Dear Guest:
Regarding your question about what actually happened in Chapter 10: Within this venue, I really can't explain it in further detail. I'm sure your vivid imagination will supply further satisfactory details. Or you can just enjoy the mystery.
;-)


CHAPTER 12

SOHO

After the three authors trooped out to the elevator with items from the farmer's market, Rick took a moment to listen to his phone messages in private. He stood there, taking notes, one minute furious with Gina and Paula, the next moment concerned for poor Eduardo as he herded the authors around the building. He listened in surprise when Edwardo left a message, "Ms. Rodgers is on her way up. She told me no need to announce her but I thought you, uh, might want to know."

"Huh," Rick said to the Beckett in his head, who was sitting on the kitchen island wearing nothing but a smile. "I wonder why she never came in. Maybe she just went straight up to the roof."

Kate-in-Rick's-head said, "I hope she didn't see anything. Jeez, I hope she didn't hear anything."

Then Nikki was sitting on the kitchen counter next to Kate. She was wearing some very slutty lingerie and drinking a Margarita. She just winked at Rick and said, "What you don't know won't hurt you, Jameson."

Rick shook them both out of his head and gave some thought to his morning's adventures with Kate at the Farmer's Market. Since they'd made the arrest, it seemed likely that someone would have uploaded some photos or video of him and Kate to the internet. He took a few moments and perused the results. For most people, seeing their appearance on video is a jarring surprise, and Rick was no exception. In his depressed-surfer-summer scruffiness, he barely resembled the Richard Castle people saw on the backs of book jackets. For all anyone knew, the man who helped Kate make the arrest was that dude from The Walking Dead. With any luck, even Ryan and Esposito might not recognize him. He hadn't seen Alexis or his mother since a small family party at the Hamptons on July 4th. So maybe the gossip mill wouldn't start turning his life upside down.

He watched one video that caught an angle on the whole thing, doubtless taken by the mushroom guy across the aisle. Castle turning to talk to the 4H mom behind the egg table. Beckett falling with a table of olives crashing around her. Castle tripping up Dumpher and holding a sunflower to the suspect's back. Beckett cuffing the suspect. Castle crawling around on an extremely dirty New York Sidewalk, picking up Scary Prostitute Things with a pair of tongs... and then the Fighting Fourteenth showing up to save the day.

He called Paula. "Hey. I don't want any spin on the farmer's market thing this morning. If anyone contacts you, I want you to say it wasn't me. I was out of town."

"Why? I mean, Ricky, this is golden..."

"No, it's not. It's embarrassing. I was covered with egg and hadn't shaven in a few weeks. I haven't had a haircut since June. I haven't plucked any grays out since July!"

"But you helped Detective Beckett make an arrest again! This is big news!"

"It is not. It was some lady on drugs who misplaced a walnut. Beckett stepped in when she was off duty, and making a fuss about it is an invasion of her privacy. If you don't publicize it, nobody will care and everything will die down."

"Well, what if we don't want it to die down? You could scrap the pirate book and go back to Nikki..."

Nikki was, in fact, lying on the kitchen counter, sucking on a wedge of lime, then licking the back of her hand. This was the most he'd seen of Nikki since early June, and she was looking mighty fine. Not as fine as Beckett, of course, but... limes.

Rick averted his mind's eye to Paula, who had a truly spectacular body and knew how to do a really amazing trick with a ping pong ball. "Look, I start touring on Tuesday morning on the West Coast. I'll be working from that hub for about six weeks" (she knew his itinerary: five days in major California cities, a tour of China, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand then Buenos Aires and Sao Paolo, Mexico City and then L.A, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Edmonton, Colorado Springs... - it was gonna be a monster of a trip with a few days hanging out. He was also to take two discreet days in Thailand on "an offgrid elephant-riding adventure" meeting with an unnamed operative about an undisclosed operation, which of course he could say nothing about to Paula). "When Tuesday morning rolls around, I'm your little bookselling slave-puppet. So can we just... can I have a couple of days to … just lay low?"

Paula relented. "Yeah, okay. If anybody asks, it wasn't you."

