Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  Dr. Bayliss swallowed hard. “Perhaps I should call my lawyer first.”

  “Perhaps you should,” the officer said.

  We didn’t get Dr. Bayliss for murder, at least not yet, but it felt satisfying to nail him for something anyway since there was so much he was doing in his life that was just plain wrong. Unfortunately, this might have been the only thing that was punishable by law.

  “I’m going to start walking back to San Francisco now,” Monk said. “You can pick me up on your way.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mr. Monk Goes Home

  True to his word, we found Monk walking down West-wood Boulevard toward Wilshire, where the on-ramp to the northbound San Diego Freeway was.

  Los Angelenos are a jaded bunch, but even they were distracted by the sight of a man strolling down the street in a gas mask. When we pulled up in my car, Monk was attracting the kind of stares usually reserved for movie stars and half-naked women.

  He was either oblivious to the attention or simply didn’t care. Monk got into the backseat of the car, slammed the door and locked it.

  “Are we home yet?” he said.

  “It’s a six-hour drive,” I said as we went through the center of Westwood Village down toward Wilshire Boulevard.

  “We can’t go home yet,” Sharona said. “You haven’t found Ellen Cole’s murderer.”

  “I can’t do it here,” Monk said.

  “But this is where the murder occurred,” she said.

  “Look at what the toxic air has done to the people who live here. They inject themselves with Botox, walk around with their pants hanging open and cockroaches crawling all over their bodies, and mate with anything,” Monk said. “If we stay here much longer, breathing this air, we’re going to turn out just like them.”

  “But you aren’t breathing their air,” I said.

  “Mark my words, in another five years, everybody in Los Angeles will have three eyes, tails and webbed feet,” Monk said. “They ought to quarantine the entire city.”

  “Trudy grew up here,” Sharona said.

  I thought that was a very low blow, but Sharona was a desperate woman and her husband was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, so I was willing to be forgiving. I hoped that Monk was, too.

  “She got out in the nick of time,” Monk said. “But God help her parents.”

  “You need to investigate Sally Jenkins and Dr. Bayliss some more,” Sharona said.

  “They didn’t do it,” Monk said.

  “You nailed a guy for murder whose alibi was that he was in the space shuttle orbiting the Earth at the time of the killing,” Sharona said. “Don’t tell me you’re intimidated by a woman who has the entire California State Senate as witnesses that she wasn’t in LA at the time of the murder. That’s a pitiful alibi by comparison.”

  “I believe her,” Monk said.

  “She could have hired someone,” she said.

  “Then why bother framing Trevor for it?” Monk said.

  “What about Dr. Bayliss?” Sharona said. “He only has a lecture hall full of students to back him up. You can figure out how he was able to be in two places at once if you put your mind to it.”

  “He’s a sicko freak,” Monk said. “But he’s right. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose from killing Ellen Cole.”

  “He had more to gain than Trevor,” Sharona said. “And he’s in jail.”

  “Maybe the doctor’s wife did it,” I said. “She had to be outraged about Ellen Cole ruining her marriage.”

  “Wouldn’t she have killed her husband or Sally instead? ” Monk said.

  “It was Ellen who asked for the sperm,” Sharona said.

  Monk cringed at the mention of the word, shook it off and continued. “But it was Sally who had the baby and ultimately stole her husband. It would be pointless to kill Ellen.”

  “Okay, if it was none of them, then the killer is still out there somewhere,” Sharona said. “You can’t leave until you’ve talked to the other people in Ellen Cole’s life.”

  “What other people?” Monk asked.

  “I don’t know,” Sharona said. “We’ll have to find some.”

  “You find them,” Monk said, “and have them call me.”

  Sharona turned to me. “Pull over.”

  It was a simple request, but not so easy to do on Wilshire Boulevard. I had to turn onto Sepulveda, which paralleled the freeway and ran alongside a vast military cemetery.

  I parked at the curb, earning a few honks from angry motorists as they sped past me and flipped me off. I hope they enjoyed it because in five years, when their hands were webbed, doing that wouldn’t be so easy.

