Mr. Monk and the Two Assistants by Goldberg, Lee (books for students to read .TXT) 📕

that, but he remained silent. I was shocked. Stottlemeyer was probably relieved. I was sure that the last thing the captain wanted to deal with were two absurd theories about the murder from two bullheaded egotists at once.

Even so, I wish Monk had stepped up. I wish he had done it for Sharona. But once again, he was letting her down when she needed him most. And I didn’t know why.

"C’mon, that’s just stupid,” Disher said to me. “We’re talking about Ian Ludlow here. He’s the man.”

“What about me, Randy?” Sharona said. “Do you really think that I’d kill a woman I don’t even know and frame my husband for it?”

“You’re more likely to do it than the greatest crime writer of our generation,” Disher said, then turned to Ludlow. “But I just don’t think you’re right about this. You don’t have any evidence to support your charges.”

“Three days ago I didn’t,” Ludlow said. “But then you called and asked me to come up here to figure out how someone was killed on a nude beach by an alligator.”

“How does Ronald Webster’s murder prove that Sharona killed Ellen Cole?” I asked.

Ludlow smiled at me. “Because you murdered him, Natalie.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Mr. Monk Loses an Assistant

Ludlow might as well have punched me in the stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t find the air to speak. His accusation was so wrong, so unfair, so terrifying that it left me numb.

I didn’t know where to begin. How do you argue against something that goes against all logic and everything you know to be true?

It was surreal. At first, I thought he was just getting back at me for my crack about him being the killer. But I could tell by the way he was studying me for telltale signs of guilt that he meant it.

The best I could muster, once I found air in my lungs again, was to say with all the moral conviction, truthfulness and outrage that I could muster: “That’s not true!”

I don’t think it was very convincing, at least not to Ludlow, who had this smug, self-satisfied look on his face, not unlike the look Monk gets during his summations, only minus the smugness.

I turned to Monk, expecting him to leap to my defense, but he said nothing, which was the scariest thing of all to me. He hadn’t spoken since Ludlow started making his crazy accusations. It was like he was a member of the audiencewatching the show instead of a member of the cast of characters.

“Adrian, speak up,” Sharona said. “Are you just going to stand there and let this happen?”

Monk shrugged and looked away. He was abandoning me, too.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said to him, then turned to Stottlemeyer and Disher. “What about you two? The next thing Ludlow is going to do is accuse one of you of murder.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Stottlemeyer said, “considering the way things have been going.”

Ludlow faced Sharona and pointed to me. “Natalie knew how much you meant to Monk. She was terrified that Monk would fire her and rehire you. So you simply had to go, and the best way to accomplish that was to get Monk to prove that Trevor was innocent. If Trevor was freed, you’d go back to LA, and her job would be safe again.”

That much was true, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it because I was afraid it would add credibility to whatever idiotic thing he was going to say next.

But unfortunately, Stottlemeyer and Disher already knew that Ludlow was right about that. I had owned up to it, no matter how embarrassing it was.

“Being petty and selfish isn’t a crime, though it’s pretty humiliating,” I said. “But once I met Trevor, it stopped being about me or what I wanted. I knew he was innocent. I believed him.”

“Of course you did, because he was telling the truth,” Ludlow said. “But this created a huge problem for Sharona. Your meddling could send her to prison. She had to stop you. But how? This part is where I’ve had to do a little guesswork.”

“Just this part,” Stottlemeyer said, “because everything else you’ve said has been so firmly grounded in fact.”

Ludlow ignored the captain’s sarcasm and plowed ahead. “Somehow Sharona convinced you that even if Trevor was innocent, he was an abusive husband who would make her life, and her son’s, a living hell. She made you a deal: She agreed to disappear from Monk’s life forever if you helped her keep Trevor behind bars.”

“You’re guessing wrong,” Sharona said.

“That conversation never happened,” I said. “None of this did. It’s fiction, something you’re very good at.”

“You concocted a brilliant scheme,” Ludlow said to me. “You committed another murder in San Francisco, one so bizarre you knew Monk wouldn’t be able to resist it, one that even the police would agree ‘cried out for him.’ And while you did that, Sharona remained in LA to establish an alibi and erase whatever tracks she’d left behind when she killed Ellen Cole.”

His theory was so ridiculous, and his reasoning so flawed, that I actually felt relieved. Nobody would ever believe that he was right.

“You think that I murdered a complete stranger just so I could keep my job with Mr. Monk?” I said. “Do you have any idea what this job pays?”

“You didn’t do it for the money,” Ludlow said. “You did it because you’re in love with him.”

The surprises never stopped coming from Ludlow. Of all his accusations, that was by far the stupidest.

Disher gasped and looked at me. “You are?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t love him.”

I regretted it the instant the words were out of my mouth.

I’d hurt Monk. I could see that. His whole body seemed to sag with the pain of it. I’d