Free Mr. Monk Gets Even by Lee Goldberg

halted when she grabbed a letter opener with her free hand and brutally stabbed the stack of files that he was about to straighten.
    “I’ll be right down,” she said. She hung up and took her gun out of her drawer.
    “That won’t be necessary,” Monk said, holding up his hands and taking a step back from her desk. “You made your point with the letter opener.”
    “It’s not for you.” Devlin put the gun in her shoulder holster as she stood, then took her leather jacket off the back of her chair. “I’ve got to roll. I’ve got a body.”
    “A murder?” Monk asked.
    “Looks like a woman out in Noe Valley had too much to drink before diving into her lap pool—cracked her head on the bottom and drowned.”
    “Or it was a murder,” Monk said.
    “If it is, I’ll be sure to give you a call,” Devlin said, turning her back to Monk and heading for the door.
    “If it is,” Monk said, “you might not notice.”
    She stopped and turned around very slowly. “You know I’m armed and you still said that to me?”
    Julie stepped out of Captain Stottlemeyer’s office at that point because she’d heard enough to know that Monk had created a situation in need of defusing, and she considered that a key part of her job.
    “Leland sent us here because he wanted Monk around if any bodies dropped,” Julie said to Devlin. “I think those were pretty much his exact words.”
    Devlin gave Julie a look. “You know it was just to get Monk out of his hair and into mine.”
    Julie shrugged. “Doesn’t really make a difference though, does it?”
    “I was just starting to like you, kid,” Devlin said and walked out the door.
    Julie smiled at Monk. “But now she loves me because I stood up to her.”
    “Then why doesn’t she love me?”
    “Because you irritate her,” Julie said. “Come on, let’s go. We have to follow her and she has a siren.”
    She went out the door. Monk started to go but doubled back, quickly straightened the stack of files on Devlin’s desk, and then hurried after Julie.
    • • •
    Noe Valley is an upscale neighborhood of renovated Victorians and well-off young families south of the Castro District, with its strong gay community, and west of the Mission District, once known for its vibrant multiethnic working-class mix and now home to the largest percentage of BMW owners in the city.
    (Okay, I made that last fact up, but the Mission is where all the hip dot-com millionaires are buying their lofts and all those little mom-and-pop taco places that I loved are being replaced by coffeehouses and artisan bakeries. But I digress. . . .)
    The usual cluster of official vehicles was parked outside the dead woman’s home, which was already cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape. She had a tiny garden that was beautifully maintained, with a small patch of grass and two flower beds covered with tan bark and bordered with smooth rocks that looked as if she’d scavenged them from a beach.
    Monk and Julie arrived right behind Devlin, though they had to break a few traffic laws to do so. Devlin got out of her car, marched across the front yard, and went through the open wooden gate on the side yard.
    Julie hurried after her, but she quickly noticed Monk lagging behind, crouching to study the flower beds.
    “The body is in the backyard,” Julie said.
    “And it’s not going anywhere,” Monk said.
    He cocked his head from side to side, nodded to himself, then straightened up and followed Julie. She didn’t ask why he stopped or what he was looking at because she was afraid he might tell her.
    The last thing she wanted was a long lecture on how beach rocks belonged on the beach and not alongside shards of bark from trees that grow nowhere near the ocean, or some such nonsense.
    The backyard was tiny, and the lap pool was more of a narrow, short pond surrounded by a patio of aged bricks. There were two chaise lounges, a bottle of Scotch and a glass on the tiny table between them. One of the