Love Matched
When Det. Kate Beckett meets Love Match, LLC store owner Richard Rodgers during the course of an investigation, she has no idea how her life might change-particularly since he also happens to be one of her favorite authors.
ONE
After pulling her official vehicle into an empty space on the side of the street, Detective Kate Beckett pulled the keys from the ignition, dropped them into her lap, then reached up to flip down the sun visor above her. She flipped open the mirror lid and examined the reflection of her right eye not for aesthetic purposes, but detective ones: her eyelid was twitching and had been off and on for the entire morning. Kate wasn't sure what she expected to see in the mirror—it wasn't as though the reasoning for her twitching eye would be stamped across her forehead. Actually, she was pretty sure she knew the reason was the same as the previous times this had happened: too much stress and too little sleep. Sadly, that was just the nature of her job, particularly when she was involved in a complex case with multiple homicides.
With a huff of breath, she flipped the visor back up into place and then checked the side-view mirror to see if there was approaching traffic or if she could safely step out onto the street. After waiting a few seconds for a car to pass, she climbed out and joined her two partners on the sidewalk. Detectives Ryan and Esposito had summoned her to Greenwich Village half an hour earlier. They had been following some leads on their latest case and insisted this was a call she just had to take with them. Kate didn't understand why they couldn't just bring author Richard Castle to the station if they'd found them, but she trusted them enough not to question why she had to be there in person.
"Okay, what's up?" she asked as she stepped up on the sidewalk beside them.
With an impish grin, Esposito pointed towards the eastern side of the street that led towards 7th Avenue. Kate followed his gaze, unsure of what they were looking at as it was a mostly residential area, but then she saw the faded sign hanging above the brownstone façade and immediately groaned.
"The soulmate emporium? What does that have to do with our case?"
Still grinning, Espo said, "It has everything to do with our case which is why you're here; I thought you'd want to speak to the proprietor in person."
She crinkled her noise with annoyance as she struggled to think of anything she'd like to do less. "Why?"
Pointing towards the store again he said, "As you may be aware, Love Match LLC, is owned by the Rodgers family."
"So?" she replied. As it happened, Kate did know this. Several of their establishments were dotted across the five boroughs and the northern New Jersey area and they were rather infamous. They ran cheesy late-night commercials advertising their soul mate finding grift and several of the family members had more than a few scrapes with the law, though to her knowledge they were exclusively nonviolent crimes like theft or forgery.
"The gentleman who owns this particular establishment is Richard Rodgers," Esposito continued. "Richard also moonlights as-"
"No…" The utterance of shock escaped Kate's lips without her permission when she realized why she had been summoned to that location.
"Oh yeah. Richard Castle. It is, evidently, a pen name; Richard Rodgers is still his legal name."
Kate groaned as she dusted her fingertips across her forehead. Very early that morning when she'd made the connection between Richard Castle's novels and their murder cases, she had to admit to being the smallest bit excited. Of course, she hated that anyone had been killed, but she was intrigued by the concept of getting to meet Richard Castle. She very much doubted he was the killer—who would be stupid enough to commit real murders identical to the fictional ones they created?—so she felt it was okay to be a little intrigued by the concept of being able to meet someone she admired. Especially since she had never actually seen him before. His pictures were not included on his book jackets or on his website and any interview she'd seen of him had been in print. Now, it seemed the reason for that was rather obvious.
"See—told you this would be funny," Espo said to his partner Ryan.
"This is not funny! You know I hate these soulmate sales shops."
He nodded. "That's why it's funny."
"Technically," Ryan chimed in, "they don't sell soulmates. It's more like palm reading."
She shot him a look. "Yeah, that makes it better. C'mon…let's just get this over with."
Squaring her shoulders, Kate walked down the street until they reached the storefront. According to the hours posted on the window, they were a little early. On Thursdays the shop opened at four p.m. and it was right around two. Hoping the boys hadn't summoned her for nothing, Kate rang the bell and tapped on the glass with her badge. "NYPD!" she called out, hoping that would summon the writer-slash-palm-reader if he was inside.
Thankfully, it did, and a minute later he unlatched the door and stepped into the gap. "Hello, can I help you?"
"Richard Rodgers?"
"Yes, that's me."
