Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Goldberg, Lee (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

When I looked into Trevor’s face, I saw everything that I saw in my dad’s face that night. Try faking that. It isn’t easy to do unless you’re somebody with an Oscar or an Emmy statuette on your mantel.

Trevor’s tears lasted two minutes, maybe three, but I could see that they startled and humiliated him. He got control of himself with two big, deep breaths and a grimace. Then he looked around to see if anyone else witnessed the momentary crack in his masculine shell, but there were only me and the guard in the room, and if the guard saw anything, he didn’t acknowledge it.

I didn’t bother pretending that I hadn’t seen him cry or the vulnerability that it exposed. I’m not that good an actress, anyway.

He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his denim jailhouse shirt. “I didn’t kill Ellen Cole,” he said.

It was the first time anyone had mentioned the poor woman’s name to me.

“Then why was her stuff in your truck?” I asked.

“Someone is framing me,” Trevor replied.

“Who would want to do that?”

“Whoever caved her head in with a table lamp,” he said. “That’s who.”

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted her dead?” Of course he couldn’t. If he could, he would have told someone by now. It was a stupid question, but I didn’t know what else to ask. I was just fumbling along.

“I don’t know. I mowed her lawn, pulled her weeds and trimmed her shrubs,” Trevor said. “That’s as deep as our relationship went.”

“Then why were your fingerprints all over her house?”

“She was always asking me in to do little tasks for her,” he said. “ ‘Could you reach this? Change this bulb? Help me move this dresser?’ ”

“Was she an old woman?”

He gave me a look. “Don’t you know anything about this case?”

“Frankly, no,” I said. “I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to ask.”

“She was in her thirties, but she was short, kind of slight. Plus she was flirting, not that I’d ever act on it. I’m a happily married man.” He winced, as if feeling real pain. “At least I was. Or thought I was. What do you do for Monk?”

“What Sharona used to do,” I said, “only not as well.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he wants her back,” I said. I owed Trevor something real from me for his tears. “So why doesn’t Sharona believe you?”

“That’s the worst thing about this, worse even than being in here,” Trevor said. “I’m a screwup. I know that. I’ve lied to people. I’ve used people. I’ve disappointed everyone in my life, especially her. But this isn’t me. I couldn’t kill anybody.”

“If you were such a screwup,” I asked, “how did you and Sharona get back together?”

“A few years ago, I came out to San Francisco to make a play to get Sharona back,” he said. “But it was just so I could show my rich uncle Jack that I was domesticated again. He’d cut me off when Sharona walked out on me. Problem was, I’d accumulated some gambling debts and needed him to bail me out.”

“Which he wouldn’t have done unless he thought the money was going to your wife and kid,” I said. “You were just using them as props.”

“Yep. Sharona figured that out the day we were supposed to move back east. She sent Benji to her sister’s place, and when I showed up with the moving truck, she really gave it to me. Then she asked me if I wanted to give Benji a call and tell him how I’d manipulated them or if I was gonna leave that to her, too. You want to guess what I chose?”

“You made her do it,” I said.

He nodded, ashamed. “That night, and every day after that for the next few weeks, I kept imagining their conversation, and the look of disappointment on my son’s face, and it made me sick. I couldn’t stop puking. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror no more. So I decided to change.”

“What did you do?”

“I got a job in New Jersey waiting tables, and another one dry-cleaning, and paid off my debt. And after that, I sent every cent I could back to Sharona,” he said. “It was only a few bucks, but I wanted her to see the cash flowing the other way for once. I finally got some guts and called Benji. He didn’t hang up on me, so I copped to what I did and apologized. I called back every week and then twice a week. And then one day, Sharona and I started talking again, too.”

“And one thing led to another,” I said, letting my voice trail off.

“I really wanted us to work this time, more than anything else in the world. And I really thought that it was working and that Sharona knew that I wasn’t the same guy anymore. Then Ellen Cole got killed and I found out I was wrong. It was all a lie. Sharona never had any faith in me, never really trusted me again. She doesn’t know who I am. She doesn’t want to know. That’s worse than giving me the needle, you know?”

I knew.

I got back to the Bay Area in time to take Julie around to a few places in the neighborhood that night after all.

When we got home, she had a check for thirty dollars from Sorrento’s Pizza in her pocket and an advertisement to glue to her cast. Anyone who ordered a pizza and said they had heard about the restaurant from Julie’s cast would get a ten percent discount. If the sales were good, Sorrento’s would pay for a second week of cast-vertising (a term my daughter coined and that we’ve trademarked).

That deal