I gestured to the white cream. “Why is this called a geisha facial?”

“Because Kabuki actors and geishas would use the cream to remove their makeup and replenish their skin,” JoAnne said. “The Chinese have also used it for centuries. I’m using my great-great-great-grandmother’s mixture.”

“What’s in this that isn’t in my jar of Noxzema?”

“Milled nightingale guanine mixed with rice bran,” JoAnne said.

Monk looked up. “You must be mistaken. Guanine is-”

“Bird poop,” she interrupted. “This is made from nightingale droppings.”

Monk froze and his face went almost as white as Mrs. Wurzel’s.

“You’re putting avian excrement on this woman?” He looked at Wurzel. “And you’re letting her?”

“It feels wonderful,” Wurzel said.

“The guanine has been sterilized with ultraviolet light to kill the bacteria,” JoAnne said. “It cleans and revitalizes your skin better than anything else.”

“You’re cleaning people’s skin with excrement instead of soap,” Monk said.

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” JoAnne said. “But yes, I suppose you’re right.”

Monk turned his head and looked at all the other women in the salon with the cream on their faces. He swallowed hard.

“Excuse me, I need to leave,” he said slowly, measuring his words. “Natalie, could I borrow your cell phone, please?”

I handed him my phone and he immediately started dialing as he walked away. He was probably making an emergency call to Dr. Bell. All in all, I thought he was showing admirable restraint. I was prepared for him to tackle JoAnne and wrestle the cream from her grasp.

JoAnne and Mrs. Wurzel watched him go. They didn’t realize they’d gotten off lucky.

“What’s his problem?” Wurzel asked.

“He can’t accept that putting bird poop on your face is good for you. It offends his sensibilities,” I said. “I have to admit I’m skeptical, too.”

“I’m glad I didn’t tell him about our kitty litter exfoliation treatment or our Egyptian cleanse,” JoAnne said.

I could guess what the kitty litter exfoliation was but not the Egyptian option.

“What’s an Egyptian cleanse? Camel pee?”

JoAnne laughed and so did Mrs. Wurzel. It was nice to know that I hadn’t offended them.

“Cow bile, ostrich eggs, and resin,” Joanne said.

“I think I’ll stick with Noxzema,” I said, and turned to Mrs. Wurzel. “If anything occurs to you about Bill Peschel or Paul Braddock, please give us a call at Intertect.”

I didn’t have a card to give her but I figured Intertect was in the book.

“I will,” she said.

I walked outside and found Monk standing across the street. I assumed that he wanted to put some distance between himself, the poop facials, and the flesh-eating carp.

Monk said good-bye to whomever he was talking to and handed me the phone.

“That’s a chamber of horrors.”

“I wouldn’t pay two hundred bucks to have bird crap smeared on my face,” I said. “But maybe it works. Women wouldn’t be coming from all over to have it done if it didn’t.”

“JoAnne must be using some form of mind control on them,” Monk said.

“It’s not mind control. It’s insecurity and futility. They just want to look young and pretty as long as they can and keep the pimples and wrinkles away forever. I’m the same way. I think it’s hardwired into us.”

“Those women are in mortal danger,” Monk said. “It took all of my willpower not to do something about it on the spot.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s a dangerous, volatile situation. JoAnne and her evil minions are practically holding loaded guns to the heads of those women. I didn’t want to cause a panic. So I played it cool.”

“I’m glad that you did, Mr. Monk. I think that taking a relaxed, low-key approach was exactly the right thing to do.”

“I’m leaving it to the professionals,” he said.

“What professionals?”

That’s when I heard the sirens. Within moments, fire trucks pulled up in front of us and firefighters in hazardous materials suits charged into the salon.

“You called a haz-mat team?” It was a rhetorical question, of course, since the team was right there.

“And plenty of backup,” he said.

“Backup?” I asked. “What kind of backup?”

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than two black, windowless vans screeched to a stop behind the fire trucks, the back doors flew open, and dozens of men in full paramilitary gear and carrying automatic weapons spilled out and stormed into the building.

“Who are they?”

“Homeland Security,” Monk said.

Linda Wurzel and the other customers were hustled outside at gunpoint in their bathrobes and white face masks. That would have been embarrassing enough, but then the satellite broadcast vans from the local TV stations began to arrive.

I hustled Monk away before Wurzel or any of the reporters or cops spotted him.

“Why are we leaving?” Monk said. “I want that Red Chinese poop terrorist to know who took her down.”

“I don’t think that Nick Slade would appreciate the publicity,” I said.

“Why not?” Monk said. “Who knows how many people we’ve saved today.”

“Because the women might not see it that way and could sue for intentional and malicious infliction of emotional distress,” I said, thinking in particular of Mrs. Wurzel and her deep pockets. “Intertect could be tied up in litigation for the next ten years.”

Monk froze. I turned to yank him along when I saw that sparkle in his eyes, that goofy grin on his face, and that tell-tale rolling of his shoulders.

He’d solved the mystery.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“You know, don’t you?” I said as we headed back to the Lexus.

“Know what?” he asked.

“Who killed Bill Peschel and Paul Braddock and framed Captain Stottlemeyer for murder.”

“You don’t need me to tell you,” Monk said. “You figured everything out this morning.”

“I haven’t figured out anything,” I said.

“You had a tickle.”

“I don’t know what the tickle meant.”

“Yes, you do,” Monk said. “That’s why you insisted that we meet Linda Wurzel. She is the key to everything.”

“She’s the killer?”

“No, but she’s pure evil.”

We reached the car. I unlocked the doors and we got inside. But we weren’t going anywhere until he explained himself.

“I really hope you’re not just saying that because she has poop facials and fish pedicures.”

“That’s a big, big, big part of it,” Monk said. “Because usually when you meet someone who cleans themselves with excrement and bathes with flesh-eating fish it means that you’re in hell and that person is Satan.”

“As convincing an argument as that is, do you have anything more to go on?”

“What more could anyone possibly need?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Evidence, maybe?”

“That’s all I have. Everything else that I know can’t be proven. She’s the only person who can clear the captain of murder. There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“She’ll never do it,” he said.

I rubbed my forehead. I could feel a Monkache coming on. “But you know Captain Stottlemeyer is innocent.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you know who killed Bill Peschel and Paul Braddock and why.”

“Yes,” Monk said. “And I know who killed Steve Wurzel.”

“He was murdered?”

“Of course he was,” Monk said. “But you already knew that.”

“I did?”

“Peschel sold his business and retired ten years ago, right after Steve Wurzel disappeared on his way to Mendocino,” Monk said. “There was a connection.”

I felt the tickle coming back in my chest as strong as my beating heart.

“What was it?”

“You knew what it was. Linda Wurzel,” Monk said. “Satan’s concubine. But that’s not all that happened ten years ago.”