Author's Note: I had to take this down a few hours after I put it up. It needed editing. Never post a story at 4 am. Seriously.
QUICK AND VIRTUALLY PAINLESS PREFACE: Some people believe in the theory of multiple universes. Here's the jist of it: Say you've got a choice between chocolate and vanilla ice cream. You picked chocolate—good for you. But at the second you made that decision, some people believe an alternate universe was created. One where you picked the vanilla. And then maybe, in that other universe, you puked all over your sister's new shoes because it was a really bad batch of vanilla. Who knows for sure? In this author's humble opinion, the theory's a load of bull-hookey invented by the poor jerks who wished they had picked the vanilla. But let's leave quantum physics to the quantum physicists, and leave fanfic authoring to the fanfic authors.
Each chapter of this story has two parts. Part A and Part B take place at the same exact time on the same exact day of the exact same year in the same exact city. But, you know, in two totally separate parallel universes. The main difference between A and B should be pretty easy to spot. I guess I'm really writing this to answer the question of how one mystery could be solved in two totally different ways. But enough of my jabbering. Enjoy the story.
CHAPTER 1: UNIVERSE A
11: 58 AM on a Wednesday Afternoon in mid-April
Adrian Monk fidgeted ever-so-slightly in place, trying unsuccessfully to center his weight perfectly. It was getting harder and harder to gauge, because four minutes and seven seconds ago, his left foot had fallen asleep, and thirty-seven seconds later his right foot had followed suit.
He wanted nothing more than to be in the comfort of his own home, dusting the underside of his kitchen drawers. Although any activity where he could actually feel his toes would have been preferable to this, he thought with a grimace.
Currently, though, he was stuck here, sitting in a kneeling position alongside five other people who were participating in a Japanese tea ceremony demonstration at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. To his immediate left sat his assistant, Natalie Teeger, and to his right, her daughter Julie. On the other side of Julie were several of her classmates—one kept wiping her nose on her jacket sleeve, and another had a very distressing piece of string trailing from the top of his left sock. Monk had tried to confront him about it already on several occasions, but had thus far been unsuccessful in convincing the lad that it was a safety hazard.
Being a chaperone on a high school field trip had never really been a high priority on his to-do list. In fact, it didn't even rank in the top thousand. But Natalie had signed him up for it—without any prior consent—when another kid's mother had come down with the flu.Come on, she'd said, it would be fun, she'd said; he might just learn something, she'd said. And Julie would really appreciate it, she'd said. So how could he say no?
Well, actually, he had said no, very vehemently, twenty-two times. Unfortunately for him, Natalie didn't take 'no' for an answer.
So here he was, kneeling in a small rectangular room. He gave it a plus ten for cleanliness, but a minus one hundred for having a thick, hay-like odor. It was a possibility that he was only imagining the hay smell since the floor just really looked like hay, but it was a minus one hundred all the same. And another minus ten simply because it wasn't where he wanted to be right now, which brought the score to a nice, even negative one hundred.
Their hostess and tour guide, Naomi, was explaining how the principals of Zen Buddhism had influenced the carefully-rehearsed tradition of the tea ceremony. He memorized the speech as she went—not that he was actually listening. The other participants watched respectfully and intently as she whisked a frothy, very un-tea-like substance around in a ceramic bowl. He was watching it intently too, but mostly because if he didn't, he would start to notice the walls closing in on him.
Natalie gave him a concerned sideways glance. Unbeknownst to him, he was making a face that strongly resembled that of a person who'd just bitten into a particularly unpleasant lemon. Naomi, a slim woman with dark hair and brightly-colored thick-rimmed glasses, took notice as well. She stopped mid-whisk.
"Mr. Monk," she said kindly, "You can sit with your legs crossed, you know. You don't have to kneel if it's uncomfortable for you."
"But I do…have to," Monk replied politely, with just a hint of please-god-kill-me-now in his voice. The young museum volunteer looked at him, bewildered. He leaned forward slightly and whispered very confidentially, "Everyone else is kneeling. It wouldn't be—ah, you know," he rotated his hands around each other as if trying to get her to jump onto his train of thought.
