Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse

by Lee Goldberg

  Breen rose from his seat, acknowledged me with a tip of his head, and walked back to the elevator.

  “He’s disappointed in us, Monk.” Stottlemeyer finished his coffee. “I’m crushed; how about you?”

  “He’s going to make life hard for you, Captain,” Monk said.

  “Not as hard as I’m going to make it for him,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ll get search warrants tonight, and we’ll ransack his home and office for that little item he went back to Esther’s house to get—just as soon as you tell me what that little item is.”

  “Something very, very incriminating.”

  “Which is . . . ?” Stottlemeyer said.

  “Something that points directly, irrefutably, and conclusively to him as the killer.”

  “Yes, I get the concept of incriminating,” Stottlemeyer said. “But what is it, exactly, that I should tell the judge that we’re looking for?”

  Monk shrugged.

  Stottlemeyer looked at Monk, then at me, then back to Monk. “You don’t know?”

  “Something so unbelievably damaging to him that he’d literally walk through the red-hot flames of hell to get it back.”

  “Well, there go my search warrants,” Stottlemeyer said. “So what you’re basically saying is, we’ve got bupkis.”

  “Actually,” Monk said. “It’s probably less than that.”

  13

  Mr. Monk Does His Homework

  Stottlemeyer drove us back to the Excelsior and used his badge to get my car out of the parking lot for free. It must be nice to have a badge and be able to park wherever you want without worrying about fees or tickets.

  I made Monk promise not to say anything to Julie about the attempted mugging. She’d lost her father, and I didn’t want her worrying every time I left the house with Monk that she might lose me next. If Monk had a problem with my lie of omission, he didn’t say anything.

  When we got home, lugging in our Pottery Barn purchases, Julie was at the table working on her homework, and Mrs. Throphamner was on the couch watching TV. Mrs. Throphamner’s dentures were on a napkin on the coffee table, facing the TV so they, too, could enjoy Diagnosis Murder.

  I introduced Monk to Mrs. Throphamner. “He’s staying with us for a few days.”

  She popped her teeth back into her mouth and offered her hand to Monk. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  Monk took one look at her hand, which was covered with blisters, and shook the air between them instead.

  “Yes, it certainly is,” Monk said, shaking the air enthusiastically. “What happened to your hands?”

  “I’ve been tending my roses,” she said. “It’s hard work, but I love it.”

  I paid Mrs. Throphamner twelve dollars for babysitting. She stuffed the bills in her cleavage, blew a kiss to Julie, and went home in a hurry so she wouldn’t miss a second of Dick Van Dyke’s sleuthing.

  “Mrs. Throphamner’s such a sweet woman,” I said after she left.

  “She’s a witch,” Monk said. “Did you see those gnarled hands and her puckered, toothless face?”

  Julie giggled happily. She happened to share Monk’s opinion. I thought they were both being cruel.

  “She’s old and lonely; that’s all. Her husband spends most of his time lately at their fishing cabin up near Sacramento. She’s had nothing to do the last few months except tend her garden and watch TV.”

  Of course, that was also very good for me, because it coincided with my newfound employment with Monk and made her available almost anytime for babysitting. I liked to believe that Mrs. Throphamner and I were doing each other a favor.

  I heated up a frozen pizza for dinner, set the table with paper plates, and talked to Julie about her day at school while Monk disposed of the napkin Mrs. Throphamner had rested her teeth on. He put on rubber dish gloves and used a pair of barbecue tongs to pick up the napkin and take it to the fireplace, where he incinerated it. Then he disinfected the coffee table and the air around it with enough Lysol to eradicate every germ within a square mile. I had to open the window in the kitchen so we wouldn’t be eradicated, too. Julie watched him closely, amused and fascinated at the same time.

  “I can still smell her,” Monk said.

  “It’s her flowers you’re smelling,” I said. “I opened the kitchen window. She spends so much time tending her garden that she picks up the fragrance of her roses.”

  He studied me, trying to discern whether I was telling the truth or not, then decided to believe me and put away the Lysol and threw out the gloves. I would have washed the gloves and used them again, but I’m not Adrian Monk.

  As soon as the pizza was ready, Monk cut it into eight even slices. We sat down to eat, and I gave Julie an edited account of our day, leaving out the mugging and the identity of Sparky’s killer, but said we were close to getting the culprit. I know that was being overly optimistic, but I had a lot of faith in Monk.

  After dinner, Julie went back to her homework while I unpacked and washed all the new dishes and silverware. I know Monk would have been glad to do the washing for me, but Julie had other plans. She asked him if he’d help her with her homework.

  “That’s very nice of you,” Monk said. “But I don’t want to intrude on your fun.”

  “You think homework is fun?” Julie said.

  “Homework was my second favorite thing about school.”

  “What was your favorite?” Julie asked.

  “The tests, of course. You know what was almost as much fun? Deducing days in advance exactly when the next surprise ‘pop’ quiz was coming up. The teachers pretended like this irritated them, but it was really their clever way of encouraging me to challenge myself. Boy, does this bring back memories. I used to love aligning the rows of desks each day. Do you ever do that?”

