856. Chapter 856

After Significant Others

Episode 5.10

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I did not win Castle at Augusta in '02. Rating: K Time: See above.

"Meredith, what are you…" That was as far as Rick Castle got before his ex-wife pushed her way past him and into his loft.

"Richard! It's all over! Everything!" She said, beginning to cry.

Knowing how overly dramatic his ex could be about anything, Rick was fairly certain that "everything" would turn out to be nothing. "So, what is it, Meredith?"

"Mom?" Alexis came down the stairs. "What are you doing here?"

Meredith rushed to Alexis and threw her arms around her daughter. "It's all over, Alexis. It really is. My life is just over."

Alexis touched her mother's forehead. "Are you sick? What's wrong?"

Meredith detached herself from Alexis and sat on the couch just as Martha came in. "Oh, Meredith is here." She said with as little enthusiasm as she could. "What could be better?"

"Could I have a drink, Richard?"

Rick nodded, beginning to think that something serious might be happening in Meredith's life. "A glass of red wine?"

"Scotch. Neat." Meredith replied.

Rick looked at his mother and daughter. Meredith never drank Scotch.

Martha smiled happily. "I'll be happy to pour you some, dear." Martha got a tumbler from the kitchen and filled it with Scotch. "Here you go, Meredith. Drink up." Drink until you're too drunk to realize you're being tossed out on that well padded butt of yours. She thought vindictively.

"Meredith, will you please tell us what's wrong?"

Before she could answer Rick, Kate came home. "Meredith is here?" Kate gave Rick the look. This time Rick knew what the look meant. Your ex is not staying with us. You are my husband, not hers.

"Meredith has some kind of a problem, but she hasn't been able to explain it to us yet. Perhaps you could use your interrogative skills to find out?"

Kate suddenly wished for red hot irons, whips and all the necessities for waterboarding. "I'll see what I can do, Kitten." She glared at Rick and then knelt by Meredith. "Meredith, you need to tell us what the problem is." She looked up at Alexis who seemed to be genuinely worried about her mother. Even Martha seemed mildly concerned. "Otherwise, we can't help you." She added.

"The studio won't release my film." Meredith wailed.

"You made a film?" Martha asked, quite surprised.

"Why won't they release it?"

"I don't know. I think it's just studio politics."

Martha raised an eyebrow. "More likely some studio executive was overcome with a sudden and unexpected attack of good taste." She said softly.

Kate nodded. "I can see that you'd be upset. But why fly all the way to New York? Wouldn't you be able to work out your problems better if you stayed in LA?"

"I don't have any place to stay in LA! They foreclosed on my house."

"Meredith, they couldn't have foreclosed on your house. You got it free and clear when we divorced." Castle said. Then a horrible thought hit him. "When you say your film….?"

"I put every cent I had into that film, including the house. It was going to be my big break. And now the stupid studio won't release the film and I couldn't pay off the mortgage and I have nothing." Meredith began sobbing again.

Alexis knelt by her and put her arms around her mother. "That's all right, mom. You can stay with us until you get back on your feet. You can stay in my room. I'll be going back to Princeton to start my PhD program in a few days." Alexis looked up at her dad, grandmother and stepmother. "That's okay, isn't it?"

"Sure." Kate said, not very enthusiastically.

"I suppose." Martha added.

Castle said nothing.

"Worse, my husband left me and some people want money from me."

"You got married?" Castle said, shocked. "When? To whom? Why'd he leave? Who does he owe money to?"

"Billy Piper. He wanted to keep it a secret because, you know. His first wife."

Rick shook his head. "Meredith, Billy Piper's first wife staged her own death to get away from him."

Meredith sniffed. "And she killed that lawyer. I blame the whole divorce on the first wife."

"There's a lot of that going around." Kate said, but Meredith didn't hear her.

"Why did he leave you? Apparently owing some people money?"

"He was going to get back into golf, resume his career just where he left off. It was going to be just like the old days." Meredith said, smiling for once.

"He didn't make the cut at Pebble Beach, or Augusta, or at Bethpage." Rick said, trying to understand the problem.

"Billy bet on himself, didn't he?" Kate said. "But, after being out of the game for so long, and his drinking, he wasn't the old Billy Piper."

Meredith nodded. "Now this awful man from LA wants his money."

"How much?" Castle asked with a sigh. "And who is this guy?

"Two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. The man's name is Salcedo." Meredith moaned.

Meredith had gulped down the last of her Scotch and was a bit woozy. Alexis took her upstairs.

"I am not going to pay some LA bookie nearly a quarter of a million to get him off of Meredith's back. Maybe we can get the studio to release her movie. That's should bring in a few bucks." Rick headed for his office. "I need to do some research. Call me for dinner, please."

The next day, Rick, Kate, Alexis and Martha got together while Meredith was still asleep to discuss their problem.

"Dad, Mom had a DVD of her movie. Kate, Grams and I watched it last night."

"Most of it. I had to close my eyes through a lot of it." Martha said.

"The movie is awful. Mom is some lawyer whose husband gets murdered by some gang. She learns how to shoot and do martial arts and kills off the gang one at a time. Mom is not….an action star."

"She's not actor either." Martha said. "Not that has stopped a lot of so called "action stars", but this was just dreadful. That woman has all the grace of a drunken bull in a china shop. She keeps closing her eyes when she shoots. Not only that, but….The whole thing is a train wreck, Kiddo. No studio executive in his right mind would release this film. Even the ones who aren't in their right mind, which is a lot, wouldn't release this turkey on an unsuspecting world."

"I agree with Martha." Kate said. "And I did some checking with people in Vice. One of them has a friend in LA. Ruben Salcedo is a well known bookie in LA. He's a fairly "respectable" bookie in that he deals with wealthy people, so beating up deadbeats would scare off his clientele. The bad news is that Billy apparently bragged to some people about how he stiffed Salcedo. That pissed Salcedo off. But what Salcedo might do is anyone's guess."

Rick shook his head. "I checked with the mortgage company. They did foreclose on Meredith and the place is up for sale. And I am not going to buy it back for her."

Alexis reached over and took his hand. "No one expects you to, Dad. But, what are we going to do about Mom?"

Rick turned to Martha. "Could you ask around and see if you could get a job for her?"

Martha rolled her eyes. "Meredith is a known commodity in the acting community, Richard. Everyone knows she's a stinker."

And so Meredith stayed with the Castles for a week, mostly in her room, crying. And no one could figure out how to solve her problems.

One morning there was a knock on the door. Kate opened it to find Billy Piper standing there.

"Hey, is my wife here?"

"Yes." Kate said, frowning. "But shouldn't you be worried about your bookie friend from LA?"

Billy laughed. "Let me tell you something, Billy Piper is back! I just won the Phoenix Pro-Am. I got two hundred thousand out of it, but a couple of my old sponsors asked me to come back to them. I called up old Ruben and told him I have his cash. And that I never bragged that I stiffed him. Ruben understands money. Everything is good."

"Billy?" Meredith called from the top of the stairs. She ran down and threw her arms around him. "Where were you, Kitten?"

"Getting back in the game. We're flush again, baby. Get your stuff. We'll go to my place."

In minutes Meredith was packed and ready. She stood by the door, thanking everyone. "And, Rick. I have the best idea for my next film. It all about a pro golfer who gets in deep with a bookie and can't pay. It's an action picture. I think that's where my future is. I play the golfer, of course. Do you think you could write the screenplay?"

Rick smiled. "I'll have my people call your people. We'll do lunch."

And with that, Meredith was gone.

"You aren't really going to write something for her, are you, Kiddo?"

"Never."