Kate's Investigation
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: A thorough investigation shows I do not own Castle. Rating: K Time: After my story, Kates' Run.
Andi and Gigi sat for over an hour as Becker named people and companies they'd never heard of. Mrs. Lee seemed quite happy with the results. She also took the hard drive of his computer just to be safe.
"Now shall we all walk over to the resort's admin offices? I always keep a little bit of cash on hand, just in case."
What Mrs. Lee considered a little cash was a staggering amount by Andi and Gigi's standards. But, she handed a million UK pounds over to Becker.
"There's a shuttle leaving for the Toulouva spaceport in three hours. You should be able to pack your things and be ready in no time."
Becker just smiled and walked off.
"Do you mind if I ask you a question, Mrs. Lee?"
"You can ask, but I don't promise to answer."
"Fair enough. You're a trillionaire and yet you're here at a third-rate resort. Why?"
"Part of that I can explain. When people get rich, and I mean very rich, they can let their egos run away with them. They don't want to hire anyone but yes men. They want people who'll do exactly as they're told, no less and certainly no more. They want nothing to do with anyone with brains and initiative. I'm not like that. The people I hire to run the divisions of Lee Systems are left to run things without me micromanaging everything for them. It has caused me some problems in the past, but on the whole, it's worked well. Just in case I really do need to make a decision, I have a number of very fast ships standing by to bring me what I need to make a decision."
"Now, as to what I'm doing here, I won't answer that. I'll just say that I have something very interesting and very profitable in mind and I needed time by myself with no distractions to accomplish that. There's more to it than that, but that's all I'm prepared to say."
Andi nodded.
"Fair enough."
Next, they visited the three Thrends. The Thrends had large, round bodies and six limbs that could double as either arms or legs. The only hair on their bodies was a fringe of black hair over their ears. They wore a coverall type garment, blue in color.
"We have come here to mate, Detective."
"You can't mate at home?" Andi asked.
"Not at this time. Our sun has…Oh, dear. I don't know the correct human words. However, the sun will send out great amounts of radiation every few thousand years. It can be quite devastating to us. The last time this happened, our population dropped precipitously since there were very few births over a period of a century or so. As we now have access to FTL drive ships, we are trying to see if we can mate on nearby planets. Only a small number of us can make the journey, of course, but every little bit helps."
"You need three people to mate?"
"Yes, Detective. In addition to the male, Serro Patronad, "he pointed at one Thrend, "and the female, Vorna Blassk, "He pointed at the other Thrend, "we need what might be called a carrier, me, Obosso Tingaka."
"You've been in the cottage ever since you arrived?" Andi asked.
"Yes. Human food is not nutritious for us and we're not an aquatic race. We really don't like the water. In addition, we need the correct balance of temperature and humidity to breed. I'm afraid we've been bothering the resort people since we got here, asking for the heat to be turned up, for it to be turned down and then back up again. We're able to create various states of humidity using this machine." He pointed to a machine that Andi had never seen before.
"Thank you. If we need anything else, we'll be in touch. And good luck."
Once outside, Andi looked at her list.
"Just one cottage left. A pair of newlyweds, from Tamarind. Mrs. and Mrs. David and Ella Bonsaro. They got here on Twoday, just in time for the murder. Shall we?"
The Bonsaro's cottage was a mess. There were dirty dishes everywhere, the bed was unmade, there was clothing scattered about and the cottage had a distinct odor. The Bonsaros weren't in better shape. Mr. Bonsaro had a healthy growth of beard, and Mrs. Bonsaro's hair was a mess. She wore a robe over a negligee and he wore pajama bottoms and a suit coat. Both were barefoot.
"No, we haven't left the cottage. We were supposed to get married last spring." Mr. Bonsaro said. "But my grandfather passed away a week before the wedding. Our customs require a thirty-day period of mourning. No weddings allowed"
"We managed to find a church that could squeeze us in three weeks after the mourning period." Mrs. Bonsaro said. "But two days before the wedding, Pastor Frank left town with two girls from the Youth Choir and a great deal of money from the church building fund."
"We found a minister and a really great place for a wedding reception. But, in the wedding scheduled just before us, the groom got cold feet and left town. The bride and her family decided to have a party at the reception venue. Unfortunately, the groom's family showed up and…" Mrs. Bonsaro began to cry."
"The result was a riot. They managed to set fire to the place." Mr. Bonsaro finished.
"We couldn't find a thing for two months after that. Everything was booked solid. Both churches and reception venues. We didn't want a winter wedding, but we set up one. We were all set when the Great Blizzard of '66 roared in. The whole city was snowed in for weeks. No wedding for us."
"Finally, it was spring again. Everything was fine until…" Mrs. Bonsaro stopped and looked at her husband.