"It wasn't me. Thank you. You're a goddess." He wasn't specific which one. Probably Hera: jealous, demanding, fickle, vain, and appreciative of human sacrifice.

His next call was to Montgomery, and of course Montgomery's first words were, "Hey, Castle. Long time no hear."

"Sorry about that. Weird summer," he sighed. They made small talk for a while, catching up. Alexis' summer studies and travels. Montgomery's girls in middle school. Evelyn's promotion at work. Montgomery's plans to upgrade the plumbing at his fishing cabin in anticipation of an early retirement. Alexis' thoughts about applying to Stanford. Rick's possible relocation to the West Coast.

Montgomery's voice was cautious. "So, uh, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I ran into Beckett this morning. At a farmer's market."

"Oh," said Montgomery.

"You might see some footage on the internet. We helped make... okay, we made an arrest. Nothing big. Just a purse snatcher."

"Wasn't it her day off?"

"Well, yeah. So she called it in, and some uniforms from the Fourteenth – well, let's just say my camera wasn't the only one that caught some unprofessional behavior on their part."

"Unprofessional."

"Internal Affairs might be interested. I thought you might want to have a first look, in case they have questions, or the captain at the Fourteenth has questions."

Montgomery sighed. "All right, send it my way."

"Sorry," Castle said. "I just wanted to give you a heads up. I uploaded my file to YouBoob and I'll message you the private link after we talk. But you have my permission to show it to Beckett, to IA, whatever's necessary so she doesn't catch any further crap from those... fine officers."

"Thanks," Montgomery said. "Now you're back in the City, I don't suppose you'll need to do more research at the Twelfth?" His voice was carefully neutral. He played poker very well. Rick suspected that there were layers to Montgomery that nobody was ever gonna get through.

Rick's fingers scraped through hair that suddenly felt too long and sloppy. "You know, Roy, I hope so. But it depends on Beckett. And maybe you."

"You're not gonna bring Weldon into it?"

"Not this time," he said quietly. "Either you guys want me there, or you don't."

Montgomery said, "You know our solve rate went up when you worked on Beckett's team."

Rick couldn't hide the grin in his voice. "So she admitted today."

"I'm never gonna get in the way of something that gets the job done," Montgomery chuckled. "So you two work it out if you can. My guess is you'll have more trouble with Ryan and Esposito."

"Oh?" Rick squeaked. He hadn't really thought of that.

"Hell hath no fury. You didn't call, you didn't write..."

Rick laughed, disbelieving. "Did they ever even like me?" He'd come to seriously doubt it.

"Maybe they did, but not right now. So tread with care. They'll come around if you grovel a little. Or maybe bribe them. Or help them with paperwork."

Rick nodded to the phone. "Thanks for the inside tip. I gotta go. Authory things."

"Okay. I'll have a look at the video and figure out if I need to take any action." Montgomery was pretty sure he would. So much for a peaceful Saturday.

•••


SOHO
Rick spent the next twenty minutes in the bathroom, first with the clipper, then the shaver. He trimmed his bangs and sideburns, and sprayed his hair into submission, knowing from bitter experience not to try trimming his own hair in the back. He briefly contemplated a ponytail, but he'd seen too many action movies. "The guy on the roof with the ponytail is always a goner." Then, with a sigh, he shucked off the shorts and the watermelon T-shirt, and changed into what he sometimes described to Gina as "Published Author Friday Casual" - a pair of khaki linen slacks, some Merrills, and a button-down plaid shirt. He put in his contact lenses and swiped some bronzer over his face in the hope of evening out the beard-shaded skin, which was one tone lighter on his chin and upper lip. Loins now girded to deal with his friends, rivals, frenemies, and close acquaintances, he picked up his laptop. He stopped in the kitchen to grab the bag of raw oysters out of the fridge, and headed up to the party. One sweeping gaze at the crowd told him that everyone he'd expected was already there, and that his mother - whom he'd thought was at the Ashland Shakespeare Festival finishing up a summer stock season - was hitting on a man with a Pulitzer and three ex-wives.

•••


TRIBECA

Kate visited the building supervisor, Mr. Miro, and he opened her apartment door to let her in.

