Chapter 6

Beckett's head hurt too much for her to be able to think, so she didn't. The hot water bottle was easing her cramps, and the painkillers were kicking in there – but nothing was touching the headache except the ice pack, and that wasn't curing it. She would have gratefully closed a deal with an executioner to take her head off, right now, had one presented themself. She had a feeling of vague appreciation that Castle had brought her home and provided the necessary items, but that was as far as she could go. She plummeted into sleep as if she'd fallen over a thousand foot precipice.

Castle ambled off to the subway thinking hard. Beckett – apparently, so far, indestructible and indefatigable – could actually suffer from normal ailments, such as normal people might experience. Did it explain her temper? No. Beckett's temper was incendiary at the best of times.

Well. Beckett's temper with him was incendiary. With everyone else, she was calm to the point of dead flat, serenely equable – right up until she didn't get her evidence when she wanted it, and then her irritation was generally directed at the circumstances, not the person. Just maybe, he thought, just maybe his own smooth taking-care of her would bring them to a better place. Just maybe.

He continued home, and spent the evening, after dinner, constructing various scenes in which Rook took care of Nikki, to much better effect than Castle himself taking care of Beckett. For a start, Rook was able to stay with Nikki, cuddling her close and petting, soothing her pain. Castle couldn't do any of that, but when he slept, he dreamed of close-held affection, not the X-rated movies of previously.

When Beckett woke to the soft trill of her alarm, the headache had mostly gone, the cramps had definitely gone, and she was ravenous. She whisked through shower, dressing and make-up, and found herself with plenty of time to purchase a substantial breakfast, heavy on bacon and fruit, and drowned in coffee. After she'd finished it, the headache had almost entirely gone, and she was completely ready to face the day.

By the time she'd caught up with the limited occurrences of the prior afternoon, which added nothing to the information she already had, Ryan and Espo had arrived.

"What do we got?" she asked.

"Lemme open my e-mail first," they said together, and did so.

"Okay," Ryan said first, "I got the construction stuff and architect."

"I got some customer lists, but there are a lot more to come."

"I haven't any information on buyers of bronze nails yet, but I'll start calling as soon as they start opening," Beckett said. "I've got a whole bunch of confirmations that the warrants were served, so I'll check them off against my list to make sure we haven't missed any." She looked at the boys. "What about the knife and the tox screen?"

"Lanie said she'd send the tox as soon as it was done, and she's passed the thoughts on the knife on to CSU for them to model."

"Have CSU run prints yet?" As Beckett asked, fingers tapping on her desk, her e-mail pinged. "Yes, they finally have."

"And?" Espo and Ryan chorused.

"And, our victim is Stuart Darnley." She grinned. "CSU have sent a social security number, so we finally have something to go on. Let's start running him and find any next of kin, employer, all the usual. Let's get to it."

They did. An hour later, they reconvened, just as Castle bounced in, joined them in the break room, and started to brew the coffees. "You all look happy," he observed. "Does that mean clues?"

"Naw, it means Beckett's booby-trapped your chair, bro. Of course it means clues."

"What sort of clues? Road trip clues?"

"Next of kin," Beckett said. "Which isn't a jaunt."

"No, but it's out," Castle said happily. Underneath, he was biting his tongue not to ask are you okay, how's your head, can I cuddle you just to make sure everything's all better? "Where are we going?"

"We?"

Castle put her coffee into her hands. "Yep, we. I shadow you. Therefore we are going to break the tragic news to the next of kin."

Beckett sighed. "Yes." Now she'd have to spend two hours or so each way in the car with Castle ruffling her composure. She'd been trying really, really hard not to think about how he must have taken care of her, since she had a vague, pain-soaked memory of the ice pack and then the hot water bottle appearing without her input. It didn't fit with the irritating flirtation and casual dismissal of their kiss. If it hadn't been for that dismissal, she might have thought that he had some good points. As it was…she didn't understand why he'd have helped, except in the hope that she'd feel grateful enough to be nice to him. Nice, meaning debrief, meaning sex. Nope.

She stalked out to her unit, protective armour sliding imperceptibly into place.

"Where are we going?" Castle asked.

