“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 took 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.