"You got a spare key in your apartment, Kate?" He never called her Detective, or Ms. Beckett, probably because he had a daughter about the same age as Kate, and he was an informal guy. This didn't bother her. He was a genius when it came to projects like extricating dead mice from the radiator pipes.

"Yes, I do, thanks, Mr. Miro."

"Do you need to change your lock?"

"Oh, no, I'm pretty sure I know where I left the key," she smiled. "They wouldn't take advantage." Would Castle ever... whoa, it was a little early on to be thinking such a thing. "Thanks anyway!"

"You bet."

She hurried in, pulled out the bag of pastries with the now-grease-spotted note, and got smashed banana all over her hand. She realized that was another casualty of the arrest that neither she nor Castle had had the time or energy to deal with. She turned the bag inside out, scraped the banana pulp off the bag (Richard Castle's voice inside her head said, "I wonder if I like banana bread? You could bake some. Ohh, could I watch you stir the batter?")

Kate smirked to herself as she rinsed the blackening banana goo off the nylon fabric, scrubbed it clean, wrung it out, and hung it to dry on the fire escape outside her more westerly living room window (the one without her mother's murder board.) She removed further banana pulp from the plastic bags wrapping her torpedo-shaped collection of vegetables, and popped them into her crisper drawer.

Then she swore, remembering she'd told Cuthbert and Hodgkins that she'd email them a report of the incident up to the time they arrived. She hurried to her laptop and logged in to her police account, pulled up a form to complete online, and spent forty minutes documenting an incident that took five minutes to transpire. This was partially because she heard Castle's voice in her head narrating the whole thing ("Beckett, did I mention you looked totally hot with those zip-ties?") and partially because she was trying to think of a way to leave her partner out of it. She referred to him as a "Concerned Citizen" and left it at that. After all, it wasn't a lie. She didn't want to complicate his life any more than she had to. And despite their utterly blissful noontime liaison, she didn't want to assume anything about Castle's intentions, either public or private.

•••


SOHO

When the elevator door opened, Martha glanced up, excusing herself from Mr. I-Have-A-Pulitzer-And-You-Don't. She descended on Rick, arms flapping like a large bird-of-paradise stooping to greet a chick in her nest. "Oh, Richard, finally, there you are, what a lovely party!" she exclaimed. She planted a hug and kiss on him, which he returned with reasonable enthusiasm, surprising himself at how glad he was to see her.

"Hello, Mother."

"We were all wondering whether you'd even show up." She winked.

"I'm here now," he grimaced, then gave her a smile. "Welcome back. But I thought you were out of town until later this week?"

"Oh, I missed New York, and I wanted to be here for Alexis, since you're going off on tour. Give my understudy a chance to shine for the last weekend of the run." Martha jingled her bracelets and took an agua fresca vodka slushie from a passing caterer's tray. "Mm! Refreshing!" she chirped.

"Excuse me a moment." Rick stepped past her, went over to the outdoor kitchen area the caterers had set up, and handed off the oysters to the catering manager, Lance.

"I was thinking angels on horseback," he said. "But maybe just raw. They're fresh. But we're barely into a month with an R in it. So you decide."

"We can do Florentine. Stretches them a little. Less greasy than angels."

Rick nodded. "Your call." He took his apartment and building key off his main ring, and handed them to Lance. "There's a bunch more stuff in the crisper drawer including spinach – also there's a little pot of chives on the counter. Oh, and a pan of sauteed mushrooms on the stovetop."

Lance nodded. "I should have hired you instead of the other way round."

"You'll be the first person I crawl to if my next book bombs."

Martha looked around happily at the party-goers. There was a hot jazz combo playing, people were mingling – (very few authors like to dance, and none of them were anywhere near their required stage of intoxication). Several sat on lounge chairs in the sun or under shade umbrellas, writing on notepads or tapping away on laptops. Mr. Pulitzer was gazing up at the sky, sipping on a draft stout, smoking a pipe, looking as Irish as possible. A good many of the male writers were well into or past middle age, and spectacularly divorced, and Martha was quietly sussing out her most likely candidate before going in for the kill. She nudged her nose in an attractive, silver-haired man's direction.

Rick shook his head. "Nope. He tends to write about things with tentacles."