"Greenwich, Connecticut. His next of kin is his wife. No children, thankfully." Two hours, more or less, with Castle jabbering in her ear. Great. Two hours of studiedly not reacting to him. And then two hours back again. It would be well into the evening before she was home. She carefully did not think that Castle would undoubtedly want lunch and dinner, and short of leaving him in Greenwich (which would be even more tempting were it Greenwich, England not Greenwich, Connecticut) she'd have to put up with it. She supposed, bitterly, that if she could make it through today without either betraying herself by succumbing to his far-too-practised charm or shooting him and dumping the body in the ocean, she'd never have to worry again.

Castle stayed quiet, though he fiddled with the radio incessantly, until they were halfway up Manhattan. He'd suppressed his intense desire to ask questions and to tap at Beckett's shell until it broke to reveal some true thoughts or feelings, but once he'd got bored of playing with the radio until he found something he actually wanted to listen to, it didn't take long for his desire to start hammering at his common sense.

"Are you feeling better?" he tried.

"Yes, thank you." She could have been talking to a maiden aunt, so prim was her voice.

"Good." He paused. "I was really worried about you. I thought you were made of steel and whipcord."

"As opposed to? Cotton candy and marshmallows?"

"Delicious, but you'd melt in the rain." He forcibly stopped himself saying which would be a terrible shame because then I wouldn't be able to eat you. "Nope. Steel and whipcord. Nobody who's met you would ever think that you were soft and fluffy."

"No," Beckett said, and died a little inside. No, she wasn't soft and fluffy. Because she never had the chance to be soft, or fluffy, or snuggly. She wished she could be, sometimes, but that wasn't going to happen. Steel and whipcord. Yeah. That was what he was shadowing. Not someone who needed to be looked after. "I don't melt in the rain. I'm fine." She said it in such a way as to shut down the conversation entirely.

"Why don't you notify next of kin by phone or local cops when it's this far away?" Castle queried, as they stopped at a light.

She turned and gaped at him. "You what now? Tell someone their close relative died by phone? How'd you like to get a call like that? I'd never call someone. If they were really too far, I'd at least get local law enforcement to go around. You can't – you just can't." She paused. "But mostly, it's because so many deaths are to do with family. I want to look them in the face when I tell them. Check out their reactions." Her tone was deliberately cool. Steel and whipcord, and definitely not anything that might point to a softer side. The light changed, and she pulled away. She could feel Castle's assessing gaze on her, and kept her expression completely neutral.

"I see," Castle said slowly, dragging out the words. "So which is it?"

"Huh?"

"Your instant reaction was total empathy – how they'd feel. Or should that be – how you felt? You told me about your mother. You only gave the investigation answer second, after you'd had time to think about it." He waited, but Beckett said nothing. "Why're you trying to tell me it's only about the cynical answer?"

"Because it is. You're supposed to be a mystery writer. You claim," she stated with a nasty edge of disbelief, "that you do a lot of research. Surely you've learned that most homicides are the victim's so-called nearest and dearest? Of course the cynical answer is the truth. What sort of cops would we be if we actually believed that every family was just like the Waltons?"

"I've watched you tell next of kin, and sure you're observing their reactions, but you aren't only doing that. You're trying to make it as easy as possible for them. Why're you trying to pretend differently?"

"So from shadowing me on five or six cases over less than two months, you know everything about how I operate? Wow," she said sarcastically. "Do you do telepathy too?"

"You're avoiding the question."

"Because it's a dumb question."

Castle heard from a dumbass idiot, though Beckett hadn't actually said it out loud. "There are no dumb questions," he said.

"You keep telling yourself that," Beckett snarked.

"There are only questions people don't want to answer," Castle said equably. "And you, my dear detective, don't seem to want to answer. So maybe you'll answer a different question."

"Doubt it," Beckett muttered. "I don't answer dumb questions."

"How do you know it's going to be dumb when I haven't even asked it?"

"You're asking it."

"You didn't think I was dumb when I was fixing up your ice pack and hot water bottle," Castle fired back, nettled.

"I'd have managed just fine without you."

"You couldn't drive!"