  “No,” Julie said.

  “You aren’t being aggressive enough,” Monk said.

  “I don’t think that’s what it is.”

  “The trick is getting to school an hour early, before some other enterprising student beats you to it. Not that anyone ever beat me to it.”

  “Are you sure anyone wanted to?”

  “Yeah, right. Next thing you’ll tell me nobody competes to get an even-numbered locker. You’re such a kidder.” Monk turned to me. “Isn’t she a kidder?”

  “She’s a kidder,” I said. “And a josher.”

  “So,” Monk asked her, “what are you studying tonight?”

  “A bunch of stuff. But there’s something I thought you might know a few things about,” Julie said. “In Life Sciences, we’re learning about infectious diseases.”

  “You’re talking to the right man,” Monk said, reaching for her Life Sciences textbook. “When I was in junior high, I taught the teacher a few things about the subject.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She opened the book and pointed to a page. “We’re doing this project tomorrow.”

  Monk read it aloud. “ ‘Everyone in class should shake hands with two people and record their names—’ ” He stopped midsentence. “How can they put children through this? Don’t they realize how dangerous it is? Didn’t they send home permission slips for this?”

  “Uh, no,” Julie said. “Why should they?”

  “Why? Why?” Monk turned to me. “Tell her.”

  “It sounds innocent enough to me,” I said.

  “It does? Well, you won’t think so after you hear this.” Monk read again from the textbook: “ ‘Now shake hands with two different people, take their names, then shake hands with two more.’ What kind of teachers are these? Are they insane? I suppose they tell the kids to run around the classroom with scissors, too.”

  “It’s just a practical exercise that teaches kids how diseases are spread,” I said.

  “By having them spread diseases themselves?” Monk said. “What’s next? Having the kids drink cyanide-laced fruit juice to see how poison works? I can’t imagine how they teach sex education.”

  “I have an idea.” Julie to
ok the book from Monk and closed it. “How about if you quiz me for the test instead? Here are some of the questions.”

  She handed Monk a piece of paper.

  “I hope you plan on bringing extra gloves and disinfectant wipes to school tomorrow,” Monk said.

  “Extra?” she said.

  “You do take gloves and disinfectant wipes to school, don’t you?”

  Behind Monk’s back, I nodded vigorously to Julie, and she got the message.

  “Yes, of course, who doesn’t?” she said. “I just thought what I usually bring would be more than enough. So are you going to quiz me?”

  Monk sighed with relief, nodded, and glanced at the paper. “Okay, here goes. What are pathogens?”

  “Organisms that cause disease,” Julie answered, a confident smile on her face.

  “Wrong,” Monk said.

  Her smile faded. “That’s the right answer. I know it is.”

  “The correct answer is everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “All organisms cause disease. Name four sources of pathogens.”

  Julie bit her lip, thought for a moment, then ticked off the answers one by one on her fingers. “Another person, a contaminated object, an animal bite, and the environment.”

  “Wrong,” Monk said. “The correct answer is everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “The entire world is a pathogen. Next question: What are the four major groups of pathogens?”

  Julie tapped her fingers on the table. “Um, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protists.”

  “Wrong,” Monk said. “The correct answer is—”

  “Everything,” Julie interrupted.

  “Correct.” Monk smiled and handed the paper back to her. “You’re going to ace this test.”

  “But what about the other study questions?”

  “There’s only one answer for all of them.”

  “Everything?”

  Monk nodded. “Life is simpler than you think.”

  Julie finished her homework and went to her room to IM her friends. I put away everything, expecting Monk to join me at any moment to lecture me on the proper arrangement of pots and pans or something, but he didn’t show.

  The phone rang. It was Joe.

  “We didn’t get a chance to talk when you came by,” Joe said. “And then you went across the street and didn’t come back. I kept waiting for you to come back.”

  “Oh,” I said. Brilliant answer, huh?

  There was an awkward silence, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since high school.

  “You missed all the excitement,” Joe said. “A bunch of people from the city engineer’s office and the Public Utilities department were here. Turns out Dumas has a tunnel under his house to the sewer and another one from the sewer into our basement.”

  “I know; Mr. Monk was the one who figured it out,” I said. “Dumas has been digging up Roderick Turlock’s treasure of stolen gold coins.”

  “Did he kill Sparky?”

  “Afraid not,” I said. “Mr. Monk is still working on that one.”

  “What about the mystery of your disappearing panties? Are you having any luck with that one?”

  I almost said he could help me solve that mystery himself, but caught myself in time. Instead I said, “I’m really looking forward to seeing you Wednesday night.”

  I supposed that could have been interpreted as conveying almost the same thought as what I didn’t say, but not so brazenly.

  I don’t know how he interpreted it, because suddenly I heard the fire alarm bell go off at the station.

  “Me, too, Natalie. I’ve got to run,” Joe said.

  “Be careful,” I said, and we hung up.

