“You don’t have to take all your food at once,” I said when he came to the table. “You can go back for more as often as you like.”
“Cool,” Monk said.
He set down his plate and went back to the buffet for another one, which he filled up with an omelet, pastries, pancakes, smoked fish, bagels, crepes, and Grape-Nuts cereal.
“Are you sure you have enough food?” I said.
“I have a high metabolism.”
“If you eat all of that, you’ll be ready to go into hibernation for the winter.”
Monk devoured his breakfast, taking each bite from a different item. He was channel surfing, only with food. He didn’t care if his lox was mixed with his Grape-Nuts or his pancakes with his pastries. He washed it all down with four cups of Kona coffee, jacking himself up on caffeine on top of his mind-altering Dioxynl high.
I was so caught up in watching the spectacle that I almost forgot to eat my own modest breakfast of pancakes, pineapple, and yogurt.
We’d finished eating and were about to go to the lobby and check out of the hotel when Lieutenant Kealoha strode up to our table.
“I was hoping I’d catch you before you left,” Kealoha said.
“Not to be rude,” I said, “but haven’t we said goodbyes to each other twice already?”
“I wanted to give you the good news personally. We raided the body shop last night. The truck that hit you was there, and so was the man with the goatee that you described. We found millions of dollars’ worth of cocaine.”
“All right!” Monk yelled, raising his fists in the air in victory and dancing around the table. “That’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. Oh, yeah!”
Kealoha stared at him as he danced. “Not only that, but we discovered a crop of marijuana in the field behind the shop. It’s the biggest drug arrest in Kauai history. There’s already talk around the station that I’m going to be promoted to captain.”
“Give me five.” Monk held up his hand. Kealoha slapped it. Monk slapped back. “You deserve it, man.”
“Maybe if I solve Martin Kamakele’s murder, they’ll make me chief.”
“Wish I could help you there, bruddah, but the Monk doesn’t know who killed him. What would you like from the buffet?”
“Nothing, thanks.”
“I’ll get some more food and you can eat it off my plate. They’ll never know.”
“Really, I’m fine,” Kealoha said.
“You’ll change your mind when you see the grub.” Monk got up and hurried to the buffet, piling his plate high with bacon.
Kealoha looked at me. “Is he on drugs?”
I nodded.
“Have a nice flight,” Kealoha said, and walked away.
I won’t torture you with the details of our flight home. It might not be torture for you to hear, but it would be for me to recall it. The horror began when we were in the security line and Monk started pulling out the bacon and pastries he’d stuffed into his pockets at breakfast. Things only got worse and more embarrassing from there. Let’s just say that Monk isn’t welcome to fly on Hawaiian Airlines again.
After five hours in the air with Monk, I was glad to be home. Julie loved her Red Dirt shirt, although my mom found it almost as disgusting as Monk did.
My mother had heard all about what happened at Candace’s wedding. Apparently the news had spread throughout the high society of Monterey and San Francisco. I felt terrible for Candace.
“When will you learn not to take Monk to weddings?” my mother said.
“Would it have been better if Candace married a married man?”
“I’m sure the situation would have resolved itself more quietly, and with more dignity, than what happened at the wedding.”
“You mean it would have ended up being just as disastrous, if not worse for poor Candace, but at least it could have been kept quiet.”
“Her parents may never come back from safari,” my mother said.
Julie gave me a fashion show that night of all the clothes my mother had bought her while I was gone. By the time it was over, I was so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open. I kissed Julie and Mom good night and went to bed.
I was awakened by the phone at nine A.M. sharp. I knocked the phone over reaching for the receiver and nearly fell out of bed trying to pick it up off the floor.
“What?” I snapped into the receiver.
“Where are you?” It was Monk.
“Obviously I’m at home. You just called me here. Some detective you are.” I’m surly when I’m tired and still half-asleep.
“Why aren’t you here?”
“It’s my first day back,” I said. “I assumed I had the day off.”
“You just had a week’s vacation in Hawaii. How much more rest could you possibly need?”
“I’m recovering from the flight,” I said.
“You were sitting the whole time. I don’t see what’s so difficult about that.”
I restrained myself. My job was difficult, but I wanted to keep it.
“I’ll stop by this afternoon,” I said.
“That’s too late. I need you now. I have work to do.”
“You have a case already?”
“Of course,” Monk said. “I have to expose Dylan Swift as a fraud.”
“Can’t you expose him tomorrow?”
“He’s taping his show today at eleven at the Belmont Hotel, and I want to be there,” Monk said. “And then there’s Martin Kamakele’s murder to deal with.”
“What can you do about it from here?”
“I can solve it,” Monk said. “Today, in fact, if you can drag yourself out of bed.”
The low-lying fog over San Francisco swallowed the buildings of the Financial District, obscuring the upper floors from view and blotting out the sun, leaving the streets windy, cold, and gray.
But San Franciscans like me were used to mornings like this and never lost hope that before the day was out, either winds off the Pacific would blow the fog away or the sun would burn it off. If neither happened, so be it. The fog gave the city—and, by extension, all of us who lived there—character. Character meant more to San Franciscans than sunlight anyway.
The