"I'd have gotten a taxi."

"Yeah, right." Castle stopped. "And you're still trying to distract me from asking questions. What're you afraid of?"

"Not you, for sure." Beckett looked at the interstate in front of her and put her foot down. "Now shut up. I'm concentrating on the road."

You're sure not concentrating on obeying the speed limit, Castle thought, and wondered why Beckett was so keen to disabuse him of the (he believed, perfectly correct) idea that she empathised with the next of kin as well as considered them to be suspects, rather than simply treating them as suspects, which was what she was trying to suggest. Another Beckett mystery, which simply did not add up with her behaviour to the guy whose daughter had been found in a freezer, five years frozen.

"Surely you can walk and chew gum at the same time – or in this case, drive and talk?" he said.

"Of course I can," Beckett snapped. "But I don't want to. I want you to shut up and stay shut up."

Which, to Castle's already well-trained ears, meant I don't want you questioning me because I don't want to give you any answers. Which wasn't unusual, but was rather disappointing. He thought for a little while, as Beckett whistled along the interstate. Her air of closed-off semi-hostility didn't dissipate. Castle thought some more. Joking hadn't worked. Caring for her didn't seem to have worked, though that had been at most a half-hour's worth of being allowed to help out. He had no idea what would work. If he were writing it, he thought again, he'd need some inciting event to move them along in the right direction, like an explosion or a car crash. Since he was present, he'd rather not be caught up in an explosion or a car crash. He'd have to settle for lunch, and dinner. It was already past eleven-thirty, and they still (despite Beckett's laxity in the matter of speed limits) had some way to go.

"Can we get lunch before we see the next of kin?" he asked. "It wouldn't be good to have rumbling stomachs while you're breaking bad news."

Her immediate snap died unspoken as she considered courtesy. "Okay. Find somewhere quick. It's been at least three days since he went missing. His wife deserves to know that he's dead."

"And you want to see if she's hiding something," Castle said blandly. So blandly, that Beckett took a moment to realise what he'd said.

"Yes," she snipped. "Like I said before."

"Mm," Castle hummed. "Funny how that wasn't your first thought. Seeing as you were so determined to tell me that was your only reason earlier."

"I'm not going to repeat myself just because you have the memory of a mouse on crack," Beckett snapped. "If you want lunch, find us somewhere to eat and tell me how to get there. Otherwise, we're going straight to Mrs Darnley."

Castle consulted his phone and the wonders of Google, and found a pizza place. Burgers, he already knew, would never compare to Remy's. He gave directions, which Beckett actually followed, and she parked neatly close by.

Beckett chose the table, which was wide enough that she wouldn't touch Castle in any way at all, ordered rapidly, and generally made it clear to the server that she was in a hurry. Pizza and soda arrived in short order, and were eaten and drunk at a rate that avoided any conversation: Beckett being disinclined to breach etiquette by talking with her mouth full. When Castle suggested dessert, she declined.

"I want to talk to next of kin, not stuff my face with dessert," she rapped, and signalled the server. "Can I get the check, please?" She paid before Castle could reach for his wallet. "Restroom," she said, and disappeared. Castle did the same. It seemed somehow disrespectful to ask the grieving widow if he could use the bathroom, if required.

They were at the Darnley residence no more than twenty minutes later. Beckett took a deep breath before she left her unit, squared her shoulders and then got out. Her knock on the door of the clapboard house was steady.

"Yes?" A small woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed, peeked around the door, on its chain. She didn't look as if she'd slept for a few days.

"Mrs Darnley?"

"Yes?"

"Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD" – she didn't get any further.

"Stuart? No!"

"May we come in?"

Mrs Darnley, sobbing, unhooked the chain, let them in, and closed the door. "I reported him missing to the state police but they said they wouldn't do anything for at least twenty-four hours because he was an adult and adults sometimes do just go away for a day or two. But I knew he wouldn't do that. I knew." Tears poured down her face.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," Beckett said. Castle spotted a box of Kleenex, and passed one over, wondering why Beckett hadn't already done so. Mrs Darnley wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and dumped the Kleenex in the trash. "Can you tell us about Stuart?"

