Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants, Goldberg, Lee [book series for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

here and found so much around him that needed straightening, balancing and organizing.

San Francisco. Home of the crookedest street in the world and Adrian Monk. Somehow that just seemed right to me and was proof that God has a terrific sense of humor.

I dropped Julie off at school and headed straight to Monk’s apartment on Pine. There was an old, beat-up Volvo station wagon in my spot with a hospital-employee parking permit stuck to the windshield.

I found the symbolic value of that very unnerving. Sharonacertainly hadn’t wasted any time moving in on me. This was going to be war. I could see that now.

I flung open Monk’s front door and marched in like a jealous wife hoping to catch her husband cheating on her.

The two of them were sitting at Monk’s dining room table, eating bowls of Wheat Chex, without milk, of course. Monk was afraid of milk, even when it was in someone else’s bowl.

“Perfect timing, Natalie,” Monk said. “Sharona just stopped by with breakfast. She brought Chex!”

“How nice,” I said, meaning, of course, How terrible.

“I was on my way home from work and thought I’d drop in and say hello,” Sharona said. “I know Adrian can always use more Chex.”

“You just finished work?” Monk asked. “But it’s nine a.m.”

“The Sunday hell shift was the only one I could get,” Sharona said. “All the good ones were already taken by nurses with more seniority than I have. But what could I do? I needed the job.”

Which I was sure was her oh so subtle way of saying she wanted her old one back. It was bad enough she was bribing Monk with Chex.

“So who got Benji off to school?” Monk asked.

“My sister. We’re living with her until I can get on my feet again,” Sharona said. “But with Trevor’s legal problems, that could be a while.”

“I thought you’d turned your back on him,” I said.

“I did, but we still have a joint bank account and he’s already taken what little we had left in our savings to pay his defense lawyer.”

“I’m sure Mr. Monk could help,” I said.

“I couldn’t borrow money from Adrian,” Sharona said.

“No,” Monk said, “you couldn’t.”

“What I meant was that you wouldn’t have to live with your sister, or pay any legal fees, if Mr. Monk gets Trevor out of prison,” I said, turning to Monk. “You don’t have any cases right now anyway.”

“If Sharona says he’s guilty,” Monk said, “then I’m sure he is.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because the police arrested him and he’s in jail,” Monk said. “That means he’s guilty until proven innocent.”

“It’s the other way around,” I said.

“Not in this case,” Monk said.

“You haven’t even looked at the evidence,” I said.

“Nobody has asked him to,” Sharona said.

“Maybe somebody should,” I said.

“Maybe somebody should butt out of things that are none of her business,” Sharona said.

“Mr. Monk has figured out murders that everyone else thought would be impossible to solve.”

“I know,” Sharona said tightly, “because I was at his side for most of them.”

“You were there for the early, less interesting cases before he really hit his stride,” I said. “I’ve worked closely with him on the classic mysteries that have made him famous. They even tried to make a movie out of one of them—the one with the astronaut whose alibi for the murder of his lover was that he was orbiting the earth in the space shuttle.”

“I heard about that,” Sharona said. “But wasn’t Adrian’s assistant in the movie going to be an Asian-American hot-tie with incredible martial-arts skills?”

I like Chinese food, I’m easy on the eyes and I can throw a mean punch, so it wasn’t that big of a change for the movie. But even so, screw her for mentioning it.

“The point I’m trying to make is that solving your husband’s case would be a no-brainer for Monk,” I said. “Why don’t you want your husband to be freed?”

“You don’t know the first thing about me or Trevor,” she said.

“I know he’s in jail and you want to keep him there,” I said.

“So do I,” Monk said. “He’s a threat to society.”

He was a threat to Monk. If Trevor got out of prison, it would mean Sharona would leave Monk again. Monk was so selfish, he’d rather let an innocent man rot in prison than jeopardize his own comfort.

“His whole life Trevor has been a scammer and a petty thief, always looking for the scheme that would make him rich,” Sharona said. “He’d take advantage of anyone, even his own family, to do it. I told you he had this landscaping business, right? Well, he’d go back to the houses when no one was there, break in and steal stuff. Then he’d sell the stolen goods on eBay—under his own name.”

“If he’s such a dimwit,” I said, “what did you see in him?”

“He’s not stupid. He just doesn’t think,” she said. “There’s a difference. The problem with Trevor is that he lives entirely in the moment. He never considers the consequences. That’s also part of his charm. I certainly fell for it. Twice.”

“She has terrible taste in men,” Monk said. “She once dated someone in the Syndicate.”

“The Syndicate?” I said.

“It’s how we law enforcement professionals refer to organized crime,” Monk said.

“If you were a cop in 1975,” Sharona said.

“Trevor doesn’t sound very dangerous to me,” I said. “What makes you think he’s a killer?”

“Because he killed someone,” Sharona replied testily. “A woman he worked for came home early and caught him in her house. He panicked, grabbed a lamp and hit her with it. I’m sure he didn’t mean to kill her. But that doesn’t excuse what he did.”

“What he did was unforgivable,” Monk said. “Luring you away to New