A/N: Happy New Year! Only 6 more days until a new episode. Here is my latest chapter to tide you over. Please let me know if the case is easy enough to follow, while still being interesting. I have trouble following the cases in an episode sometimes, although it's probably because I spend the entire hour obsessing over Caskett and tuning out the case. :)

"That was Beckett," Esposito said as he stepped out of the police cruiser in front of Daniel Henry's residence. "They're on their way to see Lanie. Get this, tox screen found traces of cocaine all over Caitlyn's body." He looked up at the looming high rise, its glassy surface blending in with the grey, winter sky. He'd visited enough expensive, seemingly idyllic homes before to know that behind every picture-perfect building in New York lived hundreds of dirty secrets threatening to tarnish the pristine exterior. Esposito hoped he and Ryan could expose a few today.

"Well that opens up a whole new line of questioning," noted Ryan, as he joined his partner outside the car. Out on the street, Central Park traffic crept along, pausing occasionally to let sled wielding children and parents cross the intersection. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like?" He gestured toward the building. "You know, to live the high life?"

Esposito shrugged his shoulders. "The only thing high about that life is literally the elevation. What they don't put in the brochures is that in order to afford a place like this you have to work so much you never step foot in it."

"Eh, maybe." Ryan said as he followed Esposito through the revolving entrance door. "If I can't have the digs can I at least get the complimentary housekeeping though?" He smiled as a middle-aged woman lugging a vacuum and a bucket full of cleaning supplies hurried past them.

"Isn't that the whole point of getting married. You get someone to look after you—clean up after you." Esposito playfully punched Ryan, attempting to divert the death stare his partner was giving him.

"Dude, if Jenny heard you say that, you'd be so dead." In the two years he and Jenny had been married he had learned a lot of valuable lessons about what makes a marriage successful. Equitable division of chores was definitely one of them.

Esposito pushed the call button on the elevator intercom and a proper, English accented voice answered.

"This is Detective Javier Esposito from the NYPD. I have an appointment to speak with some of the residents and house guests." The intercom clicked off, and the elevator doors opened. Esposito and Ryan stepped in, and without pushing a single button the elevator began its smooth ascent. They watched as each floor number briefly illuminated as they rose, wondering how far up the metaphorical ladder they'd be climbing.

The doors opened onto the top floor and they were greeted by the same English accent as from the intercom. "Gentlemen," the man said perfunctorily, extending his arm. "May I take your coats?" He looked like he had stepped out of an ornate 18-century period piece with his inky, pomaded hair, white gloves, waistcoat, and high-collared shirt that left his chin jutting toward the walls. For someone whose job it was to serve he exuded an air of aloof superiority.

Ryan and Esposito handed over their coats and followed the man into the central living room. Just as they were being instructed to take a seat, a young, blonde woman came running into the room, her small, lacy nightgown coming dangerously close to sliding down her bare shoulder.

"Are you the guys investigating Caitlyn's death?" she squeaked as she plopped down on the loveseat and tucked her feet under her body, leaning forward like she was waiting for some juicy gossip from a girlfriend. Before Esposito or Ryan could speak she continued on in her overly excited, kid on a sugar rush tone. "Of course you are, duh." She rolled her eyes and settled back into the cushions, her nightgown creeping up her thighs. Ryan stood there, slightly stunned, his eyes fixed on a Matisse oil painting on the opposing wall. He busied his mind with trying to decide if it was an original or a reproduction. Esposito's gaze fell slightly to the woman's legs, but an elbow to the ribs from Ryan brought them sharply back up.

"Miss Dobbs. Right?" Ryan asked, recalling her DMV picture.

"The one and only, but you can call me Jennifer" The woman demurely smiled and extended her hand, palm down, like a kiss was the natural way to greet someone of her position. Ryan reached out, awkwardly grasping her hand and corkscrewed it back to an upright handshake position. Jennifer looked disappointed.

"Jennifer, is there—" Ryan began but couldn't get out the full sentence before she interrupted.

"Isn't it terrible—Caitlyn's death. I've been so torn up ever since I found out. And then to think she died just after working the party with me. To think I was one of the last people to see her alive." She dramatically fanned her face, holding back forced tears.

"Miss Dobbs," Ryan continued. "I think—"

"Who would do something like this to her? And right before we were supposed to go to LA together. Who is going to be my drinking buddy now? Who is going to tell me when it's time to turn over when I'm laying out by the pool. Who is going to help me decide what to wear out? You know most people don't know this but there's a fine line between sexy and slutty." She took a deep breathe and plucked a tissue off the table, dabbing at imaginary tears, appearing to gather herself. "Caitlyn was so good with fashion." She paused, struck by her moving eulogy to her friend.

