Six Impossible Things, Chapter 7 (Castle Fic)
A/N: Oh, look! Finally some smooching. So cheap, I know the "I just woke up" kiss, but there was that pencil/hair stick on the mantle . . . .
As always, thanks for reading, following, and especially reviewing.
"Hear me out on the Mrs. Danvers thing," Castle's pen was poised above the legal pad.
"Can we give the Hitchcock theories a rest?" Beckett paced the length of her living room.
"Please: Du Maurier"
"What?" She was only half listening, her mind was too busy turning what little they had to go on over and over.
"Daphne Du Maurier wrote the novel," Castle jotted something on the pad, "Hitch manufactured a fine little movie, I suppose, but credit where credit is due."
"Fine little movie? Hitchcock's first American film. One of the all-time great collaborations," Beckett stopped in front of the window, enjoying the contrast of the warm sun on her skin and the arctic temperature of her blissfully air conditioned apartment, "Ten Oscar nominations."
"And a code-imposed ending that completely undermines the psychological tone of the novel," Castle pointed at her with the pen, "Plus Hitchcock's total failure to realize that the chemistry between Olivier and George Sanders blew Joan Fontaine right off the screen. But a fine little movie."
Beckett glared, "Why are we even talking about this?"
"Because Clayton Winnert's global video conference is a pretty tight alibi, and no one else seems to have known Philip Grayson well enough to want to murder him," Castle assumed an innocent expression and kept his eyes on the notepad, "Except possibly Mrs. Danvers."
"So we have no suspects and you immediately go to the housekeeper?"
"They don't have a butler," Castle pointed out, "And don't tell me you didn't get a gothic overprotective vibe off her."
"She'll be here in a little over an hour. Can we please focus, Castle?" Beckett absently pressed a hand against her stomach and resumed pacing.
"I can hear your stomach from here," he tossed the legal pad on the coffee table and shifted on the couch. "Have you eaten anything today?"
"Just those doughnuts . . . oh, wait . . ." she shot back.
"Food. Order food. Whatever you want, on me," he muttered as he sent his shoes clunking to the floor and swung his feet up on to the chaise and leaned back. Has her couch always been this comfortable?
Beckett reached the end of another lap and spun toward him. Another needling comment died on her lips as she watched his eyes slip closed. He really does look like hell. She thought.
"Fine. Mr. Chow. AND Ferrara for dessert," she grabbed her phone off the counter.
"Ferrara doesn't deliver," Castle murmured sleepily.
"Wei-min will have his delivery guy pick it up for me on the way," Beckett continued pacing with the phone to her ear.
"I thought you only used your feminine wiles to fight crime," his voice was growing fainter by the second.
"Can't fight crime on an empty stomach. Yes, I'll hold," Beckett watched as his head sank heavily against the back of the couch. She stepped softly past the coffee table and into her office.
She placed her usual "for two" order and thanked the owner profusely for arranging dessert pick up, then poked her head back into the living room.
Castle was well and truly asleep. The evening sun slanting across the couch threw his face half into shadow. She studied him a moment, then snagged the legal pad and pen from the coffee table and took it with her back into the office. She thumbed the ringer on her phone to vibrate and dropped it on the corner of the desk. Settling into her desk chair, she turned her attention to the note pad.
Castle had been quieter than usual as she caught him up with what little they'd learned from the autopsy and more interviews than she cared to think about. At the time, she'd written it off to his being tired and distracted. Now, she smiled at the pages, thick with writing.
His solo notes were typical: Boxes, ovals, and other shapes sprinkled across the page with bold arrows connecting them, light underscores and heavy question marks here and there, hare-brained ideas pushed to the margins. At the bottom of the page, in opposite corners, he'd written: Sex? and Courtly love.Turning the page sideways, she saw he'd written Grace-Grayson in a light hand, and below it Blank slate.
Flipping forward through several pages filled with Castle's neat block-letter writing, she easily found the first page of notes he'd taken as the two of them had brainstormed in preparation for a second go-around with Audra Winnert. The page was neatly divided into two columns, the left headed "Macro timeline," the right "Micro timeline." Her straightforward facts lined up in a sure hand, interleaved with his conjectures and speculation sketched in with a slight slant to the letters.
