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Authors: Lee Goldberg

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“Fair?” I said. “How can you stand there and talk to me about fair?”

“Because I’m being rational and you’re not?”

I wish I could say that I responded with a brilliant rejoinder that put him in his place and made him confront his own insensitivity. Instead, I totally reinforced his point of view by marching out of his house and slamming the door behind me.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mr. Monk’s Assistant Takes a Trip

I was fairly certain that I had a much closer relationship with Captain Stottlemeyer than Sharona had. I can’t say that was much of a consolation.

Our mutual concern for Monk was what initially drew Stottlemeyer and me closer together. But what really changed things between us was his divorce. We didn’t date or anything—he just started to open up to me about his troubles.

I guess there wasn’t anybody else he could unload on. He couldn’t turn to Lieutenant Disher, as that would have irreparably undermined Stottlemeyer’s authority in their professional relationship. And outside of Monk, he didn’t seem to have that many friends, at least not that I knew of.

I was flattered that Stottlemeyer trusted me with his problems but, until Sharona showed up in Monk’s life again, I didn’t feel equally comfortable sharing my woes with him.

But that day I went straight from Monk’s house to the captain’s office and told him everything that happened. I didn’t even mind that Disher listened in.

“I’ve got to say, I never expected her to come back,” Stottlemeyer said, leaning back in his desk chair.

“Sharona and I had this erotic tension between us,” Disher said, standing in the doorway. “A hot ‘will they/ won’t they’ thing.”

“More like a ‘will never happen’ thing,” Stottlemeyer said.

“It was palpable,” Disher said.

“It sure was,” Stottlemeyer said.

“So it was sort of like the relationship that we have,” I said to Disher.

“It is?” he said.

“A ‘will never happen’ thing,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “But it’s searing. People can feel the heat.”

“I sympathize with your situation, Natalie,” Stottlemeyer said. “But I don’t know what to tell you. It’s Monk’s decision and it’s going to be a hard one for him.”

“You can help me,” I said.

“I’m not going to choose sides,” Stottlemeyer said. “I’ve got a lot of respect for Sharona. She went through hell with Monk.”

“I know that, and I don’t want you to get in the middle of this,” I said.

“Then what do you want from me?”

“I’d like you to find out the details of the murder that Trevor is accused of committing down in Los Angeles.”

“I can do that,” Stottlemeyer said, then glanced at Disher. “Take care of it, Randy.”

“You just said that you were.”

“I am,” he said, “through you. It’s one of the privileges of being captain.”

“So you should have said, ‘I’ll ask Randy if he can do that,’ ” Disher said. “And I would have checked my calendar.”

Stottlemeyer just stared at him.

“Which happens to be wide-open at the present moment, ” Disher said and went to his desk.

Stottlemeyer turned to me. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“That would be great,” I said.

We went to a coffeehouse across the street, chatted a bit about his kids and how things were going with his girlfriend, a successful Realtor I’d inadvertently introduced him to in my disastrous attempt to turn Monk into a private eye, but that’s a long story.

Stottlemeyer’s sons were doing well, the relationship with his girlfriend was moving comfortably along and he was happy and relaxed for the first time in ages.

“Life is good,” he said.

I was pleased for him. He’d had a rough year or two and deserved a little peace, at least as much as a guy who looks at dead bodies every day can have.

When we returned to Stottlemeyer’s office, there were some faxes from the LAPD waiting for him on his desk. Stottlemeyer flipped through the pages while Disher and I sat and waited. After a moment or two, Stottlemeyer sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“They’ve got a strong case here, Natalie.”

“What does that mean?” I said.

“They found Trevor’s fingerprints all over the house,” Stottlemeyer said.

“Of course they did,” I said. “He worked there.”

“He worked outside,” Stottlemeyer said. “Why would the mow-and-blow guy’s fingerprints be
inside
the house?”

Oh. Right. So much for my detective skills.

“Maybe he was one of those full-service landscapers,” Disher said, “and was also watering her houseplants.”

“That’s possible,” I said.

“No, it’s not,” Stottlemeyer said. “The police also found jewelry belonging to the victim hidden in his truck.”

“So you’re telling me he gets caught by the lady as he’s stealing her jewelry, he kills her and, instead of getting the hell out of there, he sticks around to gather up the bling?” I asked. “Doesn’t that seem odd to you?”

