Another Chance

Chapter 21

Kate snaps her leather folder shut. "That was the last of them, Castle. Anyone look good to you?"

Castle leans back in his chair to stretch out the kinks. "Honestly, not a one. They were jealous, but more the kind of jealousy that leads to grabbing the last piece of Tillie's favorite pie before she can get it or hiding her clown nose - not murder. You got the reports from Perlmutter and CSU. Anything enlightening?"

"Just that Perlmutter has assured himself that an award like the one that was missing was the murder weapon. CSU didn't find any usable trace or DNA. This time of year, whoever broke in was probably pretty well covered up. There aren't any security cameras in the building, and none of the neighbors heard or saw anything. Our killer might have been in or out in a minute or two."

"That's another thing that doesn't fit. If it were a jealous co-worker, you would think the awards would be smashed and the apartment at least messed up a little. I'm beginning to wonder if Tillie was killed with that award to distract us from the real motive."

"What motive, Castle? She worked at Macy's. She didn't have money. What insurance she had was slated to go into a college fund for her sister's kids. As far as anyone's been able to tell us, there's no significant other. That lets out love, jealousy, and cash. What's left?"

"According to Cannell's playbook, covering up another crime. But what crime could Tillie know about?"

Kate closes her eyes and shakes her head. "I don't know. Pilferage by another employee maybe, but store security said there were no unexpected losses, so that wouldn't track. Castle I think we're stuck." She looks down at the man's watch on her wrist. "It's getting late. We should go back to the loft. Maybe you'll get one of your off the wall inspirations."

"I'm not feeling very inspired right now, but I do have some paperwork that Tamera sent me to go over. She texted that there's a problem with some of the ingredients she wants to use for our reception feast, but I haven't had a chance to check out the details. We could do that together - after we eat something. I'm starving already and looking at anything about food will just make my stomach grumblier."

"I could get my teeth into something myself," Castle. "Let's throw a quick dinner together and then we can check out Tamera's hassles."

Alexis is way ahead on her term paper. It keeps her hands on the keyboard while Micah's at work. Otherwise, she'd be yielding to the temptation to dig into her bag of cheese puffs. The fact that they're organic and non-GMO doesn't make them any less fattening. She doubts that a few pounds would matter to Micah. He seems to enjoy having something to hold on to. But they matter to her. She already knows what dress she's planning to wear to her father's wedding to Kate, and she's determined that her dimensions won't change. In any case, she's always seen herself as the one person in the family with self-discipline, and she's not about to give up on that now.

She glances at the time at the bottom of her screen. Micah has about another hour to go on his shift. He promised that he'll Facetime her when he finishes. It will be too late for him to come up to Columbia, especially since he has his own school work to do, but it's always easier for them to get through the night if they can see and hear each other before they go to sleep. Calls, when they wake up, are great too. She's come to the point where she's not sure she could get through the morning without one. She never felt that way about Pi, not even at the beginning in Costa Rica when she decided to bring him home with her. If anything, he was always way too cheerful in the early hours for her taste. Before long, it began to grate on her nerves. Nothing about Micah grates - except his absence.

Kate scans through the items Castle highlighted in the attachment to Tamera's message. The hotel objected to the portobello mushrooms Tamera wanted as part of her alternative dish for vegans. Same thing for the tiny purple potatoes and the plums that would have been destined as part of the sauce for chicken. They're all marked with a code. "What does 'UAS' mean?"

Castle glances over to where she's pointing her finger. "My guess would be unapproved supplies. Remember that Bobby Cray said that anything Tamera brought in would have to be on the hotel's approved supplier list." His eyes widen as his mouth falls open.

Kate knows that look. "What are you thinking, Babe?"

"I'm thinking about Tillie. She knew the store's stock backward, forward and inside out, right? She could always figure out what would make a customer happy, even if the other clerks didn't know the store carried or could order it. So what if someone, perhaps a buyer, was trying to pull some kind of a scam substituting inferior – or worse - counterfeit products. Whoever it was could have been taking a bribe from the seller and falsifying the records. A scheme like that, pulled off across multiple stores and coming into the highest sales months of the year, could net a tidy little sum. And if the perpetrator thought that Tillie would twig to it, he or she would have two motives at the top of the hit parade, money and Cannell's addition. We need to have someone go over the purchasing records for products Tillie would have handled. The clue to our killer might just lay therein."

"I can have our fraud people look into that, but they're more experienced with embezzlement and door to door rip-offs than retail switch-ups. Who- besides Tillie - would be able to understand that kind of thing?"

"Isn't Jenny Ryan working as a buyer for a department store? There was that eye-shocking tie she gave Ryan, but that could have been just a momentary aberration attributable to love blindness. We should ask her to give it a try. Kevin jumps at any chance to have her around the precinct, and she does love mysteries. She told me once that she reads all of mine."

A smile teases Kate's lips. "I'll bet she'd get a charge out of actually working on an investigation instead of hearing Kevin recount his roles in solving our cases in what is probably excruciating detail. I'll give her a call - in the morning."

"And what would you like to do in the meantime?"

"Oh, I don't know, Castle. I have some episodes of Temptation Lane to catch up on, or we could watch a movie." She climbs into his lap and works her fingers into his hair. "We have had a long day. Maybe we should just take a nap."

Castle reaches up to cup her cheek. "Naps are good. I like naps, especially with company."

Kate covers his hand with her slim fingers. "You'll have all the company you want -as long as it's mine."

Castle presses a kiss into her palm. "Can't imagine ever wanting it to be from anyone else."