Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii by Goldberg, Lee (best large ebook reader .txt) 📗

Monk said. “Never at night, never on Sunday.”

“The same schedule a mailman keeps,” I said.

“They also all occurred at specific times of day in the same neighborhoods,” Monk said. “The break-ins in this neighborhood, for instance, always happened around noon. The ones farther west happened at the end of the day.”

“At the end of the mailman’s daily route,” Kealoha said, glancing at the suspect, who wisely stayed silent.

“I wanted to go golfing this morning to see who came through the neighborhood at noon,” Monk said. “When I saw the mail truck, it all made sense.”

“There’s just one problem,” Kealoha said. “We don’t have any proof.”

“Yeah,” the mailman said with a sneer.

“Impound the truck and get a search warrant,” Monk said. “I guarantee you’ll find burglar’s tools, some empty boxes, maybe even some stolen goods in the back.”

“I suppose it’s worth a shot.” Kealoha looked at the mailman. “What do you think, bruddah?”

The mailman answered by barreling past Kealoha into the driver’s seat of his idling truck and speeding off, tires screeching.

Monk dashed to the golf cart, got behind the wheel, and floored it. As the tiny cart zipped past me, I jumped onto the back and grabbed hold.

“What are you doing?” I yelled as Monk steered us between two of the homes and across their backyards.

“Cutting him off,” Monk said. “The road weaves around to the other side of the block.”

“But we’re in a golf cart. He’ll mow us down.”

“Hand me a pitching wedge,” Monk said as we bounced along the grass.

I grabbed the club and was about to hand it to Monk when we burst through a hedge of bougainvilleas. I let go of the club and grabbed an armrest to avoid toppling out of the cart.

We were nearing the street. The mail truck was coming our way. If we didn’t stop, within moments our two paths would cross.

“Hurry,” Monk said.

I yanked another club from the bag and passed it up to Monk, who wedged it against the power pedal and his seat.

And then he casually jumped out of the moving cart onto the soft lawn.

I was stunned. It took me a second before it sank in that I was in the cart alone. I leaped off just as the cart shot into the street, directly into the path of the speeding truck.

The mailman swerved too hard to avoid the golf cart and the truck tipped over, sliding on its side across the asphalt in a shower of sparks before slamming into a palm tree.

The driverless golf cart scooted along between two more houses and out onto the golf course beyond.

Monk and I scrambled to our feet, ran to the postal truck, and pulled the dazed mailman from his seat. He had a few cuts and bruises, but he’d survive. We laid him down on the grass and then took stock of each other. My knees were scraped and Monk had some grass stains on his new pants, but otherwise we were both fine.

“Thanks a lot,” I said to Monk.

“What did I do?”

“You jumped out of the cart!”

“Of course I did,” Monk said. “I didn’t want to get killed.”

“What about me? You could have told me you were going to jump.”

“You saw me, didn’t you?”

“That’s not the point,” I said. “Before the driver jumps out of a moving vehicle he has an obligation to notify his passengers first.”

“I beg to differ.”

“It’s common courtesy!”

That was when Kealoha came running up, drenched in sweat and totally out of breath.

“Why did you do that?” Kealoha managed to spit out between gasps.

“He was getting away,” Monk said.

“We’re on an island,” Kealoha said, still huffing. “He was driving a mail truck. Where was he gonna go?”

“Oops,” Monk said.

At that moment I happened to glance at the golf course, just in time see our cart as it splashed into the lake and abruptly sank, taking our clubs down with it.

I was glad the rentals were on Monk’s credit card and not mine.

Although burglary tools and stolen goods were found in the mail truck, I was hoping the destruction of two vehicles, the loss of three bags of clubs, and the outrage of the golf course officials would dissuade Kealoha from passing along any more of his unsolved cases to Monk.

Not that Monk cared about the damage he’d caused. Playing a single hole of golf and chasing a bad guy left him in an ebullient mood and eager to do more sleuthing.

I was ready to do nothing more strenuous than lie in a hammock. I’d had enough excitement for one day.

Fortunately, there wasn’t any detecting to do until Kealoha could get back to us with more background on Lance Vaughn and Roxanne Shaw. I figured I had some time, since Kealoha was going to have his hands full dealing with the events of the morning.

So we had a late lunch at Poipu Beach Park. We grabbed some tuna fish sandwiches at Brenneke’s Deli. Monk had them cut off the crusts and he loaned them his tape measure so they could cut the sandwich exactly in half. We took our lunch across the street to one of the scattered picnic tables on the grass leading to the sand.

The beach beyond the park was packed with families and their kids, who were Boogie boarding and frolicking in the water. There was a fat monk seal basking in the sand, his slumber captured for posterity by two dozen camera-toting tourists.

“You know what that is?” I said.

“A monk seal.”

“I understand they’re the only seals that clean their fish before they eat them.”

“Been working on that one long?”

“Since this morning,” I admitted.

After we finished our lunch, we drove back to the hotel and parked in the self-parking lot beside another Mustang convertible. Monk got out and examined the other car.

“This is Brian’s rental car,” he said.

“Half the cars in this parking lot are Mustang convertibles. How can you tell?”

“A little innovation we call the license plate.”

“You memorized the plate?”

“And the vehicle identification number,” Monk said. “Besides, I recognize the three dings