"Miss Dobbs," Ryan stared down at his shoes hoping his irritation could pass as reverence for the dead.

"Jennifer, please call me Jennifer." She sniffled and reached out, laying her hand on Esposito's leg—an absurd act of comfort coming from a woman more concerned with losing her tanning timer than her friend. Esposito knocked her hand off him but took a step closer, his looming stature having the desired effect by drawing her eyes up.

"Miss Dobbs," Esposito intentionally ignored her request to call her by her first name, "Detective Ryan and myself would like to speak with both you and Miss Roberts, preferably somewhere a little more private." He gestured to the cleaning lady dusting off the drapery behind him and the butler standing ready at the door. "Is there an office we could use to speak to the two of you?"

Jennifer's grief stricken face flashed fearful obedience under the authority of Esposito's commanding voice, and she retreated down the hallway mumbling about retrieving Samantha.

"So…about that high life," Ryan said.

"Like I said man, elevation. The higher the floor number the higher the level of idiocy."

The butler, who had followed Jennifer out of the room, returned and led Ryan and Esposito into a study down the hall. A built-in bookshelf lined one wall and an assortment of signed memorabilia and pictures of Daniel Henry with various celebrities lined the other one. In the center a large mahogany desk backed up to a floor to ceiling window with a view of Central Park. After a couple minutes spent admiring the park view, Jennifer, wearing a more conservative jeans and sweater, entered room followed closely by Samantha. Esposito motioned for them to take a seat on two antique, high-backed chairs while he settled against the desk, notepad in hand.

"I can tell you ladies have a lot of important things to get to so I won't take up much of your time," Esposito began, immediately questioning his use of the word important. Were trips to the nail salon and Starbucks considered important? "What can you tell me about Caitlyn's daily activities leading up to the day of her death? Anything seem unusual?"

Jennifer was the first to speak up, a look of consternation playing out across her face. "Now that you mention it, there was something funny." Esposito pulled out his pen ready to jot down any relevant names and places she might reveal. "About a week before she was murdered we went to get coffee at the café just down the street. The barista made her favorite drink—a tall skinny mocha, no whip—with regular, full-fat milk and she didn't even have him remake it." Her mouth gaped open as she waited for the impact of what she said to register with the detectives. When she didn't get a response she pressed on, completely oblivious. "I mean can you believe it? Full fat milk. That's just…eww. If she was thinking clearly she would never have taken that drink. Something must have been seriously distracting her."

Ryan watched as Esposito exasperatedly flipped the notebook closed and shoved his hands into his pocket—a clear sign of his partner's irritation. He took a gamble to try and lighten the mood.

"So, Miss Dobbs," Ryan pulled out his own notepad and pen, "think very carefully because this might be important. Did she get the little chocolate sprinkles on top of her mocha?" Ryan silently high-fived himself when he saw Esposito's face crack a tiny grin; his gamble was paying off.

Jennifer scrunched up her face in thought, as she processed memories from her trip to the coffee shop. "You know, I don't think she got any sprinkles," she said worriedly. "Does that mean something?"

"No…sprinkles," he said, scribbling furiously on his notepad. He knew they couldn't carry on this way for long so he switched his attention to Samantha who was still sitting quietly in her chair, unfazed by the ridiculous exchange. Although her indifference made it obvious that Jennifer's quirkiness wasn't a one-shot deal. "Miss Roberts, is there anything you noticed about Caitlyn?"

Samantha shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Either she was someone that didn't' like drawing attention to herself, which was unlikely given her lifestyle, or she was trying to decide how much information she wanted to divulge. "What exactly do you want to know?" She answered their question with a question.

Ryan pushed, "anything you think might be important, or anything that seemed out of the ordinary, no matter how small." He could see the wheels turning in her brain.

"There was something." She paused and Ryan and Esposito could see her doing mental editing—cutting and pasting words and deleting sentences that didn't fit the narrative she wanted to convey. "The past few weeks Caitlyn had been somewhat distant. Like she was lost in thought a lot. I just shrugged it off at first. I mean, this job can get stressful, and I know she had a couple gigs coming up where she was planning to meet with some bigwigs in the modeling world. I figured she was just getting nervous. But then the couple days before she died it was like she fell off the face of the Earth. Besides the Champagne Party the night she died, we barely saw her. I don't know where she went or what she was doing, but it wasn't like her."

"Oh, don't forget about the secret meetings," prompted Jennifer. Ryan was surprised her attention had held long enough to comprehend what Samantha had said.

"What sort of secret meetings?" Esposito asked.

