Mr. Monk in Outer Space by Goldberg, Lee (best sci fi novels of all time .txt) 📕

our packaging materials. The world is full of awful little people.”

Hearing her talk, I imagined this mass of angry elves carrying torches and marching towards her house.

“None of those people hired an assassin to kill your husband,” Monk said.

“How would you know?” Veronica snapped.

“They wouldn’t have had access to your husband’s security key card,” Monk said. “But whoever hired the hit man did and knew exactly when the security guard would be on patrol and away from his desk in the lobby. That person was someone close to Brandon Lorber. And no one was closer to him than you.”

Her lower lip quivered with rage—or perhaps the collagen had suddenly drained out into her chin, which would explain why she had two of them.

“Get out,” she said.

“Gladly,” Monk said. “Would you be offended if we ran?”

“It’s far too late to be concerned about offending me,” she said. “You awful little man.”

I’m tall, but as we hurried out of Veronica Lorber’s house of horrors, I couldn’t help wondering if I would always be remembered by her as that “awful little woman.”

23

Mr. Monk and the X

Once we were outside, I asked Monk a few questions that were bugging me.

“How did you know that the butterfly collection was Mrs. Lorber’s and not her husband’s?”

“It was an educated guess,” Monk said. “I have a hard time believing that a man who likes to shoot things would run around chasing butterflies with a net. And if Brandon Lorber was going to give Cahill a trophy, it would be an animal head, not a colorful insect.”

“How did you know which butterfly that was?”

“The Panamint swallowtail has a chemical composition that will make any animal that swallows it regurgitate immediately,” Monk said. “I want to know about anything that will make me regurgitate. Throwing up is about as close as you can get to dying without already being dead.”

“What are the odds of a Panamint butterfly taking a wrong turn and flying into your mouth?”

“You never know,” Monk said, and seemed to notice the two artists at their easels for the first time.

He glanced at their works-in-progress as we passed the two men on our way to my car. The artist painting the bay was doing the kind of rudimentary work you find at those traveling art shows that pop up on weekends in shopping center parking lots.

But the other artist, the one doing a painting of the painter, had real skill and a sense of humor. He’d even managed to capture the amateurish quality of the painting his subject was working on.

Monk seemed very interested in this painting, too. But before he got too distracted, I still had a few more questions for him.

“If Veronica Lorber and Andrew Cahill are sleeping together, why did he put the blame for Brandon Lorber’s murder on her and why did she put it on him?” I asked. “Are they so cold and self-centered that they would betray one another right away?”

“They did it to cancel each other out,” Monk said, looking over the artist’s shoulder.

“Cancel each other out? What does that mean?”

“They figured if they each accused the other of murder, we would never suspect the two of them of having an affair and conspiring together,” Monk said. “But it backfired. We see them as the calculating and greedy people that they actually are.”

“So with Brandon Lorber dead, and Cahill’s immunity, they can both walk away from the financial scandal with their assets more or less intact,” I said. “That’s a pretty good motive for murder.”

“Money and sex usually are,” Monk said.

They were certainly the things that were driving AriannaStipe and Veronica Lorber. They were both selfish, greedy, man-hungry predators.

Granted, Arianna had just gone through a bitter divorce, so I couldn’t really fault her for sleeping with her lawyer and pursuing her share of Conrad Stipe’s money. But I still didn’t like her.

Veronica Lorber at least put on a show of grief, but that’s all it was. She’d betrayed her husband while he was alive and might even have paid for his murder so she could get all his money.

The two women had a lot in common.

I was sure that if I introduced them to one another they would become good friends—at least until they inevitably stabbed each other in the back over money or men.

While I was musing about that, Monk cleared his throat to attract the artist’s attention.

The painter was a very thin man whom I guessed to be in his forties, with a weather-beaten face that attested to all the time he’d spent outside. He was wearing a paint-spattered T-shirt. There were flecks of paint tangled in the hairs on his tanned hands.

“Excuse me,” Monk said, “but you’ve made a mistake.”

The painter turned. “There is no right and wrong in art, sir.”

“That’s also a mistake,” Monk said. “There’s always right and wrong. The artist you are depicting is clearly wearing a checked shirt with twenty-four squares on his back. But you have only fourteen squares in your painting. He’s not wearing anything on his head, but you have given him a sailor’s cap. It’s inaccurate.”

“This isn’t a photograph,” the painter said. “It’s an artistic interpretation. I’m painting it the way I see it.”

“Then you need glasses,” Monk said. “And you’re delusional.”

The painter took his brush and, without any warning at all, painted a blue X over Monk’s mouth.

Monk staggered back, sputtering and yelping and flailing his arms as if he were being attacked by a swarm of bees. He waved his hands in front of his face because he reflexively and desperately wanted to wipe the paint off but didn’t dare do it for fear of getting it on his hands or clothes. He was in agony.

The two painters and several passersby stared at