Martha frowned dubiously. "Not in a Jacques Cousteau way?"

"No, in a Lovecraftian way. I doubt you'd have much in common."

"You're probably right." She leaned against the roof parapet and gazed out over the city. "It's a shame you have to leave town again so soon, considering you're dating someone new."

"N... uh, where did you hear that?"

"Oh, one of your guests might have mentioned a suspicion that you had a girl at the loft this morning."

"Oh. Yeah, well, discretion's a lost art form, isn't it?" he sighed through gritted teeth. "Weather report said eighty percent chance of T-storms this evening. We'll probably have to move downstairs if the wind picks up."

"Don't try to distract me with your weather-talk, young man," Martha said. "Last week, you sent me a self-taken photo looking like an abandoned Shih Tzu at the pound... I barely recognized you, and you've lost so much weight... It is not reassuring. I'm concerned."

"You mean that selfie? I'd been out fishing all day, of course I was bedraggled, but I was fine then. I'm fine now."

"...you had a new girl in a watermelon-print shirt at the loft this morning..."

"That sounds like more than just a suspicion, Mother."

"...you were late to your own party, you're obviously freshly shaven after weeks without it, and you've cut your own bangs. The last time you did this, it was because you caught Meredith sleeping with Tony."

"It's not like that."

"How is it not like that? Are you really ready to move on? Take this jump out to California? Start seeing new women only to drop them? It hardly seems fair."

"To whom?" he snapped. "I thought I'd made it clear you'll always have a roof over your head, but I really don't need your constant supervision. Or Alexis', for that matter."

She looked a little stung, and his posture sagged with shame and exasperation. He put his arm across Martha's shoulder, kissed her temple, and said very quietly, "Look, Mother. I'm truly sorry. I'm not... I have a lot going on right now, stuff I didn't expect, and I don't really know how to handle it. Can you just help me get through this one day without my alienating everyone I know, including you?"

Martha gave her son a long, loving look, and reached up to pat his hand where it rested on her slim shoulder. "Of course, Kiddo."

He made a subtle gesture, indicating his guests. "And I have this show to put on. You understand that. Show. Right?"

"Show?"

"As in 'Must-Go-On.'

"I suppose it must!" she said brightly. Then she looked around eagerly, as if expecting the Three Witches from MacBeth to rise up out of the barbecue.

Rick said, "There's a reason you're never invited to these things, Mother. It looks like a party, but it's 99 percent work for me. Writing exercises, networking..."

"And?"

"Well, if you'd like to assist in keeping the guests entertained, I'd appreciate it."

"I charge a fee for that, Kiddo," she smirked.

He smirked. "We have oysters."

"And I'm your girl!"

Rick's phone buzzed in his pocket. He turned to block his mother's prying eyes, but she saw the excitement in his expression, which fell when he saw the "Unidentified Caller" ID. He was about to pick it up anyway, just to escape his mother's scrutiny, when a passing slightly tipsy science fiction author made a wild gesture when trying to describe a space battle, and her hand crashed into Castle's elbow. His phone went hurtling over the side of the building and down to the sidewalk below, taking Beckett's voice mail message with it.

The authoress peered at him through her horn-rimmed glasses and groaned, then looked over the parapet, and her glasses nearly fell off to join the phone. She barely caught them in time. "Oh, Jeez, Rick, I'm so sorry!" she said.

"No worries, Jane, I have a backup." He'd gone through an awful lot of phones, and before that, several pagers. He didn't absent-mindedly lose them, not ever. But he was a little bit of a klutz, and things just tended to happen.

•••


TRIBECA
In her apartment, finished with her onerous paperwork task, Kate used her land-line, since it was right there in the kitchen. She let the phone ring until it went to Castle's voice mail. He'd changed his message over the summer. It sounded just... fine. Businesslike, professional, a little clipped, a little distracted... Castle-yet-not-the-Rick-she-knew.

"Richard Castle here: writer, dilettante, man-about-town. You know what to do." Click. Beeeep.

