Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii

in no small measure by the fact that he was incredibly good-looking. Today he wore a casual Tommy Bahama aloha shirt and tan slacks. His silk shirt was open just enough to show off his hairless chest and his brawny pectoral muscles. But his most prominent feature was his matinee-idol cleft chin, reminiscent of both Kirk Douglas and Dudley Do-Right. The question of whether his chin was natural or man-made was debated more often, and with more intensity, by his critics than whether or not he was a genuine psychic.

“Who is he?” Monk asked.

I’d long since stopped being shocked by Monk’s total ignorance of American popular culture.

“Dylan Swift,” I said. “He talks to dead people and relays their messages to their loved ones.”

“That can’t be done,” Monk said.

“Tell that to the millions of people who watch his show and buy his books.”

Swift moved through the crowd as if pulled along by some invisible force. The garden was like a giant Ouija board, and he was the game piece in the center.

“I’m getting something…. It’s a name. It beginswith the letter ‘G’…yes, I clearly see a ‘G,’” Swift said. He closed his eyes, cocked his head, and listened to something. “’G’ could be someone sitting here or it could be the name of someone close to one of you who passed on.”

A man jerked his arm into the air and waved it around, bobbing excitedly in his seat in front of Swift as if he’d just won a prize. He was in his sixties, a tubby little man in a bright aloha shirt and pleated shorts that he buckled practically at his chest. He wore sandals and white tube socks that nearly went up to his knobby, pale knees.

“My name is Gary,” the man said, his double chin wobbling. “Could it be a message for me?”

“Yes, it is for you,” Swift said. “Someone from the other side is whispering to me. A woman who was very close to you.”

“My sister?”

“I’m sensing her name began with an M or an E, or perhaps contained both letters.”

“Margaret,” Gary said. “You’re talking to Margaret?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Swift said. “She died recently.”

“About three years ago,” Gary said.

“Margaret looked out for her little brother,” Swift said.

“I was her older brother,” Gary said.

“Yes, but she was still very protective of you, wasn’t she? As if you were her little brother. In fact, she saved your life once, didn’t she?”

Gary nodded enthusiastically and squeezed his wife’s hand. She was shaped just like him and dressed almost identically.

“When we were kids, we were fishing on the lake and I fell out of the boat,” Gary said. “I got tangled up in the anchor line and almost drowned.”

“Yes, and you would have, but she was there for you then and wants you to know she’s still looking out for you now,” Swift said.

I turned to go, but Monk was transfixed. I guess curiosity was one aspect of his personality no drug could deaden.

“She’s tried very hard to touch you from her realm,” Swift said. “Margaret says you know when. She says it was in that moment of your darkest despair. When you got the news you hoped you’d never hear.”

“You mean when I got the cancer diagnosis?”

Swift nodded. “That voice you heard in the back of your mind, the one that said, ‘This isn’t my time to die; I will fight,’ that was her whispering to you. She wanted you to know you were going to be all right. And you are, aren’t you?”

“I’m in complete remission.” Gary began to sob. “Yes, I heard her. Tell her I heard. Tell her she gave me the strength to fight.”

Swift put his hand on Gary’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring squeeze. “Margaret knows that. And she wants you to know she loves you now and for eternity from the other side.”

I applauded along with the rest of the audience. Swift lifted his head up and met Monk’s gaze for a moment. Monk didn’t look away. I’d seen that expression on Monk’s face before; it was one he usually reserved for men he was intent on proving were killers. It was an unspoken challenge: You can’t fool me.

The psychic was gravitating toward Monk. The last thing I wanted was Monk, in his drugged-out state, confronting Dylan Swift on national television.

“Maybe we should go, Mr. Monk,” I said, taking him by the arm and leading him away.

“The man is a fraud,” Monk said.

“Nobody has been able to prove it yet,” I said.

“I could,” Monk said.

“You’re on vacation, remember?” I said. “You’re here to have a good time.”

“I’d enjoy it,” Monk said, but he tagged along with me anyway.

I looked over my shoulder and saw Swift watching us go, a bemused expression on his face.

I would have liked to see Monk swimming.

I would have liked to have some pictures of it, too, as evidence to show Stottlemeyer and Disher that it really happened. I couldn’t imagine Monk getting into a pool crowded with half-naked, sweaty, lotion-slathered adults and squealing kids with runny noses and full bladders.

But I missed that historic event. Instead I went to my best friend’s rehearsal dinner. As much as I love Candace, I would have preferred to be in the pool with Monk.

None of her relatives nor any of Brian’s were among the guests, just two dozen of their mutual friends from L.A. Her parents were on safari and couldn’t be bothered to adjust their plans for something as insignificant as their daughter’s wedding. Brian was an orphan whose parents died in a car accident, so he had neither parents nor relatives to invite.

There wasn’t much to rehearse, either. The wedding was going to be quick and casual, out on the luau garden tomorrow morning. All I really had to do was stand beside Candace at the altar and remember to give her Brian’s ring.

The dinner was a Hawaiian buffet served in an open-air restaurant on the lagoon, the terrace lit by torches. I’d tell you all about the food