"Um…polite?" the hostess attempted to finish his sentence.
"No!" Monk answered, aghast. "It wouldn't be even, even, it needs to be even. That's the Zen way...evenness in all things."
"Oh," she replied, looking even more confused than before.
Natalie, having just felt all the Zen get sucked out of the room, attempted to remedy the situation. "How about we all sit cross-legged, then?" she suggested. The kids happily complied.
All except one, a heavyset boy sitting on the end of the row. "I don't mind kneeling," he shrugged.
"Yes you do," Natalie shot back with a look of urgency. "Sit."
He did, thankfully, and after several awkward seconds of silence, Adrian sat as well, and Naomi resumed her duties. "So," she explained, "Now I pass the bowl to the first guest—that's you, Natalie—and you bow to accept it." Natalie, good sport that she was, did exactly as the hostess instructed.
"Like this?" the blonde asked, imitating the younger woman's pose.
"Very nice," the guide smiled gently. "Now you rotate it in your right hand and admire the ceramic. Each tea bowl is one-of-a-kind, and since you'll probably never see it again, you'll want to have a good look at it. That's it. Now you can take a sip."
With only the slightest apprehension, Natalie downed a mouthful of the green, pasty tea. Despite looking as though she'd just swallowed a whole cockroach, she remarked "It's good," though whether she was trying to convince the kids or herself was uncertain. What was certain was that she wasn't very convincing.
The hostess smiled and continued with her lesson. "Now you wipe the rim of the bowl and pass it on to the next guest, who does the same exact thing you just did. Not so hard, right?"
Monk raised his hand. "Excuse me," he said apologetically. One of the kids groaned. "I'm not sure I fully understood that last part. She hands the bowl to me?"
"That's right," the hostess nodded.
"And then I turn it and look at it."
"Yes."
"And then I drink out of it?"
"Correct."
"Out of the same—the same bowl?"
"Uh-huh."
"The same bowl she just drank out of."
"That's the one."
"The same exact bowl?"
"The very same."
Julie interrupted the verbal ping-pong match. "Mr. Monk, come on," she said pleadingly.
The hostess suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. "You don't have to drink it if you don't want to, Mr. Monk."
"Oh, thank God," Monk replied, looking exuberant. "Thank God," he repeated, though not as enthusiastic on the second chorus. His attentions had shifted to the rim of the bowl in Natalie's hands. "It just needs a wipe…wipe. Wipe, wipe," he extended his hand in his assistant's direction.
Snatching one wipe from Natalie's hand and another from the open package, he gingerly picked up the tea bowl using both his covered hands and proceeded to wipe the rim with gusto.
"That's the rule," he explained to the sour-faced kids as he wiped away, "She said you have to get it clean before you pass it on. You'll thank me later," he said importantly.
Everyone else in the room severely doubted it.
After the fiasco in the tearoom—which had, needless to say, not ended well—Natalie was desperate to find something to brighten the mood. Naomi had a suggestion.
"How about I take you to see the origami demonstration? We've got a guest speaker from England with us this week," she said. It seemed like a good plan.
"Her name's Madeline Davison. She spent about twelve years in Japan," Naomi explained as she hurried the kids down a long corridor. The right side of the wall was lined with Indonesian stone carvings. Monk began to tap each one as they passed, but thankfully Natalie grabbed his right arm and steered him in the other direction. Naomi, at this point, was making a conscious effort to ignore Natalie's co-chaperone.
"She's been folding origami since she was seven, so she can do some pretty amazing stuff. Scale models of buildings, flower arrangements, a thousand paper cranes, of course—"
"A thousand?" asked the boy with the unraveling sock.
"That's right," said Snot-Sleeves, "We learned about that in elementary school." (Monk could only hope this young lady had a sensible mother—the kind who would have that jacket disposed of and burned immediately.)
Julie smiled. "If you make a thousand paper cranes, you get to make a wish, right?"
"That's what they say," the tour guide smiled back.
