161. Pretty boys and pretty girls

Bryan is also tall and ripped, but dark-haired and dark-eyed. Lingham had been pretty good-looking too. Beckett spots a theme, and makes a mental note to run through the photos of all the coaches. She’ll try this ever-more-likely theory out on Castle, when they’re on the way back.

“Vance Lingham was murdered Sunday,” she says baldly.

“What?” Bryan is as white as Jace had been. “That’s… You don’t suspect me? It wasn’t me. I wasn’t here on Sunday.”

Beckett doesn’t mention where Vance had been found.

“I know you were angry with him for poaching clients.”

“How…” Beckett simply holds his eyes. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t kill him for it.”

“Where were you Sunday?” Beckett’s mixing it up. Bryan will tell Jace that he was asked for his alibi, and Jace will wonder why he wasn’t. He’ll be even more nervous then.

Bryan acquires a hunted expression: his eyes flickering round the small office. He doesn’t find any help there. Beckett allows the tense, terrifying silence to stretch out, projecting intimidation, until the sweat beads on Bryan’s brow.

“Where were you?” she grates. Bryan cringes. His fingers are shaking.

“I was with a friend.”

“Name.” It’s an order.

“Lita.”

“Full name. Address. Number. We’ll be talking to her.”

“You can’t.”

Beckett pins him to the chair with her glare.

“I can.”

“No, you can’t. Her husband” –

“Let’s talk about that,” Beckett says coldly, concealing her triumph that her theory is growing roots.

“She’s married. She doesn’t want her husband to know.”

“We’ll be discreet.”

Bryan spills. Under Beckett’s supervision, he calls Lita, after which Beckett requests her to present herself at the Twelfth as soon as possible, on pain of being picked up. Which, Beckett points out, would not be discreet.

Now that she’s sown the seeds of divide and conquer between Bryan and Jace, it’s time to get back to the bullpen. Bryan is required to attend at the precinct at four-thirty as well. Ryan and Espo can take one, she and Castle will take the other. Judging by this morning, they will both be utterly terrified by then, and they’ll rat on each other as fast as they can.

“I have a theory,” she says mischievously as they get into the car.

“That’s my line!”

“So copyright it. I still have a theory.”

“It’s my job to come up with theories. You’re making me redundant, Beckett. What will I do if I’m not producing theories?”

“Well, you might write a bit more,” she says, “or you might make me more coffee, or” – her hand slithers over his knee – “you might just be useful in lots of other ways.” Her fingers flicker and her hand pulls away. “Though I don’t think you’ll stop throwing out insane theories just because I’ve thought up one theory of my own.”

Castle pouts.

“Don’t you want to hear my theory?” Beckett asks.

“Guess so,” he grumps.

“I think that all of those coaches were offering benefits on the side.” She smirks.

Castle gasps, and his eyes light up. “Beckett, that’s almost worthy of my theories.”

“Except that I have some grounds for mine.”

“Aww, that’s not how it works. Don’t spoil your theory with logic and facts.” He humphs. “I thought I was finally rubbing off on you.”

“Nope.” He opens his mouth. “Shut up, Castle.” He closes it on a very inappropriate remark.

“You think a high end tennis club was running an escort ring?”

“It’s the logical conclusion if they were all doing it. Look at them. All three men were gorgeous.” Castle humphs again. “Stop that. Fishing for compliments isn’t polite. I bet when we find the rest of their photos we’ll find that all the coaches were seriously pretty. We’ll need to talk to all of them.”

By the time they’ve parked at the Twelfth and reached the bullpen, footage from the club’s CCTV has reached Ryan, client lists have reached Espo, and everyone is very, very keen on Beckett’s theory. Possibly this is because Ryan and Espo call dibs on interviewing all the female coaches, as soon as they get a glimpse of the photos.

At four-thirty, Jace and Bryan turn up. Together. Beckett discerns that they have talked to each other, and is very satisfied that her plan has worked.

“Ryan, Espo, you take Bryan. Push him hard about who was running this ring.” The boys smile nastily. “We’ll take Jace. Starting with finding out what his alibi was.”

Jace, having been left to consider the forbidding walls of Interrogation One for a few moments, is not a happy gym bunny at all. In fact, he’s in just the sort of nervous, scared state that Beckett likes her victims – whoops, witnesses or suspects: he’s both – to be in.

“I wasn’t there on Sunday,” he starts, before they’ve even sat down. “I wasn’t!”

“You weren’t where?”

“I wasn’t at the club. I was with Manda.”

Manda is on the client list. Manda is an extremely beautiful twenty-something married to a seventy-something whose main advantage is that he is very rich. Manda lives in the East Village. The client list had been very comprehensive. Lita, on the other hand, had lived in Greenwich Village. Still very plausible, but not as convenient.

