Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii (18 page)

With the investigation of Helen Gruber’s murder behind us, there was nothing standing in the way of my enjoying everything the island had to offer. I changed into my bikini, grabbed a towel and my Kauai guidebook, and headed for the beach, leaving Monk and Kealoha with a quick good-bye as I raced out the door.

I went to the Grand Kiahuna Poipu activity hut to check out some snorkeling equipment and buy a Ziploc bag of fish food. While I was there, I made reservations for Monk and myself to attend the resort’s Sunday-night luau.

The best place for snorkeling, or so the guidebook told me, was a secluded little cove just past the resort property and right in front of the ruins of a condo complex decimated by Hurricane Iniki.

The condo complex was laid out in a staple shape, the courtyard in the center choked with weeds as tall as trees, the dry pool filled with sand, rusted chaise longues, and enormous chunks of concrete. The oceanfacing units were entirely stripped away; only the iron skeleton remained.

The tiny beach in front of the ruins was empty, too cluttered with black boulders and concrete blocks to be much of a tanning spot. The water in the cove was shallow and calm and filled with lava rocks, creating lots of nooks and crannies for tropical fish to dart around in.

I put on my snorkel gear and walked backward into the sea until I was about chest-deep. The water was warm and perfectly clear. I could see scores of colorful fish. I dove and paddled out to sea.

After that, I lost all track of time. It was as if I were swimming in the aquarium in the waiting room of my daughter’s dentist’s office. I half expected to go around the next rock and see the enormous face of some kid with braces staring at me, his nose pressed against the glass.

All I had to do was throw out a few kernels of food, and out of nowhere I was swarmed by fish tickling my skin and poking against my mask.

I thought about nothing, my mind a complete blank as I floated along, dispensing food, admiring one brightly colored fish after another.

In some ways, it was like being in a sensory-deprivation tank. It was just me and the fish and the gentle current. I was in a deeply relaxing snorkel trance that wasn’t broken until I tossed out some food and an eel shot out of the rocks and into my face like a jack-in-the-box.

I screamed and jerked upright, scrambling for footing, sucking in water, and scraping my left leg across the razor-sharp surface of a lava rock.

It was only as I stood there, coughing and bleeding, my mask askew, that I realized I was in only about three feet of water.

Still coughing, I staggered back toward the beach, sat down in the surf, and pulled off my flippers. As the water lapped against the two-inch-long cut below my knee, I experienced for the first time what it really means to have salt rubbed in a wound. It was like being scrubbed with a loofah made of glass shards.

While I was drying myself off, careful not to get blood on the towel, I noticed how tight and itchy my back was. I couldn’t see it, but I knew I had a nasty sunburn. How many hours had I been out there, floating facedown, my back cooking in the sun? I wouldn’t be wearing my bikini top again that trip. It was going to be T-shirts for me for the rest of the week.

But despite my discomfort, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt better or more truly well rested. I gathered up my things and trudged back to the resort.

Monk was leading a trio of maids out the front door when I came in through the back patio.

“See you tomorrow. If you have any questions before then, don’t hesitate to call,” Monk said, waving at them as they left with their carts, vacuums, buckets, and mops. “Aloha.”

When he turned around, I expected him to avert his gaze away from my shocking nakedness. But instead he hurried over to me, looking at my left leg.

“What happened to you?”

“I was snorkeling and scratched my leg on a rock. It’s no biggie.”

“Not if you enjoy infection, gangrene, and amputation.”

“It’s not that bad, Mr. Monk.”

“I want you to sit down and put your leg up on a chair.”

He took me by the arm and led me to the kitchen table. As I was sitting down, he noticed my back. He gasped. Based on his reaction, you’d think the flesh had been stripped away and he was looking at my exposed spine.

“I got a little sunburned,” I said. “It happens to everybody here.”

“Why didn’t you just douse yourself with gasoline and light a match?” He pulled out a chair and I lifted my injured leg up onto it. “Don’t move.”

Monk hurried to his room and came back a moment later with a small gym bag, which he set on the tabletop. He dragged a chair beside me, took a pair of rubber surgical gloves from the bag, and put them on.

“What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“Haven’t you ever seen a shaving kit before?”

He pulled out iodine, antiseptic cream, cotton swabs, gauze bandages, tweezers, scissors, tape, and enough medical supplies to stock a small hospital.

“You brought all that just for shaving?”

“I might nick myself,” Monk said.

“Or get shot in the chest and have to remove the bullet yourself.”

He soaked a swab with iodine, picked it up with the tweezers, and then gently dabbed my wound. The iodine stung again, but not as bad as the salt water.

“I’m sorry,” Monk said, glancing up at me. “But it has to be done.”

“It’s okay.”