Kate scanned her eyes over him to get a first impression as she normally did with possible suspects. He was tall, over six feet, and solidly built. He wore a light blue button-down shirt with the top two buttons undone. He also had on charcoal gray dress pants with a nice belt and shoes, which led her to believe he possibly wore a suit jacket, maybe even a tie, for his work, but as the shop was not yet open he'd yet to finish dressing. His eyes sparkled blue and his medium-brown hair flopped down across his forehead boyishly. He was handsome, in a rugged sort of way, and as she gazed at him Kate felt a strange sense of recognition, but she brushed it away thinking she had probably just seen him on one of the commercials.
Holding up her badge she said, "Detective Kate Beckett. These are my partners Ryan and Esposito. Can we come in?"
"Yes of course." He stepped aside and let them in.
Kate immediately felt she'd entered some sort of kiln because of the color scheme blasting towards her from nearly every direction. The walls, the draperies, even the rugs, which while modeled in color, seemed predominantly red. It was all a bit overwhelming and she initially wondered why but then she realized: red was the color of love and passion.
"Is there something wrong detectives?"
Kate clasped her hands in front of her and asked him, "Can you please tell us your whereabouts for last night from say…ten p.m. on?"
"Oh—I—oh…" he appeared taken aback for a moment. He drifted a few steps to his left where there was a counter with a computer monitor on top of it and leaned his forearm heavily against it. "Well, we were open until eight-thirty last night and I was here for about another hour finishing up some bookkeeping. Then, I took a car service home and did some more work there until about midnight before I went to bed."
"You can give us the name of the car service?" Ryan asked him, glancing up from the notebook he wrote in.
"Ah, sure." Rick walked behind the desk, grabbed a stickie note pad and jotted down the information. He then handed to Detective Ryan, who took it with a gracious head nod.
"Was anyone else at home with you last night?"
He looked to Kate. "Yes, my daughter; she's fourteen. I greeted her when I came home, but she went to bed shortly after. May I ask what this is about?"
Kate reached behind her to take the folder Esposito held and pulled out a DMV photo of their latest victim. "Do you know Allison Tisdale?"
He gazed at the photo for several second but shook his head. "I'm sorry; doesn't ring a bell. Do you need me to check if she was a client?"
"That's okay, Mr. Castle; that's not why we're here," she said and watched as his eyes flashed with confusion. It was then she pulled out the crime scene photo, showed it to him, and watched his jaw drop.
"God, god! It's-"
"Flowers for Your Grave," she finished for him. "Allison was murdered last night, and this is how we found her body. You write under the name Richard Castle, is that correct?"
He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah that's me. This is just so—wow." He skimmed his fingers over his mouth, and she gave him another few seconds before dropping the next bomb.
"Do you know Marvin Fisk?"
"Um, no. Is he a suspect?"
"No. Another victim," she said, pulling out the second photo, clearly displaying a crime scene from another one of his novels.
"Shit!" the writer cursed and then began to pace on the spot, raking his fingers back through his hair. "Detective, I don't know anything about these murders, I promise you. I'll answer any questions you have or provide anything I can for you, but I didn't do this. I would never…I mean, I just write books and I-"
"Relax, Mr. Castle—or would you rather I call you Rodgers?" He shrugged one shoulder, so she continued. "We don't think you're a suspect, we're just trying to find out everything about this case. Do you ever get disturbing fan mail?"
"Ah… yeah, sometimes. A lot of my fan mail is weird, to be honest. Some, I guess, is disturbing."
"May we take a look?"
"Yeah. Definitely. You can have anything you want. I…I'd like to help if I can." He gazed towards the photos she now held loosely then back up to meet her eye. "I want to help bring their killer to justice."
Giving him a small smile and a nod, Kate said, "Well I appreciate that; we'll definitely be in touch about the fan mail. For now, thank you for your time."
She turned to leave, but he stopped her with, "Wait!" He grabbed a business card, flipped it over, jotted something down then held it out to her. "My cell phone number. Call me any time; I really want to help."
She thanked him and took the card. Then, she and her partners left his shop; they had a killer to find.
"Hey Dad?"