The pad was satisfyingly full. Some of the frustration that had been dogging her since the initial run-in with Clayton Winnert lifted. They had a long way to go, but they weren't nowhere.
You're good together. Lanie's voice echoed in her head. Beckett smiled, shook her head, and took up the pen.
Castle had transferred some his notes on to the timeline. The "Macro timeline" started with Clayton and Claire Winnert's wedding date, some 7 years before Audra's birth, the next event in the timeline, and years after that, Claire Winnert's death. Beckett's hand absently touched the familiar lump of her mother's necklace beneath her shirt.
Below the date of Claire's death, Castle had written Audra Winnert: Whereabouts Unknown. She laughed softly at the dramatic turn of phrase. A set of neatly indented arrows followed it: Seclusion. Institution? Mrs. Danvers? In the margin, he'd written Character Formation and underlined it several times.
He'd left considerable space in the main column, with just a few marginalia (AW Online Involvement; AW Undercover; Collectors' Communities?) appearing above the next dated item: Winterfield, April 2011. So the happy couple had been together for a little more than a year, and the media had suddenly been all over the wedding in February 2012. Whirlwind romance, Beckett thought.
She scanned the column again. Philip Grayson was represented only by his birthdate-June 21, 1984-sandwiched in as an afterthought. It bugged her, both personally and professionally, that the story featured the Winnerts so prominently. She turned to the front of Castle's notes. Blank slate.
She flipped to the next blank page in the pad and wrote Philip Grayson across the top.
Beckett was so deep into the notes that she was utterly surprised to find herself on her feet and headed straight for Castle. His wide, staring eyes reflected her own disorientation.
"Kate," he breathed as she dropped to the couch next to him, clutching the legal pad in one hand.
"Castle, are you ok?" She remembered now: He'd cried out and brought her running.
"Kate," he repeated, breaking into a wide smile.
"What?" She couldn't help returning his smile, "You scared me!"
"I have it! I need paper," he snatched the pad from her hand and flipped madly for a blank page, "Pen! Pen, pen, pen!"
"Castle, what . . ." She broke off with a soft "oh," because his hands were suddenly in her hair.
His fingers closed around the pencil she'd snatched from him earlier, as his other hand slid up the nape of her neck and into the thick coil of her hair. He froze, abruptly and fully awake. More awake than he'd been in weeks. Maybe ever, he thought.
Somewhere in the suddenly vast real estate of his brain, alarms were blaring, claxons were wailing, and an old school Sci-Fi robot was flailing its corrugated arms and intoning, "Danger, Danger!"
But that was all faint, far away, and unreal compared with her breath on his cheek, and her wide, questioning eyes.
He kissed her. Just a brief, soft meeting of lips.
"Sorry," he whispered in her ear, brushing his nose against her temple. He slid the pencil free, catching her hair as it tumbled into the fingers of his free hand. "I need this," he murmured against her lips, lingering this time. He kissed her again, once, twice.
"Um," he said, pulling back just enough for some basic information gathering. This made the vast majority of his brain very unhappy, but somewhere in the distance, a robot breathed an exasperated sigh of relief.
Her eyes fluttered open and almost laughed at the utterly boyish look of confusion dancing across his face. She leaned in, bringing her fingertips lightly, lightly to rest on either side of his jaw and kissed him, once, twice . . . then she lost count.
"Ah," she said as they pulled apart.
Castle brought the hand clutching the pencil up between them. His left hand was still pressing its luck as his fingertips traced the contours of the base of her skull, "Kate, I . . ."
They jumped apart as a loud, insistent buzzing sounded from the office.
"Phone!" Beckett said, much, much louder than she'd intended, as she propelled herself into the other room.
Castle moved to follow her, when suddenly the play of blue and red lights on the wall caught his attention. He knelt up on the couch and peered out the window, "Beckett, there's something going on down there."