Naomi opened the door to Classroom #2 and gestured for the group to enter. They filed in quietly, some of them drifting up to have a look at the glass display cases on the wall. Each was filled with delicate paper foldings—miniature dragons, airplanes, people, plants and animals. Each one was a work of art in itself, and the sheer number of them made it all the more impressive.
The room's other two occupants were a tall, lanky Chinese fellow—also a museum volunteer—and a balding security guard. Their presence seemed to trouble Naomi a bit. She excused herself quickly and joined the huddle, speaking in a hushed tone.
"Park? Jeff? What's going on? Where's Madeline?"
"Dunno," replied the male volunteer. "She signed in at the front desk, hung out in the lobby for a while, then headed up here to arrange the display cases, but no one's heard from her since."
Natalie, meanwhile, oblivious to the other goings-on in the room, was wandering down the row of display cases admiring Madeline's work.
"Wow," she remarked offhandedly to her boss, "Who knew you could make all this stuff out of paper?"
Monk seemed less than impressed. Actually, he seemed to be just as bothered as the staff members. He had stopped at a case labeled "1000 Paper Cranes: Myths and Messages of Peace." The title was misleading, as the display case only had a small sampling of paper cranes—a few dozen, at most. Monk stood in front of them, looking from one to the next with a furrowed brow.
"Something's wrong," he said.
Natalie took a look at the case, though she couldn't find any fault with the display herself. "What?"
"These two cranes here," he pointed back and forth between the last two birds on the top shelf. "They're the only ones whose wings aren't folded across the center. And the two sides of the head are uneven. All of the other ones are perfect."
Natalie shrugged. "Maybe she got tired."
"I don't think so," the detective shook his head. "Look at how the tail feathers don't match up. For someone who's supposed to be an expert, there are too many inconsistencies."
"So maybe someone else folded them," Natalie suggested.
"Maybe," Monk said thoughtfully. He turned around and called over to the cluster of museum employees. "Excuse me," he asked them, "When was the last time this room was cleaned?"
"Probably not since last Friday," Park answered.
Monk nodded and turned back to his assistant. "Someone wiped down this display case very recently. It's clean."
"And that's a bad thing?" Natalie raised an eyebrow at her germophobic boss.
"No," Monk was quick to reply. "But all of the other ones are dirty. They've got handprints and…and god-knows-what-else all over them," he added, shoulder twitching at the thought of nose prints and saliva left by previous guests.
"What does that mean?" Natalie asked curiously.
"I don't know," Monk admitted.
As if on cue, the door to the room swung open. A panicked-looking Japanese woman entered the scene, her hands wringing fretfully around her beaded ID badge necklace. Aika Itoh, it read in bold, dark letters.
"They found Madeline," she said breathlessly. "In one of the storage rooms."
The other three employees walked briskly up to her, causing the kids' heads to turn. "Oh, thank God," Naomi said. "Is she ready for her presentation?"
"Naomi," Aika shook her head, voice wavering. "She's dead."
CHAPTER 1: UNIVERSE B
11: 58 AM on the same Wednesday Afternoon in mid-April
Clink, clink, clink.
Sharona Fleming rubbed furiously at her right temple. In her left hand was a pen, held upside-down, which she was using to punch strings of numbers into a calculator. Her eyes darted frantically from the tiny screen to the piece of scrap paper she was scribbling on.
Clink, clink, clink, clink.
Her jaw clenched as she double-checked the math mentally. Then she reached for another envelope off the top of the pile of yet-unpaid bills she was keeping on the kitchen table. She shuffled the papers out of the already-torn envelope and began to skim over them, eyes landing on the total electric for the month. Her face scrunched up further and further in attempted concentration.
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.
She realized, with mounting frustration, that certain other parties in the room were determined to make concentration virtually impossible.
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.
"Would you cut that out?" she snapped, letting the pen and paper fall away onto the wooden surface. Her annoyed glare settled on the source of the clinking: Adrian Monk sat across from her, a teacup held in his hand. He'd been stirring the tea nonstop since she'd given it to him.
"Sorry," he mumbled, setting down the teacup, spoon, and saucer as quietly as possible.
