Mr. Monk Gets Even by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online

didn’t want to see me in the tuxedo before the wedding,” Ambrose said. “She presumed that I’d be irresistible in this attire, though I do have a flannel shirt that she finds particularly erotic.”
    “Don’t be disgusting,” Monk said.
    “It’s a natural part of life, Adrian.”
    “Disgust?” Monk said.
    “Sexual attraction.”
    “Shh,” Monk said, waving his hand. “What’s the matter with you? Do you have Tourette’s or something?”
    Ambrose shook his head. “The tailor, Morris Abish, is waiting for you upstairs, Adrian.”
    Monk sighed and shuffled past Ambrose. “Now that you’ve gutted the place, what are you going to do next? Tear down the house?”
    “Now that you mention it, we are talking about doing some remodeling—”
    Monk held up his hand, interrupting his brother. “I don’t want to hear any more. A man can only take so much.”
    He started up the stairs, but took only a few steps before a short, balding man in his sixties, wearing a three-piece suit and a length of yellow measuring tape draped around his neck like a doctor’s stethoscope, appeared on the landing. His face was flushed with anger.
    “What have you done?” Abish said, pointing at Ambrose with a piece of chalk.
    “My sentiments exactly,” Monk said.
    Ambrose looked at himself from top to bottom. “What? Did I miss some chalk?”
    “That’s what I am talking about,” Abish said. “You brushed off all my chalk marks!”
    “Of course I did,” Ambrose said. “I couldn’t answer the door in filthy clothes.”
    Monk nodded. “It’s a relief to know you still retain some shred of human decency.”
    “Now I have to do all the measurements again,” Abish said, glowering at them both. “Get up here, you two, and make it snappy.”
    Monk and Ambrose did as they were told.
    Julie headed to the kitchen to help herself to Ambrose’s stash of Pop-Tarts, but before she could get to the pantry, she glanced out the window above the sink and saw Yuki stepping into the RV that was parked in the driveway.
    Julie hadn’t spent much time with Yuki, who was only a few years older than she was and had long black hair almost all the way down her back. But Julie was intrigued by Yuki because she’d spent some time in prison for killing a man (something Monk never tired of reminding Ambrose), had a snake tattoo coiled around the base of her spine, and rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
    To say that Yuki and Ambrose appeared to have very little in common was an understatement. But if you looked below the surface, you’d see that they were both very much alike. They were outsiders, quirky and troubled individuals who didn’t fit into conventional society, so they cut themselves off from it, living in worlds of their own.
    Now they had each other.
    Julie stepped outside and knocked on the open door of the RV. “Permission to enter?”
    Yuki leaned out. She was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and was holding a soapy sponge.
    “Oh, hello,” Yuki said. “I was so busy cleaning I didn’t even notice that you’d arrived.”
    “It’s a shame Mr. Monk wasn’t able to hear that,” Julie said. “You would have scored big points with him.”
    “I don’t need Adrian’s approval,” she said.
    “Why are you cleaning the motor home?”
    “I’m getting ready for our honeymoon.”
    Julie nodded. “I can see how going from the house to the driveway would seem like a big getaway for a guy who almost never leaves the house.”
    “We’re driving across the country.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    Yuki tossed the sponge in the sink and sat down on the steps of the motor home. “We might not ever leave the RV, which is sort of the point of a honeymoon anyway, but at least he’ll see the country through the windows.”
    Ambrose and Yuki met during his first and only trip in the motor home, though Monk and Julie had to slip drugs into his food and abduct him to pull it off—but that’s another story. The upshot is that the trip