"She'd been spending a lot of time at the clubs hanging out in the back room or mingling with some of Daniel's more elite clientele in private. That's not abnormal, we do it all the time, but normally more than one of us is present, but she insisted it just be her."

"Do you know what she was talking about with these clientele?"

"No. She never said."

"Daniel mentioned that you and Caitlyn might have been arguing lately, can you tell me what that was about?"

Samantha huffed, not wanting to rehash the squabble. "Look, it was nothing."

"How about you let me decide that," Esposito countered.

She crossed her arms over her chest—an overt tell this information wasn't forthcoming. "Daniel rotates through us three girls every time he takes trips out of the state for a new club opening. The next trip was slated to be in a couple weeks. We were going to Miami. I was scheduled to go, but Caitlyn put up a big fuss about going and Daniel caved. I got mad and confronted Caitlyn about it. That's it."

"Do you know why Caitlyn was so insistent on going to Miami?" asked Ryan.

"Not really. I would assume it had something to do with publicity, advancing her career, but she'd never made such a big stink before, and Daniel isn't one to normally cave" She paused for a moment like she was deep in thought. "Can I admit something to you?"

Esposito and Ryan exchanged glances, silently agreeing on who would press her for more details. "Sure, anything," said Ryan.

"I think Caitlyn and Daniel were up to something."

"Can you be more specific? What sort of something?" He flipped to a new page in his notepad and held his pen at the ready—a trick he learned to make people realize that their words carried weight and would be taken seriously. It usually led to more assiduous reports.

"I really don't know. It was just a feeling I got. I wish I could be more helpful." Ryan tucked the pen behind his ear, upset his trick didn't work.

"Well if you think of anything else that seems relevant," he turned his gaze toward Jennifer, "non-coffee related that is, please don't hesitate to give us a call." Ryan extended a business card, wondering how many he had handed out fruitlessly over the years.

Before returning to the precinct Ryan and Esposito split up, interviewing house guests and staff, checking and cross checking lists until they came up with only three potential people who could have made the upsetting call to Caitlyn.

As Ryan carefully pulled the cruiser into the Midtown traffic Esposito made a call to Beckett to catch her up on what they had learned—the fight between Caitlyn and Jennifer, the clandestine meetings with elite clientele, and Jennifer's assertion that Caitlyn and Daniel were up to something.

"But here is where we struck out," he said into the phone, "no one admitted to making that call to Caitlyn the night of her murder. Of all the people in the penthouse at the time, only three people's whereabouts are unaccounted for—Samantha Dobbs, a house guest by the name of Timothy Scott, and the butler."

"It was the butler. The butler did it," Ryan shouted in the background. Beckett didn't need to be riding shot gun to see the satisfied smirk plastered on Ryan's face.

"Each one claims ignorance when it comes to the call."

"I wouldn't call that a strike out though," Beckett said, "we now know that whatever was said is important enough to lie about—whether it was directly related to Caitlyn's death or not. Look into those three's backgrounds—the usual stuff; see if anything pops."

"You got it." They hung up, and Beckett recapped what she had learned to Castle, assured that if there was something lurking in any of the background checks, Esposito would be sure to find it. She trusted his instincts as much as her own.

The drive to OCME to meet with Lanie had taken longer than they expected. A multi-car pile up combined with auxiliary accidents from rubbernecking drivers left them in stop and go traffic for over an hour. She was about to pick up her phone and let Lanie give her the details without an up close and personal with the body when a police cruiser showed up and began rerouting traffic into an opposing lane. She breathed a sigh of relief. Besides the fact that she was looking forward to seeing her friend, Beckett didn't know how much longer should could tolerate the literary flair Castle was injecting into the traffic debacle.

"The sound of shattering glass surrounded him—pinging against the blacktop, tiny, sharp pellets mixing with debris and blood."

"Castle, you can't even see what happened."

"Jutting metal segments jabbed into his ribs, his arms caught in a nightmarish land of loose wires and twisted plastic. Up was down and down was up."

"Castle, someone could be seriously hurt."

"A quarter mile down the road, a smart and sexy—albeit slightly annoyed—female detective waited impatiently for the wreck to clear. Her ruggedly handsome partner keeping the mood light with his rapier wit."

"Castle."

"Disappointed, but never defeated, her handsome partner sensed his efforts were not paying off and—"

"Castle."

"And he decided to end the story there. Traffic's moving." He pointed to the cars inching forward.

They walked into the morgue to find Lanie hunched over Caitlyn's head, a large magnifying glass inches from her scalp as she tweezed out nearly invisible pieces of glass and placed them into a small collecting dish. "Just give me," she slowly parted Caitlyn's hair, using a delicacy more fitted for a living person, "one..more…minute. And I got it." She held up a sliver of glass. "But this is not what you are here to see." She motioned for Beckett and Castle to join her next to the body.

