Free Mr. Monk Is Open for Business by Hy Conrad Page B

busy to open.”
    “Glad you’re busy. Are you and Adrian working the mass murder downtown? It’s all over the news.” She also called him Adrian, and has for much longer than I have.
    “Triple homicide,” I corrected her. “Yes, we are. But I should save it. We don’t want to run out of things to talk about.”
    “We never run out,” she corrected me. It was true. The two of us could talk and talk for hours, like girlfriends.
    After hanging up, I walked back to the officer at the door to Sarabeth’s room. He was halfway through an apple andheld it in his mouth while he wiped his hands and got up to unlock the door.
    It was during those few seconds that I glanced through the protective glass panel, a feature only designed into doors of the ICU rooms. I was at just the right angle to see the bed. Monk was standing there, his back to me, straightening the sheets and tucking in the bedspread. I could see Sarabeth, waiting patiently for him to finish, staring off into space. There was something about the look on her face. Something . . .
    I know that in retrospect, when you look back at an event and play it over in your mind, you often think you sensed something wrong when you really didn’t. I think we all have the ability to reinvent memories to suit what we later find out to be the truth. Then we smile wisely and say we’d had this premonition.
    But I swear to you, even then, I knew something was wrong.

CHAPTER TEN
    Mr. Monk and the Intern
    I t started out as one of our better Teeger nights.
    I was late arriving home. Daniela had called at the last minute and talked me into an AA meeting. I felt I had to go, and not just because she was a client on a case that we were doing absolutely squat about. I liked Daniela, and I found the meetings soothing and inspiring. Plus, I’d been consistently unable to convince her that I wasn’t an alcoholic.
    The misunderstanding happened months ago when Monk and I accidentally attended an AA meeting while he was trying to score some individually wrapped oatmeal cookies. Ever since, the more I tried to deny my alcoholism, the more convinced Daniela became that I was in denial.
    Julie’s car was in the driveway when I pulled up. Miraculously, there was a spot at the curb, so I grabbed it. From the moment I opened the door, I felt like I was in an Indian restaurant. The house was full of the unmistakable scent of curry. Red and yellow scarves were draped over the reading lamps to give the living room some soft Eastern ambiance. Julie must have dredged up an old Ravi Shankar CD from some bottom drawer somewhere, because the monotonous strains of sitar music were wafting through the house. (Truestory: I once had a Ravi Shankar CD playing for two hours before I realized there was a flaw in the disc and the same song was playing over and over. It was almost impossible to tell.)
    “Are you doing an internship in India?” I called out. “Is this your way of breaking the news?”
    Julie’s laugh was coming from the kitchen. “I was just in the mood,” she said. “And the online recipe looked easy. I didn’t realize how much chopping was involved. I think I have enough onions for an army. I hope it wasn’t a typo.”
    I joined her, washed my hands, grabbed a knife, and followed instructions, chopping carrots and mint and measuring out fifteen different spices.
    I don’t cook every night, especially not time-consuming dishes. But I welcomed the chance to do something simple and manual while we caught up on each other’s lives. Julie offered me a glass of my own Chardonnay, but I turned it down, perhaps as a tribute to Daniela and the meeting I’d just attended.
    An hour and a half later, when we were sitting down to our shrimp curry, we had gone through boyfriend stories—hers, not mine, which don’t exist—the sagas from Summit, and a brief outline of the current cases. Julie has been hearing Monk cases since she was eleven, so what might have seemed like crazy