Very Castle Celebrations

Chapter 7

As galas go, the fundraiser for the Elite Debate Squad is pretty tame. Just from looking at the conservatively tailored suits and collection of equally conservative ties, Castle guesses that most of the boosters present are lawyers. Their contributions will serve to support a farm team of sorts for their profession. Castle had seen a few of them before in interrogations of wealthier suspects but never had occasion to talk to any of them. Any previous donations he's made to the cause have been by mail or on the web.

Caspar is sitting at a corner table. Castle almost doesn't recognize him. Since they left school, the lesser Bloomingdale has put on close to seventy pounds, and very little of it is muscle. The gray in his hair is more than a couple of distinguished patches at the temples. His skin is sallow, like some men Castle knows who spend too much time with the bottle.

The dissipated former classmate clearly recognizes Castle. After all, the writer is famous-ish. Castle responds to Caspar's wave and walks over, hand in hand with Kate. Though not yet returned to her pre-pregnancy figure, it is clear to Castle that his wife is eliciting more than a little prurient interest from Caspar. He can see the man's eyes sweeping up and down her body and staring at her breasts as hungrily as Jackson does. Castle's fingers tighten as he interlaces them with Kate's.

The couple takes seats across from Caspar who immediately signals to a member of the waitstaff. Castle orders a scotch but Kate demurs on alcohol in favor of sparkling water. Caspar asks for a Johnny Walker Blue Label. From his diminished quantity of drink chits, it is clear that it is not his first one.

Castle had expected to have to start the conversation about Michael's death, but Caspar beats him to it. His gaze rarely straying from Kate, he confides that he overheard a lot of mutterings at the private family service and has a suspicion about whom the most likely suspects are. Michael has no siblings, so with his passing, the right to his inheritance would pass to one of the Bloomingdale uncles, Seth or Noah. Caspar goes on to detail how they both have plans for expansions of the Bloomingdale empire to the West Coast and into Canada. Either one of them would want Bloomingdale assets to stay in the family.

Kate flashes Caspar a grateful smile. Castle, not at all pleased by the predatory look Caspar returns, asks Kate if she wants to dance. Kate leans into his shoulder and whispers in his ear that she doesn't trust Caspar. The fact that he kept staring at her boobs aside, he was too eager to offer information. In her experience, witnesses who act too helpful are either cop junkies or trying to hide something. Since Caspar has no history of being the former, she suspects that he's hiding something big.

Since he knows practically nothing about what Caspar's done since school, Castle agrees that they should look into their too-willing assistant's history - but tomorrow. Alexis is staying overnight at the loft to babysit for her brother. He has no intention of wasting a moment of parental freedom. As the DJ begins to play "In My Veins," he holds Kate close and lets the music wash over them.


Over breakfast, Mother reiterates what she had told Detective Ryan as she complains of the lack of progress on the solution of Michael Bloomingdale's murder. Patience is one of her least talented students as far as becoming a character is concerned. She should have been the first actor jerked back to reality, not the last. Moreover, Patience hasn't shown up at the school since Michael's murder, even though she's paid up for the rest of the year. In Mother's opinion, no struggling thespian wastes either the chance to perfect her craft or that kind of money.

Kate offers that from what she's heard from the boys, Patience has dropped out of sight. She packed up and left the apartment she was sharing with two other acting students and failed to show for an assignment from a temp agency. Neither her credit cards nor her ATM card showed any recent activity. There were no airline tickets purchased in her name either. She doesn't own a car, and she would have needed a credit card to rent one. If she left the city, she would have had to do it by train. More likely, she collected whatever she might have been paid by Michael's murderer and is holed up somewhere until the investigation blows over. Kate had passed on Caspar's suspicions about Seth and Noah Bloomingdale, but also her skepticism about them. In any event, on orders from the Commissioner via Captain Gates, the boys will be treading very carefully with the Bloomingdale family.

Castle speculates that Patience might be with Caspar Bloomingdale. Mother waves her hand dismissively, declaring that it's unlikely since Patience is gay. She explains that the girl's sexual orientation came in handy when the class was doing Shakespeare scenes where a female character was masquerading as a male. Displaying the appropriate masculine mannerisms in those roles was the one thing at which Patience truly excelled.

Castle is even more anxious to check out if there is any connection between Patience and the Bloomingdales aside from Mother's acting school. Perhaps Patience's proficiency at impersonating another gender is a clue. He intends to look for anything unusual in her history, especially as it might relate to Caspar. He'll be looking closely at Caspar too - even more closely than Caspar was looking at Kate.

Breezing out of the loft, Alexis casually drops that she'll be meeting Cary to look at apartments. Castle's mouth is still gaping as the door closes behind her. Mother fixes him with a reproving gaze. "Richard, you know very well that when you were Alexis' age, you were in some roach infested hovel with a girl. You survived, and didn't she go on to marry a congressman or something? Cary is a lovely young man, and Alexis is so much more responsible than you - well either of us - ever was. She'll be just fine.

Castle can feel his shoulders tightening. No one, not even the near-perfect Alexis is fine at 19. It's one thing to be seriously dating someone, it's something else again to be shacking up. And he's been paying Columbia directly for Alexis's housing and support. Her allowance is generous, but no way is it going to cover even half the rent of the cheapest apartment in a student slum. Where the hell is she going to get the money? He worries that her school work and possibly even her health will suffer if she works enough hours to pay her expenses. He remembers how much sleep he had to miss just to keep up with his studies while taking every shift that he could, manning the concessions at the student union. Even with that exhausting schedule, he was barely covering his bills - until he sold In a Hail of Bullets. Alexis has a lot of talents, but writing novels isn't one of them. Some way or another, he'll have to make sure his daughter doesn't starve.

Once he realized Cary wasn't related to a murderer, he hadn't run much more background on the boy. He'd been in enough trouble with Alexis when he checked out her too-handsome violin teacher. But now is the time to go deep - very deep.