Rick glanced up to see his daughter hovering in the doorway to his office. She wore her orange-red hair in two thick braids with a yellow bandana tied around her scalp as a headband. She'd pushed up the sleeves of her shirt and was wearing old jeans that flared slightly at the bottom. Looking at her, he could have just as easily seen her on a playground as his now-teenager. The fact that she was growing older did break his heart a little bit, but he was exceptionally proud of the young woman she was becoming.
"You all done pumpkin?" he asked, referring to her once weekly thorough cleaning of his Love Match offices—her unofficial job.
"Almost. I was just thinking about this past week and how you helped the police. I'm really proud of you, you know?"
His heart warming in his chest, Rick smiled at her. "Well that's very kind of you, Alexis. I honestly didn't think twice about it; it seemed the right thing to do."
"Well, still; it was really cool. I—oh, I think someone's coming into the shop."
He stood from his chair, walked over, and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "What a perfect opportunity for you to sweep up my office." Then, with a wink, he shut the office door behind him and walked out to greet his customer, who turned out not to be a customer at all; it was the detective he'd been working with to bring the copy-cat-killer to justice.
"Detective Beckett, this is a pleasant surprise."
"Ah hi. I, um, I just wanted to stop by and thank you once again for your assistance with the case; I really appreciated your input."
"Well that's very kind of you to say," he said with a smile. As it was his second accolade inside of five minutes he felt rather touched, but he didn't feel the admiration was strictly necessary. Yes, he'd helped go through the fan mail and pulled out some suspicious letters, but ultimately the letter that had jetted their investigation forward had been found by Kate. That investigation ended up being a bit of a red herring and, yes, he had been the one to point out all the reasons their original suspect had been framed, but he was sure the NYPD team could have come up with those thoughts as well. In particular, the impressive Detective Beckett, who had really captured his attention during their brief time working together.
She hummed in response and began gazing around the bookshelves in his office, which were decorated with some texts on love and the human experience as well as a vast amount of figurines and other tchotchkes that added to the ambiance. Really, he could have done his work in a plain white room with wooden table and chairs, but as his family always pointed out—that did not seem very impressive to their potential clients. That, after all, was what the service business was all about: impressing the clients which led to word-of-mouth recommendations, which were much more effective than any print or TV advertising they purchased.
"This place you have here is, um…interesting." He watched as she reached out to touch a Venus statue, then evidently thought better of it because she pulled her hand back before it made contact.
"I'd say I'd give you a tour except this is pretty much it aside from my office and a consultation room."
She nodded slowly as she turned back to face him. "Consultations…do you do a lot of those?"
He tiled his head to the side, curious. "Are you interested in one, detective?"
"Absolutely not."
He chuckled inwardly at her harsh tone. "Okay, okay. No pressure," he said holding up his hands with palms facing out in a defensive stance. He had been involved with his family's business for as long as he could remember, so she was hardly the first person he'd come across who was not at all interested in their love matching services. He couldn't really say he judged those people; it wasn't everyone's cup of tea. He certainly could understand those who wished to live their lives and discover their loves on their own as much as he could understand the ones who wanted the answer provided to them for a nominal fee.
"I'm serious, I don't have any interest." She backed away from him and he put his hands down, fearful she might have seen them as threatening.
"Don't worry Detective. You won't accidentally catch any glimpses just being in this room."
She gazed around momentarily then back at him and said, "It's palm reading, right?"
"I wouldn't say that, though it does involve me holding your hand. And in case this is your next question: yes, I could hold your hand without seeing anything related to your match; it's not instant."
She hummed slightly, though still noticeably kept her distance from him. "Well, um, anyway, I just wanted to say I appreciated your input."
"Well, thank you for that. Oh, and um, you should know: I have a new book coming out in a few months."
"Oh?" she replied, arching a brow at him.
He nodded. "I figured you had to be a fan if you recognized that scene from Hell Hath No Fury; that's my least popular book."
"Ah, I… um." She stammered, clearly flustered, which made him smile. Then she tersely nodded and said, "Have a good day, Mr. Castle," before making a quick escape.
Rick watched her scurry away and couldn't help but wonder if he'd ever cross paths with Detective Kate Beckett again.
A/N - Hello and Welcome to my first Winter Ficathon story of the 20-21 season. THis story has nothign to do with Christmas, but that's okay lol. As you might have already gathered, this is a soulmate AU story. Plot bunny suggested by Jenn (SuzyJane on twitter). Enjoy!