Monk held my leg with one hand and tended to my cut with the other. While he dressed the wound, I watched him. I was deeply moved by this simple gesture, by his tenderness. Gone was any awkwardness he felt about my nakedness. His concern for me trumped his own anxieties. Well, most of them anyway. He still wouldn’t touch me without gloves.

“What have you been up to while I was snorkeling?” I asked him.

“Showing the maids how to vacuum, mop, and dust,” Monk said. “We had a lot of fun.”

“You’ve been doing that since I left?”

“I’m on vacation, so I’m cutting loose, being a little wild.”

He finished bandaging my cut and, using the tweezers, put all the used swabs into a Ziploc bag, which he sealed and put into another bag.

“Turn around,” he said.

“Why?”

“So I can put some cream on your back,” Monk said.

“You’d do that?”

He went to the kitchen, got some paper towels, and wound them around his gloved right hand until it looked like he was wearing an oven mitt. “If my hair were on fire, would you put out the flames? Would you throw me a life preserver if I were drowning?”

“Of course.”

“It’s the same thing.” Monk came back, squeezed some lotion out of a tube onto my shoulders, and started to rub it in with the paper towel.

It felt as if he were using a blowtorch. I yelped in pain and jerked away from him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You might as well be using sandpaper. My skin is very sensitive, especially when it’s burned. If you’re going to do this for me, you’re going to have to use your hands.”

“You mean you want me to touch your body?”

“You can keep your gloves on if that will make you more comfortable.”

Monk went to the kitchen and got a trash bag. He unwound the paper towels, stuffed them into the trash bag, tied it shut, and came back to his seat. He squeezed some more cream onto my shoulders, took a deep breath, and began to massage it into my skin.

I could see his reflection off the glass tabletop and the disgusted scowl on his face. It wasn’t touching me that he found repulsive (at least, I hope not). The gloves weren’t preventing him from feeling the greasy consistency of the cream between his fingers. He didn’t like it. But he was doing a good job. The cream cooled my skin and immediately soothed the sting. And his light, tentative massage didn’t feel bad, either.

“That feels good,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Monk said. “I’ll stop.”

“No, no, go on. I thought making me feel better was the idea.”

“I’m providing medical attention.”

“Right. That’s exactly what it feels like, good medical attention.”

“I’m glad,” Monk said.

He rubbed the cream in some more.

“I’m planning on spending the day tomorrow sightseeing and buying some souvenirs. Maybe see Spouting Horn and Waimea Canyon or go in the other direction and see Hanalei,” I said. “Since you’re finished investigating, you ought to come with me.”

“I’m not finished.”

“You caught Helen’s killers,” I said.

“But I haven’t caught Swift.”

I turned around. “What are you talking about?”

Monk held his hands in front of him as if they were covered with manure. “I’m going to reveal him for the fraud that he is.”

“Please, Mr. Monk, don’t.”

Grimacing, Monk took one lotion-covered glove off with his other gloved hand. “He’s a con man. He takes advantage of grief and loss for his own personal gain.”

“Maybe. But he helped me. He could help you, too.”

“I don’t need his kind of help.” Monk put the glove in a bag and took a fresh glove out of his shaving kit. “He doesn’t talk to dead people. He tricked you. That’s what he does.”

I considered whether or not to tell Monk what Swift said about Trudy, but I decided it would only strengthen Monk’s resolve to ruin the man. So that left me with just one option.

“I’m asking you as a favor to me,” I said. “Please just leave him alone.”

Monk looked at me for a long time. “I’ll do it for you, not for him.”

I gave him a kiss on the forehead. “Thank you, Mr. Monk.”

“Now would you do a favor for me?”

“Sure.”

“Could you put this glove on my hand?” Monk said.

I took the fresh glove from him and pulled it over his left hand, which he then used to take off the dirty glove from his right hand. He disposed of the lotion-covered glove in another bag, then removed the new glove from his left hand and put it in a bag, too. It was a strangely fascinating process to watch. I could have taken his gloves off for him, but to be honest, it didn’t occur to me and he didn’t ask.

“Do you go through all of that when you shave?”

“Of course I do,” Monk said. “Me and every man in America.”

We ordered dinner from room service. Our meals were delivered personally by Martin Kamakele, the manager of hotel operations. It wasn’t because we were VIPs who deserved extra-special attention. It was because Kamakele was upset that Monk kept his maids for three hours, putting them way behind in their work on the other bungalows and forcing the hotel to pay them overtime.

Kamakele implored Monk not distract the maids from their work anymore.

Monk agreed on one condition: On Monday, Kamakele would gather the entire cleaning staff together and let Monk instruct them in the history, theory, and proper handling of the dust rag, the mop, the broom, and the vacuum. Kamakele reluctantly gave in.

