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

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.”

“I know,” I said. “But now if I say that, it will seem like I’m doing it because it’s expected of me. It won’t feel sincere.”

“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