“Not really,” Stottlemeyer said. “That’s why he was in the house to start with.”

“But then he leaves the incriminating evidence in his truck instead of ditching it the first chance he got?” I said. “How stupid is this guy?”

“The jewelry was too valuable to throw away,” Stottlemeyer said. “He couldn’t bring himself to do it, especially after what it cost him to get. He was only holding on to it until he could sell it on eBay.”

“Did Trevor have an alibi?” I asked.

“He claims he was parked in his truck on the side of a road somewhere, having burgers with a couple members of his crew at the time of the murder.”

“There you go,” I said. “He has witnesses who can prove he’s innocent.”

“His crew was usually day laborers he’d pick up on Sepulveda Boulevard and pay in cash. He didn’t know any of them. They were all Hector and Jésus to him, if you know what I mean.”

“They were illegal aliens,” I said.

Stottlemeyer nodded. “If these corroborating witnesses exist, which I sincerely doubt, they’re in another state or back over the border by now. The last thing they’d want to do is get involved in a murder investigation.”

“So that’s it?” I said.

“Until the trial and the likely conviction, yeah, that’s it,” he said. “What’s it to you?”

“I don’t know Sharona at all, but if she’s the woman you’ve all told me that she is, I have to believe that as bad as her taste in men might be, she wouldn’t marry a guy, have a child with him, divorce him, then remarry him if he was capable of murder.”

“I have to agree with Natalie on that, Captain,” Disher said.

“How can you agree with something that doesn’t make any sense at all?” Stottlemeyer said to him.

“I have faith in Sharona’s instincts,” Disher said, “even if she may not have it herself.”

Stottlemeyer looked at Disher as if he was seeing him for the first time. “I’ll be damned.”

“Could you arrange for me to see Trevor?” I asked.

Stottlemeyer shifted his gaze to me. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I want to hear his side of the story.”

He studied me for a long moment. “Okay, I suppose I can do that.”

“You mean that I can,” Disher said.

“I meant that I could,” Stottlemeyer said.

“So how am I supposed to know when you say, ‘I can do that,’ whether you really mean that I can do that, as in me not you?” Disher said.

“Have faith in your instincts,” Stottlemeyer said; then he turned to me. “I’ve never met Trevor, but judging by his rap sheet, he’s done a lot of stupid things. Sometimes you mix stupid and bad luck and you get murder. Do you really think that he’s innocent and that Monk can help him, or are you just afraid of losing your job?”

“I’m exercising my right to remain silent,” I said, “to avoid self-incrimination.”

“You haven’t been arrested,” Disher said, “or charged with a crime.”

“That’s true,” Stottlemeyer said, reaching for his phone. “But she’s guilty.”

He was right.

It only takes about an hour to fly down to LA and you can get cheap flights leaving out of Oakland Airport all day long. So I arranged for the mother of one of Julie’s friends to pick up her up after school and take care of her until I got back that night.

Julie was going to be upset that I was reneging on my promise to take her out to look for advertising clients, but I’d make it up to her.

I drove over the Bay Bridge to Oakland, stowed my car in short-term parking and took a Southwest Airlines flight to the Burbank airport, which was closer to downtown LA than LAX was.

On the plane, I thought about what I wanted to ask Trevor and couldn’t come up with anything. I was somewhere over San Jose when I realized that this was a pointless trip, but it was too late to turn back.

So I thought instead about the real reason I was going. About my relationship with Monk. And, for some reason, my mind kept wandering to the Cement Ship.

In the 1970s, my parents bought a painting of the Cement Ship at a gallery in Capitola, a quaint seaside village not far from where I grew up in Monterey. They hung the painting in the living room over the fireplace and I’ve spent countless hours just sitting and staring at it.

On those rare occasions when I visited my parents, I’d curl up in front of the painting with a hot cup of coffee and gaze at the ship like it was the view out of a window.

The Cement Ship was actually a shipwreck at the end of a fishing pier in Aptos, a beach town between Monterey and Capitola. The real name of the ship was the
Palo Alto,
one of two concrete tankers constructed in San Francisco during World War One.

I’ve often wondered whose brilliant idea it was to build a cement ship.

Why not one made of bricks, too?

How could they have been surprised when the thing didn’t float?

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

It floated.
Once.

BOOK: Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

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