Mr. Monk Is Open for Business Read Free Page A

wrong,” I said.
    “How do you know?” Luther asked. He had given up waving his glass.
    “Because Randy and Monk never agree on a killer. Never ever. Monk is almost always right and Randy . . . Well, Randy is Randy.”
    This turned out to be true. Monk spent a few hours interviewing suspects and looking at photographs. He walked around the Grand Summit, holding up his hands like a movie director, and reviewed the video from the first weekend, where every one of the cooks seemed to be taking the contest very seriously.
    Finally he had the five surviving chefs line up in the ballroom, all dressed in their white aprons with the custom-designed logos. “It was like some old movie,” said Luther. “He lines them up. Then he walks back and forth and talks. And then he points and says, ‘You’re guilty because you’re wearing the wrong apron.’”
    “The wrong apron?”
    Luther sipped from his empty glass. “It was the TV weatherman, Adam Morse. He’s this tall guy. But Monk kept pointing out how short his apron was and how this made him the killer.”
    I mulled this over and came to my own deduction. I asked a few more questions just to make sure. “There were only six custom-made aprons? No more?” Yes. “Did the aprons come in different sizes? Small, medium, and large?” Yes. “Were theaprons kept in the kitchen in between the two weekend contests?” Yes, at each contestant’s station. How did I know?
    For those of you who haven’t spent years watching Monk’s every move and trying to figure out how he thinks, I’ll give you the solution. The rest of you have probably figured it out and can skip the next few paragraphs.
    Adam Morse, explained Monk to Chief Disher and Sharona and a handful of other bystanders, had been the one to sneak into the kitchen and take a peek in the mystery box. He had put on his apron, an extra large, and began doing a little prep work.
    At some point, Kathy Enbrel walked in. Monk didn’t know what happened between them. He’s not a mind reader. But they both had a lot to lose from any scandal. Kathy was a woman with political ambition and Adam’s career was based on being the lovable, community-minded weatherman.
    After Kathy’s fateful encounter with the carving knife, Adam realized he had a second problem. His extra-large apron was covered in Kathy’s blood. These were specially made aprons, one for each player. There was no way he could clean the apron in time, if at all. And for him to tell everyone that he had lost it would look suspicious, especially since the aprons were kept with the other supplies in the locked kitchen.
    Adam’s only way out was to trade aprons with his victim. He put his large bloodstained apron on Kathy and put her clean small one at his station. Monk had basically figured it out from the moment he saw the photo of Kathy in the huge bloody apron.
    Giving Monk credit where it’s due, this was something Inever would have come up with. He clocked the unusual size of her apron and that the blood was in a spatter pattern, which is different from the way blood looks when it oozes out of a wound. But once Luther told me about Monk’s pointing a finger at the man in the small apron, it wasn’t hard.
    “Well, that doesn’t sound like a horrible weekend,” I said. “Solving a murder. Getting Randy off the hook. Sounds pretty good.”
    “I didn’t tell you about Ellen,” said Luther.
    “Oh yeah.” After all, this had been the whole reason for the trip. “Was Ellen around for this? Did she see how Monk’s obsession can be a good thing?”
    “Not so much. When we first showed up, before we even got involved, Mr. Monk went over to Ellen’s and tried to apologize. He was persuasive. The man really likes her. Ellen’s brother was there and he did his best to talk Ellen into giving Mr. Monk a second chance.”
    “That’s good,” I said, but I had a feeling it wasn’t. “Does Ellen listen to her brother?”
    “Ellen loves her brother.