Chapter 9

Kenny spun in his chair and surveyed his domain. In his humble opinion, he had the best cubicle in the Accounting Department. He was surrounded by awesome automobiles, magalicious motorcycles and buxom babes in bikinis. Mere samples of what awaited him once his music career finally took off.

Who knew it would be so hard to break into the industry? To be honest, he thought he'd have left Meade by now. His main bud, Henry, had left for Arizona to raise his son with his baby mama. The guy Henry hated ditched his sandwich cart and opened up his own deli. Heck, even Alexis Meade had left the company (under less than auspicious circumstances according to the bathroom gossip).

Well at least there was one other person who was still stuck at Meade he thought as he spotted a familiar figure in a cacophony of colour flit by.

ooOoo

Castle followed Betty as they went to drop off Connor's envelope in Accounting. It was your typical cubicle farm filled with people rarely associated with the glamorous world of magazine publishing. They were almost through the maze of grey dividers and onto the next stop of the tour when a voice called out "Yo, B-licious!"

Betty froze. Castle watched as her entire body tensed up then she took a deep breath of resignation and turned to a young, slender Asian man. "Hey, Kenny."

"Long time, no see."

"I suppose so."

"Guess what! Me and my band just finished cutting our album," Kenny said and turned to grab something from his desk. "Hot off the presses! Here, have one. It's even autographed. When I'm famous, you can tell people you knew me back when."

"Thanks," Betty said as she took the CD.

"We're shooting a video next week and uploading it to YouTube," he said. "So you've been all avoidy since my boy Henry went back to Tucson."

Kenny's pronunciation was like 'tux-son' rather than 'two-sahn' causing Castle to blink. To his further surprise, he saw the normally cheerful young woman practically scowl.

"I have not been all avoidy, and it's Tuscon," Betty said with prim annoyance and correct pronunciation.

"It's spelled like Tucson. It should be pronounced like Tucson," Kenny insisted.

As the two co-workers argued phonetics, another story idea came to Castle. An accountant with dreams of making it big stumbles across some irregularities in the company's books. Instead of reporting it to the authorities, he tries to blackmail the culprit and gets killed for his trouble. Castle looked at Kenny's cubicle and visualized a corpse spinning slowly in the swivel chair having been strangled with the cord from his own headphones.

"Who's the boy toy?" Kenny asked.

Castle watched Betty take another deep breath as though she was contemplating giving a demonstration of her garrotting capabilities. "This is Rick Castle."

"The mystery writer? Awesome!" Kenny said shaking his hand. "Do you really get as much action as they say?"

Mindful of Betty's gaze, Castle replied, "I get my fair share."

"And then some," Kenny said grabbing another disc from his desk. "Here, have a CD."

"Ah, thanks," Castle said.

"We better get going," Betty said.

"Later, B-Money, R.C.," Kenny said.

ooOoo

Author notes: The Ugly Betty episodes referenced in this chapter are 2.4 "Grin and Bear It", 2.5 "A League of Their Own", 2.6 "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and 3.4 "Betty Suarez Land".