CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE – A Dream Fulfilled, Confirmation, & the Last Conspirator(s)
The following morning, Kate Beckett opened her eyes and was momentarily panicked. She could feel the warmth radiating from Castle's body spooned up against her back. She'd had a few glasses of wine with dinner, but not enough to get her drunk. She bit her lower lip remembering the way she'd pulled him into her room, threatening to use her handcuffs on him even.
She could feel her cheeks heating from the rush of blood, yet she couldn't help running her fingers lightly over his arm that was draped across her body, feeling the tiny hairs there. She could still feel the heat of the two of them the night before.
The more she thought about it, the harder she found it not to smile. He'd been everything she'd hoped for, everything she'd been imagining he'd be for almost two years. He'd been all that and more, sweet, attentive, giving, but also demanding, and at times a little rough. Not enough to scare her, or make her uncomfortable, but enough for her to know just how much he wanted her, maybe even needed her. She'd certainly needed him.
"Hey," he mumbled into her ear. "How long have you been up?"
"Not long," she said, rolling over so she could face him. She hesitated before speaking again. There was very little on Earth that Rick castle found quite so adorable as Kate Beckett biting her lower lip, shy and nervous at the same time. He'd never seen her act that way before.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It's been two years," she said quietly. "That's a lot of foreplay." He chuckled at the thought, mostly because it was right on the money. "I guess I was just hoping that it was everything you hoped for."
"And then some," he said, the twinkle still in his eyes, but his voice taking on a more serious tone. "Nikki Heat has nothing on you, Detective."
She smiled, and kissed him lightly. "I think you can call me Kate, and thank you," she said in a near whisper, "for being here, for being with me through all of this."
"Always," he simply said, and she didn't doubt his sincerity, not even a little bit.
"What are we going to tell Alexis?" Kate asked, blushing just a little.
"She's a big girl," Castle said. "She can handle it." He paused for a minute, considering how much he should say. In the end, he decided that he didn't want to keep secrets from Kate. "She told me the other day that you cared more for me than you let on."
"She did?"
"Yes. She's known that I've loved you for a long time. She tried to give me a push. She thinks you've felt the same for a while, and that I needed to make my own feelings clear to you."
"I have," she said, looking down, unable to meet his eyes, "but I was scared."
"I know that can't be true," Castle said. "I didn't think you were scared of anything, least of all me."
"Well, now you know different," Kate said. She looked back up into his eyes and kissed him lightly once more, and then climbed out of bed, wrapping the comforter around herself on the way to the bathroom. "I'm going to shower and get dressed," she said. "We need to be at NCIS in an hour."
As she walked away, Castle admired her backside. Just as she reached the door he said, "You were right, Kate." She looked back at him a little confused. "Two years ago in that alley, you told me so, and you were right. I had no idea." She smiled and dropped the comforter, slipping into the bathroom and closing the door, though not all the way, which he took as an invitation. The night before had been a long-standing dream come true for him, and it was only likely to get better from here.
Alexis smiled in the elevator on the way down to the restaurant. Her Dad had clearly spent the night with Detective Beckett, Kate. Everyone around them had been wondering when they'd finally cross that line. There wasn't much doubt that it would happen eventually, unless of course he did something stupid. Not at all outside the realm of possibility, she thought.
She loved her Dad, but he could be clueless at times. She laughed at the irony of that last thought. The clueless mystery writer and the clueless Detective, had finally gotten a clue, where their hearts were concerned.
She entered the restaurant and walked over to a table on the side. Detective Esposito was sitting with a cup of coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon, reading the New York Daily News.
"Would you mind if I joined you, Detective?" she asked.
"No," Esposito said, "of course not." He set aside his paper and stood, pulling out a chair for her to take a seat.
"Thanks."
After he'd settled back in, she said," Sooo…"
"Yeah," he replied.
Neither said anything else for a minute while Alexis perused the menu. The server came by and brought her a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice, then took her order, Eggs Benedict.
Esposito was back to flipping through the paper, reading the an article in sports section about the upcoming football season and the Jets chances, when Alexis asked, "So who wins the pool then?"
"Excuse me?" he asked. "I'm not sure what you mean." His face was innocence itself. The problem was, he looked too innocent.
"Come on," she said. "You can tell me. I won't rat you out."
He looked at suspiciously. Could he trust her? Why not, he figured. It was clear he hadn't fooled her with his innocent act anyway.
"I don't know," he said. "The sign-up sheet is hidden in the bottom drawer of my desk, underneath my log book." She seemed to be taking what he said at face value. "I know I didn't win. I had sixteen months. It's been about twenty-three." After a little thought, he said, "Maybe Lanie, but I'll have to call Ryan later and have him check the sheet."
"How much does the winner get?" Alexis asked. She started in on her breakfast, which had just arrived.
"Two-hundred fifty."
"Wow," she said. "That's a nice pot."
"Yeah," he said, wondering how it was that every time they ran a pool, either Lanie or Beckett managed to win. "When are you going back to New York?"
"Dad arranged for a car to take me to the train station. My train leaves at noon. Gram is meeting me at Grand central. Looks like you won't have to share a room with him after today."
"Probably wouldn't have to anyway," Esposito mumbled into his coffee, trying not to let her see his grin.
"You're probably right," she said, making no attempt to hide her own grin.