"Hey, Castle, this is... yeah, this is Kate. I, um, seem to have lost my key. My super let me in but I wonder if it might have, if I might have dropped it somewhere. Maybe in your kitchen? Or your upstairs bathroom? I never put it in the jeans pocket. Uh, I know you're busy. I could swing by and get it, or, I don't know, you probably won't have time to drop it by. I'll be up fairly late. Feel free to call back or message anytime." She hesitated, grinning. "And I had a … I had the best day... in a long time. Maybe the best day ever, Rick." She paused. "Okay, I really don't care that much about the key, I trust you with it, I just... I'd love to see you again before you take off for points west, even if it's just..." Beeeeeep.

"Press one to listen to your message. Press two to erase and re-record your message. Press 3 to accept your message."

She went for something more grown up, but she was still grinning from ear to ear and pressed 2. "Hey, Castle, it's Beckett. I think I may have left my key at your loft. Can you give me a call or text me? Thanks."

There. Much more adult. She pressed 3 and hung up, satisfied.


SOHO

Watching his phone explode into smithereens sixty feet below, Rick sighed. "Why do I have a feeling this day can only go south from here?"

Martha said, "Well, it wouldn't be the first phone that's taken a fall for you."

He started to feel something nagging at the back of his mind. Not the phone, nor the feeling one has when one's phone is turned off but still seems to have a phantom ring anyway. He was beginning to get an idea of the many ways in which things could go wrong. He pushed it down. Kate had only been gone for an hour at most. She had his home phone number. He had a backup cell phone in his desk because he'd learned from hard experience that his profession and travel required it (at that time there wasn't a 'cloud', remember. There was barely even a horizon for it to approach from). It could wait. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. He was just being paranoid. Okay, paranoid would be if he thought she'd be kidnapped by the CIA. Anxious, then. Obsessive. Compulsive. Stupid. He thought of the way her face had looked when he kissed her, when she kissed him back. He thought of her hands on his body, and his on hers. And of their mutual tears when they had to say goodbye. It was real. It was good.

Everything was fine.

And if it wasn't now, it was going to be. He had made Things Turning Out For The Best his life's goal, and he was damn good at it.

Castle stared down at the sidewalk and said evenly, "Mother, I have a spare cell phone in my lower right desk drawer. Can you please place it on the charger cable for me?"

"Of course, Darling," Martha said. "I'll also call maintenance and ask them to sweep up the mess down there."

"Now would be really good." His smile looked like a slice of American cheese: smooth, plastic, completely false yet still moderately attractive. "Thank you so very much."

Martha nodded, found her purse, and took the elevator down to the loft.

Richard Edgar Castle took a deep breath and clapped his hands once to reset his mood, and, like turning on a switch, he closed the shutters on his personal life and became the Master of Ceremonies – (and, incidentally, the Macabre).

"All right, everyone, now that we've had time to mingle and accrue the snacks of our choice, let's start on the first round. Grab a seat, whip out your writing implements, and let's do this thing."


TRIBECA
Kate stood there for a moment with the phone pressed to her chest like a love-struck teenager, then remembered to click 3. She put some coffee on and opened up the packet of pastries. She set them on a plate. The one with raspberry chocolate ganache in the middle had gone a bit sweaty, and the slightly-buttery sugar glaze had leaked onto and smeared his note to her.

If he'd had a brain cell left in his skull he would have wrapped it separately. But the brain doesn't always work well in a pre-party, post-orgasmic haze. When he originally wrote the note in a gel pen he'd hastily grabbed from the kitchen junk drawer, it had been quite sweet:

"Hope this tides you over until the next time we kiss.
I can't wait to hold you.
We'll be lovers again before you know it."

...with a little heart drawn below it.

The pastry had other plans. What Kate read was:

"***** **is **** *** over un** *** *ex* **me ** *is**
I can't ** it **** old ***.
We***** over *** **in ***or *** *no ****."

and the little heart he'd drawn looked rather like a frownie face with little horns.

It looked really bad. It looked... well, over.

At least the raspberry ganache donut didn't call her a "Ho".

