Adrian Monk and Natalie Teeger take Julie to the hospital after she breaks her wrist during a soccer game, though before they leave, Monk gives the other parents the satisfaction of exposing the other team's coach as a murderer. At the hospital, Monk is stunned when he sees his old assistant Sharona Fleming working as a nurse. She explains that after leaving Monk's employ to remarry her ex-husband, Trevor Howe, and move to New Jersey, a friend of Trevor's from Los Angeles who owned a landscaping business sold his business to Trevor. They moved to Los Angeles and took over the business. However, recently, when one of his clients, a professor named Ellen Cole, was found bludgeoned to death with a lamp in her house, evidence turned up suggesting Trevor was the killer. Sharona has no trouble believing it, so she and Benjy have moved back up to San Francisco, with Benjy currently staying with Sharona's sister Gail.