“As opposed to police detectives who solve murders,” Lorinda said. “That never gets old.”
“Cute, isn’t she?” Ludlow said.
“Not with only one safety pin in her nose,” Monk said. “Her face is an asymmetrical nightmare.”
“I’ll take my safety pin out if you take off your gas mask,” she said.
It was a draw.
“I’m Sharona Fleming and this is Natalie Teeger,” Sharona said to Ludlow. “We’re his associates. Lieutenant Dozier said we could find you here. We’re investigating the murder of Ellen Cole.”
“Your husband did it,” Ludlow said. “Case solved. Can I autograph a book for you?”
“I don’t think so,” Sharona said.
“It makes a great gift for a loved one in prison,” Ludlow said.
“He’s not guilty,” Sharona said.
“That’s not what the evidence says,” Ludlow said.
“But it’s what he says.” Sharona gestured at Monk.
“Well, that changes everything,” Ludlow said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mr. Monk and the Brooch
"Are you being sarcastic?” I asked Ludlow because I honestly couldn’t tell.
“Not at all. I have enormous respect for Monk’s abilities, ” Ludlow said. “Who am I, a mere scribbler, to argue with a legend in homicide investigation? May I sign a book for you?”
“Sure.” I picked up one for myself, then two more to give as Christmas gifts. I handed them to Lorinda along with my credit card. She rang up my purchase.
“How did you get involved in this case?” Monk asked Ludlow.
“As soon as I finish writing a book, I hang out with Lieutenant Dozier for a couple of days until a murder comes along that intrigues me.”
“But this wasn’t a bizarre or unusual case,” I said. “It almost seems mundane.”
“That’s exactly what drew me to it,” he said. “I have found that what may seem simple or ordinary on the surface can turn out to be more compelling and complex than you ever imagined. That’s a trademark of my books.”
“That and every description of a female character beginswith her breasts,” Lorinda said, handing me my receipt to sign.
“I like to give my books a little sizzle,” Ludlow said. “What’s the crime in that?”
“What’s the sizzle in the Ellen Cole story?” Sharona asked.
“Are you kidding me?” Ludlow said. “You start with a lady conked on the head by an intruder, but you dig just a little bit and you get warring lesbian lovers, a heart-wrenching child-custody battle, a political battle in the capitol over gay marriage, academic backstabbing at a major university and a steamy affair with a married man. I couldn’t make up anything that good. It has enough sizzle for two Detective Marshak novels. And the gardener did it, the ultimate surprise ending.”
“But he didn’t,” Sharona said. “Someone else did.”
“Another shocking twist,” Ludlow said. “This story keeps getting better and better.”
“I’d read it,” Lorinda said, putting my copy of the receipt in one of the books and handing them to me.
“See?” Ludlow said. “It’s a grabber.”
“Where does adultery fit in?” I asked as I handed my books to him to sign.
“That’s what broke up the relationship. Sally cheated on Ellen,” Ludlow said as he signed and dated my books, “with a man. Dr. Christian Bayliss. And if you think that’s a twist, get this: He was their secret sperm donor. And he’s married, or at least he was until this story broke.”
“And you still thought my husband was the most likely suspect?” Sharona said. “These two have a million reasons to want to kill Ellen Cole.”
“That’s the thing. Sally and her lover were the obvious suspects. Bor-ring,” Ludlow said. “So while Dozier was banging his head against a wall trying to nail them, I looked in another direction.”
“The least likely suspect,” Monk said.
“You got it. The guy nobody was looking at for this. Trevor had means and opportunity,” Ludlow said. “All that was missing was a motive. Dozier did some checking and found out Trevor was known back east as a two-bit hustler always looking to make a quick buck. I stumbled on his eBay account and it all fell into place.”
“Except you were wrong,” Sharona said.
“So I’ve been told,” Ludlow said, turning to Monk. “What’s your theory?”
“That Trevor didn’t do it,” Monk said. “And someone else did.”
“Well, when you figure it out, let me know,” Ludlow said. “It’s going to make a hell of a book.”
We stayed at the Holiday Inn at the foot of Santa Monica Pier that Tuesday night. We had rooms 204 and 206. Monk stayed in one room and Sharona and I shared another.