"That's okay," she said irritably, looking back to her paperwork with a sigh. She buried her right hand in her dense, curly hair, while her mind attempted to re-bury itself in arithmetic.
Her current frustration didn't actually stem from the fact that her boss was relentlessly annoying—although that certainly was a factor. But aside from all the usual stressors—raising a teenager, the recent slew of bad breakups, and barely being able to live from paycheck to paycheck—she was also in the process of trying to re-negotiate her alimony.
So far it had been less than fun, to say the least. She couldn't even so much as think about her ex-husband without wanting to tear her hair out. She hated having to rely on Trevor, of all people, to ease her financial burden. But what other choice did she have if she wanted to keep paying the rent? The price of everything kept climbing, but the meager numbers on her paychecks had remained static for almost four years. Apparently the odds of getting a raise from Adrian were roughly the same as the odds of getting struck by lightning.
The only other solution to her problem, then, would be to seek out other means of gainful employment. And if she had to, she would—at least, that's what she kept telling herself.
She began to unconsciously tug at the handful of curls. Put down four, carry the seven, plus nine is sixteen…
Clink, clink, clink.
"Adrian." she slammed the pen down and looked intently at her boss. He squirmed, avoiding her gaze. "I gave you that tea an hour ago."
"Fifty-one minutes ago," he corrected her without meaning to.
"Yeah, fine, fifty-one minutes. What's wrong with it?" she leaned forward on her elbows, pursing her lips.
"Nothing," he lied badly. "It's fine."
Sharona cocked her brow expectantly.
"…Some of the sugar isn't dissolved," he lamented.
"Are you gonna drink it or not?" she asked him tersely.
A pause. He mulled it over.
"Probably not," was his answer. She continued to stare at him in silence for a few seconds.
He resumed stirring.
Clink, clink, clink, clink.
"Ugh!"Sharona resolutely hoisted herself out of her chair and walked briskly into the kitchen, snatching up her empty teacup and Adrian's full one as she passed.
"Sharona, I wasn't finished!" the detective complained.
"Yeah, well you are now," she responded sharply, tossing both cups into the sink. She turned on the faucet and grabbed the dish soap.
The only thing piled higher than the bills around this place were the dishes. Without even thinking about what she was doing, Sharona grabbed a plate and absently started scrubbing in circles. It didn't do much to soothe her nerves, but it sure beat thinking about money. And certain no-good cheapskates that she may or may not have once been married to.
The phone rang once, then twice. Adrian turned his head back toward the kitchen. "Aren't you going to get that?" he asked timidly. Sharona scowled, looking around frantically for a paper towel to dry her sopping hands on. No such luck, though, as no one had bothered to restock the empty paper towel dispenser. As she made a dash for the telephone, she shook her hands like a woman trying to speed along the drying of her nail polish. Adrian ducked and covered in a panic as she sent droplets of filmy water and soap suds everywhere.
"Hello?" she answered, maneuvering the receiver between her ear and shoulder so she could wipe her hands on her skirt. Monk winced at the sheer sloppiness of it all.
"Yes, he's here." She plucked up her pen and began jotting something down. "Uh-huh….okay, what's the address?" A quick pause as she finished getting it all down on paper. "Okay. We'll be right over." Click.
"It's a case," she told him, reaching for her car keys.
"You're angry," Monk remarked delicately as Sharona ran her third consecutive stop sign.
"No I'm not," she said defensively, gesturing obscenely at a truck driver as she passed him illegally on the right. "My god, if this guy was driving any slower he'd be going backwards," she spat, tapping emphatically at her horn.
"He's doing forty in a twenty-five miles-per-hour zone!" Monk replied, horrified, as they sped up and swerved to the left. He couldn't bear to watch anymore. He buried his head in the crook of his arm, waiting for what would hopefully be a quick and painless death. "And you're angry," he said into his sleeve.
Sharona slowly exhaled through her mouth, hitting the turn signal as an afterthought. Having this argument—with him and herself—seemed relatively pointless, so she figured she may as well come clean.
"I'm not angry," she repeated, "I'm pissed." She flexed her fingers on the steering wheel as they pulled around the corner into a neighborhood. "But not at you," she added quickly.