“Really?”

“Yes. She wanted a plus-one for a social event. So she booked me.”

“Booked you? I thought you were a tennis coach.”

Jace turns even whiter. Clearly he hadn’t meant to admit that. Beckett goes for the jugular.

“So, Jace, you were running a little game on the side, you and Bryan? Escort services? Bored women? Did Vance want in on your little game, or was he better at it than you? Is that why you killed him? Lost your temper because he was better with the girls?” She’s taunting. “He was a little older. More experienced. Able to show them a better time. You’re still a bit young. Stamina, but maybe not the skill?”

“I’m fucking good at it!” Jace explodes. “I never had any problems till that bastard started on my clients. He wasn’t allowed to poach. That was the rules. Everyone has their favourites. He wasn’t even part of it. Like he was such a frigging saint. No-one’s that honest.”

Once started, Jace can’t stop. It all comes pouring out. What does not come pouring out, unfortunately, is anything at all that might break his alibi, or Bryan’s. They’ll have to find a new way round that. They’ll also have to find out what was really going on, because on comparing notes with Ryan and Espo, who had got much the same story from Bryan by taking a man-to-man God-I-wish-I-got-that-many-hot-women route, it’s fairly clear that neither Jace or Bryan could have been running the ring. It’s also fairly clear that most of the other coaches were in on it. Someone has been making a hell of a lot of money out of this.

They set up all the bank account searches, now that they’ve got hard evidence to ask for them, and phone record requests, and leave that to the overnight techs. All that done, they fall out of the precinct and disperse to their various homes. It is, after all, well after nine.

“Ride home, Castle?”

“Sure.” He hops into the cruiser. Today’s been Beckett at her full-on bad-ass, hard-ass best. “Dinner first?” he asks as the door shuts.

“Okay. Takeout?”

“Thai.” He taps, and orders.

“Thanks.” She yawns widely, and then smiles viciously. “This one’s all breaking open, isn’t it? Should be done tomorrow.”

“It better be. Remember we’re all going out for dinner?”

From the sudden slump of her shoulders, Castle infers that Beckett had forgotten in the thrill of chasing down a nice new murderer.

“It’ll be okay,” he reassures. “No-one’s told Mother, and Alexis is keen to see you. She likes you. She might grill you about work, but she won’t be intrusive.”

“I’ve still got to see her with you, though. How it should be.”

“We can postpone.”

“No,” Beckett says very quickly. “No postponements. I can do this. I just forgot about it. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay.” He takes her hand as they go up to her apartment. The takeout is hard upon their heels, which is convenient. He’s hungry.

So, it seems, is Beckett, who is demolishing her meal in short order and with perfect decorum, even with chopsticks. Far too quickly dinner is done, though it does give him the opportunity to put his arm round her and snuggle her in.

“Time I went to bed.”

“Really?”

“We’ll be starting early tomorrow.”

“I guess I’d better kiss you goodnight, then.”

“Guess so,” she murmurs, and turns her face up for him to land on her lips: as soft as a butterfly settling, because she’s tired and he has to go and all of it needs to stay lightly loving and accepting of reality.

But tomorrow night they will take another step – she will take another step – towards the future they’ve only talked about in hints and subtext and mistaken words and hopes. He’s sure she sees and wants it too, but he can’t hurry it, can’t push the pace. She has to heal in her time, not in his, but if he could he’d wave a wand and seal each wound and free her to come forward to him.

He lifts away, and puts his coat on. She rises to walk him the few steps to the door, softly touching his hand, and then rises to her toes to kiss him goodbye.

“Till tomorrow, love,” he murmurs.

“Love you too.”

By lunchtime all the evidential ducks are neatly in a row.

“Shall we?” Beckett extends a crooked arm to Castle, with a wicked smile.

“My pleasure, Detective.”

“Why can’t we go get him?” Ryan complains.

“My idea, my theory, my suspect. I’m getting him.” She swings off to the elevator, happy ferocity in every movement. Castle ambles after her.

“Max Warnam, you are under arrest for the murder of Vance Lingham.”

He takes off like a scalded cat, right into Castle, who oofs as the breath flies out of him but has the instinctive sense to smother him in a bear hug. By the time Max has realised, Beckett’s got the cuffs on him.

“Why did you do it, Max?”

“Do what?”

His small eyes run around the room, and then run over Beckett, obviously assessing her for compliance with his looks policy. She stares back icily.

“You killed Vance Lingham. Why?”

“Prove it.”

