In A Heart Beat (a Castle Fan Fiction)

Chapter 18: The Arrangements

At TJ's, Beckett and Castle quietly stood by the bar as William searched for the bottle he'd used to pour out for her father. Beckett had called Will to see if her dad had simply ordered the usual beer or if he’d changed things up over time. Just as she had suspected, her father had decided to go to a hard scotch that she knew he really dove into when her mother first died. Picking up the bottle that Will had set down, she found the one thing she knew she’d find. In black sharpie was written the common calling card: 3XK.

Kate burst into a questioning frenzy, “Will, did my dad act differently after you left the bottle out for him?”

“I can’t say I spent that much time with him. I put down the glass and the bottle and just left him to his thoughts. He seemed consumed by the TV which was covering your engagement.”

“What time did he come in or leave?”

“He came in around eight at night and left around nine, but from what I could tell, he didn’t drink all that much. Honestly, he acted as though he was drunk before he came in and then barely touched the Scotch while he was here even though he asked me the leave the bottle.”

Kate made a mental note of it and continued, “Did he talk to anyone or maybe come in with someone?”

The bar tender shook his head, “He didn’t talk to anyone or even really talk to me. The second he got the bottle and that phone call he became completely silent for the rest of the night.”

“Phone call?” Beckett asked, “What phone call? Do you know who it was from?”

“He got the phone call maybe a minute after he got the Scotch from some guy named Jack or James or something. Anyway, these two talked for a total of maybe thirty seconds before your dad hung up.”

Beckett looked at her exe, “Are you sure?”

"Yeah, and when he hung up, he downed one glass of that Scotch and I'm not really sure he even touched the bottle again," Will said, picking up the half empty Scotch bottle. "It doesn't look like he did and I don't think I've used this particular brand of Scotch for anyone else since your father came in."

Kate nodded, looking at the bottle and wondering how an alcoholic with an obsession as bad as her father’s could drink one glass and not get another from a bottle sitting right in front of him. Asking, “Do you remember if he left in a cab or if someone drove him home?” she was searching for something to track down where he went next. This had been days ago, and he father only seemed to have gone missing hours ago, but she needed to check out where he went next. She had a hunch about it this and her hunches were rarely ever wrong.

Will moved from Kate, picking up something from behind the bar, “Yeah, he came in a cab. But, ah,” coming back up from under the drawer behind him, he pulled a blue vodka bottle and held it out to the others. “There was a man who came in shortly after Jim left. He was also sitting in the same place, staring at the TV and drank the same Scotch, only he wasn’t as quiet. He started talking to me about you both and said that next time I saw you, I was supposed to give you this. He said, ‘Shall we call it stress relief for after the baby’s born? Just a little trick I picked up with my son.’ It didn’t seem odd to me then, but now I guess it’s obvious it meant something.”