Shared Obsession Chapter 115

"I have no idea what Sophie was doing but I'm sure it was nothing good," Sheila Blaine declares. "Did you know she called me after the engagement party and asked me to pay for her flight?"

"And did you?" Esposito asks.

"Of course not. I told her people have to make their own way."

"So you have no idea what Sophie did on Thursday?"

"No, but guess what she was doing on Friday when I first saw her?"

Esposito straightens in his chair. "What's that?"

"Shopping at the hotel store." Sheila expels a breath through narrowed lips. "And do you know what the markup in those places is? Here she is telling people how broke she is and suddenly she has money to burn."

"Any idea where she got it?"

"No legitimate way. Probably some sugar daddy. That's probably why she went after Greg. A whore is a whore. It's always about the money."

Ryan works his way swiftly through the rest of the wedding party. Keith Murphy still claims that he hadn't seen Sophie until the rehearsal dinner and hadn't talked to her. Laurie Hill says she hadn't seen Sophie until the wedding party, and Uncle Teddy insists that he barely knew her.

"Someone is lying," Kate asserts on hearing her detectives' reports at the murder board.

"Kyra told me that Greg and Uncle Teddy talked about family financial matters," Castle recalls.

"Greg told me that Teddy handles them – and that Teddy has the original of the Murphy crest tie bars that he gave to Greg and some other members of the family," Kate puts in.

"Sheila Blaine said what Sophie did was all about the money. She might have been right about that," Esposito figures.

"And all the Murphy money seems to flow through Uncle Teddy," Castle adds.

"Then we follow it," Kate decides. "We need to dive deeper into Uncle Teddy."

"I asked around the hotel staff," Ryan reports over take-out Chinese food in the conference room. "Teddy was definitely lying when he said he barely knew Sophie. The sales clerk who handled Sophie's purchases said Teddy covered them with cash. That stood out to her because almost no one pays cash for anything. They either use a card or sign for it and have it added to their hotel bill."

"Teddy clearly didn't want a record." Castle taps a printout of Teddy's financials. "But there is one for his cash withdrawals. They coincide with the money Sophie spent on her plane fare, her dress, and her trip to the spa. There were $1500 withdrawals before she paid her rent for three months before she flew to New York. But what I don't get is why he would make sure Sophie was at the wedding. And if he was Daddy Sugar, why would she go to so much trouble for a one-night stand with Greg?"

"Unless that's what Teddy wanted," Kate suggests. "Maybe he was afraid that a married Greg would take more interest in his own financial affairs."

"Uh-huh," Castle agrees. "Any decent guy would want to make sure that if something happened to him that Kyra and any kids they might have would be taken care of. Esposito, didn't you say, Greg's a trust fund baby?"

"Yeah, but he wasn't living off it," Esposito recalls.

"Maybe he couldn't," Castle guesses. "A good Irish family might set it up so a guy couldn't blow it until he was ready to settle down with a wife. Which would have put it under the control of –" Ryan beats a drum roll on the table – "Uncle Teddy. The same Uncle Teddy who has a tie bar a lot like Greg's."

"This is ridiculous!" Greg exclaims. "You don't have enough to build a case against me so you go after another member of my family."

"We're trying to get to the truth," Kate responds to Greg as they and Castle view Teddy from observation.

"By hauling in my uncle?" Greg retorts. "For God's sake, he barely knew Sophie."

"And yet he paid for a $700 dress and her ticket out here," Castle says.

Greg looks to Kate for confirmation. "He bought her dress?"

Kate nods. "If he barely knew her, why would he do that?"

"We heard through the grapevine that Sophie might have some trouble getting the money together to get to the wedding. Maybe Teddy was just trying to help her out," Greg proposes.

"That doesn't explain the $1500 he paid her for the last three months," Kate points out.

Greg swallows, staring at Beckett. "He was paying her?"

"Mm-hmm."

"For what?"

"Some kind of deal they had going on. We think it had something to do with the way Sophie was behaving the night before your almost wedding," Castle explains.

Greg snorts his disbelief. "Yeah, sure, he paid Sophie to ruffie a groomsman and then climb into bed with me."

