Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants

by Goldberg, Lee

  “What you didn’t know when you stole the Jaws of Life was that there was a small leak in the hydraulic line,” Ludlow said. “We found phosphate ester fluid in your car, the same greenish liquid that Monk discovered on Webster’s bathroom floor.”

  So that was why they towed my Jeep. They wanted to give it a forensics once-over.

  “It must have been planted in my car by someone,” I said. My explanation sounded desperate and pathetic, which I most certainly was. I could feel myself getting boxed in by the false impression he was creating about me, about my actions, about what I had and hadn’t done.

  “But that’s not the only leak that’s sinking your plot,” Toplyn said, startling me. So far, the man had simply been Ludlow’s silent Vanna White, if Vanna were a middle-aged man who favored off-the-rack suits from Wal-Mart. “We found steering fluid in your driveway and it matched steering fluid we found in the parking lot outside Webster’s loft.”

  I’d been framed. As neatly and efficiently as Trevor had been. The evidence was so compelling, I was almost persuaded that I had killed Webster.

  If only I’d listened to Monk and gone to the car wash when he’d suggested it, there would be no evidence linking me to the murder. I was doomed by my own slovenly ways.

  I looked again at Monk, expecting him to rub it in. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t even meet my gaze.

  Toplyn stepped forward, taking out a pair of handcuffs. “Natalie Teeger, you are under arrest for the murder of Ronald Webster.”

  Toplyn glanced at Disher and motioned to Sharona. The silent command was clear. Disher hesitated, but as he started to step forward to do his duty, Stottlemeyer cut him off.

  “No, Randy, I’ll do it.” Stottlemeyer faced Sharona and sighed wearily. “I’m sorry about this. I really am. Sharona Fleming, you’re under arrest for the murder of Ellen Cole.”

  Ludlow smiled triumphantly and clicked off the tiny dictation machine he’d had hidden in his pocket. He’d solved another case and simultaneously finished what would be the closing chapter of his next bestseller.

  Monk didn’t say anything. He wouldn’t even look at us. He lowered his head and walked away while we were still being read our rights.

  CHAPTER TWENTY- SEVEN

  Mr. Monk and the Jailbirds

  Sharona and I shared a cell with a couple women, who I assumed were prostitutes or drug addicts. They looked haggard, wrung-out, and desiccated.

  I thought maybe that was how I would look in a few months.

  Before we were put in the cell, we were fingerprinted and booked. Sharona used her one phone call to reach her sister, who agreed to take care of Benji and Julie, which relieved my biggest worry. I hadn’t figured out how I was going to explain to Julie what had happened or ease her fears about what was to come. Mainly because I didn’t know the answers myself.

  I used my call to contact my parents in Monterey. I don’t have much money, but I come from a wealthy family. I knew my parents would hire the best criminal attorney in San Francisco to defend us—as soon as they got my message on their answering machine. They were away for the weekend.

  At least I hoped it was only for the weekend and not some monthlong Caribbean cruise.

  Wherever they were, they were sure in for a shock when they listened to their messages. It’s not every day that your kid is arrested for murder. I tried to imagine how I’d feel if I got a call like that from Julie.

  No matter where my parents were, or when they were getting back, one thing was certain: Sharona and I would be spending Sunday night in jail. And, if we were unlucky, the rest of our lives.

  I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t even angry anymore. I was too tired. Declaring your innocence loudly and strongly in the face of mountains of contrary evidence is exhausting work.

  I was so tired that the concrete bench I was sitting on actually felt comfortable and inviting to me. Sharona sat beside me, almost shoulder to shoulder.

  For a long time, neither of us spoke. We just stared at nothing, the situation slowly sinking in and, with it, a certain resignation. We were caught up in something now that we had very little control over. All we could do was wait and see what happened next.

  In a way, I was sort of thankful for the quiet. My ears were no longer ringing with accusations and lies.

  “This is payback,” Sharona said softly.

  “From who?”

  “From God,” she said. “This is what I get for not believing Trevor. I’m being made to suffer the same way he is.”

  “If we go to prison,” I said, “both of our kids are going to be orphans.”

  “They are going to be screwed up for life,” Sharona said.

  “Totally,” I said.

  “They’ll have one bad relationship after another, searching for the stability they never had as children.”

