Monk set his suitcases down at the foot of the bed. “It’s charming.”
“Really?”
This was working out much better than I’d hoped, though I noticed he was shielding his eyes from the dresser as if it were emitting a blinding glare.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “It oozes charm.”
Before I could ask him what he meant, exactly, by “oozes,” someone rang the doorbell. I excused myself and went to see who was at the door.
There was a burly guy with a clipboard standing on my porch. Behind him I could see two men unloading a refrigerator from a moving truck in front of my house.
“Does Adrian Monk reside here?” the man asked. He smelled of Old Spice and Cutty Sark. I wasn’t sure which was more unsettling to me: the mingling of odors or the fact that I could identify them.
“No, I reside here,” I said. “Mr. Monk is just a guest.”
“Whatever,” he said, then turned and whistled to the guys on the street. “Start unloading the truck.”
“Whoa,” I said, stepping out onto the porch. “What are you unloading?”
“Your stuff,” he said, thrusting the clipboard and pen at me. “Sign here.”
I looked at the papers on the clipboard. It was a moving-company invoice listing all the furniture, dishware, bedding, and appliances they were transporting from Monk’s house to mine. This was Monk’s idea of roughing it?
“It’s about time you got here,” I heard Monk say behind me. I turned to see him holding the door open for the two guys hauling in his refrigerator. “Be careful with that.”
“Hold it,” I shouted at the movers, and then I turned to Monk. “What is all this?”
“Just a few necessities.”
“There’s a big difference between staying with someone and moving in.”
“I know that,” he said.
“Then how do you explain this?” I pointed at his refrigerator.
“I have special dietary needs.”
“So you brought your own refrigerator and all the food that’s in it?”
“I didn’t want to be a bother,” he said.
I waved the clipboard at him.
“This is everything you own, Mr. Monk,” I said. “To accommodate all of your belongings, I’d have to move everything of mine out of the house.”
Monk gestured to the movers. “I’m sure they’d be glad to help. They’re professionals.”
I took a deep breath, shoved the clipboard into the burly man’s hands, and said to him, “You’re taking all of this back where you got it.”
“They can’t,” Monk said.
“Why not?”
“The building is tented by now,” Monk said. “And filled with poison.”
“Then you’ll just have to put it in storage, Mr. Monk, or leave it on the front lawn. Because it’s not going in this house.”
I stomped back inside, slammed the door, and left Monk to work things out with the movers.
It was only when I was standing in the middle of my living room, trying hard to control my anger, that I finally realized that I’d been home for fifteen minutes and hadn’t seen or heard my daughter. I went to her door and knocked.
“Julie?” I pressed my ear to her door. “Are you in there?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “Stop putting your ear to my door.”
I stepped back guiltily, even though I knew she couldn’t have seen me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Mr. Monk is here,” I said.
“I know,” she replied.
“Is that why you’re hiding in your room?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“I thought you liked Mr. Monk.”
“I do,” she said.
I’m human and a single mother, and I was already pretty keyed up by Monk and the movers, so I wasn’t in the mood for petulant behavior.
“Then get your butt out here and be polite,” I said.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll think I’m a baby,” she said, and then I heard what sounded like a muffled sob.
I immediately felt a pang of guilt for snapping at her instead of being the intuitive, caring, all-knowing mom I should be. I decided to ignore the warning signs on her door and heed the one I heard in her voice. I opened her door.
Julie was sitting on her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She’d taken out all the stuffed animals that she’d stowed deep in her closet six months ago, after declaring she was “too grown-up” for them. Now she’d gathered them all around her and was hugging them close.
I got onto the bed beside Julie and put my arm around her. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“You’ll think it’s stupid.” She sniffled.
I kissed her cheek. “I promise I won’t.” “Maddie called,” she said, referring to one of her friends from school. “Sparky is dead. He was killed.”
And with that she started sobbing. Completely lost, I drew her close and stroked her hair. I hated to ask, but I had to . . .
“Who is Sparky?”
Julie lifted her head, sniffled hard, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “The firehouse dalmatian. The one that Firefighter Joe brings to school every year during his talk about fire safety.”
“Oh, that Sparky.” I still had no idea what she was talking about. “What happened?”
“Someone hit him on the head last night with a pickax,” Julie said with a shiver. “Who would want to murder an adorable, trusting, innocent dog?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
She started to cry again and hugged me tight.
“I’ll find out,” Monk said softly.
Julie and I both looked up to see Monk standing in the doorway. How long had he been there?
“You will?” Julie asked.
“It’s what I do.” Monk shifted his weight. “Solving murders is kind of my thing.”
Julie reached for a Kleenex on her nightstand, blew her nose, and tossed the wadded-up tissue toward her garbage can. She missed.
“Do you really think you can catch the person who killed Sparky?” she asked.
Monk stared at the tissue on the floor as if he were expecting it to crawl away. “Yes.”
Julie turned to me. “Can we afford him?”
It was a good question. I looked back at Monk, who was watching the tissue and twisting his neck like he had a kink in it.
“Can we?” I asked him.
“I’ll bring the killer to justice if you will do me one huge favor.”
“What?” Julie asked.
I hoped it didn’t involve letting him move everything he owned into my house, because that wasn’t going to happen, no matter how many puppies, baby seals, or bunny rabbits were murdered.
“Pick up that tissue, place it in a sealed plastic bag, and remove it from this house immediately.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Thank you.” Monk looked at me and tipped his head toward the placard on her door. “It’s no joke.”
3
Mr. Monk and the Fire Truck
Saturday is Julie’s “activity day.” Tae kwon do. Soccer practice. Hip-hop class. And, of course, the inevitable birthday party. Let’s be honest here: No parent wants to spend their weekends chauffeuring their kids around. So I organized a carpool schedule with the other neighborhood mothers (it’s always the mothers who get stuck with this drudgery). That particular Saturday happened to be one of my carpool days off, so another overworked, dead-tired mother was driving a bunch of unruly kids to their classes, practices, and birthday parties.