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Authors: Lee Goldberg

Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants (36 page)

BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

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“That would never work. Adrian wouldn’t acknowledge the change. He would keep making the same unreasonable demands on you and your time,” she said. “I wanted to give this marriage my best shot. I owed Trevor and Benji that. I knew I couldn’t do it with Adrian Monk in my life.”

“So in order to be happy,” I said, “it means that someday I will have to hurt Mr. Monk.”

“You won’t hurt him,” Sharona said. “You’ll break him.”

Sharona fell back to sleep but I wasn’t able to manage the same feat. Every time I started to nod off, a snore from one of the prostitutes jarred me back into wakefulness. I didn’t want to be awake alone, so I nudged Sharona.

“Was there ever anything between you and Disher?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Erotic tension,” I said.

“Maybe for him,” she said. “I have that effect on men.”

“Me, too,” the prostitute said.

We both looked at her, but she closed her eyes and started snoring again.

“He seems to think you had something,” I said.

“There may have been an innocent flirtation,” Sharona said, “but not more than I have with the cashier at the grocery store or the mechanic who fixes my car.”

“I wouldn’t even call that flirtation,” I said. “It’s friendliness. It’s attentiveness. It’s showing an interest in people. But men misinterpret that basic social courtesy as erotic tension.”

“I think men are born erotically tense,” Sharona said. “That’s why they do most of the stupid things that they do.”

“It’s a good thing,” the prostitute said, “or I’d be out of a job.”

When I woke up again, it was Monday morning, though I wasn’t sure of the time. Sharona, the hookers and the drug addicts were awake, too.

“I mean no offense by this,” Sharona said, “but do you ever wonder why Adrian hired you?”

“All the time,” I said, “though he might be asking himself the same question now that I’ve turned out to be a sociopathic killer.”

“So am I, remember?” Sharona said.

“Mr. Monk clearly has terrible instincts when it comes to hiring assistants.”

“He didn’t hire me as an assistant,” she said. “I was brought on as his nurse. Adrian called me his assistant so he could feel better about the situation and himself.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

“You have no nursing or professional caregiving experience.”

“Nope,” I said.

“So what were you doing before you got this job?”

“I was a bartender,” I said. “A lousy one.”

Sharona nodded, mulling that over.

“I’m sure Adrian interviewed a lot of qualified nurses before he met you,” Sharona said. “But he didn’t hire them. He hired a bartender who’d just killed a man in her living room.”

“That’s because having experience mixing drinks and stabbing men was listed as required qualifications for the job.”

“I think I know why he hired you,” she said.

“You mean it wasn’t my vivacious personality and irrepressible charm?”

“You’re me,” Sharona said.

“You just got done telling me all the ways that I’m
not
you.”

“But you are in the ways that count,” she said. “You’re a single mother with a twelve-year-old kid. So was I. He wasn’t looking for a new assistant with nursing or even secretarial skills. He was looking for a new actress to play the same part.”

“My relationship with Monk is entirely different from yours,” I said.

“Of course it is,” Sharona said, “because as much as Monk tried to keep things the same, you made the role your own. You may resemble me on the surface but you aren’t me. We really aren’t alike at all.”

“Except that we both love him,” I said, “despite his many faults.”

“Yes,” she said, “we do.”

“Do you think he loves us?” I said.

“In his own way,” she said.

“He gave me a bottle of disinfectant and a scrub brush for my birthday,” I said.

“That’s his way,” she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Mr. Monk and the Third Summation

It was late Monday morning when the guards came to our cell, put Sharona and me in handcuffs and led us out to see some visitors. I hoped that meant my parents had arrived with a high-powered criminal lawyer who’d make Perry Mason look incompetent by comparison.

We were led into a windowless conference room, where Stottlemeyer, Disher, Ludlow and Monk were waiting for us. I would have preferred to see my parents and the lawyer.

“You can remove the cuffs,” Stottlemeyer said to the guards.

“That’s against policy,” the stockiest of the guards said.

“I’ll take responsibility,” Stottlemeyer said.

“You’re putting yourselves in danger,” the guard said.

“I don’t think so,” Stottlemeyer said.

The guards unlocked our cuffs.

“We’ll be right outside the door,” the stocky guard said.

“I feel safer already,” Stottlemeyer said.

