CBs

Chapter 21

"Dad!" Alexis called gently.

Castle slowly forced his eyes open. "Alexis? What's going on?"

"Nothing. Everything's fine, but it's three-thirty and your appointment with Dr. Shapiro is in half an hour."

Castle got unsteadily to his feet. "Right. Thanks. I'll call you later."

"You won't have to because I'm taking you," Alexis insisted.

"You don't need to do that," Castle protested, "I can catch a cab."

"Dad, I'm taking you," Alexis repeated. "Kate called earlier to check on you. When I told her you'd been asleep all afternoon, she was worried. She asked me to. So unless you want to take it up with her later..."

Castle grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and coughed up something thick, ugly, and green. "Fine," he conceded.

The nurse had already taken Castle's temperature and blood pressure and asked the usual questions. Instead of his usual scroll through his tweets while waiting for the doctor to make an appearance, Castle lay back on the examining table and closed his eyes. The doctor's voice seemed far away. "Rick, can you sit up for me?" Opening his eyes again, Castle took the doctors extended gloved hand hand pulled himself up."You have a temperature of a hundred and three. Combined with the coughing and the chills, that is concerning to me. I'm going to check your lungs." Shapiro put the earpieces of his stethoscope in his ears and gave Castle instructions to take deep breaths. Castle tried unsuccessfully to comply. Shapiro frowned. "You appear to have developed pneumonia. Given the severity of your symptoms, I'd recommend admitting you to the hospital."

"Really?" Castle asked. "You're going to freak out my daughter. Can't you just give me some magic pills?"

"I could prescribe an antibiotic," Shapiro responded, "but there wouldn't be anything magic about it. When an infection reaches this level it's often not easy to knock out. The best thing to do is run some tests to figure out what we're dealing with and deluge you with IV antibiotics. We can also give you IV fluids which will make you feel a lot better. And Rick, Alexis isn't the little girl who tried to pretend she wasn't afraid of shots anymore. She's a formidable young woman and she's seen you in the hospital before. She can handle this - probably better than you can. So why don't you call that gorgeous wife of yours and then let Alexis take you over. I'll call ahead to slash through the bureaucracy a bit."

"Where's the captain?" Ryan asked.

"Hospital. Alexis took Castle in," Esposito replied. "Doc thinks he's got pneumonia."

Ryan nodded. "Yeah, he didn't sound good at all this morning. Hope he'll be okay. But anyway, I've got a line on that death from the collapsing staircase Captain Beckett mentioned. It was part of an annex to a records storage building. The vic was Mary Brodsky, single mother of two. Widow. Husband was killed in Afghanistan. There's no family to ask questions. The kids are in foster care."

"Son a bitch!" Esposito exclaimed. "Hell of a thing to happen to a soldier's family. Well we're asking questions, lots of questions. What else have you got?"

"Not much yet. The annex was built by Rampart Enterprises. Typical thing. Lowest bidder. Rampart is a subsidiary of Trimp. I've put in a request for the records, but Trimp has an army of lawyers. But I have the name of the building inspector that signed off on the staircase." Ryan held up the keys to their unit. "Want to go talk to him?"

Esposito snatched the keys out of Ryan's hand. "Yeah Bro, I wanna talk to him alright, And he better have some answers."

Castle had IV lines running into both arms. "You don't have to stay," he told Kate. "You've seen Alexis is here. She's just grabbing a snack. Mother's on her way. I know how busy things are at the precinct and the CBs have the new investigation."

"Edelson's handling most of my paper," Kate confided. "If anything critical comes up, I'll get a text, a call, and probably ten emails. For now at least, I'm here. You look better, but you don't sound it."

"Is that your wifely way of telling me to shut up?" Castle teased.

"No, if I want you to stop talking, I'll tell you. Not that you've ever paid much attention when I have. Before she popped down the cafeteria Alexis said something about Balazs Kovacs, your forensic accountant. Looked like she has more than just a professional interest. Her eyes had that 'God, he's cute,' look."

"Did I miss that?" Castle shook his head. "I must really have been out of it. She told me she's interested in forensic accounting as a possible path for her investigative career. I didn't catch that her interest was for that particular forensic accountant."

"Your cluelessness can be excused by your feverish haze. But her interest could be in both. It's a solid career. She'd never be out of work. There are more people trying to cheat the system every day."

"I hope so. I prefer not to think about people pointing guns at my daughter. Obviously Balasz has yet to have my full fatherly scrutiny as my daughter's suitor - not that Alexis would give a damn what I think anyway. But I like his work. I had two happy clients this morning."

"I think you might be surprised, Castle. After her fiasco with Pi, I think Alexis' opinion about your judgment rose. But tell me about the cases."

"I'm not sure I should, P.I. discretion and all that." Kate looked skeptical. "Okay, but no names. I was looking at two family owned companies. The executive slots were filled by nepotism rather than on merit. In one, a guy who was passed over got mad and started skimming. He tried to cover it up by altering records of payments to the company to make them seem smaller than they were. But he wasn't as smart as he thought. Balasz tracked down the discrepancies. I reported what he found to my clients. I'm not sure if they'll just allow the guy to quietly make restitution or they'll press charges. They're very concerned with maintaining a spotless reputation. They may just go for getting their money back and firing the guy.

The other one is way more juicy. The villain of the piece is a family member. He wasn't bad at his job and earning a nice enough salary to keep a family pretty well. Unfortunately for him, it wasn't enough to keep two families well."

Kate's brows rose. "He was a bigamist?"

Castle started to laugh and ended up in a coughing fit, but his eyes still glowed when he got his breath back. "Cool right? If bigamy weren't so overdone on cable right now, it would make a good book. Anyway, he had one in Westchester and the other in Queens. Using my brilliant investigative techniques I tracked them down. He used the old working late, staying at the company apartment excuse. I followed him and found both families. One of his wives would probably have twigged eventually anyway - maybe hired Richard Castle Investigations herself. But the loss of funds showed up first. The company had been doing pretty well, there was no reason for it to suddenly start sliding. The matriarch of the family, who is also the CEO, got suspicious and called me. I exposed the bigamy and Balasz traced the missing funds. Restitution won't do for this one. That money has long been transformed into kids' clothes, electronics, and tuition. He will be facing charges for bigamy and embezzlement."

Kate chewed on her lip. "I feel sorry for the families. They could lose everything when Double Daddy goes to prison."

"Uh uh, that's the good part. Now that the head of the family knows the truth, they'll be taken care of," Castle explained. "Hell's only going to rain on Daddy Douche Bag - I like your Double Daddy too."

"So, all's well that ends well?" Kate asked.

Martha swept in before Castle could answer. "Darling, oh look at you. You poor thing! You look like Maury Vlostok before he dies in the third act. "

"Nice to see you too, Mother," Castle responded.

Kate rolled her eyes and kissed her husband on the forehead. "Don't worry," she whispered, "I've seen that play. He only pretends to be dead. He comes back looking terrific at the end of act four."