I N MY LIFELONG STUDY OF HUMAN BEINGS , I HAVE FOUND that no matter how hard they might try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workaday lives of meaningless toil and suffering.

That thought always cheers me up, and because I like to spread happiness wherever I go, I did my small part to cushion the blow of unavoidable Monday morning by arriving at work with a box of doughnuts, all of which vanished in what can only be called an extremely grumpy frenzy before I reached my desk. I doubted very seriously that anyone had a better reason than I did for feeling surly, but you would not have known it to watch them all snatching at my doughnuts and grunting at me.

Vince Masuoka seemed to be sharing in the general feeling of low-key anguish. He stumbled into my cubbyhole with a look of horror and wonderment on his face, an expression that must have indicated something very moving because it looked almost real. "Jesus, Dexter," he said. "Oh, Jesus Christ."

"I tried to save you one," I said, thinking that with that much anguish he could only be referring to the calamity of facing an empty doughnut box. But he shook his head.

"Oh, Jesus, I can't believe it. He's dead!"
"I'm sure it had nothing to do with the doughnuts," I said.
"My God, and you were going to see him. Did you?"

There comes a point in every conversation where at least one of the people involved has to know what is being talked about, and I decided that point had arrived. "Vince," I said, "I want you to take a deep breath, start all over from the top, and pretend you and I speak the same language."

He stared at me as if he was a frog and I was a heron. "Shit," he said. "You don't know yet, do you? Holy shit." "Your language skills are deteriorating," I said. "Have you been talking to Deborah?"
"He's dead, Dexter. They found the body late last night."
"Well, then, I'm sure he'll stay dead long enough for you to tell me what in the hell you're talking about." Vince blinked at me, his eyes suddenly huge and moist. "Manny Borque," he breathed. "He was murdered."

I will admit to having mixed reactions. On the one hand, I was certainly not sorry to have somebody else take the little troll out of the picture in a way I was unable to do for ethical reasons. But on the other hand, now I needed to find another caterer-and oh, yes, I would probably have to give a statement of some kind to the detective in charge. Annoyance fought it out with relief, but then I remembered that the doughnuts were gone, too.