Free Mr. Monk in Trouble by Lee Goldberg Page A

the motel down the street and handed me the card keys.
    I thanked her for her help and went back outside. Monk was squatting in front of my car, peering into the grill.
    “I see a suspicious fleck in there,” Monk said, pointing. “I think it’s the remains of a dead butterfly.”
    “So what?”
    “It could get sucked into the fan and out an air vent into the car, where I could inhale it and die instantly,” Monk said. “Do you want that on your conscience?”
    “I certainly don’t,” I said. “I’m driving up to the motel, but you’re welcome to walk. It’s only a block or two.”
    Monk looked warily down the dark, dimly lit street towards the motel. “I could be mauled by a burro on the way.”
    I opened the driver’s side door. “I’m going now.”
    “Maybe an armed police officer could escort me,” he said.
    “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” I said and got in. I was starting the ignition when Monk knocked on my window. I rolled it down. “Yes?”
    “Could you go inside the police station and ask for me?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Isn’t that what I pay you for?”
    “It might be, but my shift just ended. I’m on my own time now. Unless you’re paying for overtime.”
    Monk grimaced, walked around the front of the car and got inside, put on his seat belt, and covered his nose and mouth with his hands as I drove to our motel.
    The Trouble Motor Inn was shaped like a staple around a fenced-in pool. It was a flat-roofed, low-slung cinder-block building that looked more like a collection of storage units than a motel. We were booked into rooms two and four. I parked the car in front of room two.
    Monk took one look at his simple room, with carpet about as plush as plywood, and asked me if I could get him the maid’s cleaning cart. I talked to the unshaven, sallow-faced manager, who insisted that the room was already clean. But I explained that Monk liked his rooms clean enough to perform open-heart surgery in them.
    “You aren’t planning on drugging someone and removing one of their kidneys to sell on the black market, are you?” he asked.
    From the yellow tinge of his skin, I wondered if that had happened to him.
    “Not on this trip,” I said. “Maybe next time.”
    He gave me a maid’s cart, which was stocked with a big laundry sack, a garbage bag, and plenty of assorted cleaning supplies, as well as a mop, broom, and vacuum. I wheeled it to Monk’s room, where he’d already stripped the bed and dumped the sheets on the floor.
    “I knew I should have brought my own mattress,” he said.
    “I would have had to tie it to the roof of my car,” I said. “It would have been covered with dead bugs and dirt when we got here.”
    “It still would be cleaner than this one,” Monk said, scowling at the stained mattress. “It’s a good thing I brought plastic sheeting with me. You should never leave home without it.”
    “That’s what all the professional assassins and serial killers always say.”
    Murderers like to spread plastic sheeting over surfaces before they do their killing so they won’t leave blood or other trace evidence behind. Monk liked to do it to protect himself from whatever germs might be lurking around, waiting to pounce on him.
    We covered the mattress in plastic, tucked it in, then we made the bed with the sheets and blankets that he’d packed for the trip. We removed all the towels, toilet paper, and tissues in the room and replaced them with supplies he’d brought from home.
    I stuffed the hotel linens in the laundry bag and Monk began to clean.
    There are professional crime-scene cleaners and hazardous material teams who don’t do as thorough a job as Monk does. The only way Monk could be more thorough was if he stripped the room to the studs and remodeled it entirely, which wasn’t something I’d put past him.
    At the very least, I knew he’d be at it for hours and I wasn’t going to help, since I was officially off duty and, therefore, could pick and choose