"My idiot brother Edvard was caught in bed with Ella's married aunt. With a nasty divorce going on…"
"Aunt Bethany claimed that Uncle Howard had been cheating on her for years." Mrs. Bonsaro finished.
"It wasn't the time for a wedding."
"We tried to reschedule, but with all the weddings cancelled by the winter weather, everything else was booked solid. So, we decided to elope."
"And we did." Mr. Bonsaro added with a smile.
"Daddy will be so angry at us when we get back. He so had his heart set on escorting me down the aisle."
"Ella, you still have three unmarried younger sisters."
"And the oldest is Anna and she's just fifteen. It'll be years before she gets married."
"So, you've been in your cottage the whole time?" Andi asked.
"Yes. We decided that we'd remain pure until we were officially wed. By the time that actually happened, we were ready. Very ready."
"Very, very ready." Ella added.
"Okay. If we need anything else from you, we'll get back to you."
Once outside Andi looked at their list.
"Do you believe them?'
"Not a bit. They must think we're stupid." Gigi replied hotly.
"You don't think they spent the whole time having sex?"
"What? No, I meant that nonsense about remaining pure, whatever that means. Mark my words, I'm sure they've been banging like bunnies from the second date, at least."
"Well, we have to find out if they have been in their cottage the whole time."
"Who was in their cottage?" Tolan asked, walking up to them.
Andi explained that they needed to confirm the Bonsaro's alibi.
"I can do that for you." Tolan said. "Remember how good my hearing is? When they're…um…having relations…"
"You mean when they're screwing?" Gigi said.
"Yes. She squeals very loudly and when he's done, he lets out this loud roar. I'm surprised no one else has heard them."
"That's the last of our suspects, Tolan. I guess we'll go back to our cottage and see if we can find any holes in anyone's stories. Why don't you take the day off?"
"Certainly."
When they got back to their cottage, Andi noticed that a light on Gigi's computer was blinking.
"Did you program your computer for something?"
"I thought I'd check out Fuzzy's electronic reader and see if he had anything other than porn on it. The computer's done."
Both women walked over to see what, if anything, the computer had found.
"Just more porn." Gigi said. "But this time it's a porn video. Big deal, the people aren't even that hot."
"No, but we now have some real evidence."
"What evidence?"
"Look carefully at the people in the porn video. The man is a much younger Mr. Fuzzy and the woman is…"
"Mrs. Lee." Gigi said.
"Funny she didn't mention she knew the dear departed." Andi said sarcastically.
The door opened and there stood Mrs. Lee, an electronic master key in her hand.
"You didn't ask me if I knew him, did you?" She said.
"No, but you could have mentioned it, and I can see why you'd want to lie. You're now our main suspect."
"But you lied to me, didn't you, Captain Beckett and you too, Ms. Harper."
"You know who we are?"
"I would have checked you out anyway, but I thought you were a bit too good to have gotten your investigative abilities by watching some Earth video."
"What do you intend to do now?"
"Very little and what I plan to do will help you two."
"You realize you're all but confessing to murder."
"Oh, I will confess to murder, but I'm not worried about that. As someone said, Trelawney is judge, jury and executioner around here. I could buy him and the entire Union with no trouble. In fact, I've already bought Trelawney. No matter what information you bring to him, including a signed confession by me, he won't do a thing."
Andi's hand was edging closer to her sidearm.
"Please, Kate, go ahead and draw your pistol. You too Alexis. I do hope we can be on a first name basis. I'm Elisa, by the way."
Kate drew her weapon as did Alexis.
"So you want to tell us what happened?"
"We'll have to begin from the beginning." Elisa said. "My family was comfortable, that is upper middle class, but they aspired to move up. Lower rich class, I suppose. However, my mother was an empty headed party girl. She got pregnant with me and didn't know who the father was. The three most likely candidates left the planet. There was some talk of aborting me, but in their social class abortions were considered lower class. So, I was sent off to live with my aunt on the other side of the planet."
Elisa got a faraway look in her eyes.
"I've always loved my aunt. She was the best mother I could have wanted, but I've always harbored a sense of resentment towards the rest of the family."
"I went to school and soon found that I'm quite smart. Not to brag, but I'm in the upper level of the genius range. I was in high school when I first put my intelligence towards making money. I made cheats for virtual reality games."
"What exactly are cheats?" Kate asked.
"Suppose that you and a half a dozen friends are playing The Sorcerer's Lost Crown. I found that if you went into the Forest of Light and stopped in the Glade of the Dancing Spirits you could find a magical sword if you looked behind the largest tree in the glade."
"You could?" Alexis said. "I played that game hundreds of times and no one ever found a sword there."
