691. Chapter 691

After Death Gone Crazy

Episode 5.12

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: Claiming to own Castle would be the death of me. Rating: K Time: See above.

Kate Beckett saw her fiancé coming towards her desk with two cups of coffee in his hands and a smile on his face. She glanced at the two detectives on her team and whispered, "Let me handle this. Just keep quiet.

Espo and Ryan nodded. They wanted no part of this.

Castle handed Kate her morning coffee, as always. "Good morning all. We get anything?"

Kate smiled. "In fact we did."

"A body drop? Where? Who is it?"

"It's not a body drop."

"Yet." Espo muttered.

Castle frowned. "There's no murder?"

Kate took a deep breath. "I guess the easiest way to do this is to just do it." She turned her computer monitor around so Castle could see what's on the screen.

He looked at it and shrugged. "So, it's just…." Then he looked more closely. "Oh my GOD! What is that?"

"It's exactly what it looks like. It's Alexis. And she's fully dressed."

"Fully dressed?" Castle yelled. "She's wearing bikini bottoms and a skin tight wet tee shirt! You can see her nipples! Her nipples. Now everyone knows she has nipples."

"Yes. And the louder you yell, the more people will know she has them." Kate reminded him.

"Which one of you was accessing porn sites and found this?" He demanded, in a low voice.

"Not us, bro. Karposwki's nephew saw it and called her. He recognized Alexis. She told us about it.''

"We just got the website on when you arrived. It's not like we were all sitting here gawking at it. You know we wouldn't do that to you. Or Alexis." Kate tried to calm him down.

"Where is this pervert relative of Karpowski's?" Castle demanded, looking around for the detective.

"In middle school, Rick. He's twelve years old." Kate said.

"A twelve year old….Saw this?" He looked at the website again. "College Girls Gone Crazy? How in the hell could that be still around."

"With Beau Randolph dead and Troy Strickland in prison for killing him, Seth Parrino bought the company for peanuts." Kate said. "He has this and College Guys Gone Nuts."

Castle sadly shook his head. "Why would Alexis ever enter a wet tee shirt contest? Where did I go wrong? How can this have happened?"

"Castle, we can talk to Alexis when we get home tonight." Usually, Kate avoided getting involved in any arguments between Rick and Alexis, feeling it wasn't her place to intrude. But, seeing the look on Rick's face, she felt that someone needed to be the voice of reason since Castle seemed to be ready to go all medieval on Alexis.

Castle looked at his watch. "No tonight. Now. She's still home. Her first class today isn't until late afternoon." Castle turned and headed for the elevator.

Kate grabbed her coat and just as she did, Gates' office door opened. "Detective Beckett, please bring your team in. The ADA on the Swenson case has some questions. I have him on the phone."

"Sir, Castle has a problem and I think…"

"My office, Detective. Now. Your fiancé doesn't have a problem, he is a problem."

It took a half an hour to answer the ADA's questions, and as soon as they were done, Kate headed for the loft.

Ryan and Esposito watched her go. "I wouldn't want to be in the Castle household about now."

Epso smiled. "I don't know. Castle going all berserk? Little Castle going all "I'm an adult" and Beckett trying to settle the two of them down? You could sell tickets." He pulled the computer screen to face him. "Besides, Little Castle is as hot as anyone of these chicas."

"Dude, you don't want to have Castle hear you talk like that about Alexis."

Javi laughed. "You think I'm scared of Castle?"

"Do you want Beckett to hear you talk about Alexis that way?"

Espo pushed the screen away from himself. "Good point."

Kate walked through the door to the loft and managed a smile. World War Castle had not occurred before she could get there. Alexis was sitting quietly at the kitchen island, eating lunch and studying. "Where's your dad?"

"Out trying to get the 1950s back. Or better yet, the Victorian era."

Kate walked over and sat next to the young redhead. "Alexis, I know that this is really none of my business…"

"No, it is your business. You're engaged to Dad. You're going to be his wife soon and my step-mom. To tell the truth, you're already way ahead of Gina in the step-mom department. I know Dad. You're going to be my step-mom forever. And, I feel a lot closer to you in many ways than my mom. So, yes. What happens between Dad and me does involve you and it is definitely your business. That said, it's too late to do anything about it. And Dad has already given me the worst case scenarios. One day when I'm up for the Nobel Prize, it'll be between me and someone who was never in a wet tee shirt contest. And I'll lose. Or, one day my grandchildren will find those pictures of Granny Alexis and be humiliated that sweet old granny could do something like that. Or that all manner of sexual predators could come after me. I've heard it all from Dad."

"Then why did you do it?" Kate really wanted to know what would cause Alexis, who was normally so level headed and smart, to do that.

"I've always been cute little Alexis. The girl who gets straight A's in AP courses at one of the most demanding private schools in Manhattan. I dated guys mostly, who were just like me, even Pi. I was cute and sweet and nice. But all of a sudden, I was up on that stage with those other girls in that wet tee shirt, and I was the hot redhead. I was the sexy babe on the left. I was hot and sexy, and guys wanted me. And it felt good. Odd, and really not me, but good."

"But it wasn't really you." Kate made sure they both understood that.

"I've heard you were a wild child. Didn't you do anything like that? Something crazy, sexy and hot?"

Kate thought back to her days in high school and college. There were some things, but nothing she ever wanted to tell Alexis about. "To tell you the truth, I teased Rick a lot about my wild child days. I guess I was a little rowdier than you were, but I went to Stuyvesant, a very academically challenging high school and to Stanford, one of the best universities in the world. I really didn't have time to be that wild a child. But even if I was, things are different now. What you did will be online forever. What I did is gone and forgotten."

Alexis nodded. "But it still felt good to me."

Kate laughed. "I bet it did. But do you know where your dad went?"

Alexis had no idea, but Kate had a very good idea.

She arrived at the offices of College Girls Gone Wild/ College Guys Gone Nuts to find Rick nose to nose with Seth Parrino. Two large men who Kate suspected were not college students were standing on either side of Parrino.

"Look, pal, I don't care if she is your little girl. She's an adult, she signed a waiver and that's the end of that. If you're unhappy, too bad. Now, I have work to do. I'd like to leave. If you don't want to leave, I can have my friends assist you. Your choice."

Kate spoke up before Rick could make a choice that she was sure would end badly. She held up her badge. "Mr. Parrino. I'm Detective Beckett. Do you remember me and Mr. Castle?"

Parrino nodded." So? I have the law on my side."

"True, but I think Mr. Castle and I have something else on our side."

After dinner that night, Rick and Kate sat on the couch. "You're remarkable, you know that, don't you?"

"And if it wasn't for me, you'd be in jail for punching Parrino."

"It would have been worth it."

"With a cop, two bodyguards and a couple of secretaries watching? You'd have been in trouble. And not the sort that your pal the mayor could have gotten you out of. I'm not about to watch you go off and spend time behind bars. I like having you here too much."

"Yeah, but I to pay that clown Parrino."

"Which you can well afford. Now, after a short, discrete interval, Alexis will be edited out of the wet tee shirt contest. Of course it'll still be up on websites that copied it before she got taken out, but they don't have anywhere near the audience College Girls Gone Wild has. And we all live happily ever after."

"Uh huh. And I have my very own Cop Gone Wild."

"True. And I have my very own Juvenile Delinquent Gone Wild."