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

these days, for him and for me. Or maybe I was just getting used to it.

But there was no question that things were humming along for him professionally lately, too. He solved cases so quickly, it seemed to me that he could probably start doing his work over the phone without visiting the crime scenes at all.

“Sometimes I think that maybe if I stick around long enough, and try real hard, I can save him,” Gavin said. “The way he saved me.”

I understood how he felt, more than I cared to admit to everyone in the room.

“What did he save you from?” I asked.

“Mediocrity,” Gavin said. “Before I met him, I was in telemarketing. I called people in the middle of their dinner and tried to sell them crap they didn’t want. Now I’m helping solve big murder cases. I’m doing something important with my life. What were you doing before?”

“Writing my thesis,” Jasper said.

“Running group therapy sessions,” Arnie said.

“Bartending,” I said.

“Enjoying life,” Sparrow said. “I’m really looking forward to going back to that.”

Gavin looked at the rest of us. “Do you want to go back?”

“I never left, ” Jasper said. “I’m still writing my thesis, only now it’s about the woman I’m working for. It’s going to break new ground in the understanding of paranoid schizophrenics.”

“I used to spend my days in an office with a lot of miserable, angry people before Wyatt came along,” Arnie said. “Now I’m leaping out of speeding cars.”

“Wyatt pushed you out,” I said. “You were in the hospital for two weeks.”

“I’ve become a man of action,” Arnie said. “I’m going to get a few scrapes and bruises.”

“Don’t men of action usually have more hair?” Sparrow said.

“Tell that to Bruce Willis,” Arnie said.

“You aren’t Bruce Willis,” Sparrow said.

“But I feel like I am,” Arnie said. “And that’s worth all the trouble Wyatt causes me.”

Gavin looked at me. “What about you? Could you go back to bartending?”

I shook my head. “Serving drinks was never my goal in life. I’m not sure I ever had a goal, which is probably why I’ve bounced around so many jobs. This is the longest I’ve worked in one place. But the truth is, I don’t think I could quit working for Mr. Monk.”

“Are you afraid of what will happen to him?” Jasper asked.

“I’m afraid of what will happen to me,” I replied.

CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Monk and the Balance of Nature

It was a beautiful Monday morning, the kind that makes you want to jump onto a cable car and sing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” at the top of your lungs.

But I wasn’t in a cable car. I was in a Buick Lucerne that my father bought me when my old Jeep finally crapped out. It was only later that I discovered the real reason for Dad’s largesse. He’d actually bought the Buick for his seventy-seven-year-old mother, who’d turned it down because she didn’t want the same car that everybody else in her retirement community was driving. Nana was afraid she’d never be able to pick her car out from the others in the parking lot.

So Nana got a black BMW 3 Series and I got a car that my fifteen-year-old daughter, Julie, won’t let me drive within a one-mile radius of her school for fear we might be seen. Supposedly Tiger Woods drives a car like mine, but if he does, I bet it’s only to haul his clubs around on the golf course.

The day was so glorious, though, that I felt like I was driving a Ferrari convertible instead of a Buick. My glee lasted until I turned the corner in front of Monk’s apartment and saw the black-and-white police car parked at the curb and the yellow crime scene tape around the perimeter of the building.

I felt a pang of fear that injected a hot shot of adrenaline into my bloodstream and made my heart race faster than a hamster on his wheel.

Since I’d met Monk, I’d visited lots of places cordoned off with crime scene tape, and the one thing they all had in common was a corpse.

This wasn’t good. Monk had made a lot of enemies over the years and I was afraid that one of them had finally come after him.

I double-parked behind the cop car, jumped over the yellow tape like a track star, and ran into the building. I was terrified of what I would find when I got inside.

The door to his apartment was open and two uniformed officers stood in the entry hall, their backs to me, blocking my way.

“Let me through,” I said, pushing past them to see Monk facing us. He was perfectly relaxed, his starched white shirt buttoned at the collar and his sleeves buttoned at the wrist. Believe me, for him that’s hanging loose.

I gave him a big hug and felt his entire body stiffen. He was repulsed by my touch, but at least his reaction proved he was alive and well.

“Are you okay?” I stepped back and took a good look at him and his surroundings. Everything was neat, tidy, balanced, and symmetrical.

“I’m a little shaken,” Monk said. “But I’m coping.”

“What happened?” I asked, glancing back at the two cops.

They were both grimacing. Either they’d eaten something that disagreed with them or they’d been talking to Monk. Their name tags identified them as Sergeant Denton and Officer Brooks.

“I was burglarized,” Monk said.

“What did they take?” I asked.

“A sock,” Monk said.

“A sock?” I said.

“A left sock,”