"I did. And eventually, I moved on to college. I expanded my repertoire. I sold term papers, the answers to tests, why I even provided a professor with "proof" that he was playing chess with his colleague and not sleeping with a student as his wife suspected. It was very useful to have a professor who owed me. He kept me advised on the school's attempts to track me down. They never did."
"Then I met Fuzzy. Oh, you were wrong, Kate, it was an alias. Fuzzy was my pet nickname for him. He was from a very rich family, but he was a wild man. He was absolutely fascinated when he found out what I was doing. He pushed me to do more and more dangerous things. He loved the adrenaline rush. We got married and we took my money and headed out to see the universe. We made money at every planet we stopped at. I won't tell you where any of those planets are, though."
"Finally, we arrived on Earth. That's when we made our biggest mistake. We conned a young politician out of his entire political war chest for his first run at an office. The man's name was William H. Bracken. He doesn't want me as badly as he wants you two, but I set his political career back by several years. Bracken never forgives or forgets something like that."
"How does this involve Fuzzy?" Kate asked.
"He was going to blackmail me. He wanted us to remarry with no prenup so he'd legally acquire half of all I own. I suspect that once we were married, he'd let Bracken know where I was and help him kill me. So, I killed him first."
"Why did he die in our cottage?"
"He was afraid to go into my cottage for fear I'd have some lethal surprise for him. He chose to meet in your cottage. By the way, I've had a bug in your place since Fuzzy told me where the meet would be."
"That explains a lot." Alexis said.
"Why are you telling us all of this?" Kate asked.
"I'm afraid that in checking you two out I have alerted Bracken's people to where you are. If they find you here, they won't have any trouble figuring out who and where I am. Once I get home, I'll be safe. We trillionaires have excellent security."
"And us?"
"I'll be just a bit safer if Bracken's best people are after you two. I propose to give each of you one million UK pounds in cash. I'll take you back to Tralee with me and there I'll give you a little FTL runabout I have. You shouldn't have any trouble disappearing." She frowned. "You won't need any experience with FTL ships. She has a conscious level AI to do all the work. Just tell her what you want."
"That's awfully generous of you." Kate said suspiciously.
"Simple cost-benefit analysis. A few million and a ship is a small price to pay. Plus, I really loathe Bracken and his kind. The man is power mad. Just the type to start an interstellar war to get what he wants and to hell with the consequences."
Kate and Alexis exchanged glances.
"Okay. We'll accept,"
"Good. Then there's one more person I need to help."
She pulled out her phone.
"Trelawney, would you please send Tolan to Andi and Gigi's cottage. I'm afraid he'll be leaving you soon."
In less than a minute, Tolan arrived.
"Tolan, I have some very bad news. A very evil man wants to kill our friends Andi and Gigi. We're sure a highly skilled hired assassin working for him killed Mr. Fuzzy for some reason and escaped. Now, I understand you wish to go to the United Kingdoms and enlist with Black Jack Schram's mercenary brigade?"
"That is my dream. To do so and return to Tark to liberate my people. There is a human who serves Schram who will lead us."
"I find that a noble cause. I'm prepared to give you a first class ticket to the UK and a thousand UK pounds for your very capable assistance in trying to solve this murder. Will you accept?"
"I will."
"Then let's get ready to leave. I have a fast ship already in orbit, ready to go."
A month later Kate and Alexis sat in the cockpit of the ship, Not for Hire.
"As far as I can tell the ship isn't rigged to blow up and the AI doesn't have orders to do away with us."
"I'm very insulted that you'd even think that." The AI said.
"Sorry, Becky. But a lot of people have been trying to kill us. We get a bit paranoid now and again."
"I would suggest that if Mrs. Lee wanted to kill you, she wouldn't use a fine ship like the Not for Hire. I mean consider it. It sleeps four, has a fine entertainment system, a gourmet AI chef, that's me, of course, and the best computer you'll ever meet. Plus, it's as fast as anything you'll run into this side of a warship, plus it has both offensive and defensive weapons. Please remember I'm a conscious level computer. If I committed a crime, I would be reduced to a bunch of spare parts. Kill you indeed."
"Sorry, Becky."
"Apology accepted. Now where did you want to go?"
"We haven't decided."
"If we stay in orbit around Tralee for too long that Bracken or his people might show up."
Kate pulled out a star chart.
"Alexis, close your eyes."
"Why?"
"Close your eyes and put your finger on the chart. Where ever your finger lands is where we'll go."
Alexis closed her eyes and put her finger on the chart.
"I've never heard of the place." Alexis said.
"It seems to be a fairly advanced planet and far from Earth."
"Then let's go, Becky."
The End
Author's note: Next up is Happy Birthday, Don Vorleone. Yes, the fine old gentlevorlag is having a birthday and his friends are planning a surprise party. Three furry wiseguys ask Kate to do them a small favor. What could possibly go wrong?