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my appetite for Monk’s kitchen, where I would perfectly toast his muffin, cover it evenly with one ounce of butter and get him on board with me, ready to tackle this new case.
    Monk and I were full partners now. Almost. The exam was still more than a week away. But I had every right to bring in a case and have a theory about it. True, we didn’t have an employer, per se. But there have been plenty of cases where we didn’t start with an employer and still got paid. Besides, this was personal.
    I used my key to get in, just like in the old days. And, just like in the old days, Monk was at the kitchen sink, using Clorox and rubber gloves and a bottle brush to clean out the garbage disposal. He didn’t blink an eye to see me walk in, as if the last few months of upheaval had never happened.
    “Why do you clean the garbage disposal?” I said instead of hello. “You never use it.”
    “Of course not. Garbage disposals are full of, you know, garbage. They’re filthy.”
    “Not if you never use them.”
    “It’s still a garbage disposal. It’s like saying a pig isn’t a pig because it’s had a bath. Natalie, stand back. You’re within ten feet of the switch. What in heaven’s name are you thinking?”
    “Sorry.”
    Luckily, the refrigerator and the toaster were twelve and sixteen feet away, respectively, and I could safely make our breakfast without endangering life and limb. “Mr. Monk, I’ve been thinking about yesterday. . . .”
    As Monk cleaned already clean things and I assembled the muffins, I went on to explain. I told him all about last night with Ellen—about my hunch and the phone call and my deduction about the prearranged tryst.
    “And Damien Bigley, according to the retreat brochure, is a licensed hypnotherapist.” I said this dramatically. It was my big finish. “My theory is that he hypnotized her, maybe over a period of weeks, maybe giving her drugs, leading her closer and closer until finally he got her to jump.
    “That’s how he did it.” I placed the toasted and buttered muffins, each half perfectly centered on a dessert plate, in front of him on the eat-in island.
    Monk had remained silent throughout. Now, finally, he rearranged the muffin on the left and scrunched his face. “Ellen was at your place last night?”
    “That’s not the point. The point is, it wasn’t suicide.”
    “Because I called Ellen every ten minutes and she never picked up.”
    “I know. Ellen and I needed to spend some time together. Alone.”
    “To talk about me?”
    “No, not about you. Our mentor, our icon, our life coach just died. We were talking about her.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, I’m sure.” I wanted to shake him to make him focus, but I knew it would just make things worse. “Mr. Monk, it’s possible, isn’t it? I know a person can’t be hypnotized to do something against her will. But if there are drugs involved? If the suicide is something as simple as jumping a foot or two forward?”
    “Ellen’s been getting more argumentative lately. The last time I tried to talk to her about her horrible shop . . .”
    We could have kept going on like this forever. Luckily for my sanity, the phone rang. It was Captain Stottlemeyer with a fresh murder.
    •   •   •
    The crime scene was an apartment, occupying the lower half of a shabby two-story house on Willow Street on the edge of the Tenderloin. Even people who don’t know San Francisco know about the Tenderloin. Despite the lure of gentrification, which had transformed other parts of town, it has proudly remained a sketchy neighborhood for the past hundred fifty years.
    Lieutenant Devlin was waiting on the street. She didn’t come over to meet us, but stayed by the front door. “The captain’s in the back bedroom.” Devlin is not the type to mince words.
    As we walked past, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a sign beside the door, perhaps a homemade business sign, with a colorful round design, like a balloon. It was