"So I don't mean to sound crass," said Castle, "but is it really that surprising for her to have cocaine in her system. I mean her mother's testament aside, sex, drugs, and rock and roll kind of go with the territory. Or in this case sex, drugs, and murder."

"And that's where you'd be wrong," countered Lanie.

"I thought you said you found cocaine," said Beckett, looking confused.

"I did." Lanie smiled and held up a bag with the victim's clothing. "I found it all over her clothes." She picked up Caitlyn's hand and turned it palm up pointing to her fingers. "I found it underneath all her nails. But I never said I found it in her system."

Multiple theories percolated in Beckett's head. Castle, channeling her thoughts, began throwing out ideas.

"Caitlyn was using the club as a front for trafficking drugs. Caitlyn was unwittingly thrown into a drug trafficking scheme with Daniel as the front runner." All plausible hypotheses so far Beckett thought, especially given what Esposito had relayed from his meeting at Daniel's penthouse. "Caitlyn found some mysterious white powder and mistook it for pixie sticks." And decidedly less plausible.

"And you'd be wrong on all accounts." The voice came from a man standing just outside the doorway. Nobody had realized they had an eavesdropper.

"Excuse me?" Beckett stared the man down as he slipped into the room pulling back his blazer to reveal an NYPD badge.

"Name's Preston Davis. But your boys know me as Timothy Scott." He extended his hand to Beckett who was slowly processing how and why she knew the name. "I didn't want to out myself when I talked to Detectives Ryan and Esposito back at Mr. Henry's, but I'm hitting a dead end on my end and thought it be beneficial for both of us if we work together."

"And what exactly would we be working on Mr. Davis?" She eyed him suspiciously, not ready to trust a quickly flashed badge as evidence that they were in fact on the same team.

"How did you put it?" he turned to Castle. "Sex, drugs, and murder. Only I'm much more interested in the drugs and you're much more interested in the murder. Shall we find someplace to sit?"

They walked out of the morgue into an attached break room, the smell of burnt coffee and an overly ripe banana overriding the smell of formaldehyde. Beckett tried to get a read on Davis, to access her internal bullshit meter, but his demeanor was so relaxed, so composed, that she couldn't tell if he was playing her or just really good at his job.

"Mr. Davis can you tell me what you were doing inside Daniel Henry's penthouse?" Beckett initiated.

"Short story—I'm with narcotics, down at the 5th. A few months ago we had got some intel that Daniel Henry was operating a drug trafficking ring out of his New York based night clubs. With enough persuasion," he lingered on the word persuasion, "we were able to elicit Miss Madison to assist us in our investigation. Everything was going well—we found enough evidence to nail Daniel for possession—but we were hoping to get some more substantial evidence. Find the bigger fish swimming up the supply chain. And then this happened," he nodded back toward the morgue. "I became friends," he held up his hands placing air quotes around friends, "with Daniel back on a drug sting I did a couple years ago. I was working undercover, our paths crossed, and the relationship stuck. When his name popped up on our radar they sent me—well Timothy Scott that is—in to covertly investigate."

"Do you know what happened the night she was murdered?" Castle asked. "Was she on the clock for you?"

"That's where I was hoping you could fill in the blanks. We know Daniel has amassed large quantities of cocaine—close to $200,000 worth in a few of his clubs, we've seen the financials revealing the purchase, but that's as far as we got. No indication of how his distribution works. Not even a record of incoming money from the sale of the drugs. It's like he purchased it and is now just sitting on it. The night Caitlyn died she was supposed to be doing routine surveillance—nothing out of the ordinary. The next thing I know she's dead. We were holding back, not showing all our cards so to speak until we could gather more intel. We didn't want to spook anyone he might be working with."

"Well I'd say this is cause for abandoning circumspection and moving on with plan B," Beckett said, not wanting to disclose too much of what she knew until she verified Davis's credentials with narcotics. She looked to Castle and, seeing the cautious, reserved look in his eyes, knew he was on the same page. "Quick question, did you make a call to Caitlyn around 1am the night she was murdered?"

"I'll tell you the same thing I told your partners, wasn't me."

Castle glanced from Davis to Beckett. "Well I guess this rules out Timothy Scott. I call the butler."

Beckett smiled at him. "You and Ryan both then." She turned her attention to Davis. "Let's head back to the precinct. I think it's time to put some more pressure on Mr. Henry." Castle knew that look—Beckett's eyes darkening, her body growing rigid as her lips twisted into a smirk—it was the same look he imagined a shark shot its prey just before striking. The break room became calm as the men waited to hear her proposition. "I'd say a search warrant is in order."