I said, my eyes drawn to Stoffmacher’s mustache. I’d never seen anything quite like it. I wondered how many hours he spent waxing it, oiling it, or soaking it in tar.

“That’s a nice gesture, but this isn’t a murder,” Stoffmacher said. “It’s suicide. Axel Vigg was despondent. His girlfriend ended their relationship, he was fired from his job at the glass factory, and he was about to be evicted. So he shot himself in the head. Sadly, these things happen.”

Monk straightened a painting on the common wall with the duplex next door. It was a still life of a fruit bowl. I’d be tempted to shoot myself, too, if I had to look at a bowl of fruit every day.

“He’s been dead at least twelve hours,” Monk said. “How was the body discovered?”

Geshir referred to his notes.

“Vigg was supposed to meet some friends last night and didn’t show. This morning he didn’t answer his phone or his door, so his friends got worried and called his landlord,” Geshir said. “The landlord unlocked the door and found the body.”

Monkwalked over to the front door and examined the knob and the dead bolt. “Did the landlord unlock both locks?”

“I don’t know,” Geshir said.

“I’d like to find out,” Monk said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Geshir said. Stoffmacher nudged him. “But I will go outside and ask him.”

Geshir stepped past us and went outside. Monk’s attention was drawn to something else. He walked over to the bright orange couch, which would have been gaudy even in the seventies, and examined what looked to me like a bullet hole in the thin cushion of the backrest. He scrutinized the rest of the couch, too, as if he’d never seen one before.

“Why did he shoot his couch?” Monk asked.

“Maybe because it’s ugly,” I said. “Personally, I would have set fire to it instead.”

“It was a test shot,” Stoffmacher explained, “to make sure the gun was operating properly and wouldn’t jam when he did the deed.”

Monk pointed through the air, following what I assumed was an imaginary line from the couch to the gun on the floor. He crouched beside the gun and peered at it.

“Did anyone hear the gunshots?” he asked.

“Not that we know of,” Stoffmacher said. “If he shot himself during the day, the neighbors were most likely at work. Even if they were home, they probably wouldn’t remember hearing a gunshot. It’s not unusual to hear gunfire in this neighborhood.”

“Really?” I said. “It seems so safe and peaceful here.”

“It is,” Stoffmacher said. “People don’t even lock their doors at night.”

“So why would they be accustomed to hearing gunshots?” I asked.

Monk stood in front of the couch and stared at the wall and the sun-bleached outline on the wallpaper of a painting that once had hung there. I know he detested wallpaper. The seams rarely matched up, so the patterns were never properly aligned.

“We are on the edge of the forest and hunting is a popular sport,” Stoffmacher said and I remembered the hunting blind I’d sat in yesterday. “I’m not surprised that no one heard this poor man shoot himself.”

Monk rolled his shoulders. “This wasn’t a suicide.”

“You’re saying it was murder?” Stoffmacher said.

“It wasn’t murder either,” Monk said.

“Then what was it?”

“An accident,” Monk said.

Stoffmacher stroked the curled end of his mustache. “You think the victim accidentally shot himself in the head?”

“He didn’t shoot himself,” Monk said. “Someone else shot him.”

“So you’re saying someone else was holding the gun,” Stoffmacher said, “and accidentally pulled the trigger.”

“That’s not what I am saying at all.” Monk turned to the brick fireplace and began counting the bricks on either side to make sure they were even and symmetrical.

“Forgive me. I think we’re having a little language problem,” Stoffmacher said. “That must be why I am misunderstanding you.”

“You’re not,” I said.

“Then what is he talking about?” Stoffmacher asked me.

That’s when Geshir bounded in like a golden retriever coming back with the tennis ball he’d been told to fetch.

“The landlord says he only unlocked the doorknob,” Geshir said. “The dead bolt wasn’t locked.”

“Now it all makes sense,” Monk said.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” Stoffmacher said, exasperated.

I had to smile.

They were experiencing pure, unadulterated Monk for the first time. They had no idea how his mind worked. I’m not saying that I did either, but at least I was used to the backwards, sideways, and often inexplicable way he put things together. I had the benefit of knowing it would fit in the end and that it was best just to go with the flow rather than question it.

“It’s obvious what happened here,” Monk said. “It’s right up there on the wall.”

Monk pointed to the bleached patch of wallpaper above the couch. Stoffmacher, Geshir, and I looked at the wall.

“There’s nothing there,” Geshir said.

“There was, but now it’s over there.” Monk gestured to the painting of the fruit on the opposite wall. “That painting used to be on this wall. It matches the bleached outline on the wallpaper.”

“So?” Geshir asked.

“Someone moved it.” Monk went over and lifted the painting off the other wall, revealing a hole. “To hide this.”

Geshir walked up to