ACT I
Took almost an hour to get to Throgs Neck with the traffic and the ride had been an interesting one with Castle in the passenger's seat. He kept going on about the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie. The only thing they could agree on was that Johnny Deep was indeed very hot.
It was the awkward moments that followed the conversation that made him both funny and slightly endearing to her. As insane as he could be, he was probably the most real person she'd ever met.
Their conversation turned back to the case once they got to the Museum, a large school bus taking up several spaces in the parking lot. The foyer was fitted to look like the deck of a merchant steam ship, complete with classic life preservers on the wall and a big anchor at the entrance, among other decorations.
A bunch of kids were being ushered through the forward bulkhead into the next part of the museum.
Kate walked around the stragglers to the information desk, flashing her badge at the older lady that welcomed them with a smile. "Like to speak with David Pendelcote please."
The lady's disposition faltered for moment, the police badge often did that to civilians. But she politely nodded, "One moment."
As the woman left, the detective could feel the school-boy giddiness build in her unlikely partner.
"But he has an eye patch and everything!" he blurted out in a hushed tone.
"How many times do I have to say it," she was going to shoot him, more than likely, one of these days, probably, "an eye patch does not a pirate make."
He looked at her in all seriousness, "Does he have to own a parrot too?"
"Yes!" she knew him too well and looked him point blank, "And you are not asking him if he has a parrot!"
Whatever Castle was going to reply back with was squashed as the Director walked up with an extended hand, "David Pendelcote, you wished to speak to me?"
"Mr Pendelcote," she shook the hand politely and made conscious effort to look him in his eye. "I'm Detective Kate Beckett, I'd like to ask you a few questions about Joshua Peritti."
"Josh," the smile faded from his lips, "is he okay?"
"I'm sorry," always hated this part, "but he's dead."
"Dead?" because they always asked it like it was question, like it was a mistake, "How?"
"Murdered, in his apartment," she pushed through, no reason to dwell on such things. "We have record of several phone calls made to this Museum, your office in particular, by Mr Peritti. How well did you know him?"
"Not extremely well," the older gentleman rubbed his forehead, his stance withered slightly, "he came here often to do his research, sometimes we'd chat about ships. He wanted access to our non-public archives. Normally they are off limits but he was such a nice young lad…"
"Did he leave any personal items here?" Kate questioned, "any research?"
"No," he shook his head, "brought his laptop and took it with him every time."
"Twenty phone calls in the past month?" Castle jumped into the conversation as he was apt to do, "That's a lot of access to the archives. How much information could you have on the Edmund Fitzgerald?"
That caused the man to stall and blink, "Edmund Fitzgerald? Why do you ask?"
"Peritti was doing his research paper over the shipwreck," Castle's statement almost sounded like a question to her ears.
"Oh," the director seemed confused, "he was doing a shipwreck alright, but of the Washington Irving."
"He told his family he was investigating the Fitzgerald," Kate spoke the thought aloud.
Pendelcote shrugged, "I never heard him mention it."
She exchanged a glance with Castle who shook his head, so she asked, "What was the Washington Irving?"
"A passenger ship that hit an oil barge and sunk in the North River," he explained. "Though he was more interested in its salvaging from what I gathered."
Could the brother-in-law have been mistaken, or maybe Peritti could link the two ships together somehow? Did his research even have anything to do with his death? Too many questions right now, she needed to start answering some of them and get them out of the way.
"Mr Pendelcote," the writer continued, "do you have any blunderbuss's or musketoon's in your museum?"
"We're an industrial museum," Pendelcote almost laughed, "you won't find pirate weapons on these ships."
Castle paused for a second, rocking just slightly on his feet before saying, "So no parrots then I take it?"
""""
Deciding that there was a distinct possibility that the college student's research could have something to do with his death seeing as no laptop was found and he was killed with a relic naval weapon, they decided to stop by the office of his advisor.
Kate expected to see ships-in-bottles, maps and maybe a fake porthole, but the office was instead decorated in Ancient artifacts all with writing that literally looked Greek to her.
"I admit I barely knew Mr Peritti," Professor Dobins was in his mid-40s she would estimate, a drab blue suit and a bad comb-over, "but it is always sad to hear of someone's untimely passing."
"Professor," Castle was standing, admiring a gladius that was hanging on the wall, "how did you become Joshua Peritti's advisor?"
"Last year, his old advisor, Professor Ketter, died in a boating accident off Cape Cod," the man answered with a sigh, "His students where shuffled around, the naval and maritime history ones were the most difficult. Ketter was the only one who had the expertise in the subject."
"How'd you get Mr Peritti?" Kate asked as she heard the ting of metal and a slight yelp from Castle. She didn't bother turning in her seat to look at him.
"By luck of the draw," he replied absently as he watched Castle si in the other seat, sucking his thumb. "I tried to help, but sometimes he knew more than I did when it came to the particulars of the subject area."