Monk put his own sheets and pillows on the bed and had some of the food he brought with him for dinner. I’m not sure, but I think he spent the rest of the night cleaning the bathroom. I don’t know how he ate with the gas mask or if he slept with it on. I didn’t ask.
Sharona and I had a pizza delivered and ate out on the deck, overlooking the parking structure of a shopping mall. But if we leaned over the railing and craned our necks, we got a nice view of the pier and the glittering Ferris wheel at the end.
The pier was a pleasant sight, if you were in the dark and looking at it from a distance. Up close, the decaying midway, loud arcades and shabby rides resembled one of those scummy traveling carnivals that show up for a weekend in shopping center parking lots.
The darkness also hid the homeless who congregated in the long, cliffside park that overlooked the bay and that ran parallel to Ocean Avenue. They probably had the best view of any homeless encampment in America.
Sharona went inside the room to try to call Trevor at the jail. She told me that she wanted to tell him that she believed him and was fighting for him, but they wouldn’t put her call through. So we decided that I’d drive her downtown in the morning to visit him and then we’d go have a talk with Sally Jenkins, Ellen Cole’s ex-girlfriend.
Yesterday, Sharona was my mortal enemy. But my feelings toward her had changed. I realized that it was more than just fear about losing my job that drove me. It was also jealousy.
She was like me in so many ways. We both had twelve-year-old kids and raised them, more or less, on our own. And we’d both worked for Monk, an experience that no one, with the possible exception of Captain Stottlemeyer, could truly appreciate.
But there were some significant differences.
She would always be in first position with Monk. No matter how long I remained with him, I would still be the replacement, the consolation prize.
She had a profession, and I didn’t. I had never found my true calling, though until Sharona came along, I was beginning to think it was being an assistant to a detective.
And she had her husband. If we weren’t so much alike, maybe that fact, out of all the others, wouldn’t have made me so jealous. But it did.
I was thinking about these things as I nibbled on the last cold slice of pizza and Sharona leaned over the rail again to look at the ocean and the pier.
“All it would take is one shove and you wouldn’t have to worry about me taking your job ever again,” Sharona said.
“It occurred to me,” I said. “But if I tried to make it look like an accident, Mr. Monk would see right through it.”
“He might let you get away with it anyway,” Sharona said, standing up straight again. “Because if I’m dead, and you go to prison, who is going to take care of him? He is, after all, the most selfish man alive.”
“Good point,” I said. “Take another look at the view.”
We both smiled.
“You’re good for him,” Sharona said. “I see that now. I was wrong about some of the things I said about you.”
“Just some?”
“This is where you’re supposed to say how wrong you were about me,” Sharona said. “It’s a bonding moment.”
“Would it be sincere?”
“Probably not,” I said. “But I like you now, if that means anything to you.”
“It does,” she said.
During the hour that Sharona spent in the jail visiting her husband early Wednesday morning, Monk and I stayed in the car. I tried to start reading one of the three signed Ludlow books that I’d bought, but Monk wouldn’t give me any peace. He nagged me to help him write letters to members of Congress urging them to pass a law that all the M&Ms in a package must be the same color.
“If we want to win the war on terror,” he said, “we have to start at home.”
“Multicolored M and Ms aren’t an act of terrorism,” I said.
“They’ve got you fooled, too. It’s sugarcoated anarchy,” he said. “It’s insidiously ingenious. It makes the idea of anarchy acceptable, even tasty. Left unchecked, it could eventually topple our society and our entire system of government.”
Somehow, I just couldn’t picture terrorists plotting to destroy America by hooking the populace on multicolored candies.
Sharona returned with bloodshot eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. She got into the car without saying a word to either of us. She didn’t speak until nearly twenty minutes later, during which time we’d managed to travel maybe two miles on the traffic-clogged, westbound Santa Monica Freeway.
“He still loves me,” she said, sniffling. “Can you believe that?”
“Yes,” Monk said, “I can.”
I could, too.
It took us another hour to make our way back to Santa Monica, where Sally Jenkins ran Funky Junk, a small boutiquethat sold “fashion accessories with an edge.” That was what the advertisement in the LA Weekly said and I had no idea what it meant.
But I was about to find out.