Mrs Darnley cried harder, but out of the tears Beckett managed to distil some useful information. Stuart Darnley had been a construction worker, specialising in high quality soundproofing and insulation. He'd worked all over Connecticut and New York, and out of state.

"Did he have any enemies?" Beckett asked.

"No. He was a really good worker, fitted in with all of the site crews."

"But" –

"Mm?"

"But I – he didn't die in an accident, then?" All the blood left her face. "What happened? Did someone kill him?" She slumped in her chair. "Why? Why would anyone kill him?"

"That's what we're trying to find out, and anything you can tell us will really help that," Beckett said. "Was he employed?"

"No, freelance. He was so good they called him. He was a real expert." Beckett looked around the house. "He did all the work here, too. It doesn't look much from the outside but it's been fitted with the best he could do – you can't hear anything from outside if the windows and doors are shut." She began to cry harder. "We were thinking about starting a family and Stuart wanted to make sure when we had a baby they wouldn't be disturbed…"

"Do you know what he was working on?"

Mrs Darnley made a valiant, if largely unsuccessful, attempt to bring herself under some control. "I do all the accounts," she said. "I…oh, God. I can't think."

"Just take a few moments," Beckett said gently. "There's no hurry."

"Did Stuart work with a lot of the same people?" Castle asked.

"Some. Other specialists – not people who pour concrete or manoeuvre cranes, or bricklayers, but like electronics people, fire systems, intelligent buildings" – she caught Castle's look of confusion – "like where the lights go on or off on motion sensors, A/C only in areas people are actually in…that sort of thing. And entry systems." Talking about her husband's business – and, to Beckett's interest, hers – had stabilised her.

"So," Beckett said, "he worked with other specialists, and mostly the same ones. Would you have a list of the projects he'd been working on, and who with?"

"Projects, yes. Not the other workers, though. He didn't employ anyone, that would all be through the constructor."

"Could you add the constructor to the list?"

"It's there. That's who pays" – she gulped, and lost her composure again.

Beckett leaned forward. "Anything you can give us will help us find the reason for Stuart's death," she murmured.

"Everyone liked him," she wept. "He never said anything about any trouble."

"Would he have told you?" Castle asked. "I don't tell my nearest and dearest about things worrying me."

"We shared everything. I couldn't manage the accounts if he didn't tell me – some constructors will do anything to get out of paying, so he had to tell me about any trouble so I could push back." She scrubbed at her eyes. "We shared everything," she repeated.

"How long would it take you to give us the list?" Beckett asked.

"I can run it off in five minutes." She sniffled. "Let me…" She stood up, and Beckett stood with her. Castle began to move, and Beckett, behind Mrs Darnley's back, shoved him down again. He opened his mouth, received a nuclear-strike level glare, and shut it, fast. Beckett followed Mrs Darnley to her small office, with a tidy desk, files on a shelf above it, computer to one side. Mrs Darnley efficiently switched on, tapped for a few seconds, blinking away her tears, and then hit print. "The last year," she said damply.

"Thank you." Beckett regarded her, hazel eyes soft and sympathetic. Unseen, Castle had sneaked up to the doorway, and was listening hard. Every word, every intonation, of Beckett's made him more sure than ever that she'd been lying to him about her reasoning. "Is there anything at all that you can think of that might have made anyone want to hurt Stuart? Relatives? Guys he used to hang out with, that maybe he wasn't hanging out with any more?" She smiled gently. "Your mom or dad?"

"Mom and Dad loved him. They were so pleased I took up with him. He was a good guy, with a really good job."

"Had there been exes who weren't so good?" Beckett managed a pained face. "My dad got really upset when I was dating a grunge rocker, in high school."

"No-o…" Beckett exuded interested hopefulness. "Not exes, exactly…"

"Mmm?" Beckett didn't fall into the rookie trap of leading her witness, but let Mrs Darnley tell it her own way. There was something here. She could feel it.

Thank you to all readers and reviewers.

Thankfully, my laptop is back with me for the moment. Fingers crossed. Thank you for the sympathy. It'll need to go back for repair when they get the parts it needs, but it won't do anything suicidal for now.