“You’re projecting. You were uncomfortable watching him replay scenes from his old life but that doesn’t mean that he was suffering,” I said. “He seemed happy to me.”

“If I end up sitting at a card table in my son’s garage believing that I’m in my office, running Homicide again, you have my permission to shoot me.” Stottlemeyer looked back at Carol, sitting at the counter in the kitchen. “I’d better go talk to her. Get some rest, Monk. You look like you need it.”

Monk nodded and we left through the side yard, following a path through a vegetable garden.

I was tired, too. It was a lot of death for one day and it was only the early afternoon.

The first thing I did when we got to Monk’s place was to take that rolling file drawer and wheel it out the door to the Lexus.

“Where are you going with that?” he exclaimed, chasing after me to the street.

“I’m taking it home,” I said.

“But the day isn’t over yet.”

“It is for you,” I said, opening the lift-back on the SUV. “You worked all night, so you get to take the rest of the day off.”

“I don’t want to take the rest of the day off.”

“Too bad,” I said. “You’re going to. You’ll thank me later.”

I collapsed the legs and slid the file drawer right into the car. That rolling drawer was handy. I thought about getting myself one for bringing groceries into the house. Instead of three trips to the car, I could do it in one.

“What about you?” Monk asked.

“What about me?”

“You didn’t work all night,” he said.

I stopped and turned to face him. “I think I deserve an afternoon off, too.”

“Why?”

“On general principle,” I said. “What do you care? Technically, you aren’t the one paying me anymore.”

He did a little double take. “I’m not?”

“Intertect is paying me,” I said.

He smiled. I did, too. I think that was the first moment that he realized how great this job was. So I decided to drive the point home.

“Not only that, Mr. Monk, but they are paying for Dr. Bell, too.”

“So, I could see him four days a week and it would be absolutely free.”

“For you, yes. Not for Slade. But I’m sure he’d consider it a small price to pay for keeping you happy and productive.”

Monk’s smile got bigger. “I know how to spend the rest of the day.”

I groaned. I didn’t have to be a deductive genius to see what he had in mind.

“What makes you think Dr. Bell has any openings today?”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll just sit in his office and catch him between sessions.”

“He’s going to love that,” I said.

“I know,” Monk said.

I dropped Monk off at Dr. Bell’s office, told him to call me when he was ready to be picked up, and I sped off before he could think of a reason for me to spend the afternoon with him in the waiting room.

I went home, left the file drawer in the back of the Lexus, and caught up on some very important loafing around.

You’d think I’d be inured to death after all the years I’d spent working for Monk. And I was, to a degree. I didn’t turn away anymore from the victims of violent death. I could study a corpse alongside Monk, Stottlemeyer, and Disher without flinching or feeling sick. But after seeing a particularly bloody murder and a tragic drowning death I needed to decompress.

All that death was a heavy load, emotionally and visually, to carry around. It wasn’t just the dead bodies that got to me; it was everything that went along with it-like meeting a mobster in jail, facing an unrepentant murderer on her doorstep, and comforting the heartbroken, guilt-stricken loved ones of the dead.

Factor in the day-to-day, minute-to-minute aggravation of smoothing things out for Monk on top of all that and you can see why I just curled up on the couch with a bag of nacho cheese Doritos, a Diet Shasta root beer, and some unread issues of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Entertainment Weekly.

That’s the secret to keeping my svelte figure, by the way: generous amounts of junk food coupled with hours of sitting on my butt.

I engaged in that rigorous workout until Monk called around five for me to take him home.

I insisted on picking up Monk on the street because I didn’t want to face Dr. Bell, who was likely to be very angry with me for dropping Monk in his waiting room and then fleeing for the day.

Monk had an actual skip to his step as he came to the car. I found that pretty amazing given the fact that he hadn’t slept in a day and a half.

“How did it go with Dr. Bell?”

“I think he really enjoyed it,” Monk said. “He pretended to be irritated, but it was just a show for the other patients. He didn’t want them to know that I’m his favorite and that he was counting the minutes in their sessions until he could get back to me.”

“You’re probably right,” I said.

“I usually am,” he said.

I sat on the beach at Paradise Island, letting Daniel Craig slather suntan lotion all over my bare back. The lotion smelled like coconuts and I could feel some grains of sand gently scratching my skin as he applied the cool cream. His hands were rough, but he was using them softly, and I found hands were rough, but he was using them softly, and I found the contrast intoxicatingly exciting. It was all I could do not to purr like a cat. Or maybe I did, but it was drowned out by the sound of the ringing phone.

I grabbed the phone, fully intending to throw it into the ocean, but then I opened my eyes and saw that the beautiful, white sandy beach that stretched out into eternity was actually the pillow beside my head.

“Hello?” I said, my consciousness still half in San Francisco, half on the beach with Daniel Craig.

“I’m glad you’re still up,” Monk said. “I was thinking about those files.”

I glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was two twenty-four a.m. I wasn’t in the Bahamas anymore.

“Go to bed, Mr. Monk,” I said.

“You know what would be fun? If you brought those files back to my apartment.”

“You want me to drive over to your house at two thirty in the morning and deliver a bunch of case files so you can work all night again?”

“You’re exaggerating,” Monk said. “It’s two twenty-six.”

“I’m going back to the beach,” I said, and hung up. I put my face in the warm spot on my pillow, closed my eyes, and tried to transport myself back to Paradise Island.

The phone rang again.

I opened my eyes, rolled over, reached behind the nightstand, and yanked the phone cord out of the wall. The phone was silenced. In my room but not the rest of the house.

A moment or two later my door flew open and Julie stood there in her nightgown, holding her portable phone.

“It’s Mr. Monk,” she said. “He wants me to drive to his apartment with some files.”

“Tell him no and turn off your phone,” I said, and put the pillow over my head.

“I’ll be glad to take the files to him,” she said. “If I can drive the Lexus.”

I tossed the pillow aside and sat up in bed. “Do you actually think that I’m going to let a seventeen-year-old girl drive alone in the city at two thirty in the morning?”

I heard some squawking from the phone, like one of those adult voices from a Charlie Brown cartoon. Julie held the phone up to her ear, listened for a few seconds, and then covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

“Mr. Monk says you could come, too. We can make toast and have a party.”

I motioned to her to bring me the phone. She handed it to me. I turned the phone off and gave it back to her.

“Good night,” I said.

“How am I supposed to get back to sleep now?” she whined.

“You can count Lexuses.”