Funky Junk was a tiny shop wedged between a florist shop and a Starbucks. As we passed the Starbucks, the patrons at the tables outside looked up from their laptops, and the spec screenplays they were writing, to stare at the strange man in the gas mask.
Monk didn’t mind. The only time I’d ever seen him embarrassed was when he inadvertently went out in public with his shirt open at the collar. When he realized his button was undone, he was mortified by his show of “public nakedness.”
Funky Junk was an eclectic mess, full of couture belts, scarves, hats and accessories that were designed to look as if they were scavenged from a vintage-clothing store. I didn’t get it. I’d rather buy the real thing for a lot cheaper.
A young woman with shocking white hair and radiant blue eyes greeted us. She wore a starburst-style brooch with a tiny gold chain attached to it that disappeared over the shoulder of her white blouse.
“May I help you?” she said with a smile.
“Sally Jenkins?” Sharona asked.
“Yes?”
“I think Lieutenant Dozier called you this morning and told you we’d be coming by,” Sharona said. “This is Adrian Monk. He’s investigating the murder of your girlfriend.”
“Ex-girlfriend,” she said. “Ex as in ‘we broke up,’ not as in ‘she’s dead,’ of course. That would be callous and cruel, and I’m neither of those things.”
That was when the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen in my life crawled over her shoulder and hissed at us.
Sharona and I both instinctively jerked away.
Monk instinctively ran out the door and back to the car.
It took me a moment to realize that the four-inch-long cockroach was leashed by the gold chain to Sally’s brooch and that his body was adorned with glimmering Swarovski glass crystals.
“I see you’ve noticed my roach brooch,” Sally said.
“It’s hard not to,” I said, appalled.
“It’s a real eye-catcher and our biggest-selling item,” Sally said. “It’s a Madagascar hissing cockroach.”
“Who would want to wear a cockroach?” Sharona said.
“Anybody who wants to make a powerful fashion statement by defying convention, by turning the ugly and the repulsive into art,” Sally said. “I can’t keep them in the store.”
“Because they keep running away?” Sharona said.
“They’re affordable, live a long time and require very little care,” Sally said.
“That’s hardly a selling point for jewelry,” I said.
“Would you like to try one on?” Sally asked.
“No, thanks,” I said.
My cell phone rang. I could tell from the caller ID readout that it was Monk calling from the car on Sharona’s phone.
“I can’t believe you’re still in there,” Monk said.
“We haven’t talked to Sally yet,” I said.
"There’s a cockroach the size of a dog on her,” Monk yelled.
“It’s jewelry,” I said.
“Run,” he said. “Run for your lives.”
“Not until we’re done,” I said.
I switched the phone to speaker mode and held it up so Monk could listen as we spoke to Sally and so he could ask her questions, too. I asked the first one and it was quite blunt, but the lady was wearing a cockroach, so I figured she was tough enough to handle it.
“Ellen’s murder makes your life a lot easier, doesn’t it?”
“We may have broken up, but we had a deep and everlasting bond,” Sally said. “Her death has devastated me.”
“You mean her murder,” Sharona corrected her.
“But now that she’s gone, you don’t have to fight her for custody of your daughter,” I said. “No more legal bills, no more uncertainty.”
“There was never any doubt that I’d win custody,” Sally said. “I gave birth to her. She was my biological child. The court wasn’t going to acknowledge that a woman in a lesbian relationship has any parental rights to her lover’s biological child.”
“And yet, at the time of her murder, you were at a hearing at the state capitol arguing in favor of gay marriage,” Sharona said.
“So?” Sally said. “Just because my relationship with Ellen ended doesn’t mean I’ve stopped believing that gays and lesbians should have the same rights as heterosexual couples.”
“As long as it doesn’t happen until after you win custody of your child over your lesbian lover,” Sharona said. “Of course, now that she’s dead, it’s a moot point.”
“That’s a vile thing to say,” Sally said, which struck me as a bizarre statement coming from a woman with an enormous cockroach on her shoulder.
“What’s really odd is that you were arguing for gay marriage after you’d left your lesbian lover for a man, Dr. Christian Bayliss,” I said. “So it wasn’t even an issue that affected you anymore.”
Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants Page 11