Kate still ignored the writer, she didn't want to encourage him, "You went over his thesis?"
"Of course," Dobins turned his attention back to her.
"Mind if we take a look at his thesis submission?" Call it a hunch, but she wanted to see what the connection was with the two ships.
"Well, I suppose it would be okay," the teacher hesitantly stood up, moving over to his filing cabinet. "He hadn't given me more than a prospective outline really."
"Just a prospective outline?" Castle finally joined the conversation after nursing his thumb, "We were under the impression he was almost done."
"That would be news to me," the professor pulled a file out of the cabinet and began to flip through it. "Here we go."
Pulling out three pieces of stapled paper, he passed it over to her, and it only took her a second to see something wrong. "He was researching the Andrea Doria?"
"Yes, he wanted to look into the accident," Dobins returned to his seat, "make a discussion about right-of-way navigation, or something along those lines. To be truthful I got lost in the maritime jargon."
Three ships, three different areas, "Did he ever mention the Washington Irving or Edmund Fitzgerald?"
"No," he dragged the word out, thinking on it, "don't believe so?"
"Do you know of anyone who might have a blunderbuss or musketoon?" she asked before Castle could.
The man gave her an odd look, like she had suddenly grown a second head.
Castle cleared his throat, "How about a parrot?"
""""
With nothing else to go on, Beckett needed to know what the ships had to do with his murder, or at least prove conclusively that they weren't connected at all.
"The few friends he had came up dead ends," Esposito said as he and his partner joined them in the conference room where Peritti's papers where strung across the table. "No ex's or love triangles. No one with access to a blunderbuss."
"Musketoon!" Ryan corrected.
"I suppose this could have been a crime of opportunity," Castle looked up from his pile of papers, "Maybe it was our victim who owned the blunderbuss."
"Musketoon!"
"It's possible," Kate nodded, "but nothing points to him ever owning a blunderbuss."
"Musketoon!"
"Not the kind of weapon that you buy off the back of a truck," Esposito agreed. "Excuse me, I'll have two semi-automatics, a 9mil, and oh, a blunderbuss."
"Musk-oh-for-the-love-of!" Ryan yelled out in exasperation, the three of them sharing a grin at the man's frustration.
"Why don't you try the local antique and memorabilia dealers," she made sure she didn't laugh, "they might remember selling any blunderbuss's... or musketoon's."
"Thank you," Ryan put his hands together and gave her a mock bow.
"Find anything here?" Esposito moved around the table to flip through a few of the papers.
"Not yet," she admitted, "but there had to be a reason he told everyone a different story about what he was doing."
"Edmund Fitzgerald, Andrea Doria, Washington Irving," the writer mused, "Only common thread is they are ships that went down, but not in the same way, or same body of water."
"I don't know about you," the dark haired detective picked up a stack, "but most of this research seems like fluff. Basic numbers, facts, things I'd drag off the internet to get a quick passing grade in high school history, not for a master's degree."
"I agree," Castle stared intently at the papers laid out in front of him. "I do more research than this for my books."
She had to agree with both of them, still, "His laptop was missing, that could have the real research, or could explain what these wrecks had in common."
"Other than they're all famous wrecks?" Ryan added helpfully.
"Wait," Castle held up his hand as if he'd finally found something, "his brother in law said that Josh was almost done with his thesis, but he hadn't given anything to his advisor."
She considered that for a moment. "Maybe he thought Professor Dobins was too illiterate on the subject to advise?"
"And my editor couldn't write herself out of a paper bag," Castle laughed, "but she knows her story flow and character development and when it's lacking. If anything, Peritti should have asked his advisor to double check his referencing, cohesion, and resources."
"So either Peritti lied about almost being finished," she caught onto his train of thought, "or he didn't want his advisor to see what he was writing, or maybe he just doesn't have your outlook on editors?"
"Why would you hide your research from your advisor?" Ryan asked the obvious question.
"So we agree that something isn't right here," she pushed the research from her, "but we don't know what."
"Well," Esposito headed back towards the door, "we'll get on the shops in the morning, see if we can locate the… blunderbuss."
"Mus-ke-toon!"
"Bless you," Castle quipped.
"Alright," Kate nodded, ignoring them, a talent she was getting all too good at, "and I want to go back to the museum, maybe we can find something in the archives he was studying."
"I foresee many paper cuts in my future," the man frowned at her.
"You're a writer," she almost laughed, "isn't that an occupational hazard?"
"Yeah," he said in all seriousness, "but you try to explain that to IRS when you want to declare band-aids as a tax write-off."
""""
"So what do you think," Alexis got his attention and he peered over his book to see her holding up two outfits, "too professional and stuffy, or not professional enough?"
