Neal skulked back into the room containing the dead body, keeping his eyes averted from the corpse on the carpet and instead concentrating on the task Peter had set him - determining if the painting above the fireplace was a fake. It only took a brief glance for Neal to recognise a few tell-tale signs that the portrait wasn't genuine, he was familiar enough with forgery techniques to spot the shorter brush-strokes and the too-sharp lines at the edge of the girls' face. He'd need to take a much closer look, of course, to be certain, but he told Peter what he thought, anyway.
"That's most likely a forgery, but I'd need to take a closer look to confirm."
"Can you tell who did it?"
"Not from this distance, maybe when I have some of my equipment with me I could. If the person who did it is anything like me-"
"There might be a signature on it somewhere. Okay, Kate? Can we get that painting into evidence? Neal thinks it might be a fake."
Beckett looked up from her position next to Lanie, first glancing at the painting then raising an eyebrow at Neal.
"How can you tell? You're fifteen feet away from it."
"Well, for a start, the red is far to vibrant for a painting that's supposedly a hundred and twenty years old. Even if it had been restored recently this particular piece spent the better part of two decades in a gallery uptown between 1968 and 1984, under fluorescent lights for ten hours a day."
"Huh." Castle looked over at Neal, his eyes narrowing as Kate gave him a rare smile, impressed, before ordering one of the CSU team-members to find an evidence bag big enough to hold the painting.
"Your place or mine?" Kate directed her question at Peter, who was nonplussed for a moment before finally realising that she wanted to know which office to send the painting to.
"Oh, well, uh-" Peter stammered for a moment, caught off-guard, before recovering. "Well, to maintain the chain of evidence, it should probably go back to your precinct. You've got a bigger team than I do and it's easier for me and Neal to relocate than for all of you to try and fit into the FBI."
Neal's head snapped up at the mention of his own name, he'd been immersed in the painting.
"What? Relocating where?"
"For the moment, you and I will be working with Detective Beckett and her team out of her offices. No objections." Peter forestalled Neal as he opened his mouth to protest. "I'll get Diana to bring your bag of tricks over to the 12th this afternoon."
Neal pouted for a few moments, but knew it was futile to try and argue with Agent Burke when he made up his mind. Instead, he turned his attention to the rest of the artworks in the room, having lifted a pair of purple crime-scene gloves from a member of the CSU. He inspected each of the paintings in turn, carefully nudging those that were fakes so that they didn't hang straight while everyone else in the room concentrated on the body on the floor.
Peter, unused to dealing with cadavers since transferring into the White Collar unit, was hovering over Kate's shoulder as she conferred with Lanie, listening intently as Lanie outlined her preliminary findings, pointing out marks on the body and shooting the odd glare at Castle every time he interrupted her.
Neal was drawn away from his perusal of a small but exquisite Manet (that he couldn't determine the authenticity of) when he felt someone staring at him. He looked up and found himself staring into another pair of blue eyes - he was trying to place the man who was staring back at him when Javier Esposito approached his partner, nudging him.
"You know that guy?" He asked, indicating Neal as the con man resumed his examination of the painting hanging next to the kitchen door.
"I think so, I just can't figure out why." Ryan told his partner, narrowing his eyes at Neal.
"Isn't that the guy who jumped out of a judge's chambers and went on the run a few weeks ago? His face was all over the papers, no wonder you recognise him."
"I know he did that-" Kevin said, irritated, "-but I feel like I know him from somewhere else."
"Ask him."
Kevin turned to face Javi, giving him a look that indicated to Esposito that he may have said the wrong thing.
"Okay, okay, or don't ask him, see if I care." Javier turned his attention back to his notebook, stepping away from Ryan, and as soon as he was immersed in his task, Neal stepped over to the Irish detective.
"You're Kevin Ryan." Neal said, having finally recognised the detective when he'd been glaring at his partner.
"You're Neal Caffrey. Why do I know you?"
"Because I'm the best alleged art forger on the east coast?" Neal joked, giving Ryan one of his devastating-and-disarming smiles as he snapped the purple gloves off and stuffed them into his pants pocket.
As soon as Neal smiled, Kevin knew why he recognised him, and the glare returned in full force. Neal had been hoping to have at least a minute or so of pleasant conversation with the detective before he realised why they knew each other, but apparently his luck had run out.
"The last time I spoke to you you called yourself Nick... and you stole my girlfriend!"
"Hey, man, she came up to me."
"You flew her to Monaco!"
"She wanted to see the grand prix, and I happened to have tickets."
"SHE DUMPED ME IN AN E-MAIL! FROM A PRIVATE PLANE! IN YOUR NAME!" Kevin shouted, making everyone in the room look around.
For the second time in ten minutes, Peter caught Neal by the collar and dragged him out of the crime scene, while Esposito caught his partner by the shirt as he went to lunge at Neal, his face rapidly turning red. Neal could hear Beckett demanding to know what was going on as the door slammed shut and Peter tossed him bodily into the hall, making Neal's hat fall off his head again.
"Neal, what the hell was all that about?" Peter demanded as Neal regained his feet, at least having the decency to look a little abashed.
"I, uh, may have, quite a few years ago, um..." he drifted off then muttered something that Peter couldn't quite make out.
"What?" Peter demanded.
"I may have taken his girlfriend to Monaco on a private jet and she dumped him by sending an e-mail from the plane." Neal told him, speaking so fast that it took Peter a few seconds to decipher it, before raising an eyebrow at Neal.
"You stole his girlfriend? How long ago?"
"Uh- it was before I met Kate... ten years?"
"And he's still sore about it?"
"Uh, well..."
"Neal? What else did you do?"
"It wasn't me, it was her! She sent him photos of us at the Monaco Grand Prix, but she sent them from my computer. He thought they were from me - from Nick Halden - and he was kind of pissed."
"Apparently he still is pissed. Get in there and fix this, we're working this case with these guys, I don't want you at each others' throats."
"Oh, c'mon Peter, this guy hates me."
"So did Sara. She still dropped the charges, and didn't you two have lunch together the other day?"
"Fine, fine." Neal picked his hat up and spun it on one finger, opening to door a crack to see what kind of situation he'd be walking into.
Ryan was still in the kitchen, talking to his partner and Detective Beckett, while Castle was over near the door. Neal decided that he might need some inside information, so hissed at Rick to get his attention.
"Rick? Castle!"
Rick spun around to catch Neal's eye and slipped out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind him and facing Neal with a smile, apparently impressed.
"You flew his girlfriend to Monaco on a private jet just to see the grand prix?" Castle asked.
"That was ten years ago, but yes, I did fly a young lady to Monaco to see the grand prix, and she may or may not have been dating Kevin Ryan at the same time." Neal was almost embarrassed, in spite of his many cons and scams, it was rare for one to come back and bite him like this, at least, in such an unexpected fashion.
"Nice." Rick was grinning and Neal found himself smiling back, until he caught Peter glaring at him over Rick's shoulder.
"I, uh, I guess I should go apologise, hey?"
"You might want to give him some time to simmer down... maybe meet us up at the precinct? There'll be more witnesses there, at the least."
"That- that's not a bad idea." Neal conceded, before looking over at Peter, almost pleading.
"Okay, we'll meet you at the precinct." Peter told him. "Straight from here to the station-house, no pit-stops."
"Yes, dad." Neal muttered, returning his hat to his head and leaving the hallway at top speed, Peter and Rick watching him as he rounded the corner to take the stairs, too impatient to wait for the elevator.