“You’ll thank me later,” Monk said.

We ate our dinner out on the patio and watched the sunset. Afterward Monk insisted on playing another game of peanuts. Since I was playing on a full stomach, I managed not to eat my pieces this time. He still easily beat me. I put one peanut back in its shell, but that was only because I cheated. I marked a shell with my fingernail so I could find it later. I think Monk knew, but he must have let me get away with it out of pity.

I spent the rest of the night going over the guidebook and a map of the island, figuring out all the things we were going to do on Sunday and learning facts about interesting sights.

First thing the next morning, we got in the car and set off for Waimea Canyon, which Mark Twain called “the Grand Canyon of the Pacific” because, really, what other big canyon is there to compare it to? Can you think of one? I can’t. I’m sure there are others, but they aren’t widely known.

Waimea Canyon is 3,600 feet deep, ten miles long, and a mile wide. It was a sixty-mile drive along the coast and up a winding road into the mountains to get there, but I didn’t mind, even though my tender back burned from the contact with the seat. The scenery was spectacular. We saw craggy peaks, lush meadows, golden beaches, and the red Waimea River. Legend says the river runs red with the blood of Komali’u, the daughter of a tribal chief who was killed atop a waterfall by a lover she had spurned.

I thought Monk would like that story, maybe argue that someone else killed her, or that she was murdered somewhere else and dropped in the river. But he wasn’t paying attention. He was too freaked out. The higher we climbed into the mountains, the more anxious he became.

Monk couldn’t get out of the car at the first Waimea Canyon lookout spot. He sat there hugging himself, his eyes squeezed tightly shut, as if he were actually standing on the precipice instead of safely buckled in his seat, a good ten yards away from the cliff’s edge. He couldn’t even see the gorge from where he was.

So I got out, walked to the railing, and took in the view by myself. Instead of being all dry and dusty like the Grand Canyon, it was covered with dense green growth, and I could see a waterfall across the expanse. I wish I could tell you more, but I got only about sixty seconds to absorb the sight before Monk started honking the horn in a panic.

That was my one and only glimpse of the canyon, outside of the photos in my guidebook. To keep Monk from hyperventilating, I turned the car around and drove back down to the flatlands of the town of Waimea. By the time we got there and parked in front of a row of shops, Monk was calm again, though a little weak-kneed when he got out of the car.

“I think I have altitude sickness,” Monk said.

“You were only up there for a few minutes. Your apartment in San Francisco is higher above sea level than that.”

“I know. That’s why I try not to reach for anything on a high shelf at home.”

We were standing in front of a gift shop. T-shirts hung in the window, and a postcard carousel propped open the front door.

“I’m going inside to look for something for Julie,” I said. “Maybe you’d like to rearrange the postcards by geographical location, size, or paper stock.”

“I want to get her something too.”

We went inside. The tiny store was stuffed with all kinds of cheap T-shirts, bathing suits, shorts, hats, wraps, and beach towels. They also sold videos of island sights, CDs of Hawaiian music, jewelry, Kona coffee, taro chips, macadamia nuts and cookies, suntan lotion, throwaway sunglasses, and hula dolls.

I was looking for something unique that Julie wouldn’t be able to find at home. I was wandering around the store, looking at this and that, when I stumbled on their selection of Red Dirt shirts. I was sorting through them, hunting for one in Julie’s size, when Monk joined me again with a package in his hand.

“I found something for her,” he said.

I looked at what he was holding. “You’re getting her Q-tips?”

“Hawaiian Q-tips,” he said.

“Those are the same ones she can get at home,” I said.

“But I’m buying them here.”

“You should get her something uniquely Hawaiian, like one of these Red Dirt shirts. They’re made right here on Kauai.”

I told Monk the story behind the shirts. The story was almost as unusual as the shirts themselves. Hurricane Iniki destroyed a guy’s T-shirt factory, soaking his entire inventory in water and mud. But it wasn’t the total disaster it first appeared to be. He discovered he liked the unique, dyed color the mud gave his clothes. So instead of throwing out his ruined stock, he made dirt-stained garments his new business.

“You’re buying her a dirty shirt?” Monk asked incredulously.

“They’re dyed. They aren’t caked with mud. There’s a difference.”

“No, there isn’t.”

“People dye shirts with all kinds of things. They’ve got shirts here dyed with coffee, beer, hemp, chocolate, and wine. It’s fun stuff.”

“It’s disgusting. What do they do here? Wear a shirt for a week and then sell it?”

“These aren’t used shirts,” I said. “They’ve never been worn.”

Monk suddenly became intensely aware of all the dyed shirts around him. He drew himself in, careful not to brush any part of his body against one of the shirts, which wasn’t easy in the cramped store.

“Why would you want to buy your daughter clothes soaked with beer, sweat, and vomit?”

