Monk (2002) - 4x06 - Mr. Monk and Mrs. Monk

Just as Monk thinks he's getting better and Captain Stottlemeyer is ready to let him back on the force on a trial basis, Natalie overhears a conversation between an elderly man named Zach Ellinghouse and a woman named Trudy, who looks exactly like Monk's late wife. Natalie follows the pair to photograph them, only to be confronted by Trudy, who rips the film out of Natalie's camera and tells her that she faked her own death. Natalie confides in Stottlemeyer, who tries to keep Monk from following when he's called to investigate the death of Zach Ellinghouse. They determine that the murder was unpremeditated, but the clues--a cinnamon stick used to stir coffee, a woman's small footprints, the scent of Shalimar--remind Monk of Trudy. When Disher blurts out that a neighbor heard Ellerbach address the woman as "Trudy," Monk is devastated. Could his beloved wife be alive and guilty of second-degree murder? A visit to her grave reassures him that Trudy is really dead and innocent of the crime, but the only evidence he has is the impression of a storage shed key in the pages of a magazine in the old man's house.

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