She threw the note, and the plate of uneaten pastries, into the trash, sat down at the counter, put her face in her hands, and wept.
•••


SOHO
Martha let herself in to the loft, where Lance was rummaging through the fridge, looking for the spinach. She caught her foot and nearly went sprawling on the bundle of blue gloves by the door. She bent and picked them up gingerly, then deposited them in the trash. God only knew what was on those gloves, but she could smell hot peppers, which she found very peculiar indeed, but might explain why Richard's eyes looked a bit red-rimmed. She went to her bedroom upstairs to deposit her purse. Then she went to the bathroom (which she and Alexis sometimes shared with guests) to wash her hands. Draped on the back of the toilet, she found a pair of ancient black booty shorts that she thought she recognized from Richard's Rocky Horror days (Normally 6'2", he'd stood 6'8" in the platform heels, somewhere between gawky and magnificent. She wondered what had happened to all the photos she took of him and his friends) (He knew exactly what had happened to the photos because he'd burned them himself). The lycra had given up its mojo, so she tossed them into the trash, resolving to buy him a new (larger) pair for Christmas, just to embarrass him. Then, standing on the bath mat, Martha's shoe clinked softly against something metallic. She bent and picked up a bronze deadbolt key.

"Hm. Wonder who dropped this?" she smiled to herself, then thought of a woman's long, elegant foot sticking out from behind the couch, and her son's right hand grasping that woman's slim right ankle to shift it further out. "Somebody tall, I imagine."

Then she heard Lance's voice calling up from downstairs. "Ms. Rodgers, do you folks have a nutmeg grater?"

She tucked Kate's lost key into her pocket, along with her own set, and called out, "Coming, Lancelot!"


TRIBECA

Kate's phone rang, and she answered it with a breathless "Hello?" instead of her usual clipped 'Beckett.' It was Montgomery. She couldn't hide the disappointment in her voice.

"Sir, isn't it your day off?"

"It was. It was your day off, too. But I see you were busy."

"I... yes, sir. I made an arrest this morning."

"Thanks for ccing me on the report. Did you happen to see any of the footage online?"

"Onli-? Oh. N-no, Sir." She'd vaguely noticed people with their cell phones. It somehow hadn't occurred to her that anyone would bother to post something so... stupid. "How bad is it?"

"It's interesting. I hadn't considered oil wrestling a normal course of action for New York's Finest." She could hear the amusement in his voice now.

"I, uh, it won't happen again."

"What, you'll never foil a purse snatcher?"

"I guess I can't guarantee that," she sighed.

"I'm looking at YouBoob. There was quite a crowd watching. They just can't wait for the nightsticks to come out. At least nobody took it in the crotch."

"Well, sir, all I had was a bag of..."

"Carrots?"

"Yes. And, uh, zucchini. And a banana." Montgomery was silent for over thirty seconds. Eventually Kate heard a soft snort. This was because he had his hand over his mouth and was trying not to let her hear him laughing. "Uh, sir?"

Montgomery coughed. "Sorry, I had something in my throat. Needed some water. So who's the scruffy guy there?"

"The suspect? Donald Dumpher."

"No. The one who brought him down. With the shopping cart."

"Innocent bystander."

"Beckett, I've emailed you a few links. They'll take you to the videos on YouBoob."

Kate logged into her account and went to the first URL in his email (Imaginary Richard Castle peered over her shoulder and crowed, "Will you look at that, Beckett? You're famous!"). At the top of its feed was an entry, "NYPD PIGS Officer Misconduct Soho Farmer's Market." Kate's intestines lodged themselves into (shut up, Castle!) ..."an arcane knot of viscera, used to foretell doom by the druids somewhere back in the mists of time." "Shut up, Castle. Just shut up."