"Not at all?" was his muffled response. "That's a first."
"Well, I'm always pissed at you," she said with a half-smirk, "But this is different."
She seemed to have slowed down just a little. Monk peeked out from under his sleeve, then immediately regretted it when they came dangerously close to a parked SUV. He let out a strangled yelp and clutched the sides of his seat. Sharona either didn't notice or pretended not to, and continued.
"I mean, all this stuff with Trevor just gets me nuts, you know? Always promising Benjy the moon—and do you know how many times I've actually almost believed him? And now he turns around and says he can't be bothered to send a few bucks a month to support the woman who's raising his son—it just gets me so—"
"Cat!" Monk interjected.
"—so disgusted, I can't—"
"Cat, cat, cat-cat-cat!"
"What?"
Before Sharona could react, her boss had reflexively grabbed and pulled up on the emergency brake, bringing the car to an abrupt halt. He shot his arm out to the left protectively, keeping her from colliding with the steering wheel. Crisis averted.
Or not.
Sharona, having overcome the shock of the moment enough to speak, snapped her head sideways. Her hand was still clutching at her heart, her breathing rapid. She looked absolutely livid. "What the hell was that for? You almost gave me a heart attack!"
"There was a cat," Adrian said dumbly, shaky hands gesturing behind them. "A cat. It was a cat," he added unnecessarily.
A few agonizing seconds of silence followed.
"Is it okay?" She asked wearily, pressing her forehead into her palm.
Monk turned around and scanned the road behind them. Then he turned back around and covered the rear-view mirror with his arm. "Yes," he forced a smile, "It's fine. Just…don't look."
Sharona rolled down the driver's-side window and stuck her head out, peering around the side of the car.
"I said don't look!" her boss whined, but it was too late. She caught a glimpse of the lone grocery bag drifting across the street. Honestly, she didn't know whether she should be relieved or angry. While she was deciding, she heard the passenger door open and close. Monk had stepped out of the car.
"Where're you going?" she asked, more curious than annoyed now.
"It's a nice day," Monk replied nervously. "I think I'll walk."
The street was lined with prim two-story houses, each with a front and back yard. Some were decorated lavishly with whirligigs, tiny statues and flowers. Others were sparsely ornamented, with only shrubs hugging the perimeter of the building. It was as if these people had thrown all the rules about symmetry out the window—totally unacceptable. How could they live like this?
Still, it was quiet here, and the weather was gorgeous. The skies had cleared up nicely after last night's rainstorm. He tapped the mailboxes and counted as he went, eliciting an odd glance from an elderly woman across the street who was trimming her hedges.
He had only gone about a block and a half when he heard the steady clacking of heels on the pavement behind him. He knew who it was without having to turn around.
"Hey," Sharona greeted him quietly as she fell into step next to him. Somewhere between a few minutes ago and now, she had popped a piece of gum into her mouth. Her car, he noticed, had been parallel parked—badly—at the other end of the long stretch of sidewalk. "Having fun?"
He responded with a twitch of his shoulder, a gesture they both knew well but only vaguely understood.
"You know what?" she said, adjusting the strap of her purse. "You were right."
"I'm always right," he automatically responded. Two mailboxes later, his curiosity got the better of him. "What was I right about?"
"It really is a nice day," she responded with a small smile and a nudge.
Well, any idiot could have been right about that, he thought. But as long as her mood had brightened, he really didn't care.
"Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen…" he stopped in his tracks halfway to mailbox number twenty.
Sharona turned around. "What's wrong?"
"I think I missed one. Back there," he pointed, and started to turn around.
"We'll get it on the way back," his companion promised. "We're here." Before he could do so much as protest, she took him by the arm and led him up the driveway of an off-white colonial house surrounded by police tape. The pair ducked under the canopy of the open garden gate and joined the investigation already in progress.
