CBs

Chapter 3

Mandy Lewis ushered Castle into Lily Merchant's bedroom. There was a bare spot on the desk where Bill Garrett had removed the laptop, but everything else was in good order, perhaps too good. "Do you clean in here?" Castle asked.

"I do the vacuuming when I do the rest of the house and I put her clothes away when they come out of the laundry or come back from the cleaners, but Lily takes care of the rest herself," Mandy replied. "She's always been organized, ever since she was a preschooler."

"You've known her a long time?" Castle queried.

Mandy swiped at her eyes. "Since she was born. I've been the Merchant's housekeeper for twenty years, ever since Mrs. Merchant started Lilysoft."

Castle smiled a reassurance. "We're going to find her Mrs. Lewis. Now you said you put away her clothes, so you've been in her drawers and her closet. If she wanted to keep something private, it wouldn't be in either of those places." Castle began to look around the room, opening storage containers and keepsake boxes and snapping pictures of everything with his phone. Nothing jumped out to him as significant. "Mrs. Lewis, is there anywhere else in the apartment or the building Lily likes to be, or where she might keep some of her things?"

Mandy thought for a moment and nodded. "Each apartment has a storage area in the basement. They are private and locked. All of Lily's things from when she was younger, except the toys and clothes she gave to charity, are there. She goes down there sometimes. She told me she likes to remember."

"Do you have a key?" Castle asked.

Mandy nodded. "There's one hanging in the kitchen."

To Castle, the contents of the storage area looked unremarkable. Shelves were filled with old tax records and outdated electronics awaiting recycling or disposal. Lily had her own small section. The tattered remains of an old blanket were lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. A bedraggled stuffed dog occupied his own carefully padded box. Cardboard tubes held posters of boy bands and teen heart throbs whose popularity had waned. Castle noticed one small heart shaped carved wooden box that would have looked more at home on a dresser than a storage shelf. "Do you know what that is?" he asked Mandy.

Mandy shook her head. "I've never seen it before."

Pulling on gloves, Castle carefully opened the box. Inside lay a collection of tiny gold hearts, each inscribed with "TGH."

"The giving heart," Castle murmured. "Mrs. Lewis, do you know where she got these?'

"I have no idea - well maybe. She got little envelopes in the mail with just a heart as a back address. I never opened Lily's mail, but it felt like there was something in them. It could have been these. Do you think they mean something?"

Castle pursed his lips in thought. "I think they might. I'm going to take these and turn them over to the crime lab. Maybe we'll get lucky."

Castle returned to his office to write up his notes on Lily Merchant and emailed them to Ted Merchant, to Kate, and to the other CBs. Alexis wandered in from her desk in reception. "Dad, I've been going over the books for Richard Castle investigations."

"So what's the bad news?" Castle asked.

"There isn't any," Alexis replied. "I was probably over enthusiastic when I ordered so much of the scotch you like, but with the profit you made from the cases you picked up after you found that multi-million dollar dongle, the cases I closed, and the retainer from Ted Merchant, we're actually in the black."

"That's certainly going to be a surprise your grandmother," Castle said. "She's been ragging on me about this place being a money pit for months. I'd suggest a celebration, but not while all those kids are missing."

"We can have one when you find them," Alexis suggested. "It will be the first case solved by the CB's."

"Let's just hope it is solved," Castle cautioned. "Right now we're not even close. But I picked up a new clue this morning. I just dropped it off at CSU."

"What?" Alexis inquired.

Castle used his phone to show her a picture of the hearts.

"I think I've seen something like those before," Alexis told him. "When I was at Marlowe Academy I joined a service club. You remember. We did canned food drives, collected books for school libraries, filled wishes at Christmas time. Every time the club finished a project, the participants would get a little thing like that, except they said 'MASC' instead of 'TGH.'"

"That would really fit," Castle mused. "Lily loved activities f like that. If she was in a service group that came out of The Giving Hearts website, the other kids might have been too. I'll send a note to the CBs to check if any of the other kids got those hearts, maybe we can trace them down. Ryan is really good at that kind of thing. Hey, don't you have a class?"

Alexis nodded. "Mm. But I have time. It's forensics and after interning with Lanie, I can do it in a walk."

Castle motioned to the chair in front of his desk as he dashed off a text. "Talk to me for a minute."

Alexis dropped into the chair. "What's going on, Dad?"

"That's what I was going to ask you. Last year you came to me worried that you hadn't found your passion. I was wondering if you have now, if this place, your work here, is it? You seem to spend more time here than you do with your friends or at school. Does my daughter want to be a P.I.?"

"I think I do Dad, but I have to put in the time. When you got your license you fulfilled the three years of experience requirement with your work with Kate. I need a place to try my hand at solving cases too," Alexis explained. "A lot of the science courses I've taken work for criminalistics. The courses I took when I was working on the Innocence Project with Professor MacDonald help too. I'm filling in the rest of what I need this year. By the time I finish working here long enough to qualify for a license, I should know if I really want one, or if I should go to law school, graduate school, or medical school. But I think this is it, Dad. I've always liked working out scenarios with you for your books and now I'm doing it for real. We both are. Even though she's a captain, you still get to work with Kate and I get to work with you. It feels right."

At the loft, Castle lay on the couch with his head in Kate's lap. Kate popped a grape into his mouth. "So Babe, Alexis wants to be a P.I.. How do you feel about that?"

"Uneasy," Castle admitted. "I wish she'd chosen something safer. If she's interested in forensics, why can't she be in a nice lab somewhere?"

"And why do you run around the streets of New York solving cases when you could just stay in the loft writing books? I know when you started, a lot of that was about chasing me, regardless of your excuses about research for your books. But we've been together for years. I'm here with you, but you still need the action," Kate asserted.

"It's true," Castle conceded.

"Alexis is your daughter, very much your daughter," Kate pointed out. "Face it, we're a crime-solving family."

Castle pulled her lips to his for a kiss. "I suppose there are worse things to be. But I'm still considering hiring Alexis a bodyguard."

Kate cupped his cheek. "I'm sure you are."