The video's representative icon was a screen capture of Beckett from the backside, with oily handprints on her ass, and Dumpher on the ground. "Shit," she murmured. Heart hammering, she clicked "Play". There she was, falling down, oil all over her, getting up, Dumpher tripping on Castle's shopping cart and falling, Castle with the sunflower stem jabbing into Dumpher's back (she couldn't help smiling then wanting to die because he was a... a using... user!). She saw herself cable-tying Dumpher, then reinforcing with the tape, getting him on his feet, the olive guy handing the tongs to Castle as her writer picked up some really disturbing items. Kate watched the approach of Ms. Sterling, and then the advent of Hodgkins and Cuthbert. And that was where it got really interesting, because the two fridge-sized officers were talking quietly to Beckett, and her face was white and cold and composed as she spoke quietly back. Watching the video, from what Kate observed, she had not broken protocol or done anything wrong. Castle, the scruffy surfer dude with the shopping cart, was standing a little off to the side, looking, not at her ass, but at her face and the two uniforms, his expression a white mask of rage, and in the video, Detective Beckett shot him a tiny, forbidding glare that anyone who knew her would obey. Watching herself, Kate found herself smiling a little: she'd never really seen much of herself in action before, and aside from stumbling around squashing olives, she looked sort of badass. Castle stood down, stepped out of the uniforms' range of vision, pulled his phone out, glanced down at the screen, and was clearly recording every word Hodgkins and Cuthbert had exchanged with Beckett.

And then there was all the stuff about the walnut. But Montgomery didn't care about that, and the way Hodgkins and Cuthbert eventually roughed up both Sterling and Dumpher was not his current concern. He said, "So, I'm wondering what that hipster with the shopping cart recorded."

Beckett lied, "I wouldn't know. I didn't catch his na..."

"No, just watch. I love this part!" Montgomery said. "With the sneezing? The man's gotta be coked out of his mind. And there you are, walking off with him, arm in arm. He must have been having a wonderful day. Was he undercover narcotics? He's been dippin' a little too deep."

"Coked?" Beckett spluttered. "Castle would never..."

"Gotcha."

"Oh, you son o..." Kate stopped, clearing her throat. "Forgive me, sir. I've had..." suddenly her throat went hot with tears and she could barely speak. She sniffled. "Excuse me." She snatched a paper towel off the roll in her kitchen and blew her nose. It felt hard and scratchy. Well, good. Suffering clears the mind.

"Beckett," Montgomery said gently. "These guys are way outta line. I know they were passed over when you were promoted at the Fourteenth. I don't blame you for being upset."

Kate said, "Yeah, I don't give a damn about that. It's water under the bridge."

"No, it's not," he said. "You're not the only woman they've hassled. You think they should keep getting away with it? Or should Internal Affairs just let the accusations keep pilin' up?"

"I don't want to make trouble."

"They are the ones making trouble. I'm surprised at you, backin' down from a fight. Given this kind of rope, Iron Gates would make a macramé hammock out of these bastards."

Kate sniffled. "Look, sir, I really just don't care right now, okay?" She sounded way too close to crying. "Can we discuss this on Tuesday?"

He took the fine line between fatherly/gentle and Captain. "Beckett. What happened with Castle?"

"What do you mean, 'What happened with Castle'?"

"He called me a little while ago. Sent me the file he'd recorded. Told me he was leaving it up to you but wanted me to make sure NYPD kept his involvement under wraps. In respect for your privacy. His words."

"Involvement," she snorted.

"Perhaps not his exact words. I take it there's no substantial change in your situation from last spring."

Beckett found herself searching for words, unable to control the tremble in her voice. "Sir..."

"Kate. Look at that video. Look at his face, 3 minutes and 47 seconds in. That is not a man who'd play you. He may look like a roadie for a grunge band, but that's the face of a partner who has your back, hell or high water. As your superior officer, I strongly recommend that you cultivate that partnership with all the resources you have, because it's a rare thing."

"But he..."

"Look at the evidence, Beckett. Look carefully. In the long run, just like with any other search for the truth, it all adds up. Now I'd like to go back to my wife and children and get my grill fired up. I caught a few nice trout this morning."

"Yes sir. Thank you."

"I'm gonna file the report before the shit hits the fan. IA will find it on their desktops Tuesday morning, and you'll come out smelling like a rose. So just relax for now and … work this thing out with your writer."

"Yes, Captain."

"And thanks for volunteering to work Memorial Day. We'll miss you at the picnic."

"You're welcome, sir."

She hung up, and pressed her fingers into her sore, bloodshot eyes. Then she looked at the video again: at 3 minutes and 43 seconds, there was Castle, practically swooning in admiration for her, and at 3 minutes and 47 seconds, he was ready to fight or die – on her behalf. She stared at the screen. "So what the hell happened, Rick? Do I still taste like onions?" (He had. She hadn't minded). "Are you that much of a superficial user? We have one hot makeout session and you drop me like a hot... brioche?"