"We know how it sounds," Kate says.

"It sounds like something out of one of Rick's little books," Greg rejoins.

Rick squares his shoulders. "Twenty-four little bestsellers."

"What would even be the point of that, except to mess up the wedding?" Greg demands. "Why the hell would Teddy want that?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Castle replies.

Greg moves in to face him chest to chest. "Omigod! For God's sake. Now you're going to tell me that he's in love with Kyra too."

Rick glares back. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Kate puts a hand between them. "You guys!"

"You know damn well what it's supposed to mean," Greg accuses.

"No, Greg," Castle states stiffly.

"Whoa," Kate urges.

"If you've got something to say to me, just say it," Castle continues.

"I love Kyra. She means the world to me. Maybe you can't see it. Maybe you don't care, because you're still in love with her yourself. But Teddy has been nothing but supportive of us the whole way. He filed our wedding license. He helped us write our prenup. He always looks after …."

"What?" Beckett asks.

Greg steps away. "I've got to make a phone call."

"Is he right?" Kate asks Castle, as Greg ducks into the break room. "Are you still in love with Kyra?"

"I still care about her," Rick admits. "But in love with? There's only one woman that qualifies for that description, Kate. And she's standing right in front of me."

Without even a safety glance around, Kate stretches up for a kiss.

Ted Murphy turns furious eyes on Kate and Rick as they finally enter the box. "Do you know how long I've been sitting here?"

"I'm sorry for the wait," Castle says without a hint of contrition. "I hadn't had anything to eat. We couldn't decide on a restaurant."

"What? Do you think this is funny?" Teddy demands.

Kate lays a stack of folders in front of the suspect. "Do you recognize these files, Mr. Murphy?"

Pressing his palms against the table, Teddy levers himself upward. "You went to my office?"

"We got a warrant first," Kate assures him. "Don't worry."

"Look, a layman like you couldn't possibly understand the financial and legal complications of an estate like Greg's," Teddy asserts.

"Beckett, I think he just called you stupid," Castle notes.

"I think I got the gist of it," Kate replies. "Greg's grandparents established a fund that he was going to receive on his wedding day and named you executor, Mr. Murphy. How am I doing so far? And for the past five years, you've been stealing from that fund to fuel your expensive lifestyle. A house in the Hampton's, a Ferrari, a pair of top-of-the-line breast implants."

"Can't even tell you have those," Castle quips.

Teddy gazes sullenly at the files. "My personal life is none of your business."

"It is when it leads to murder," Kate returns. "And you lost a ton of money in the market."

"Everyone did," Teddy claims.

"But not everyone had access to Greg's trust fund. When you ran out of your own money you started using his, burned through almost the entire two million," Kate continues. "Then when he called you to say he was getting engaged, you panicked because you didn't have enough equity to put it back."

"You realized the only way to avoid detection was to put a stop to the wedding." Castle picks up. "But how? Greg was clearly in love with Kyra. Kyra was in love with him."

"And then you met Sophie at the engagement party and you realized she was the perfect instrument," Kate goes on. "She was so desperate for money that you could convince her to go along with your plan. You wanted her to sneak into Greg's room in the middle of the night with a video recorder."

"And you would use your amateur but effective porn to convince Kyra that Greg cheated on her. How did you plan to get it to her?" Castle asks. "Leave it on her doorstep or show it at the wedding breakfast pretending to confuse it with a gag reel from the rehearsal dinner? But your problem is that being a conniving thief and cheat doesn't run in the family. Even after you got him drunk on shooters, Greg wouldn't cheat on Kyra. When you went to Sophie's room to collect the video, she told you that. And worse, Sophie knew all about your little plan. So you decided to shut her up – permanently."

"We found your tie bar in your luggage," Mr. Murphy. "The lab's already matched the blood on it to Sophie. When the DA's office puts that together with your embezzlement," Kate predicts, "I don't think it will have any problem charging you with murder."

"And I wouldn't count on Greg to bail you out." Castle points to the stack of folders. "He just doesn't have the money."