Mr. Monk Goes to Hawaii Goldberg, Lee (best summer books .TXT) 📖

aside. A lot of amateurs get bogged down there, and the strokes really add up. It’s a sad thing to see.”

“You’re talking about miniature golf. It’s not the same thing as golf.”

“I know that,” Monk said, concentrating on his signature. “Miniature golf takes precision. It’s like the difference between brain surgery and hacking off someone’s leg with an ax.”

“You’re saying miniature golf takes more skill?”

“Have you ever seen a windmill or a castle on a PGA-ranked course?” Monk said. “I think not.”

He sat up with a frown, eyed the receipt from different angles, then tore it up again in the careful way he had before. The waiter, who was standing off to one side watching us, came over to the table.

“Is there another problem, sir?”

“I need a new receipt. I think the signature line was crooked. You should really check it out before you bring over the next receipt,” Monk said. “Borrow a level from the kitchen.”

“Why would we have a level in the kitchen?”

“How could you run a restaurant without one?”

“Of course, my mistake, sir.” The waiter took the tray and walked away.

Monk gave me a look. “He must be new.”

Since Monk was going to be a while signing his name, I excused myself and went to the ladies’ room, which gave me a chance to walk through the restaurant and admire the paintings of island flowers and luau dancers.

On my way back to the table, I passed by the restaurant front desk, where a slim woman in a low-cut sundress was waiting while the hostess bagged a togo order for her.

The woman had a dark, Mediterranean complexion, hazel-brown eyes, a lithe body, and black hair tied into a ponytail that fell between her shoulder blades. I’d seen her before. She was the woman on the catamaran whose butt Lance was admiring. She wore a surf shirt in the video, so I noticed something about her this time I didn’t see before: She had a tattoo on the top of her left breast.

It was a heart with wings.

Love taking flight. Dylan Swift’s words came back to haunt me and a sudden chill brought shivers to my skin. That image was one of the things Helen Gruber’s spirit had supposedly shared with him.

It could have been coincidence that a woman on the boat with the murdered woman’s husband just happened to have a tattoo that could be interpreted as “love taking flight.”

It could have meant nothing.

Or it could mean everything. I had to know which was the case.

I hurried back to the table, where Monk was still working on his signature.

“You’ve been signing your name for thirty years. You should have the hang of it by now.”

“These are not exactly the optimum conditions. It’s a tiny receipt with a minuscule space allotted to sign my name. It’s tricky balancing the proportion of the letters with space between them and getting everything to fit. If I rush it, I could end up jamming my last name against the edge of the paper. I’ve seen it happen before.”

I glanced back at the woman. She handed her credit card to the hostess, who rang up her bill.

“You’re not being graded on your penmanship, Mr. Monk. It’s just a signature.”

“It’s more than that,” Monk said. “It’s verification of your identity. It’s an extension of who you are.”

The woman signed her credit card receipt. It took her about one second. Nobody could possibly spend as much time signing his name as Monk did. I suspected there was another motivation besides attaining the perfect proportion and balance between his letters.

“I’m on to you, Mr. Monk,” I said, reaching into my purse and getting some cash. “I don’t think this has anything to do with getting your signature right. I think this is all about you being cheap.”

“I don’t understand what you mean,” he said.

I grabbed the receipt from him, tore it into pieces, and slapped some money, enough to cover our meals and the tip, on the table.

“You hate to pay,” I said, getting up from the table. “So you do this thing with the signature until I get so frustrated that I pick up the tab. It’s like you said; you can be cunning when you want to be.”

“I only use my cunning for the good of mankind,” Monk said, picking up his credit card and rising from his seat. “Not for personal gain.”

I didn’t bother arguing, but I promised myself that the next time we went out to dinner, I would let him sit there all night signing his name and I still wouldn’t pay.

The woman gathered up her bag and walked out of the restaurant just ahead of us. We followed a few yards behind her through the tropical garden to the parking lot. Luckily for me, her Jeep was parked only a couple of spots down from our Mustang.

The night sky was much darker than in San Francisco, but the stars twinkled brighter here. The air was pleasantly warm, like a bed in the morning, and the fragrance was sweet, like freshly laundered sheets. I must have been tired, because I was obviously thinking about bed a lot.

“It’s a great night for a drive,” I said, putting the soft-top down. I had no idea how far the woman was going to take us, and I needed an excuse if she journeyed far from our hotel.

“That sounds nice,” Monk said amiably.

The woman pulled out of her spot and, using skills I learned from watching Rockford Files reruns, I let a couple of cars slip in between us and her as she headed down Poipu Road. It was dark, the road lit only by the moon and the headlights of passing cars.

She made a left on Kapili, which took us down to the water, where the rays of the crescent moon reflected off the waves. There was no beach there, just black, craggy lava rocks, the surf smashing up against them in a frothy spray, creating a mist we could feel on our skin