  “Pop the trunk,” Sharona said. “I’m getting my suitcase.”

  “You’re not seriously going to stay here,” I said.

  She answered me by getting out of the car. I got out and went around back with her. Monk stayed inside.

  “My husband is in prison, Natalie,” she said. “I don’t have any choice. I’m going to find some other suspects.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I’ll nose around, talk to Ellen’s coworkers, her neighbors, that kind of thing,” she said. “I’ve learned a few things about detective work from spending time with Adrian. I’ll come up with something.”

  “What about your job?” I said. “Your son?”

  “Benji will be fine with my sister,” Sharona said. “I’ll call in sick at work. If I get fired, well, I’ve always got a job with Adrian.”

  She saw the look on my face and shrugged. “Sorry, Natalie. That’s just the way it is,” she said, pulling her suitcase out of the car. “Sometimes life sucks.”

  Like I didn’t know already. “How long will you stay here?”

  “Until my money runs out,” she said, “which means I’ll probably be back in a few days.”

  “I’ll nag him to keep investigating in the meantime,” I said. “There must be something he can do from San Francisco.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “For both of our sakes.”

  I got the subtle nudge, not that I really needed any motivation.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “You, too,” she said. “You’ve still got to endure six hours in a car with Adrian Monk. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  The drive home wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Monk moved to the front seat and kept his gas mask on until we were a hundred miles outside of Los Angeles. But he left the mask resting on the seat beside him just in case and insisted that I give him a thirty-minute warning before we neared Harris Ranch.

  Monk began to browse through Ian Ludlow’s books. He opened Names Are for Tombstones, read a page or two and slammed the book shut.

  “The beekeeper did it,” he said.

  He picked up Death Works Weekends and flipped through the first few pages. “The matador did it,” he said.

  He closed the book and picked up another, Ludlow’s latest, Death Is the Last Word. Once again, he gave it a couple pages before closing the book.

  “The massage therapist did it,” Monk said.

  “You only glanced at the first couple of pages,” I said.

  “Ludlow is so heavy-handed, he might as well reveal the killer on the cover,” Monk said. “The murderer always has a personality quirk that is his or her undoing.”

  “How would you know?” I said. “You haven’t read to the end of any of his books.”

  Monk picked up a book, flipped to the end of it and nodded.

  “The massage therapist is claustrophobic, so she opened the windows at the crime scene,” Monk said. “That’s how Detective Marshak knew it was her.”

  “Thanks for ruining the books for me,” I said.

  “They were lousy anyway,” Monk said. “You live more interesting mysteries than Ludlow can make up.”

  “Those are work,” I said. “These would have been for enjoyment.”

  “What’s enjoyable about reading
some contrived mystery where the killer is always the least obvious person who is caught the same way every time?”

  “Nothing anymore,” I said. “I can never read an Ian Ludlow book again.”

  “You’ll thank me later,” Monk said.

  “You’re always saying that and has anyone ever thanked you later?”

  “I guess I surround myself with impolite people,” he said. “You could thank me.”

  “For what?”

  “For all the things I’ve done for you that you should have thanked me for.”

  “Like the time you threw out all my dishes because one bowl was chipped?”

  “That’s a perfect example,” Monk said.

  “Yes, it is.”

  We drove for a few minutes in silence before he spoke up again.

  “I’m not seeing your point,” he said.

  “Think about it some more,” I said. “You’ll thank me later.”

  He didn’t.

  I warned him a half hour before we got to Harris Ranch and we drove past without incident, though he kept his eyes closed the whole time and gripped the dashboard as if he were riding a roller coaster.

  Not long after we passed Harris Ranch, I had to stop to use a restroom and was prepared for a layover of a couple hours while Monk cleaned a men’s room so he could use it. But Monk didn’t need to relieve himself.

  In fact, to ensure that he wouldn’t need to use a restroom at all during the drive, I learned that he hadn’t had anything to drink since he awoke that morning. And he declared to me that he wasn’t going to eat or drink anything for the duration of the journey.