Why did the women in his life always ask him questions that, no matter what, he'd give the wrong answer to? Maybe that could be the motive in his next book. It was so obvious, no one saw it coming and the killer almost gets away with it, but it took a female detective, Nikki Heat, to see that this was truly a case of a woman whose jeans really did make her look fat?
Nah, would probably get him a lot of angry letters from the women's lib movements.
"Dad?"
"Yes," he covered his absentmindedness with well placed rub of his chin as he determined that the dress was too short, "go with the pants-suit."
She frowned at him, "Sure it doesn't make me look too much like Hilary Clinton?"
"Oh," he grimaced, "no, not at all!"
"Dress it is," with that she laid the clothes over the back of the sofa. "So, pirates huh?"
Instinctively he looked down at the title of the book he was reading, The History of Pirates, "Trying to figure out if our victim was a pirate or killed by one."
"Well," his daughter plopped down on the sofa, careful not to wrinkle her outfits, "was there a black spot found at the crime scene?"
He grinned, "How many times did you end up watching Muppet's Treasure Island when you were little?"
"…And they sailed their ship across the ocean blue, a bloodthirsty captain and a cutthroat crew…," she sung out and he laughed heartily, "…It's as dark a tale as was ever told, of the lust for treasure and the love of gold… shiver my timbers, shiver my sails, dead men tell no tales!"
As she continued into another song, he wondered what tale Peritti could have told?
""""
During the whole trip to the museum, Castle rambled off a bunch of facts and public misconceptions about Pirates that he learned while reading a book the night before. While it was interesting, it got them no closer to the truth.
The cop cars and coroner's van parked outside the museum didn't help her disposition much either.
Flashing her badge to get through the uniforms, they walked into the foyer of the building, the familiar face of Medical Examiner Sidney Perlmutter leaning over the body of David Pendelcote.
"Detective Beckett," she turned at the sound of her name and saw fellow detective, Roselyn Karpowski, approach. "What brings you to my crime scene?"
"The fact that your crime scene may be related to my crime scene," she replied in a neutral tone.
Karpowski nodded, "The one where the guy got all tore up like… what did Lanie say?"
"Chunky salsa?" Castle answered with a straight face.
"Yeah," the detective made a tisk sound, "nasty business that. And you think it's related?"
"Considering we spoke to Pendelcote yesterday about our victim," Kate glanced back over at the man, lying sprawled on his front, in the same suit they last saw him in, a massive wound at the back of his head. "Don't think it's a coincidence."
"Well," Perlmutter stood and gestured for his assistant to bring the body bag forward. "Nothing special about this one. BFT to the back of the head."
"Do you know with what?" Castle asked.
"Let me get my crystal ball," the M.E. held out his hand and gazed at it, "it says wait till I've had a chance to have a proper look at the wound in the lab."
"Your best guess?" Karpowski replied just as snarky.
"Then that would be a guess," he rolled his eyes, "but I'd say your typical long circular shaft ala baseball bat."
Kate's eyes gazed up the sides of the walls and the decorations, "An oar?"
"Possible," Perlmutter conceded, "but as I said, I'll put it all in my report."
"An oar," Castle mused, "how mundane, especially after using something as exotic as a blunderbuss."
"Musketoon," Kate found herself saying, then shook her head. "We're looking at crimes of opportunities then. If the weapon was already in Peritti's apartment, and the oar hanging as a decoration…"
"But we don't know if the blunderbuss was already in the apartment," he pointed out the flaw that couldn't be proved or disproved at this point.
"Got any suspects yet?" she turned back to Karpowski.
"Just started the prelim," the woman admitted. "Cleaning lady worked last night just after close, place empty. He was found this morning by staff opening up."
"Security footage?" Castle was the one to ask.
"Foyer camera has been broken for a few months," Karpowski sounded annoyed, "Going to see if the other cameras caught anything. So… you make my guy for your killer?"
"No," Kate replied after a second to think about it. "He was surprised when we mentioned Peritti was dead. However, I thought he might be involved in whatever Peritti was doing."
"And what was Peritti up to?"
"Swinging the lead," Castle answered, "taking a caulk, hornswaggling the coxswain…"
Everyone in hearing distance paused and just stared at the writer.
He smiled sheepishly, "Swabbing the poop deck?"
"Okay," Karpowski held out the vowel, "what's with the pirate talk?"
"Castle here," the brunette sighed, "thinks Peritti may have been a modern day pirate."
"Or killed by one," he corrected.
"Pirates, seriously?" it was easy to see that the other detective was trying not to snicker.
There was a clank and all heads turned to where a flask had fallen from the dead man's coat as Perlmutter and assistant moved the man onto the body bag. Picking it up, the M.E. popped the top and gave it a sniff.
"Alcohol," the man answered their unspoken question.
"Yo ho ho…" Castle sang, "and a bottle of rum."