  My heart was racing, but for a whole lot of different reasons. One, I was excited. Two, I was nervous. And three, I was terrified, and not about our date. It was that alarm. It meant Joe was going to be rushing off to some fire. I knew that was what he did for a living—he was Firefighter Joe, after all—but the thought of him charging into some inferno made me queasy. I hadn’t felt that kind of queasiness since Mitch used to go off on his tours of duty. I felt it every time until the one mission when he didn’t return.

  I went down the hall on my way to my room and walked past the open door of the guest room. I saw Monk lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his arms folded across his chest as if he were resting in a coffin.

  I went into his room and sat on the edge of the bed. “Are you okay, Mr. Monk?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Waiting,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “The facts to fall into place.”

  “Is that what they do?”

  “Generally,” he said, sighing.

  “And you just wait.”

  He sat up and leaned back against the head-board. “What’s frustrating about these murders is how simple they are. We know how they were done and we even know who did them. The challenge is finding evidence where none appears to exist.”

  “You’ve had bigger challenges than this before,” I said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “This is different,” Monk said. “I usually have a lot more space to think.”

  “Space?”

  “I start and end my day in an empty house. There aren’t any people or distractions. Everything is in its place. Everything is in order. All that’s left is just me and my thoughts, and sometimes my LEGOs. And that’s when the facts of a case fall naturally into place, and the ones that don’t point me to the solution of the mystery.”

  “And that’s not happening now,” I said.

  “I’m still waiting.”

  In other words, our messy house and our messier lives were too much for him. He longed for the peace, solitude, and sterility of his house. He was homesick. And my house was about as unlike his as it was possible to get.

  “Would you like me to find you a hotel room, Mr. Monk?” I tried to make the offer as nicely as possible, so he wouldn’t think I was angry or offended, which I wasn’t.

  “No, of course not,” he said. “This is great.”

  At first I thought he was being dishonest, but then I wondered if, compared to the alternatives, staying with us really wasn’t so bad.

  A hotel could be even worse. Maybe he’d hear the TV next door, or a couple making love upstairs, or kids playing in the room below. Even if he didn’t hear anything, maybe just knowing so many people were in the building would be enough to distract him. Or, worse, what if he couldn’t stop thinking of the hundreds of people who’d stayed in his room, slept in his bed, and used the bathroom? And if that wasn’t enough stuff to distract him, what about the horror of mismatched wallpaper?

  Compared to all of that, our guest room must have felt like a padded cell—in a good way, if there is such a thing.

  So what he was really talking about was me and Julie. We were the ones creating all the distraction.

  I got up from the bed. “I’ll leave you alone to your thinking.”

  “No, no, I’ll go with you,” he said, getting up.

  “But what about all those facts that need to fall into place?”

  “They’ll fall later,” Monk said. “The problem with having so much space is that I never get a chance to help someone with their homework.”

  I smiled to myself. As afraid as he was of human contact, it was nice to know that even Adrian Monk still needed it.

  14

  Mr. Monk and the Rainy Day

  When I got up at six on Tuesday, Monk was already showered, shaved, and dressed, and the bathroom tub was clean enough to perform surgery in. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he spent the night in the bathroom just to make sure he got to it first. If so, it’s a good thing neither Julie nor I got up in the middle of the night to pee.

  The three of us had Chex cereal for breakfast in our brand-new bowls and swapped sections of the Chronicle among ourselves. There was an article on a back pa
ge about a warehouse fire last night, and how the roof caved in and sent two firefighters to the hospital. My throat went dry. Could that have been the fire Joe was called to? What if he was one of the firefighters who was hurt?

  It was seven thirty, too early to call the fire station, unless I wanted to wake everyone up. I’d call later. Or maybe it would be better, I thought, to call now.

  I was yanked out of my worries by the sound of a car horn outside, signaling that Julie’s ride to school had arrived.

  Julie shoved all her books into her backpack, grabbed her sack lunch, and was heading out the door when I stopped her.

  “Don’t forget your raincoat,” I said, taking it off the coat tree by the door.

  She hated wearing her raincoat. She would rather get soaked from head to toe. The thing is, just a year earlier she had needed that raincoat more than anything else on earth. It was what everyone was wearing, and without it she would have been shamed out of adolescent society. The raincoat cost $100 at Nordstrom, but I found one for less than half that much on eBay. It was probably stolen, or a knockoff, but it saved Julie from disgrace, and she wore it every day, whether there were clouds in the sky or not. And then something happened, some great cosmic shift in society and culture. Raincoats were out; getting drenched was in.

  “Mom,” she whined. “Do I have to?”

  “There’s a sixty percent chance of rain,” I said. “Just take it with you. It’s better to be prepared.”

  “So I get wet,” she said. “Big deal.”

  “Take it,” I said.

  “It’s only water,” she said. “It’s not like it’s acid.”

  I didn’t have the time or patience to argue. I unzipped her backpack, rolled her raincoat into a ball, and shoved the raincoat inside.

  “You’ll thank me later,” I said.

  “You sound like him.” She motioned to Monk. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

  I was about to scold her for her rudeness, but he didn’t notice her disrespectful behavior. He was sitting straight up in his chair, lost in thought, and shrugging his shoulders as if neither one fit in its socket quite right.