Just after seven-thirty, the team had reassembled at NCIS. It was a Sunday, but that didn't seem to interest Gibbs in any way. He put them straight to work double-checking the backgrounds and financial histories of thirty-six other suspects, the ones that Damon Werth hadn't been able to recognize. "No reason to let something fall through the cracks because we were lazy," he said. Esposito doubted that anyone had ever accused the man of being lazy.
The exceptions were McGee and Abby. They already had assignments, assignments which had already borne fruit. By mid-day, McGee had managed to confirm that the account in the Caymans did indeed belong to Colonel Merton Bell, and that it was the same account to which the money from Warner was transferred in, and from which the start-up money for BDS was transferred out.
The numerous leads that the others worked amounted to a big giant pile of nothing, but then that was more or less what they'd expected.
Around three in the afternoon, McGee and Abby came into the Bullpen. Each wore a huge smile. They'd been working from Abby's lab all day.
Gibbs was just returning from a coffee run when they arrived at his desk.
"Judging from those grins," I'm guessing that the Geek Squad found something big," Tony said. McGee shot him a glare, but Abby's grin merely widened.
"That might be the understatement of the year, Tony," she said in her gravelly voice.
Gibbs nodded at McGee, and indication that he shouldn't keep them waiting, and one which the younger Agent took to heart.
Beckett's heart jumped into her throat. This was it, the final conspirator in her mother's killing. She instinctively grabbed Castle's hand, next to her. She didn't realize how hard she was squeezing until she heard his sharp intake of breath. She loosened her grip a little, but she didn't let go.
McGee said, "We tracked back all the accounts. It wasn't easy, but we managed to follow the money. We were right about the other two accounts. Five million went to Haines, left that account, and has now been invested in an Italian company making leather shoes, under a false name, Evan Hanley. Rough estimate, it's now worth nine million."
"The account for three million was for our dead hit man, Coonan," Abby jumped in. It was the original money transferred into the largest account McGee found for him earlier. That was the easiest to figure because he had a lot of previous info to work with."
Here it was. Beckett felt like she was having trouble getting enough oxygen. Castle rubbed her back with his free hand, hoping to soothe her nerves a bit.
"The last account, was the other big one," McGee said. "Fifteen million, just like Colonel Bell's. We traced it back, but the money had been transferred like eight times since the initial deposit, so what we did was,…"
Gibbs could feel a long-winded techno-babble filled explanation coming, so he cut it off. "McGee! Bottom line."
"It's Alfred Markham, Boss," McGee said.
Beckett let out the breath she'd been holding without realizing it.
"The Senior Partner at Johanna Beckett's firm?" Kate asked, a little bit of surprise in her voice.
"Actually," Abby said, "he's a judge on the New York Supreme Court now."
"You're sure about this McGee?" Gibbs asked.
"We traced the account back to a Cheryl Lefebvre. She's an attorney at a very prestigious firm in Albany," McGee replied.
Abby jumped in. "She kept her birth name, but would you like to take a wild stab at whom Cheryl Lefebvre married in nineteen-ninety-five?"
"Alfred Markham," Beckett said. She had an almost dazed look in her eyes. She walked toward the plasma, where McGee had pulled up the most recent DMV photo of the Honorable Alfred H. Markham. "I remember, they came to our house once, for dinner. I must have been about fifteen. They weren't married yet. They brought her daughter,…I can't recall her name just now, from a previous marriage. She was maybe three or four years younger than me."
"Renee," Abby interjected. "The daughter's name is Renee."
Beckett nodded absently at the information. "We had prime rib roast and baby red potatoes with dill butter. My Mom spent the whole day in the kitchen, making sure everything was perfect."
Castle moved up behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders. He gave a gentle squeeze, for support.
She went on, "He was the Senior Partner at the firm, her mentor. She always talked about him, about how smart he was, what a great lawyer he was. It must have devastated her to learn that he was involved in something so underhanded as the theft of that money."
"She might have even confronted him directly," Castle said. "When she did, he contacted the guy he knew would have the contacts to take care of the problem, the guy who had every bit as much at stake as he did, Merton Bell."
"And Bell hired Dick Coonan to find out who she told, and then kill her and them," DiNozzo said.
Ziva said, "Colonel Bell figured out how to steal the money, and he used Lieutenant Haines to do it."
Caitlyn put in, "Haines funneled the money to his half-brother, that no one even knows about."
"And Warner transfers the money to offshore accounts, from which the parties involved draw only when they need to," McGee said. "No wonder no one ever figured it out before now."
Gibbs smiled. "Good work, McGee, he said. "And you too," he said to Abby, pulling her into a one-armed hug and planting a little kiss on her forehead.
"One more thing, Gibbs," Abby said. "We double-checked the initial filing for Bell Defense Systems. The attorney of record was Cheryl Lefebvre."
"You want us to pick everyone up?" Esposito asked.
"Not yet," Gibbs said. "Kate, you and Esposito find Warner. Get him down here for a little chat."
"You got it, Gibbs," Agent Todd replied.
"DiNozzo, you go with Detective Beckett and Mr. Castle. Bring Haines in as well. Keep them separated."
"On it, Boss," Tony said.
"And Tony…" Gibbs started to say.
"If he resists, Detective Beckett gets to arrest him," DiNozzo supplied for him "My pleasure, Boss."
"What do you want me to do, Gibbs?" Ziva asked.
"You're going to make a phone call, and then we're going to make a plan," Gibbs said. Ziva grinned. He had something sneaky in mind, and she was pretty sure that she was going to like it.