“What do you want, Leland?” Sharona said. “Because unless it’s an apology, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Monk called this meeting,” Stottlemeyer said. “He says there are some new developments.”

I looked at Monk, who was standing at the end of the table, a grocery bag in his hand. He broke into a happy grin. No, it was more than that. He was practically breaking out in song.

I knew what that meant. Either he’d finally found two perfectly identical potato chips (a freak occurrence rarely found in nature, or so he’d told me) or he’d solved the murders.

I glanced at Sharona, Stottlemeyer and Disher, and I could see that they knew it, too. The only one who wasn’t getting the message was Ludlow. But he would soon.

“So what’s the news that’s got you so excited?” Ludlow asked him. “Have you found some leverage to make one of these two turn against the other?”

“It won’t happen,” Monk said.

“You’d be surprised what people will do when they’re looking at life in prison,” Ludlow said.

“They’re innocent,” Monk said.

“I think I’ve proved quite conclusively that they aren’t,” Ludlow said.

“You proved the opposite,” Monk said, setting the grocery bag on the tabletop. “But I couldn’t demonstrate that yesterday. It was a Sunday.”

“You were taking the day off?” Sharona said.

“I couldn’t get the final piece of evidence until today. I could have found it a lot earlier if I’d only seen what was right in front of me all along,” Monk said. “If I hadn’t been so self-absorbed, I would have realized what was going on in time to stop this from happening. I owe you both an apology.”

“What is he talking about?” Ludlow asked Stottlemeyer.

“I think he’s getting ready to tell us who killed Ellen Cole and Ronald Webster,” Stottlemeyer said.

“We already know,” Ludlow said, tipping his head toward Sharona and me. “It was the two of them.”

“It was you,” Monk said.

Ludlow laughed. Stottlemeyer groaned.

“It sure would be nice if you and Monk could expand your list of suspects beyond the people in this room,” Stottlemeyer said. “There’s a whole city of possible killers out there. Pick one of them.”

“At least Monk didn’t say it was you or me, sir,” Disher said. “Isn’t it our turn?”

“The day is just getting started,” Stottlemeyer said. “There’s still time.”

I wanted to believe that it was Ludlow because I needed it to be true. But I have to admit my heart sank just a little. What if I had been right before? What if this was the first time that Monk was wrong? I glanced at Sharona, who was expressionless, so I assumed she felt the same ambivalence that I did.

“Monk is joking, Captain,” Ludlow said. “Don’t you have a sense of humor?”

“I do,” Stottlemeyer said. “But Monk doesn’t.”

“It’s just that my sense of humor is very refined,” Monk said. “Almost antiseptic.”

“I’m not sure what that means,” Ludlow said.

“You’ll have plenty of time to think about it in prison,” Monk said.

Ludlow laughed again. “Okay, I get it now. It’s a very dry wit.”

“I really mean it. You killed Ellen Cole and Ronald Webster,” Monk said. “You can’t come up with stories to meet all your deadlines, so you murder someone you’ve met at a book signing, observe how events unfold, then pick the least likely suspect to frame for the crime.”

Monk detailed the evidence again, laying it out exactly as he had for us at his house on Sunday. I could be mistaken, but I think he even used the same words.

Ludlow listened to it all with amusement.

“That could make a pretty good plot in a novel. In fact, I might use it,” he said. “But don’t worry. I’ll be sure to credit you in the acknowledgments.”

“So far, Monk, you haven’t told us anything you didn’t tell us yesterday,” Stottlemeyer said. “And it hasn’t become any more convincing since then.”

I hated to admit it to myself, but the captain was right. My hopes were fading fast, and from the look on Sharona’s face, so were hers.

“The only thing I got wrong yesterday was thinking that Ludlow’s scheme was all about me,” Monk said. “It never was. I’m not sure he even knew I was involved until we showed up at his book signing in Los Angeles. But at that moment, he set out to frame Natalie and add another twist to the plot of his book.”

“How can you say that?” Disher said.

“Because all the events leading up to Ronald Webster’s murder began at that point,” Monk said. “That’s when Natalie used her credit card to buy Ludlow’s book, the one with the fake alligator killing in it.”

“Death Is the Last Word,”
Disher said, “which, if I may say, is destined to enter the pantheon of classic crime novels.”

“Thank you,” Ludlow said.

“Stop sucking up, Randy,” Sharona said. “It’s revolting.”

BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

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