TWENTY-FOUR

There was no white Lexus.

There was no white sedan with New York plates anywhere on Bethany’s street in McLean, Virginia, no car of any kind with a man lurking behind the wheel anywhere in her neighborhood.

Monk drove up and down the streets for ten minutes to double-check, before parking the Saab in front of her house, the same house she’d lived in when William Smith had been in her life. The small one-story brick colonial was just as well kept as he remembered, the white framing around the front windows looked freshly painted, and the front yard was postcard pretty. Twin maples towered over brightly flowering shrubbery, all of which bordered a small patch of grass as green as a country club’s.

A brick walkway led up to the house, and by the time Monk slid out from behind the wheel and strode up to the front steps, Bethany had opened the door and stood waiting for him. He took one look at her—standing there in a thick white bathrobe—and took a step backward.

She’d come directly from the shower, he saw. The hand holding the top of her bathrobe together was still beaded with water. The ends of her long red hair were damp, and from this distance he could smell the flowers in the shampoo she’d used. An intimate aroma, intimate enough to move him another full step back.

“Tell you what,” he told her. “I’ll take you out for dinner. Get dressed. I’ll wait in the car.”

She frowned. “Don’t be ridiculous, Puller. What do you think I’m going to do, attack you?”

“I just think it’s better if we go somewhere.”

She stared at him, her green eyes not as lustrous as last night. “I suppose I should be flattered, but I’m not thinking very well right now.” She glanced down at her bathrobe. “The way I look I can’t imagine a man being interested.”

Now it was Monk’s turn to stare. Was she kidding? He’d walked into every man’s fantasy: to ring a doorbell and be greeted by a woman all wet and fresh and …

“Come inside,” she ordered. “I’m the schoolmarm, as you put it. Standing here in my bathrobe with a strange man. My neighbors are going to be scandalized.”

He followed her through the door and directly into the living room. Bethany closed the door and stood in front of him. Monk shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her. Christ, he thought, it was the same every time he saw her, the same as every time he’d ever seen her. He couldn’t explain how or why, but somehow Bethany seemed to generate her own field of gravity. In her presence he felt like a small planet in the tug of a star.

He told her about checking the neighborhood. “I couldn’t find your Lexus anywhere.”

She shook her head. “It’s out there though, I can feel it. Maybe not right now, but that guy’s not finished with me.”

“I’ll stick around for a while and check again. I won’t leave until we’re sure. Or as sure as we can be, at any rate.”

“Have you eaten yet?” she asked, then shook her head. “Listen to me. Of course you haven’t, or you wouldn’t have asked me to go with you.” She reached out and grabbed his arm to lead him toward a hallway to their left. “I ate enough popcorn at the movie to fill me up till tomorrow afternoon, but I’ll fix you something. We can talk while I cook.”

He followed her to a modest kitchen. The countertop was black granite, laid in squares, and the cabinets were white, with glass doors. There wasn’t a lot of room between the cabinets and the refrigerator and range on the other side of the kitchen. Bethany turned back to Monk.

“You mind standing here and watching me work?”

He didn’t, he told her. Didn’t mind watching her at all.

“I’ve been a little lazy about shopping,” she said, “so the cupboard’s a mite bare.”

“Whatever you’ve got would be great.”

Her smile was a little embarrassed. “A Denver omelette? Does that sound too ridiculous for dinner?”

“My favorite, but I could really use a drink while I watch.”

She glanced at him. “Still drinking gin?”

He looked for a smile. Gin was what had happened to them the last time they drank it together, but her face showed nothing more than a civil question.

“A martini, if you’ve got any vermouth.”

“I think there’s a bottle somewhere in the cupboard.”

She went to a cupboard next to the refrigerator, pulled a couple of bottles down and mixed martinis for both of them. She looked over at him.

“Two onions, right?”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“I do have.” She looked at him. “I remember everything.”

To avoid responding, Monk looked for some lint on his tennis shirt. Bethany added the onions and brought his drink over. She held hers up and smiled.

“To old friends,” she said. “And absent friends.”

Monk held his glass out and touched hers. “Friends,” he said, thinking about William as he said it. Talk about absent. Talk about no longer absent.

They stood together, chatting comfortably, until their glasses were empty. “Another?” Bethany asked. “I’m going to cook first.”

“I’ll wait for you.” The last thing he needed was to have another drink with this woman.

