"I know you're in there!" Max boomed as he burst into the basement police raid style. However, once he saw the vacuum, his whole expression changed, as his gut told him that Monk could be onto something.

Relieved, Adrian told the barfly about his findings.

"Dad!" Jordan ran into the basement.

"Jordan, call Woody, and have him get Kirby employment records for the Boston area from 1970 to 1980."Max ordered. Woody, a friend of the medical examiner's, was a cop.

"I believe that a vacuum salesman might have had something to do with your mother's murder. "Adrian said and then again explained his theory.

By the next day, Leland had arrived, and the five were at the Cavanaugh home studying both cases. Max and he studied the police files, Jordan examined the forensics reports, Monk organized the refrigerator (he had seen its state when Max had opened it to get Leland a beer), and Sharona stood by with wipes.

"Could you throw that away?" Monk pointed to a piece of cheese in a bottom drawer, most of it encrusted by a greenish black mold.

"Did the M.E miss anything on the Cribner autopsy?" Max asked his daughter, as he examined crime scene photos from said case. Leland, who sat next to Jordan, read the police report on the Emily Cavanaugh murder.

"I'm still looking"

"You're not going to find anything in the medical examiner's report." Adrian stopped his task for a minute.

"I'll be the judge of that" she stated simply.

"Would you care to join us?" Max snarled at the sleuth.

"Look, he's probably got all this stuff memorized" Leland joked in an attempt to smooth things over, but he wished Adrian would stop obsessing about the refrigerator.

After making sure that the spoilt items were discarded, Adrian then proceeded to organize what was left based on his own complicated system. Leland sighed inwardly as he observed him.

"James Hawet!" the sleuth cried out.

"Cribner's gardener????" Max gave Adrian a 'What the Hell??' look, as did Jordan. The bar owner only recognized the name because he had just reread the various witness statements as taken by police officers at the crime scene.

The captain sighed again; it was hard enough to work on cases, where those close to the victim were in law enforcement without Monk and his tendency to well, be Monk.

"The man's gotta rock solid alibi!"!!!" Max checked the relevant material.

"Or does he?" the sleuth challenged.

"The medical examiner's report mentions nothing about accelerated decomposition" Jordan assented with her father. Freezing followed by thawing caused corpses to decompose faster. "So Cribner could not have been on ice during the week he was missing."

"If a dead body were to put in...space, what would happen to it?" Monk asked her, grimacing at his own scenario, but he wanted to make a point.

"It would just float around."

"But would it decompose?"

"No....." Jordan raised her eyebrows in annoyance.

""James Hawet vacuum sealed Cribner's body. " By now, he had gotten closer to the table, and had stopped his tidying up. The process of vacuum sealing, often used in the packaging of foods, effectively prevented rot because they are protected from the elements. Maggots and bacteria cannot survive where there is no oxygen.

"There's no indication that the body had any unusual marks." Jordan figured that whatever was used to wrap the body would leave imprints on the skin, especially if it was snug.

"Good question" the sleuth put his index finger on his lips.

TBC