Ms. Jensen had seemed both confused and nervous when she had opened the door, and Ryan had made a note on her behavior once they had escorted her to the car and Esposito had gotten behind the wheel. But she had cooperated fully and accepted his "Detective Beckett will explain the situation to you shortly" with only a mild expression of impatience. When he had offered her a cup of coffee, she had accepted it with a thankful smile, and once he had left the interrogation room, she had put all of her attention towards the cup and taken a small sip.
"My hunch says she has no idea what's going on", he offered as he closed the door behind him and was met by Esposito.
"Dude, we haven't even heard her story yet", his partner replied with a sly grin.
Ryan looked back at the twenty-five year old brunette, now staring with an expression of utter confusion into her coffee. No way did she have anything to do with this case, but he did agree that maybe she could point them in the right direction. If she was listed as an emergency contact, she probably knew quite a deal about what had been going on in Nina Carrera's life prior to her death – if she had had any enemy's, what she could have been hiding that was important enough to kill, anything of interest really.
"Good morning, boys", Ryan heard a familiar voice coming from behind them, and as he turned around, his gaze met Lara's, one of the secretaries working at the 12th. She was almost as tall as him, with a physique that probably made a lot of the other women at the precinct jealous. Her raven black hair was hanging straight and loosely all the way down to her shoulders and framed a slender, elegant face with sea-green eyes that sparkled like emeralds in the morning sun. In her left hand, she held a stack of paper, while her right hand was clutched around a coffee mug that she was handing to Ryan once he greeted her back with a "Morning, Lara".
"Coffee?", she asked with a dazzling smile that would have been enough to make his knees turn to jelly if it hadn't been for the fantastic woman back home that had agreed to marry him. Considering that he had proposed in the middle of the precinct during work hours, it was impossible for Lara not to know about their impending wedding, but that didn't stop her from flirting with him at each opportunity. Or at least he guessed that that was what she was doing. Esposito gave him a meaningful look as he took the cup from her hands and said with a smile: "Thanks. You're too good to me, Lara". She beamed at him and went on her way and he turned around to face his partner with a "I haven't had my coffee yet!".
He swore he could hear Esposito think That's why Castle gave us a coffee machine, but what he actually did was just to roll his eyes while he made his way back to his desk. Ryan took a sip of the coffee – sugar and cream, Lara knew him well – and followed his partner with a last glance at Ms. Jensen. Beckett was just about to enter the interrogation room, and he could see how a flinch went through the young woman's body – probably because Beckett had opened the conversation by telling her about Nina Carrera. Poor girl.
CCCCC
"Nina… Nina's dead?", Lila asked with tears in her eyes. "But that's impossible! I just talked to her yesterday at the café – how can she be dead?"
Kate tried to catch the woman's gaze and to hold it firmly, but Lila kept switching between her, the cup between her snow-white hands and Castle, who for once wore an earnest expression on his rugged features. If there was one thing she really liked about him, it was that he knew when to be serious… well, most of the time anyways.
"Lila, I know this is difficult for you, but I will have to show you a picture so you can help me identify Ms. Carrera… Nina…" Kate opened the file in front of her that by now had grown larger with pictures from the crime scene and the victim. The first one was of Nina Carrera lying on an autopsy table, and though it wasn't as horrific as the position they had first found her in, it was still a sight to make her stomach churn. It would be hard for Lila to look at, and she prepared herself to offer the necessary comfort to talk Ms. Carrera's cousin through this. When she finally managed to procure Lila's attention, she pushed the photograph towards her with slender fingers and awaited her reaction. A gasp and a lot more tears told her all she needed to know before Lila even said a single word, and her next sentence was almost drowned out by her sobs. "Yes… yes, that's Nina. Oh God, what happened to her? Who did this? Why…?"
"That's what we're trying to find out, Lila", Kate answered calmly and took the photo from her. "And we were hoping that maybe you could shed some light on all of this. According to the hospital, you were Ms. Carrera's emergency contact, so…" She let her words trail off in hopes that Lila would continue on her own, and she didn't have to wait long. Though she had directed her gaze back into the by now almost empty cup, she nodded and whispered through tears: "I… I'm not sure I can… be of any help, but… of course… She… We… We were very close, but I don't think I can be of much help."
"If you could just tell me a little bit about her, that would already be a great help. We couldn't find that much on her", Kate offered a possible beginning for Lila, and she took the hint with a weak smile. "There's… there's not much to tell, really. Nina was a very quiet woman, she didn't let many people in."
"What did she do for a living?", Castle butted into the interrogation – he did know the routine by now and so Kate didn't comment on his interference.