The dead body du jour had been found floating face-down in a koi pond. Four oblivious fish were still swimming gracefully around the deceased's head while a crime scene photographer snapped photos of the odd spectacle. A few uniformed police officers had been hanging around, as well. Six paths of stepping stones branched out from the limestone sun set in the middle of the yard. The garden was rather fancy, although a huge patch of earth near the back screen door had been upturned. It was still muddy from the previous night's rain.
"Captain," Sharona flagged down the only familiar face in the yard. "Over here."
"Monk, Sharona," Captain Leland Stottlemeyer greeted them, stepping over a lawn gnome as he approached. "You'll have to excuse the mess; Dr. Glockner was having a new patio installed," he told them dryly.
"Really? I hadn't noticed," Monk said, unable to keep his eyes off of the messy plot of dirt. It was horrifying, and yet somehow he couldn't look away.
"Landscapers found him at ten-thirty this morning. Fifty-eight, recently retired surgeon, lived alone, had one kid who hardly ever visited. And he pissed plenty of people off in his lifetime, judging from the sheer number of malpractice suits," the Captain filled them in. "From the way he looks now, I'd say he died sometime last night."
"He drowned out here?" Sharona asked out of morbid curiosity.
"Seems that way," Stottlemeyer answered. "Funny thing is, the pond's only a foot deep."
Monk nodded and got to work, pacing the length of the yard. Although he refused to stray from the stepping-stone path onto the muddy ground, his hands were raised in concentration. He stopped to examine the koi pond, kneeling beside it for a few moments. Then he rose silently, parting a gaggle of officers down the middle as he walked toward the stretch of dirt. He kept his distance, as if afraid something might jump up out of the dirt and bite him. His first thought was that someone should cover this thing—it was an absolute disgrace. But then something else caught his attention.
"It must've rained pretty heavily here last night," he said, "The birdbath, the empty flowerpots, the pond—they're all practically filled to the brim. The rain should've washed away any markings that were on this…dirt." (He said the word 'dirt' as if he were uttering a blasphemy.) "But there are a couple of places where it looks like someone tried to rub something out—and there's a series of streaks running down the middle."
He pointed it out at a distance, and several of the officers gathered around to take a closer look.
"And there's dirt all over the bottom of the fish pond. Captain, I don't think Dr. Glockner died outside in his garden. Somebody dragged his body out here this morning."
AUTHOR'S NOTES: As if I didn't waste enough space with the preface, I've also got some post-chapter yammering to do!
First off, if you don't get it by now, Universe A is the Monkland we know and love, whereas Universe B is some sort of an AU where Sharona decided to stick around because Trevor never got his act together. There'll be some other differences later on, but nothing else as major as that. The differences are more obvious to spot—the important thing is to pay attention to the similarities! (But that won't matter until the next chapter, so you didn't miss anything yet. Quit scrolling up the page.)
I think each side of the story is going to kind of reflect the personality of the assistant Monk's with. So the story with Natalie's going to be more fun and lighthearted, and the story with Sharona's going to be deeper and more complex. Each of them has such a unique friendship with Monk that I couldn't leave either one of them out.
Incidentally, Sharona was very very very hard to write for, even though she's my favorite character. WHY DON'T YOU LOVE ME, IMAGINARY SHARONA? WHY? Somehow, I had the easiest time getting into Monk's head. Tell me how I did with everybody, though. And yeah, I know I know, total lack of Randy in this chapter. But he's got an important role to play later on.
The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco is a real place. But I've never been there. So I'm quite sure my imaginary version is nothing like the real thing. I have been to a Japanese culture museum in Florida, and a tea demonstration in Philadelphia, though. So there's a lot based on that. Monk at the tea ceremony has been my favorite scene so far.
This whole story is like a fun experiment for me. It's my first Monk story and my first mystery. I hope, so far, it's been as fun for you to read as it was for me to write. And I hope you stick with the story, because that'll help me to stick with the story. In other words, leave a review, long or short, and I'll love you dearly for it. Feedback is like food for the soul, just like cheesecake is food for the stomach. But unlike cheesecake, reviews don't give me a stomachache.
Special thanks to my little sis Super Grape Pie for being my first guinea pig, and for laughing at some of the jokes.
Damn it, I talk too much. See you next chapter.