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imagine.”
    â€œExactly.”
    In the midst of all of our deep discussion, with dozens of people milling around, I hadn’t even noticed A.J. Perhaps he had just arrived. Like most of the men, he was in a black suit. Monk was the exception, of course. His wardrobe for a funeral was the same as for lounging in front of the TV, a light checkered shirt under a dark brown jacket.
    Speaking of Adrian Monk, he had now managed to remove Judge Oberlin’s memorial photo from a tripod by the podium and had propped up the awkwardly sized frame on the lower, closed section of the black coffin. I could see his eyes darting from the photo to the judge’s remains and back again. His expression was serious and focused. People were starting to notice. A few were pointing curiously at the man in the brown jacket and the propped-up photo.
    My first reaction, based on many years of experience, was,
Oh, no. Please don’t let him announce to the gathering of loved ones that the judge had been murdered. Please don’t let him say this man in the coffin isn’t the real judge at all but an impostor. Please don’t let him say the judge was a transgendered woman who had lived her whole life as a man. Please don’t let him say the body in the coffin is really a dummy. . . .
    â€œMonk! What the hell are you doing?” This was A.J. speaking. He had marched directly up to my partner, their noses separated by mere inches, as confrontational as you could get. “Don’t you know how to behave in public? Put that picture back. This is a funeral.”
    â€œThe funeral of a murdered man,” Monk muttered. Believe it or not, I was relieved. It could have been so much worse.
    A.J. shook his head in disgust. “Typical. Trying to steal thespotlight from a dead man. You’re an embarrassment of a human being, you know that?”
    â€œYou’re right,” Monk agreed, with a pitiful nod. “I am an embarrassment. I wish I was less embarrassing, believe me. But that doesn’t change the fact that Judge Oberlin was murdered.”
    â€œHe wasn’t murdered, you self-important little freak.”
    Captain Stottlemeyer was on this in a second. I was right on his heels. Between the two of us, we managed to get them away from each other’s throats and into a corner. People were looking, but I hoped we still had it under control.
    â€œMy hearing may be going, Monk,” the captain whispered, “but I can still hear you say
murder
across a crowded room. Are you sure, old friend?”
    â€œHe was poisoned. A heavy metal. Arsenic. Maybe thallium.”
    â€œHe died of dengue fever,” I said, making the obvious objection.
    â€œNo,” countered Monk. “The judge had contracted dengue fever, which is often asymptomatic, sometimes painful, and only rarely develops into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.”
    A.J. laughed. “Hemorrhagic? What are you, some sort of expert of everything that causes death?”
    â€œI am,” said Monk. “I have a list if you want to see. I’ve been compiling it since I was six. Fifty-two pages long, single-spaced, and I’m adding to it all the time. But that’s not my point. What the judge died from was cardiac arrest. Quite a few things can make the heart stop. In this particular case it was poison.”
    A.J. was about to respond, but Stottlemeyer stopped himwith one of his patented looks. A second later the captain’s gaze shifted to the body in the casket and the photo propped up on top. “Are you talking about Mees’ lines?” he asked.
    â€œSee for yourself,” said Monk. And as subtly as possible, the four of us inched our way back to the open casket. It probably wasn’t that subtle.
    For those of you unfamiliar with Mees’ lines, also called Aldrich-Mees’ lines, also called leukonychia striata (I confess, I had to look that one up), they’re the white bumpy ridges that