"She… she worked as a housekeeper in Old Westbury at the… oh, I think it was called the… the Wellerby residence…" Lila looked up as if awaiting an acknowledgement from Kate and Castle, and once again Castle managed to surprise when he scratched himself under the chin and replied in that Behold-I-The-Mighty-Castle-Know-Everything-voice she had learned to both appreciate and hate: "Ah, Martin and Richard's place."
Kate knew that he wanted her to play along, so she asked dutifully: "You know them?"
Castle smirked. "Well, I know of them, but I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them yet. They're the heirs of multimillionaire Alexander Wellerby, who tragically died of cancer last year and left them with quite an impressive estate in the form of his shipping empire."
His words did ring a bell, but considering that they lived in Long Island, it wasn't surprising that she hadn't remembered the name; it wasn't exactly her neighborhood, neither for a living nor in connection to her job, and though she did keep herself updated by reading the New York Times daily, the financial section didn't interest her all that much.
"Yes, exactly", Lila confirmed with a nod. "But I think she quit, or at least she told me she was looking for a new job."
Kate exchanged a quick look with Castle and knew exactly that they were thinking the same thing. Maybe Nina had seen or heard something that she hadn't been supposed to see or hear. "Do you know why she had to find a new job?", Kate asked in an innocent tone of voice.
"Uhm… no, not really. She had said something about moving, but… no, I don't know", she concluded with an audible finality to her tone of voice.
Kate wasn't sure whether Lila was telling her the whole truth, but she had made it clear that she wouldn't continue down that path, so Kate changed the course of the conversation: "Did she have any enemies that you know of? People who were angry at her?"
For a second, maybe just a heartbeat, Kate thought she saw something in Lila's eyes – just a flicker of an emotion, but it was gone too soon to tell the meaning behind it. Then the brunette said: "No… no one I can think of. As I said, Nina was very quiet and got along well with everybody. You don't think somebody who knew her did this?!"
Kate decided to play another one of her cards and found a photo from the living room that made clear just how much the killer had known Nina Carrera: "The man who murdered your cousin was searching for something. It wasn't just a robbery – we found a lot of her valuables still in place. Furthermore, the front door hadn't been broken open, which means that Ms. Carrera let the killer into her house willingly. Ergo she had to know him. Can you think of anything he could have been after, Lila? Anything at all?"
At that, Lila looked truly confused and seemed to think really hard about the question, but once again she ended a part of the interrogation with a shake of her head and the words: "No. Nothing comes to mind. I am sorry I can't be of more help." She actually did look sorry, but Kate hadn't forgotten about the emotion that had surfaced for the fraction of a second. Mental note to self: Dig deeper if the Wellerby-lead turns out to lead to nowhere.
"Don't be – we are thankful for every bit of information we can get, so thank you for your cooperation, Lila. And if anything else comes to mind, don't hesitate to call me, okay?" Kate handed Lila her card and gave her an encouraging smile that was returned meekly. "I will, Detective Beckett."
Somehow, Kate didn't believe her.
CCCCC
"My, my", Esposito exclaimed after they had sent Lila Jensen home with a cab. "So Martin and Richard Wellerby – that's quite an impressive clientele."
Ryan made a sound of agreement, but didn't take his eyes of the photos CSU had made of the crime scene. He knew that each detail could be the one thing shedding more light on this case, and so he took his time to take the scenery in attentively. Every single room had been rampaged by the killer; drawers had been pulled out and thrown on the floor, cupboards had been opened and stripped of their insides, even the carpet had been lifted in places, which hinted that whatever the killer had been looking for was quite slim and easy to hide. Tables and chairs had been turned upside down, the mattresses in the bedroom had been sliced open, pictures had been torn from the walls… How on earth none of the neighbors had heard something still made him wonder and made another explanation quite more likely: No one cared. Ryan took a look at the next photograph, this one of the study. The chaos was the same, but he did notice a calendar still lying seemingly untouched in the middle of her desk, though it was impossible to read the entries on the picture. Maybe she had met with someone in the last few days who could tell them more about the circumstances surrounding her death, he pondered while already grabbing the car keys. "Wanna go for a ride?", he asked Esposito, but didn't wait for an answer – of course his partner would follow him on a possible lead.
As he explained his idea to Beckett, he noticed Castle reading articles on the Wellerby's at her computer, but he only registered the headlines: "End of an era – goodbye to Alexander Wellerby", "Martin & Richard – taking over the family business", "Wellerby investment a faux pas". Apparently, Martin and Richard had some problems of their own right now… Though whether there was any connection to their case was left to be seen.
"You do that", Kate answered: "Castle and I are going to check out her job story."
"Time for visiting the rich and famous", Castle agreed with a smirk and added while pointing at the last headline: "Or should I say the once rich and famous?"
It wasn't the most trustworthy of newspapers (not to say the least trustworthy), but a sentence like "On collision course: Wellerby-brothers gambling away family fortune in Eastern Europe" did probably sell quite nicely.
