Shared Obsession Chapter 178

"From the essence of fine dining to its untimely end," Castle remarks as Kate prepares to fill in the gaps on the murder board.

"Esposito, did you connect with Sandra Meyer's doorman?" she inquires, her marker poised over her timeline.

"Yeah. He confirms her story. And the hospital has her husband logged as working the graveyard shift. She could have gone to see her lover boy chef without him knowing the difference."

"If we believe her story, ex-lover boy chef," Castle inserts. "And it sounds like so far it's checking out."

"But until Perlmutter pins down the TOD she's still our best suspect," Kate insists.

"Hey," Ryan calls, approaching the murder board huddle. "I ran down Wolf's daily disappearance. His credit card records show a charge at Café Rex around 3:45 pm every day for the last couple of weeks."

"Café Rex? That's on 2nd in the Seventies. What was Wolf doing there?" Castle wonders.

"Ryan, Esposito, head up there and see if he was meeting with anyone," Kate instructs just as her cell plays Perlmutter's somber ringtone. She listens for a moment to his gruff summons. "Come on, Babe, Perlmutter found something."


"How's our corpsicle?" Castle inquires peering at Perlmutter's autopsy table.

"Thawing nicely. In spite of the obvious challenges, I found enough unaffected tissue to narrow the time of death to between two and four am," the ME reports, handing Kate a file.

"Well, that knocks out both Domingo and our adulterous foodie," Castle says.

"Once we got Mr. Wolf under the heat lamps some bruising began to present," Perlmutter continues. "First there were considerable contusions along his back and legs."

Kate flips through Perlmutter's paperwork to the photos. "Wow! This looks like a pretty bad beating. Did this happen the night of the murder?"

"No, those bruises are at least two weeks old," Perlmutter informs her.

"There's that two weeks again," Castle notes. "Bruising on the body, sold his shares of the diner to Nicolaides, told Sandra Meyers he was breaking off their affair, all around the same time. Beckett, if past is prologue, you're going to need a bigger timeline."

"I also found a fresh bruise from a blow he suffered just before he was frozen," Perlmutter goes on impatiently. "And I went through the crime scene photos from CSU. The bruise pattern matches one of the objects from the kitchen." He points to one of the photos Kate is holding.

"Ah, the rotary evaporator," Castle says. "Spike mentioned that Wolf was using it to work his molecular gastromolecular magic on the cake. It's a tool that chefs use to distill and extract flavors from… and again, you don't care."

Kate checks through the rest of the file. "No prints on the body of the appliance. Wolf's should have been there if he was using it. Someone must have wiped it down."

Perlmutter rocks on the balls of his feet. "Go to the next page. There were some partials on the shards of the round flask that had been attached to it. The lab was able to Humpty Dumpty together a usable print. It didn't match any of the restaurant employees but when they ran it through AFIS they got a hit."

"Jennifer Wong," Kate reads.

"Wolf's arch nemesis!" Castle exclaims. "She claimed that Wolf stole a recipe from her and swore that if he won she was going to kill him. But she has absolutely exquisite knife skills. They racked up more wins for her in the advantage challenges than Wolf had. But he won on taste points for his final dish. So hit him with a rotary evaporator and freeze him? You would think she'd want her superior knife handling to hand her the final victory."

"I'll have the unis bring her in and you can ask her," Kate promises.


In Interrogation, Kate uses a laptop to replay Jennifer Wong's on-air threat to kill Wolf if he won. "Sounds like you and Mr. Wolf had quite the rivalry."

Jennifer shrugs. "What about it?"

"Oh come on! It had to be difficult watching him walk away with the $100,000 prize," Castle insists. "Not to mention the publicity that catapulted his career."

"And it's not hard to believe that the resentment was building up over the past couple of months until the pressure finally put you over the edge," Kate adds.

Disbelief drops Jennifer's jaw. "Wait! You think I killed him? The rivalry between Wolf and me was just an act."

"An act?" Castle queries.

"I thought that Kitchen Wars was a reality show," Kate says.

"Emphasis on 'show.' And win or lose, you want people to remember your name when it's over. That's how you build your brand," Jennifer explains.

Castle nods his understanding. "And who doesn't remember a great villain?"

"Exactly," Jennifer agrees. "And we made for great TV. Why do you think they kept us on until the final two?"

"But he won," Kate interrupts.

Jennifer shakes her head. "We both won. Yes, Wolf got his own restaurant, but I secured financing for a catering company and I'm doing great."

"What do you mean Wolf got his own restaurant?" Castle inquires. "Doesn't Madison Queller own Q3?"

"She and her investors and the major one was Wolf. From what he told me, he put all his winnings into it," Jennifer says.

"Right, that's what Wolf's friend told us," Kate recalls. "But if you didn't kill Wolf, maybe you can explain why we found your prints at the scene. They were all over the appliance used to bludgeon him to death."

"An appliance?"

"A rotary evaporator," Castle clarifies.

"Oh, I always think of that as lab equipment. It, the controlled temperature baths used for sous vide, and the liquid nitrogen, all come from labs. Even the same companies make them for labs and kitchens. But anyway, my prints would be on it because I own it. I've just started using it. Wolf was really into the sciency stuff. He would have used his own, but he told me the motor burned out and he had another one on order. So I loaned him mine. He said he needed one right away for something special."

"When?" Kate asks.

"It must have been the day he died. He called me early in the morning and asked to meet."

"Was he carrying a backpack?" Castle inquires.

"Yeah, he seemed in a rush, like he had a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do them. I gave him the evaporator and then he said he had a meeting in midtown. He asked me to drop him off on my way to work. I had to prepare for a catering job in the Hamptons."

"And where did you drop him?" Beckett queries.

"Uh, the northeast corner of 47th and Lex, one of those big office buildings."


Kate hangs up her desk phone. "Jennifer's employees confirm that she had a catering job in the Hamptons and stayed all night."

"Just as well," Castle considers. "Her culinary talents would have been wasted in a prison kitchen."

"Hey guys," Kate calls across the bullpen, "Did anyone at Café Rex remember Wolf meeting someone?"

"No, but they remembered Wolf," Esposito says. "A waitress said he always chose the same table and he'd drink tea and sit staring out the window the entire time he was there."

"She thought it was a little weird but he always tipped well and didn't bother anyone," Ryan adds, "so she was fine with it."

"All right." Kate hands Esposito a sticky note. "I want you to check out the tenants at this address."

"Four-twenty-three East 47th? Why?" Esposito asks.

"Apparently Wolf visited someone there the day he died," Kate replies.

"And he had the backpack with him," Castle adds. "When all else fails, follow the money."