“Why was the intruder in your house?”
“Mr. Monk figured out he was after a rock in my daughter’s goldfish aquarium,” I said. “A rock from the moon.”
“From the moon moon?” Joe pointed up.
“Yeah, that moon,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
“You’re full of long stories.” He reached across the table for my hand. “I’d like to hear them all.”
His hand was big and warm and strong, and I couldn’t help imagining what it would feel like against my cheek, my back, my legs.
I became achingly aware of just how many long months it had been since I’d spent time with a man, if you catch my drift. And yet, the anxiety I felt was even stronger than my desire.
I’m a normal woman, healthy and still relatively young, and I’m not ashamed of or embarrassed about my needs, so that wasn’t what it was. Nor was it the prospect of bringing another man into my life. There had been other men since Mitch, and I hadn’t felt this same kind of apprehension then. And it wasn’t because of any reservations about the kind of man Joe was or how Julie would feel about him.
But the apprehension was there, and it wasn’t going away.
I was spared having to tell Joe another story by the trill of my cell phone. I reluctantly, and self-consciously, took my hand from his to answer the call.
I was certain the caller was Julie and that Monk had done something terrible, like reorganizing the drawers in my bedroom. I shuddered to think what he—and Julie too, for that matter—might have stumbled upon.
But it wasn’t Julie, and my bedroom secrets were safe. It was Captain Stottlemeyer calling.
“Are you with Monk?” he asked.
“Not at the moment,” I said. “Why?”
“I’ve got a murder, and I’d like Monk’s perspective on it. Can you get him down here?”
It wasn’t unusual for Stottlemeyer to ask for Monk’s help on a particularly puzzling homicide. Monk regularly consulted with the SFPD on a per-case basis, though nobody told me how much he got paid.
Stottlemeyer gave me directions to the crime scene. It wasn’t far from the restaurant, but I had to go back home and pick up Monk first.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” I said, and flipped the phone shut. “I’m sorry, Joe, but we have to go. There’s been a homicide, and the police want Mr. Monk’s help.”
“It can’t wait until dessert?”
“Think of that call as my fire alarm,” I said.
“Gotcha.” He waved to the waitress for the check.
One the way home, I explained my working relationship with Monk to Joe, who didn’t understand exactly what I did for a living. I told him my job was mostly helping Monk manage the everyday demands of life and smoothing his interactions with other people so he could concentrate on solving murders. And that I also handed out a lot of wipes and kept him hydrated with Sierra Springs, the only water he’ll drink.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Joe said as he walked me to my door.
“Most days, I don’t know either.”
He kissed me. A real, deep, passionate, toe-curling kiss. And I gave it right back to him. The kiss lasted only a minute or so, but when we un-clinched my heart was racing as if I’d just run a mile. It was a kiss that promised so much more, born of the urgency of our forced parting. For me, there was also a hint of melancholy. For some reason it felt to me like a kiss good-bye, even though we’d be seeing each other at the dump the next morning.
But I didn’t have the time to sort out my feelings; I was in too big a hurry. I banged on the bathroom door to get Monk out of the shower. I told him Stottlemeyer needed him pronto at a crime scene. Then I called Mrs. Throphamner, who agreed to come over and watch Julie.
“I still expect to be paid for the hours I worked,” Julie said.
“But Mr. Monk never even left the shower,” I said. “You didn’t have to do anything.”
“Not my problem,” she said with a shrug.
I dug into my wallet and gave her a twenty because I didn’t have any tens or singles, just what the ATM spit out on my last visit. “Here. Credit my account with the balance for next time.”
Monk emerged from the bathroom perfectly coiffed and in a fresh set of clothes, as if he were starting a new day. Behind him the bathroom looked as if it had never been used. He shifted uncomfortably in his clothes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I still feel dirty,” he said.
“I’m sure that will pass.”
“So am I,” Monk said. “In a few years.”
“Years?”
“No more than twenty,” he said. “Or thirty. But I’m being conservative.”
I figured that worked out to roughly one year for each ton of garbage we had to sort through.
Monk spotted the flowers in the vase. “Who brought those?”
“Joe. Actually, he brought them for himself. He was afraid he might still smell from the dump,” I said. “Maybe you’d like them.”
Monk leaned down and sniffed the flowers, then stood up straight and started working that kink out of his neck, the one caused by a fact that doesn’t fit.
I was about to ask him what it was about the flowers that set him off when Mrs. Throphamner arrived and hurried to the TV.
“Forgive me, Murder, She Wrote is starting on channel forty-four,” she said. “I don’t want to miss the murder.”
“It’s okay,” Monk said, heading for the door. “We’re a little late for a murder ourselves.”
19
Mr. Monk and the Wet Ones
Captain Stottlemeyer was waiting for us on Harrison Street, where the 80 Freeway emptied into the city center in a tangle of off-ramps and overpasses. The wail of the cold wind and the roar of traffic overhead created a loud, bone-rattling shriek. It sounded as if the earth itself were screaming in pain.
The freeway passed over a weed-covered lot that was ringed by a corroded cyclone fence that had been peeled back in places. Stottlemeyer stood in front of one of the openings, with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat and his collar turned up against the biting wind. Behind him, forensic techs in blue windbreakers moved slowly through the lot, looking for clues.
The lot was strewn with discarded couches, soiled mattresses, and crude structures of scrap plywood, corrugated metal sheets, and cardboard boxes erected atop wooden shipping pallets. Shopping carts overflowing with bulging trash bags were parked in front of some of the makeshift shelters like cars in driveways.
“Sorry to drag you down here, Monk,” Stottlemeyer said.
“Where are all the people?” Monk asked.
“What people?” Stottlemeyer asked.
“The ones who live here.” He motioned to the neighborhood of cardboard tract homes.
“They scurried away like frightened rats after somebody discovered the corpse,” Stottlemeyer said. “A couple officers in a patrol car happened to be driving by when the mass exodus occurred. It piqued their curiosity, so they investigated. It’s a good thing the officers were around or it could’ve been weeks before we found the body, if ever.”
“Why’s that?”
“We don’t get in here much,” Stottlemeyer said. “And even if we did, the body is kind of out of the way.”
The captain beckoned us through the hole in the fence while he held open the flap. Monk hesitated a moment, then turned to me.
“I’m going to need the suit,” Monk said.
“What suit?” I said.
“The one I wore today,” Monk said. “I need it.”
“We returned the outbreak suit on the way home,” I said. “You insisted that it had to be incinerated.”
“I know,” Monk said. “I need another.”