"Beckett," she appeared in the doorway, phone in one hand, the other raking through her hair, "Peng? I can hardly hear you."
"It looks like a . . ." Castle turned toward her.
"What crime scene?" Beckett demanded.
"Please don't say you're not hungry," Castle dropped on to curb next to Beckett, holding up the take-out bag, "Because (a) you still haven't eaten all day, and (b) Peng risked life and limb to bring you," he peered into the bag, "Balanced And Harmonious Two Course Dinner From The Sky, Land, And Sea and chocolate cannoli."
"Castle," Beckett began in her Not-Now-Castle tone (Which, hey! Was not her We-Are-Over-Castle tone or her Castle-I-Will-End-You tone. Given that he'd just kissed her . . . holy SHIT! He'd kissed her. Several times. And she'd kissed him. Back. And independently. Holy SHIT!).
"I know. I'm sorry. I know this is bad. . ." he stopped as she held up a hand and pushed herself up.
"Is she conscious?" Beckett asked. The paramedics counted off and leveraged the gurney into the back of the ambulance.
"I'm sorry, she's not," one paramedic replied as he grasped the door to swing himself up into the vehicle, "Pulse is steady and breathing is regular, but it looks like a pretty bad head trauma."
The door closed and the ambulance eased away from the curb. Castle watched as Beckett rocked on to her toes, her fists clenching at her sides.
Here goes, he thought as he touched her shoulder and stepped up beside her, "They'll be done with Peng soon enough. And they're going to want to talk to us. No sense getting their dander up."
Beckett just about jumped out of her skin at his touch and he flinched back, "I know, Castle," she snapped.
Beckett watched the group in front of the door where the white-faced delivery man was gesturing as a uniform nodded and took notes. Another officer turned and caught her eye before making his way over.
"Detective Beckett?" he extended his hand and Beckett shook it. "Reston. This is your apartment building?"
Beckett nodded.
"And Ms. Carter was on her way to see you?"
"Carter?" Beckett was drawing a blank.
"Danvers," Castle said low enough that only Beckett could hear, then continued for Reston's benefit, "Yes, or we assume so. Ms. Carter is part of the staff at . . . well, we met her earlier today."
"My partner, Richard Castle," Beckett said shortly. "Officer Reston, this situation is more serious than the assault on Ms. Carter. We have reason to believe that Audra Winnert was with her at the time of the attack."
"Winnert?" Reston closed his eyes and shook his head, "Are you sure?"
"We're investigating of the murder of her fiancée and she'd agreed to meet us this evening," Beckett gestured toward the building's foyer, "There's one security camera in the entryway, but it looks like they didn't get that far. Between red light and NYPD surveillance cameras, we should be able to find something. Peng can narrow down our timeline."
"Thanks, detective," Reston gave her a sour look, "I think we can cover our bases."
"Sorry," Beckett grimaced apologetically, "Not trying to overstep. But we may have a more serious crime here with a very high profile . . ."
"Where's the car?" Castle said abruptly. He turned to look up and down the street, then back to Beckett and Reston, "It's not like Audra Winnert hopped the Bee-Line from Westchester."
"She'd have driven?" Reston asked.
"Or, more likely, had a driver," Beckett crouched to inspect the pavement, "No skid marks."
"Did you hear anything?" Reston looked up, "You're on, what? Second floor?"
"I was asleep," Castle said sheepishly.
Beckett thought a moment, then shook her head, "Nothing. I tune out the traffic, but I think I would remember a car horn or any kind of altercation."
Castle's jacket chimed once, "Sorry," he muttered, pulling the phone from his pocket.
Reston's hand moved to his radio, "So I'll get out an APB on Audra Winnert."
"Wait," Beckett stopped him, "You're going to want to give your superiors the heads-up on this first."
"High profile. I get it Detective," Reston looked like he had a bad taste in the mouth.
I know the feeling, Beckett thought, "Trust me, Reston, it rubs me the wrong way, too. And locating Audra Winnert takes priority, but . . ."
"I might be able to help you with that," Castle held up his phone. "She just texted me."