They set their glasses on the counter, and Bethany grabbed a stainless-steel omelette pan from a cabinet over the gas range. She lit the burner and allowed the pan to heat while she went into the small GE refrigerator for the makings. Back at the range, she cracked three eggs into the pan, then added a little milk. She sliced some ham, chopped the slices into little cubes, threw them into the mix, grated a small mountain of cheese and threw that in, along with chunks of onion and tomato. She pulled a plate from another cabinet and handed it to Monk, then gestured toward a table just beyond an archway leading to what looked like the dining room.

“You can set the table while I watch the omelette,” Bethany told him. She reached into a drawer next to the sink and pulled out a knife, fork, and spoon, handed them to Monk. He took them, along with the plate, through the door to the table, laid a place for himself. A few moments later she joined him with the omelette pan. She lowered the pan to his plate and slid the omelette onto it.

“Salt and pepper?” she asked. “Or some toast?”

“No toast, but hot sauce would be great. Or salsa, if you’ve got it.”

“That’s right, you are a California boy, aren’t you?”

She zipped back to the refrigerator, returned with a plastic tub of fresh salsa. Monk spooned it over his omelette, then put the salsa aside and used his fork to eat a bite. Bethany was watching. He looked at her.

“What can I say? It’s a masterpiece.”

She smiled as she sat down across the table from him. Monk put his fork down and looked at her. Suddenly Bethany’s eyes were not as cheerful.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Your white Lexus guy has probably gone on to somebody else by now.” He looked at her. “I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”

She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. You’re right, I know, but …” Her voice died. Her eyes seemed to focus on something very far away, before they swung back to him. “Listen to me. I invite you to stay for dinner, and I won’t even let you eat.”

He started to protest, but she reached over and touched his arm.

“Eat,” she said. “Enjoy your omelette. Then we can talk.”

He left Bethany’s house at a few minutes after nine o’clock, but before Monk started the Saab he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out his spare house key to replace the one he’d just given her. He slipped the key onto the same ring with his car keys, then fired up the engine and headed back toward Lisa at the loft. As he looked for Dolly Madison Boulevard to get him back to the George Washington Parkway, he shook his head.

What the hell had he been thinking back there with Bethany?

Their conversation after dinner had been a lot more intimate than he’d liked. The gin she’d kept drinking after they moved to her living room had hit her much harder than his one martini had hit him. Her insistence on apologizing again for her behavior in the hot tub had been far too detailed—way too anatomical—than was necessary. Detailed enough that Monk began to see a reprise on Bethany’s big couch, specific enough to get him out of her house before anything could happen.

The two different Bethany’s continued to surprise him, Monk admitted, although he’d seen it often enough to know better. There was sober Bethany—a subdued chemistry professor dedicated to research—and there was drunk Bethany—dedicated to getting into somebody’s pants. No wonder he was drawn to her. He had a history with such a woman, with a bunch of women like Bethany.

Annie Fisher had been exactly the same way, a respectable veterinarian by day, a staggering harlot by night—in the best possible meaning of the word. Until she started the twelve-step program and turned into a respectable veterinarian twenty-four hours a day … and not nearly as much fun.

Annie and Bethany, Monk thought. And him. Flawed, all three of them. Baggage enough for an entire airport. He’d loved Annie to spite his father, she’d told him in the bloom of her self-improvement, and she was probably right. The old pastor would have shit. And now Bethany was rearing her very attractive head. The two of them were a match made in … Monk almost said heaven, before he laughed out loud. Definitely not heaven. The electricity they seemed to generate was a whole lot more earthly than heavenly. And something he had no interest in pursuing. Not when he had someone like Lisa, and Monk recognized the contradiction. Lisa Sands wasn’t a drunk, she didn’t gamble, but she excited him more than the other two put together. So what was that all about? Monk admitted he had no damned idea. What he did know was that he wasn’t about to make a mistake that would send Lisa away.

So why had he done what he’d just done? Why give her a key?

Bethany was frightened, but giving her his address would have been enough. Inviting her to come directly to the loft if she had any more trouble with the guy in the Lexus would have been enough, but giving her a key was way dumb. Monk pictured Bethany coming through the door and surprising Lisa as she came out of the shower. Jesus. He banished the picture from his mind, then made the left turn onto Dolly Madison Boulevard.

Lisa would be waiting in the living room, he told himself again. She would want to know how it went with Bethany.

Jesus.