  I wasn’t under any such restriction. So I had a burger, some fries and an extra-large Coke at a Wendy’s while Monk sat across from me, wheezing and licking his chapped lips.

  I refilled my Coke and we got back on the road. For the rest of the trip, his stomach growled and he kept making these odd choking sounds. I turned up the radio to drown him out. After a couple hours, he either fell asleep or passed out from dehydration.

  We got back to San Francisco around eight p.m. I nudged him awake and helped him lug his suitcases into his apartment. He was so glad to be home that he probably would have cried if there had been any moisture left in his body.

  I went to Sharona’s sister’s place to pick up Julie, and we went home. It was good to be back.

  Julie sat down at the kitchen table. I took out two spoons and a quart of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream. Then I sat down next to my daughter. We caught up on each other’s lives while we ate ice cream out of the carton.

  Yeah, I know, health-wise and nutrition-wise I might as well have been feeding Julie rat poison, but somehow you just can’t bond with your daughter over rice cakes.

  Julie had some good news for me.

  “The cast-vertising is a hit,” she said. “The sales have triggered the escalator clause, so I’m going to get the fifty-dollar rate next week.”

  “That is great,” I said. “You may end up being sorry when your arm has healed and that cast has to come off.”

  “Not really,” Julie said. “I’ve decided to franchise the cast-vertising concept.”

  “Franchise the cast-vertising concept? What does that mean?”

  My adorable daughter was beginning to sound like one of those precocious kids on bad TV sitcoms. I didn’t know if I could stand that.

  “Kids my age break their bones all the time,” she said. “You ought to see all the kids with casts at my school. So I’ve contacted Sorrento’s and other Noe Valley merchants about advertising on other kids.”

  “What do you get out of it?”

  “I find the kids with the casts, arrange the cast-vertising and get a twenty-percent commission,” she said. “Plus we get a ten-percent discount on any purchases we make with the advertisers. I’m incentivizing other kids by giving them referral fees for recommending people with casts to me.”

  “Who helped you come up with this?”

  “No one,” she said.

  “You’ve never used words like ‘franchising’ and ‘incentivizing’ before in your life.”

  “Did you expect me to speak ga-ga-goo-goo for the rest of my life?” she said. “I’m growing up.”

  “You won’t be if you don’t tell me who is coaching you.”

  She sighed. “Sharona’s sister is dating an accountant. Larry and I talked a little bit about my venture.”

  “Your venture?” I said.

  “Why do you keep repeating everything I say?”

  “I’m just trying to keep up. The vocabulary is a little over my head,” I said. “So what does he want out of this?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “At least not until we incorporate.”

  “I’ve been gone almost two days,” I said. “Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.”

  “How did it go in Los Angeles?”

  “Mr. Monk solved a murder and caught a shoplifter,” I said. “But he hasn’t figured out who really killed Ellen Cole.”

  “So Benji’s dad is still in jail,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so,” I said.

  “I like Benji,” Julie said. “We have something in common.”

  “Mr. Monk,” I said.

  She shook her head. “Overbearing mothers with control issues.”

  “Is that another phrase you learned from good old Larry?”

  “Dr. Phil,” she said.

  “You are watching way too much TV,” I said.

  “I hope Mr. Monk finds whoever killed that lady,” Julie said. “I don’t want to have something else in common with Benji.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “That we’ve both lost our fathers.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Mr. Monk Takes a Breath

  It was Thursday morning, October 20, and my horoscope in the San Francisco Chronicle predicted that my life was about to become unpredictable. That was a big help.

  On those rare occasions when I read my horoscope, I’m looking for reassurance, some sense that I’m gaining a little edge over fate. The last thing I want is my uncertainties reinforced.

  What I really needed to ease my anxieties was for Monk to solve Ellen Cole’s murder and get Sharona’s husband out of jail. I didn’t see how Monk could do that from San Francisco. Somehow, I had to convince him to go back to Los Angeles.

  It wasn’t just about saving my job now. It was about seeing that justice was served and that my daughter didn’t have anything more in common with Sharona’s kid.