“Oh, that’s no trouble. We’ve found your gun, matched the ballistics, and tied up the payments you were making to him from your account to his. We’ve even got the calls that he made to you, and you to him. We’ve got you wrapped up like a parcel, Max: there’s no need for you to confess, because you’re going down for Murder One anyway. I was just interested, but it doesn’t make any difference.”

She stands up, and moves to the door. “Have a nice life in prison, Max.”

“I was provoked!”

“Oh?” Beckett turns back slightly. “How?”

“He was blackmailing me. Threatened to tell the club owners if I didn’t pay him off. I lost my temper and shot him. See? Provocation.”

“Thanks for the confession. It won’t shorten your sentence, though. You lured him down to the Seward Park tennis courts, and then shot him. That’s not provocation” –

“It’s premeditation,” Castle says. “You’re all washed up, Max.”

They leave on his desperately pleading excuses.

“All wrapped up,” Beckett says with satisfaction.

“Well done, Detective.”

“Sir.”

“Nicely in time for shift end, too. The paperwork will wait till tomorrow. Off you go. Take an early exit.”

“Sir.”

Montgomery oozes off, radiating smugness. Beckett, who likes paperwork as little as anyone, takes instant and full advantage of the permission and has her desk cleared in seconds flat.

“Let’s go, before anything else happens.” She’s already hammering the call button for the elevator.

“Pressing it more doesn’t make it come quicker,” Castle points out.

“Really?” Beckett murmurs, just loud enough for him to hear. “It works on you.”

He nearly kills himself choking. She did not just say that, did she? She did. And the smirking witch is looking at him from the elevator as if he’s turned into a dribbling idiot. Well, she’ll find out that she can’t say things like that and then carry on as if nothing happened.

“Ready for dinner?” she asks, and his plans for revenge of the most enjoyable sort are all destroyed.

“Yes.” He reaches for her hand. Her fingers are cold, and it belatedly occurs to him that her filthily provocative comment was masking her sheer fright at the thought of the approaching meeting. He wraps his own warm palm around her chill, and doesn’t comment, staying in contact all the way to Broome Street.

“See you at seven,” she says briskly.

“Okay.”

Beckett goes home to a scalding shower – she’d like a bath, but she might never emerge from it – to try to infuse warmth into her cold skin and flesh. She is very, very worried about this evening. It’s not only that her father and Castle have been butting heads, though that’s not helpful; it’s that she is completely unsure how she can manage to watch Alexis’s dealings with her father when her own are so very, very different.

She dresses carefully: pretty underwear that is both comfortable and sexy, reminding her that she’s not a teen any more; that she is an independent adult who is not dependent on her father or her father’s approval; and over it a soft shirt that drapes about her with semi-casual navy pants. She leaves her gun and shield locked away safely, and leaves in good time. Her gut writhes unhappily, all the way to Po.

Castle had showered and changed, ensured he was smart but not too formal, assured Alexis that she looked just fine as she was and reminded her that Detective Beckett had suggested this dinner. Alexis is, in fact, quite nervous.

“Grams doesn’t know, does she?” she asks, plaintively.

“No, pumpkin. She doesn’t. Don’t worry.”

Castle himself is far more worried about meeting Jim again. Apology or not, Jim isn’t making anyone’s life easier, and were it not for the fact that Jim’s pig-headedness had directly led to Beckett’s confirmation that he, Castle, came first with her he would still be seriously annoyed with him.

They get a cab over to Po. Castle is sure that he’ll need a drink, and he’s never going to get behind the wheel after that. They’re first there.

Beckett arrives a moment later. Castle stands to greet her, thinks something that amounts to the hell with it, and smudges a kiss across her mouth.   It stuns her, which is very pleasing. She sits down a little more heavily than she normally would, without her usual grace. Alexis is regarding him very knowingly, and doesn’t look nervous at all any more.

“Hey, Alexis,” Beckett manages, with only a very small wobble on the words.

“Hi, Detective Beckett. Thanks for inviting me.”

“You’re welcome. Have you been here before?”

“Oh yes. We used to come here when I was small.”

“I don’t think the menu’s the same, though,” Castle interjects.

“I hope not,” Alexis says. “I don’t want alphabet spaghetti now.”

Conversation continues for a few moments, largely carried by Castle, who skates over any awkwardness. Shortly Jim arrives, a little out of breath and full of apologies.

“Sorry, Katie. I just couldn’t get a client off the phone.”

“Sounds like my agent,” Castle says dryly. “She never gets off the phone either.”

“That’s because you don’t listen till she’s said it ten times.”

Castle raises brows mildly disapprovingly at Alexis. “Sorry, Dad,” she mumbles. Beckett and her father exchange a look. It appears to Castle that a similar interaction may have been part of the Beckett household.

