Esposito and Ryan arrived at the crime scene to find Lanie looking over the body of a young female, lying peacefully on the ground in an abandoned alleyway.
"Cause of death?" Esposito asked. The girl almost looking as though she could have been sleeping.
"Yeah, good morning to you too." Lanie was not in a good mood. She sighed, and wrote something down on her clipboard. "I'll have to get her back to the lab, but it appears as though she was poisoned. She has an injection mark under her fingernail." Lanie glared at Esposito. Ryan, sensing a storm brewing, hustled Esposito away.
"Thanks Lanie. We're going to – uh, check in with uniforms, see if they found anything that could tell us who she is." The pair of detectives walked away, where they could see Castle and Beckett arriving, both with coffee in their hands.
Ryan stopped in his tracks, and motioned to Esposito.
"Not a word, got it?"
"Yeah yeah. What are you, my mother?" Esposito calmly walked away from Ryan, over to Castle and Beckett.
"Hey Esposito." Beckett was not in a good mood.
"What's up?" Beckett shot a quick glance at Castle.
"Nothing." She paused. "So, what do we have?" she said, pointing towards the body in the distance.
"Well, she's a female, around 25 or so, and cause of death appears to be poisoning, via injection. We're working on the identity." Beckett nodded. The three detectives, plus writer, walked over to Lanie, who was pulling something from the girl's bra.
"Aha!" she said. Esposito was taken aback.
"Uh… why were you poking around in our victim's cleavage?" he asked. Lanie gave him a deathly glare.
"Our victim –" she shot one more look at Espo – "appears to have hidden a note on the inside of her bra strap. She handed it to Beckett. "See for yourself." Beckett carefully unfolded the yellow sticky note, revealing a set of numbers.
"120485?" she read. Castle pondered at this.
"Hmm. Perhaps the victim secretly encoded the whereabouts of her treasure on this note, after discovering a secret treasure map. And one of the other treasure hunters found out, and couldn't risk her discovering the location of the chest full of pearls and rubies and –"
"CASTLE!" Beckett yelled.
"Sorry." Beckett sighed. She didn't look particularly upset with him, Ryan thought. She narrowed her eyes at Castle, all the while baring a subtle smile. After a moment, she finally turned her head back to Esposito and Ryan, remembering they were there.
"Alright. Get this into an evidence bag, please. Let me know if you find anything. You two stay here, give uniforms a hand. Castle and I will head back to the precinct with Lanie."