“I didn’t say anything about sweat and vomit. Do you see any clothes dyed with sweat and vomit?”

“They probably save those for special occasions,” Monk said. “Like human sacrifices.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a bit?”

“We’re talking about people who buy dirty clothes and eat in restaurants crawling with lizards.” Monk lowered his voice, careful not be heard by the Hawaiian proprietor. “Cannibalism is hardly out of the question.”

I took two Red Dirt shirts off the display and held them up to Monk. “Which do you like best? The T-shirt or the tank top?”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

Monk backed away and headed for the door, weaving his way cautiously through the aisles as if a shirt might leap out and attack him.

My cell phone rang. I reached into my purse and answered it.

“Hey, Natalie,” Captain Stottlemeyer said. “How’s the vacation going?”

I glanced at Monk, who was standing outside, taking deep breaths.

“It’s been great, Captain. We’re staying one step ahead of the cannibals. Monk even managed to solve a murder.”

“So I’ve heard,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Lieutenant Kealoha called you?”

“No, I read about it in the
Chronicle
. And
USA Today
. And I heard it on the radio driving into work.”

“But Mr. Monk hasn’t talked to anybody about it.”

“Dylan Swift has. When did Monk start working with psychics?”

I looked outside again. Monk had started reorganizing the postcard display. He wasn’t going to like this news. I didn’t like it much, either.

“He hasn’t,” I said.

“You wouldn’t know that from listening to Swift. They talked to him in the ER, where he was recovering from being possessed by the spirits who helped Monk.”

I felt betrayed, used, and pissed off. “What did Lieutenant Kealoha say?”

“He didn’t talk to anybody, as far as I know, but a couple of his uniforms did, and they back up Swift’s story. They said he spoke in tongues or something. You don’t know about this?”

“We haven’t read a newspaper or turned on a TV since we got here.”

“But you were there, right? Is any of what Swift says true?”

“Yes and no,” I said, then gave Stottlemeyer a short rundown on our encounters with Swift. “Monk thinks he’s a publicity-hungry fraud.”

“Monk is right.”

“I was kind of hoping he wasn’t this time.”

“I know how you feel,” the captain said. “It would do wonders for my self-esteem if he got things wrong once in a while.”

“This wasn’t about my self-esteem. It was more about wish fulfillment.”

“They’re one and the same for me.”

I thanked the captain for the call, bought a Red Dirt shirt and a shark-tooth necklace for Julie, and went outside, where Monk was still occupied with the postcards.

“You bought one of those disgusting shirts, didn’t you?” Monk said.

“I had them triple-bag it and tie it shut. I’ll put the bag in the trunk and wipe my hands with a disinfectant wipe.”

“Aren’t you worried that if she wears that shirt to school someone might report you to Child Protective Services?”

“I’ll take the risk.”

“I’ll testify as a character witness.”

“Thanks, I appreciate that,” I said.

I put the bag in the trunk, we got in the car, and I started driving us back toward Poipu.

“You know how I asked you to do me a favor and not go after Dylan Swift?”

Monk nodded.

“Forget it,” I said. “Get him.”

“What changed your mind?”

“He did.” I told Monk about my conversation with Stottlemeyer and Swift’s claims that he helped Monk solve Helen Gruber’s murder.

“I’ll go to the taping of his show today,” Monk said, “and reveal him for the fraud that he is.”

“It’s Sunday, Mr. Monk. I don’t think he tapes today.”

“I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Martin Kamakele told us that Swift was going back to San Francisco on Monday.”

“Then I’ll catch him there,” Monk said.

“You may not have to wait that long. I didn’t tell you this before, but Swift said last night that he has a message for you.”

“What is it?”

Before I could tell him, something flashed in my peripheral vision. I looked to my left and saw a truck, its gigantic bumper gleaming like fangs, running the red light into the intersection and speeding right at me.

I didn’t even have a chance to scream.

When the truck clipped the front of our car, the steering-wheel air bag punched into my face like a boxer’s glove, and everything began spinning. It was like being in a carnival Tilt-A-Whirl while being smothered with a pillow.

When I opened my eyes, my ears were ringing, my chest was sore where the seat belt yanked against my flesh, and my face stung as if I’d been slapped on both cheeks. But I was alive and all the departments of my body were reporting back that everything was okay.

Monk lifted his face from the dashboard air bag as if he’d been startled awake from a nap. He seemed dazed but unhurt.

We both looked at each other without saying a word, then looked out the cracked windshield.

The car had spun completely around and we were facing the way we had come. The front end was smashed and the truck that clipped us was gone. People were beginning to stream out of the shops and restaurants and into the street to see what had happened.

“I think I’ve had enough sightseeing for today,” Monk said.