They manage to cover the hitches and hesitations by discussion of the menu and drinks, although it’s all terribly, horribly careful: each sentence considered before it’s said. Still, Jim isn’t pushing and he is polite to Castle – though he’s clearly much happier talking to Alexis, who is still grilling him into boot-leather on the subject of law – Beckett is sitting next to Castle and gradually relaxing as her father doesn’t do anything untoward, aided by Castle’s warm palm on her knee and some care on his part not to be too adoringly parental. This time, so far at least, she’s managing to watch her father relate to Alexis and understand that it’s not a replacement for her, not a replacement family. He’s looking at Alexis with detached, amused fondness, but it’s not a depth of emotion that should worry Beckett. Appetisers arrive and everyone digs in.

Beckett becomes aware that, now that her hyper-alertness has diminished, Castle is also rather more wired than normal.

“What’s up?” she murmurs, under the cover of general noise.

“I just can’t help worrying that Mother will show up.”

“How? She can’t call every restaurant in Manhattan hoping to find you: she’d still be on the phone next Christmas.” She pats his knee reassuringly. “Let’s just enjoy dinner. It’s all going okay right now. Don’t jinx it.”

Amazingly, dinner continues to progress well. It couldn’t quite be said that their table exuded relaxed sociability, but it’s sailing on an even emotional keel. Beckett can cope with this. Another step forward. Another major step forward. Their two families have met, and while it’s still uncomfortable to watch Castle with Alexis, it’s not the jagged-edged bite on her soul that it had been four to five months ago. If only they could guarantee Martha’s absence… she might even manage dinner at the loft. Or – or maybe if she primed her dad properly they could have dinner at his next time? She can’t quite stretch her stride far enough to make the next step to be dinner at hers, but the halfway house of her father’s place… that could be an option. She turns her mind back to the conversation.

Castle is surveying matters from the back of his mind and applying considerable analytical ability to what he’s seeing. He’s always been good at people and motivations, when he puts his mind to it, and the last few months have honed his talent to a razor’s edge. He just hopes that he doesn’t cut himself or anyone else on the sharpness.

He contemplates, grounded by his palm on Beckett’s knee, her hand over his. Alexis and Jim are establishing a fairly good connection: his wonderful daughter genuinely interested in Jim’s profession (at least being an attorney would be safe, if boring) and his bred-in-the-bone support for the Yankees. Conversation is, therefore, light and continuous. Jim is not pushing on any difficult subjects, and so Beckett is almost relaxed, compared with any other time he’s seen her with her father. And his mother has not, like the Wicked Witch, appeared to spoil the party. Castle relaxes, and enjoys his dinner.

Right up till Alexis opens her mouth.

“Detective Beckett, if your mom and dad were both lawyers, why did you want to be a detective?”

There is a half-beat silence. Castle internally curses. Jim’s mouth has tightened. Beckett bites down on her lip, and her hand over Castle’s has gripped hard enough to crush his metacarpals. Alexis looks uncertainly at each adult in turn: knowing she’s mis-stepped, but not at all sure how. Castle is about to divert the subject when Beckett, astonishingly, speaks.

“When I went to Stanford” –

“You were at Stanford? Will you tell me about it?”

“Sometime,” Beckett says quietly, as if it were a promise for the future. “At Stanford, I started in pre-law.”

Castle and Jim stay absolutely silent. Castle turns his palm upward and closes fingers around Beckett’s cold, tense grip.

“At first I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn’t know what sort – Mom was criminal justice, Dad does commercial law.”

“Anti-trust, Katie.”

“Pedant,” she says, automatically and almost affectionately, and her fingers relax a fraction. “Anyway. After I” – there’s a tiny hitch – “transferred to NYU” – fortunately Jim doesn’t choose to embellish that with hard truth about why she transferred – “I carried on, but I found I wanted to be out hunting down the criminals, not prosecuting them afterwards. More active involvement.”

“You were always one for direct action, Katie.”

“So I became a cop instead. It was right for me.”

Alexis gazes admiringly at Beckett. “That’s awesome. Thanks for explaining. That totally makes sense.”

Yeah, Castle thinks, and it totally avoided any difficult subjects. He flicks a surreptitious glance at Jim, who is looking piercingly at his daughter, with a strong underlay of finally I’m starting to hear some of your history. Jim’s expression suddenly changes to a smile.

“Rick, if I were you I really wouldn’t encourage Alexis to become a cop.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s pretty scary to have a daughter who shoots better than me,” Jim says happily. “Though I do wish I could roll her and her Glock out at difficult negotiations. I’d come out ahead every time. Actually, all I’d need would be her glare.”

“Dad!” Beckett complains.

Jim snickers. “Shall we have dessert?”