  “They’ll probably become alcoholics or drug addicts,” I said, “if they’re lucky.”

  “I guess this means we’re both out of the running for the mother-of-the-year award,” she said.

  “I was disqualified from consideration long before I was arrested for murder,” I said.

  “Come to think of it,” Sharona said, “so was I.”

  We were silent for a time. We were only joking, but not by much. We were both genuinely afraid that we’d failed our children.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “For what?” Sharona said.

  “For all the nasty things I thought about you and every selfish thing I did because I was worried about losing my job.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Sharona said.

  “For what?”

  “For leaving Adrian and forcing him to find a new assistant, ” Sharona said, “because if I hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “I’d be in another one,” I said.

  “You’re probably right,” she said. “But would there be a murder involved?”

  “I guess you never heard about how I met Mr. Monk.”

  “No, I haven’t,” she said.

  “I caught a guy stealing a rock from my daughter’s fish tank,” I said. “He tried to kill me, but I killed him first. Captain Stottlemeyer brought Mr. Monk in to help figure out what was going on.”

  “What was so special about this rock?”

  “It was from the moon,” I said.

  “You’ve been to the moon?”

  “Not since Thursday,” I said.

  “The firefighter?” she asked.

  I nodded. “The thing is, there’s enough truth to the things Ludlow said about me, my life and the things I’ve done to make the untruths look truthful.”

  “And the only reason for you to do what he’s charged you with doing is if I murdered Ellen Cole,” Sharona said, “which I didn’t do.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Just making sure,” she said. “The case against you is being used as a case against me.”

  “And it’s all speculation,” I said. “There isn’t half as much evidence against you.”

  “There’s no evidence against me,” she said. “If we can prove Ludlow wrong about Ronald Webster’s murder, then his case against me falls apart, too.”

  “How are we going to do that?” I said. “Not even Mr. Monk could do it.”

  “Adrian didn’t even try,” Sharona said. “He froze up.”

  “After everything we’ve done for him,” I said, “how could he do that to us?”

  “Because he doesn’t know,” Sharona said.

  “He doesn’t know if we’re guilty?”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t know who is.”

  As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep much that night. I only had catnaps. During those periods of wakefulness, when I was cold and scared, I thought about everything that had happened and everything that was said.

  I thought about Sharona’s comment that Monk froze because he didn’t know who the real killer was. It made a lot of sense. Not knowing who killed Trudy had frozen Monk for
years. He was completely unable to function. Now the two people who were closest to him were in trouble, their freedom depending on the solutions to two murders that he couldn’t solve.

  We’d be lucky if Monk didn’t go back to the way he was before Sharona saved him.

  Or become catatonic.

  It did make me wonder, though.

  Who would save Monk this time?

  And who would save us?

  I’d drifted off again—I didn’t know for how long—and woke up suddenly in a panic, unsure where I was. It took me a moment to slip back into place. I was in jail, accused of a murder I didn’t commit. I wished I had a mysterious one-armed man I could claim was the real felon. Maybe I would anyway.

  I was drifting off into sleep again, counting one-armed men instead of sheep, when Sharona spoke up.

  “I love him, too,” she said.

  “I didn’t say that I did,” I said.

  “You didn’t have to,” she said.

  We were silent for a time. I thought about what she’d said. “Then how could you leave him?” I asked.

  “I got back together with Trevor,” she said.

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said. “If Trevor wanted you so badly, he would have stayed with you in San Francisco. You can’t lay this on him. You decided to leave Mr. Monk.”

  “Working for Adrian isn’t a job,” she said. “It becomes your life. It starts with him needing you, demanding all of your time and attention. And then, somewhere along the way, you discover that you need him almost as much as he needs you.”

  She was right. Why else would I have become so fiercely protective of my job? I’d moved from job to job before. But this was more than that. I knew it, Sharona knew it and I bet even Julie knew it.

  “All the more reason not to go,” I said.

  “What if you fall in love with someone again?” she asked me. “What if you want to get married?”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said.

  “It will,” Sharona said. “And when it does, where is Adrian going to fit in to that?”

  “I’d keep working for him,” I said.

  “You couldn’t give Adrian the attention he needs,” Sharona said, “not without sacrificing your marriage.”

  “Then I’d quit,” I said. “We could remain friends and a part of each other’s lives.”

  “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.