Free Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse by Lee Goldberg

box, and on breezy days the smell carried, along with all that dander.”
    “Did you do anything about it?” Monk said.
    “I spoke to her,” Brudnick said. “But she told me to mind my own business, which, coming from her, I found rather ironic.”
    “Why is that?”
    “Because the old crone was always peeking in my windows, sorting through the mail in my box, and reading my magazines,” Brudnick said. “I started walking through my house naked just so I could get a little privacy.”
    Monk shuddered at the thought, and so did I.
    “You never thought about taking more direct action?” Monk said.
    “You mean like burning her house down?”
    Monk nodded. Brudnick smiled.
    “I thought about it every day,” Brudnick said.
    “Instead I sold out to Lucas Breen and looked forward to a new home in the near future, far away from Esther and her feline menagerie.”
    “So Esther wasn’t just making your life a living hell,” I said. “She was also standing between you and a fortune.”
    “She wasn’t my favorite neighbor on the block; that’s true. But I didn’t wish any violence upon her.”
    “Where were you between nine and ten P.M. on Friday night?” Monk asked.
    “Enjoying a hot bath and the latest issue of American Spectator, ” Brudnick said.
    That was an image that would haunt me.
    “Were you alone?” Monk asked.
    “Sadly, yes,” Brudnick said. “It’s been some time since I’ve found a lady who’ll share a bath and American Spectator with me.”
    He looked at me and smiled. I think it’s a credit to me and my astonishing powers of self-control that I didn’t vomit or run screaming out of his house at that moment.
    “Did you see or hear anything unusual that night?” Monk said.
    “Not until her house went up in flames,” Brudnick said. “That was certainly unusual.”
     
    It was depressing. Esther’s other neighbors on her side of the street had the same attitude about her as the Finneys and Brudnick did. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and nobody cared. They were all eagerly awaiting their checks and the wrecking ball.
    We went across the street to see what the other neighbors had to say, the ones without the sales of their homes on the line, who didn’t profit quite so directly from Esther’s death.
    We found Burton Joyner, a scrawny, unemployed software engineer, in his garage, working under the hood of an old AMC Pacer, a car that looked like a pregnant Ford Pinto—which was, by the way, the first car I ever owned, until my dad heard they could explode if a bug hit the windshield and bought me a Plymouth Duster instead. Joyner also had an AMC Gremlin and an AMC Ambassador parked at the curb.
    “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Monk. I’m glad she’s gone,” Joyner said, tightening something with his wrench.
    “She’s not gone,” I said. “You make it sound like she moved to Palm Springs. She was murdered.”
    “Esther was a victim of the bad karma she created,” Joyner said. “She was a mean, vindictive person who made life unpleasant for everybody in the neighborhood. You can feel the difference on the street already. The stress level has gone way down.”
    “And the property values will go way up,” Monk said. “Once the new development is built.”
    “The development isn’t really important to me. It won’t change my circumstances much, so I’ve stayed out of it. I’m the kind of guy who likes to get along with people.” Joyner leaned back and wiped his hands on his jeans, smearing them with grease. “Live and let live is what I say.”
    “Me too,” Monk said. “You wiped your hands on your pants.”
    “Esther wasn’t like you and me. She’d sit at her window with binoculars, taking notes and pictures, intruding on things that were none of her business. She saw me watching a ball game on ESPN, so she called the cable company and ratted me out for hijacking their signal with an illegal converter box.”
    “Were you?” I asked.
    “That’s