88. Chapter 88

After Murder Most Fowl

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: No harm, no fowl. Rating: K Time: See above.

Rick Castle put two cups of coffee down on Kate Beckett's desk. She picked hers up appreciatively, then looked at Castle. "You okay, Castle?"

"Sure." he said, then buried his face in the coffee cup so that she couldn't see it.

"Really?" She said skeptically.

"Yeah! Really."

"That's my line, Castle. I say there's nothing wrong when there really is."

"Okay, you do it and now I do it. We're even. Okay?"

Kate took another sip of her coffee. She had an idea of what was wrong, but if Castle didn't want to talk about it, why should she interfere? It's none of my business. She thought. I know how angry I get when Castle sticks his nose into my business. Then she had another thought. Sure like looking into my mom's murder against my express wishes. And Dick Coonan is rotting in hell because Castle stuck his nose in my business. And I'm alive and murder cases have been solved all because Castle keeps sticking his nose in my business. And he's able to stick his nose in my business because I asked him to come back and be my partner. And if he's my partner…

"So, I know what's wrong, Castle. You may as well talk about it."

"You know what's wrong? How?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "I'm a detective. A trained observer. I assemble facts into theories. You may have noticed me doing this on occasion."

"So what is it?"

"Alexis. You got upset about the kidnapping of the little boy, Tyler Donegal. When we closed the case, you went home, but you couldn't sleep. I doubt if you got any sleep at all last night, thinking about what might happen to Alexis. Especially since the kidnappers had no intention of letting Tyler go."

Castle nodded. "You're good, Beckett. You're really, really good. Was it the bags under my eyes?"

Beckett smiled. "Among other things." Kate got serious. "Look, we don't have anything today, would you like to go home and get some sleep. I promise I'll call you if we get a body drop."

Castle shook his head. "No. I'd rather stay here. I think being around things that remind me of Alexis made it worse last night."

Kate looked at Castle with a slight smile. "Since you are here, and there's no murder, maybe you could help with the paperwork?"

"You jest, I'm sure?"

"I'm sure I do." She said, picking up a stack of reports.

After squirming in his chair and using apps on his phone for ten minutes, Castle spoke. "I could check Ryan and Esposito's work for spelling and grammar errors. I'd hate for the NYPD to get the reputation of being bad spellers."

Kate handed him a stack of reports which he began reading. In less than a minute, he spoke. "It's always been Alexis and me. Meredith, her birth mom, was never involved in her life. You've met her. She flew in, moved into my loft without asking, pulled Alexis out of school, went shopping, which I had to pay for, and then took off."

"Meredith isn't…"Kate stopped, not sure what she should say about Castle's ex-wife. In spite of sleeping with her, she was sure Castle would just as soon never see her again. Somehow, this made her feel good.

"Meredith is an actress. I know this because she has a Screen Actors Guild card, which I pay for, by the way. There are plenty of women who have had successful careers, maybe not international stardom, but successful careers with a good body, nice boobs and a pretty face. Which I will admit Meredith has. But she's not an actress. She's a D list celebrity at best."

"She's not a good actress?" Beckett asked.

"Too big an ego. Okay, you do need a big ego to act, I'll admit, but you have to have something else. She got a part in a TV movie, some kind of sci fi monster movie. She was supposed to fall into the mineshaft full of radioactive, giant spiders, but when the other actors headed for the shaft, she pushed them away so she'd be the last to fall in, in spite of the fact that the second male lead was supposed to fall to his death last. She got fired. She played a corpse on some cop show. She argued with the director that she should look more glamorous."

"Well, if she was supposed to look glamorous..?" Kate asked.

"Her character was picked up by a garbage truck, crushed and then then was ejected when the truck drove off the freeway and fell fifty feet."

"Very hard to look glamorous." Kate said seriously.

"Basically, Meredith wasn't all the rewards of acting without putting any of the work into it."

"Oh." Kate said and quickly looked at the file in front of her.

Castle laughed. "Yes. Just like a writer you know who wants the glamour of police work, but not the grunt work."

Kate did her nest to look mystified. "Writer I know?" She frowned at Castle. "Who?"

He just smiled at her.

"Castle, if you don't mind, what happened with Meredith? Why did you two divorce?"

Castle looked away from her and kept looking away. Beckett was afraid she'd asked too personal a question, but then he spoke. "Meredith's career wasn't going well. When things didn't go well for Meredith, she looked around for someone to blame. Her acting teacher, her agent, and her husband."

"Wait, Castle, it sounds like you did everything you could."

Castle smiled slightly. "Ah, but you see I was Rick Castle, best-selling author. Why couldn't I just walk into a studio and demand that my wife get the lead role in some blockbuster? She was very angry at me for my failings."

"And you divorced her?"

"I came home one day and found I was being sued for divorce. Meredith had already moved in with some producer at his place in Malibu. It was over."

"That must have been a relief for you, at least."

Castle shook his head. "I know now that it was for the best, but at the time all I felt was a feeling of failure."

"Failure?" Beckett frowned. "She failed you, not the other way around."

"Maybe it was because I never knew my father, but I wanted the perfect Hollywood sitcom marriage. Perfect wife, perfect husband, perfect children, and a perfect little dog."

"I see."

"I did get the perfect daughter, though. One out of three isn't bad."

Kate opened her mouth, thought better of it, and then decided she'd go ahead. "Two out of three, Castle. Two out of three."