Montgomery's voice in her head nagged, "Look at the evidence, Beckett."

There had to be something she wasn't seeing. She fished the sad little note out of the trash and looked at it again, held it up to the light. Still nothing was discernible. She took it to the window and held it up to the glass next to her mother's murder board, but even the direct sunlight through the smeary paper rendered no more detail. She looked at the photo of her mom: the nice headshot from the legal firm, taken when Johanna was still alive and kicking ass. Sometimes Kate's ass, figuratively speaking. "Mom," she said. "You... God, I wish you were here."

She flopped down on her couch with her forearm over her eyes. Richard Castle was not the only person who lived in Kate's head. She could hear her mother's voice. "You know, Katie, the most important rule of justice is that people are innocent until proven guilty. It's so easy to judge. But circumstantial evidence and hearsay are not the same as hard, corroborated evidence."

"But he has a history of being a total womanizer and..."

"Who told you that? A gossip rag?"

"Page Six is hardly a gossip rag."

"Page Six is manipulated by a soulless propaganda machine whose entire goal is to make money for its publishers. They'd tell you he was dating a box turtle if they thought it would bring in extra cash. Or clicks. Whatever they call it now."

Kate sighed. "I wish you could have met him. You'd understand how confusing this is."

"I did meet him!" Johanna-in-her-head laughed. "I did! I thought he was adorable. I told you that! Remember how I was falling all over myself, and your father just rolled his eyes and called me a marshmallow? I dragged you to a book signing the next time, and we met Mr. Castle together. Twice! Remember that time you dropped the book and everyone stared at you? He was nothing but kind to you. And now you know him, better than you want to admit. He's friends with his ex-wives, Kate. He's good to his mom and his daughter. He busts his ass to help you solve cases. You've grown into a lovely, mature woman. You know he likes you. You know he wants you."

The thought of her mom saying such a thing was a bit weird. "Wanted me."

"You know he loves you," said Imaginary Mom Who Really Never Did Back Down From An Argument And Got Killed For It.

For a moment Kate's mind's eye saw her mother slumped on the floor beside her couch, dead, with blood streaming out onto the carpet, sticking her fingers together from where she'd tried to stanch her own wounds. Kate felt the fierce pain of loss again, and as always, her mind did an inventory of all the stab wounds, their angle, the organs and muscles hit, the place where the blade nicked a bone... growing colder, the January ground icy beneath, the trash can holding her up, the smell of garbage...

"Katie," her mother's voice was soft in her head now, soft, the life ebbing out. "Help me."

"I can't help you, Mom, I've looked, I've looked, I just can't see it. I feel your pain in my bones, every goddamn day, and I can't see what I'm missing, except that I miss you. Even if you won't shut up. It hurts so much."

Johanna's voice was growing stronger again. It was the voice she used when they were driving down the West Coast in a rental car, with Katie trying to decide between Reed, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA. They'd spent a lot of time talking, and a lot of time not talking, mad as hell at one another, each too stubborn to concede. Oddly, Kate could remember her mother's angry voice, but not the trivialities about which they'd argued. "Castle wanted to help you, and you pushed him away. You're still looking for an excuse, Katie. I've seen you do it before with other boyfriends. You went for bad boys like a magnet to steel, but everything always had to be perfect and dramatic and exciting and romantic, and then when they disappointed you in any way, you just couldn't accept it, and you dumped them. And if they were kind to you, you couldn't accept that either, and you got bored, and you dumped the nice ones, too. This man's made you work. He's earned a chance."

It was as fine a harangue as Johanna ever shot out in her pre-death life. Kate breathed it in, trying to fit all the pieces together. "If he loves me, why didn't he call me for over three months? Was it really just Demming? Why didn't he pick up the phone when I called this afternoon?"

"He has a life, Katie. Maybe he was busy."

An unexpected voice in her head butted in. "Why didn't you use your cell phone?" said Imaginary Castle. "You have caller ID blocked on your land line."

Kate sat bolt upright out of a nap she hadn't intended to take. "Shit!"

END CHAPTER 12