[ Road Trip ]

[bestsellingego]

[ Set about a week after this. ]A white SUV with a ski rack rattling with gear makes a sudden, unsignaled turn into their lane. Castle checks the license plate, then glances excitedly at the paperwork in his lap, even as Beckett struggles to keep their squad car between the yellow lines

Comments

[fanofthegenre]

It's not that Beckett's been avoiding Castle. There just hasn't been a good opportunity for them to sit down for an extended period of time and discuss something that isn't related to this case. By the time Lanie had managed to give them all the relevant pre- and post-mortem information, most of their leads had either dried up or fizzled out, and this trip is riding high on Beckett's list of last resorts

[bestsellingego]

"How is it possible for you to have lived in New York City and never been to Le Cirque? I always thought that was part of the driver's license requirements, right after organ donation and 'Class A' handicaps." He watches a Benz zoom past the passenger side and has a moment of hope before he recognizes a New York plate and falls into a contemplative gloom.

"You want me to get you a table?" he asks. "You'll have to wear something slinky."

[fanofthegenre]

"You'd be surprised what I still haven't done," Beckett admits, her eyes occasionally flicking to the rearview mirror and then back towards the road in front of them. She turns on the radio, sets the volume dial on a lower setting as the faint strains of slow jazz come through the speakers.

"And if I don't own anything in the way of slinky, what? You'll send me another dress?"

She doesn't glance over, but the smirk is clear.

[bestsellingego]

He slides the papers from his lap and onto the dashboard, hunched over his elbow to lean closer to her side of the car. "Come on. I know that you're dying to know how I figured out your size."

[fanofthegenre]

"Let me guess: you shadowed a fashion designer for a while. No, wait. You took a crash course in women's clothing."

Her eyes move to the rearview mirror again.

"Am I getting warm?"

[bestsellingego]

"That's between me and Donatella Versace," he finally resolves, cranking his seat up to alignment with her own. He flicks her a innocent smirk -- betraying nothing of his motives or knowledge of her bust size -- and settles back against the seat rest, his expensive loafers flicking at the chuffing heat.

"You looked good in that dress. I think you could have moved around in that world if you'd wanted."

[fanofthegenre]

"Oh, right. Me rubbing elbows with wealthy donors and members of Manhattan's upper-class? It's all well-and-good if I need to follow a lead, but that's your world, Castle. Not mine."

She reaches for her travel mug again, partly as a distracting move.

[bestsellingego]

"Right. Carnivorous insects. 'Much more your thing."

The case file sits in the console between them. Every once in a while, for lack of anything better to do with his hands, Castle opens it up and flicks through the grisly details. Marvin Cavendish, of Cavendish Textiles Inc. and Cavendish International, had been found on the floor of his study by his wife, his body swarming with insects. No indication of forced entry and no evidence of whoever it was that'd laid the picnic. They'd spent the week tracking down pursuant angles, but had come up with nothing.

The entomologist at Drexel is a stretch, and they both know it.

"What makes a person get into bugs, anyway?" he asks, rattling the small evidence bag with a couple of fire ant exoskeletons inside. "I mean, do you wake up one morning and say 'Hey, the New Orleans Hornets had a crap season this year, but that's no reason for me to be down on the entire phylum." He secures the evidence bag to the inside of the folder with a paperclip

[fanofthegenre]

All Beckett keeps dwelling on is the fact that most of the fire ants' bites hadn't been post-mortem. It's an agonizing thought, to consider the fact that Cavendish wasn't completely dead when his body had become fire ant food. Beckett's spent most of the day resisting the urge to scratch those invisible itches that creep up the back of her spine or down her arm

[bestsellingego]

"My passion is understanding why people do what they do," he says. "Just like you. Writing and being a detective just happen to be the ways we get paid for it."

He flips to Lanie's post-mortem report and feels his stomach turn when he looks at the wound pattern. It's like the guy's body exploded with a constellation of small, red dots. And each one of those dots had a little poison in it, and that little bit of poison made Cavendish's skin...well, Esposito had said it best when he compared the guy to a balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade.

The content of the file and the jostle of the car make him a little queasy; he closes the file and puts it back into the console, flicking his sunglasses back down over his eyes.

"What else did you think about doing?"

[fanofthegenre]

"Well, then I guess you could say the same for the entomologist. Only, instead of people, he tries to understand why fire ants do what they do. Or maybe why someone would want to pour a bucket's worth on this guy."

She doesn't respond to his other question right away, though a part of her knew it was going to follow up the first.

"I thought maybe I could do what my mom did, you know, for a while. Be that lawyer. Find those air-tight arguments that would put someone away for whatever they've done wrong. But now, I - "

Her eyes watch the needle sway back and forth over the speedometer.

"I think it's important to make the case rock-solid from the beginning, so there's no possible way it could fall apart in the courtroom, on the stand. I don't know, I guess I wanted to make it easy for people who do what my mom used to."

[bestsellingego]

She probably would have been good on that side of the law. Castle can't see her mucking around in a penthouse law firm or anything, but she would have found a cause and stuck with it. It's hard to see Beckett as anything other than she is; chasing down bad guys and, yeah, sweating through the requisite paperwork, they all make up the person she's become.

"I probably wouldn't be writing a character after you if you'd become a lawyer," he admits. "Grisham's got the market cornered on that genre."

[fanofthegenre]

"Then it worked out for you too," she says, her attention momentarily drawn by a road sign announcing a rest stop up ahead. It's a chance to stretch her legs, a chance to get more coffee. It's also a chance to turn the topic of conversation away from herself.

"I'm going to stop at the Starbucks," Beckett adds as they arrive, pulling into a parking space. "You want anything?"

[bestsellingego]

Castle's antennae go up as they bump into the parking lot. He turns his nose toward the window to see the familiar green and white logo, like a sailor looking for signs of a lighthouse. "Sweet, caffeinated salvation." He unbuckles his belt. "Wouldn't mind a little extra energy for the rest of the drive."

He gets out of the car and adjusts his scarf, waiting for her before he opens the door to let her pass through. Warm, solid smells in here and the ubiquitous jazz soundtrack over the speakers. It's a Friday morning and the clientele is thick. Castle joins the end of the queue and peers up at the menu board, trying to decide on something that has enough caffeine to jump-start a racehorse.

"Buy you breakfast?" he offers. "We're probably not gonna' want to eat after we get done with the doc."

[fanofthegenre]

Part of the reason she'd stopped was to walk around a little, stretch out the muscles that had tensed up while driving. Coffee is just a very nice bonus. It's early, so the lines aren't too long, but Beckett can already tell things will go from milling to packed once the lunch hour hits. She glances over at Castle, her gaze following the lines of his distinguished profile as he reads over the menu.

There's the occasional person who stops to stare in their direction, or does a double-take and whispers to whoever they're with before moving on. Beckett shakes her head slowly. Sometimes it's easy for her to forget that Castle's readership extends outside city limits.

"We're making good time," she concedes, crossing her arms over her chest while her own eyes return to the same place his are scanning. "I don't think breakfast would set us back too far."

[bestsellingego]

"Excellent," he says with a grin, as if he's just won some great contest of wills. The breakfast menu at Starbuck's isn't spectacular, but they've got enough to make you go away happy. Castle orders a coffee and a breakfast panini and produces his credit card to pay after she makes up her mind