Castle may be the writer, but Beckett’s got the words in this week’s Castle. The episode is all about competition, when a professional skateboarder is found murdered. Meanwhile, Beckett is the first in the family to beat Castle at Scrabble and he does not take it well. Ryan and Esposito have a competition of their own: which of them will Castle pick to be his best man?
Logan Moore was shot with three bullets by a man on a motocross bike. “Either this is the worst case of road rage or someone was hellbent on killing Logan Moore.” They find a key on him and trace it to his friend Holly, but she doesn’t know much. Just that he shipped a package to her house and got antsy when he came to pick it up. Logan was in town for the New York Street Sports Festival, so Castle and Beckett head down there to check it out. Plenty of bikers who could have chased Logan down. The primary suspect is Manny Castro, a professional biker who had public altercations with the victim. “Reigning champion, unable to cope with defeat. Sounds familiar.” Manny gets snarky until he finds out Logan is dead. He has a pretty weak alibi but claims his fight with Logan came after he found him looking through stuff at the festival.
Castle and Beckett next talk to Tommy Fulton, who knows about the murder and the break in. His gun is missing and he heard Logan get a phone call that he didn’t like from a caller from long ago. Esposito finds clues to the Albanian mob: according to friend Ross De Koning, Logan’s mom had an Albanian boyfriend, Enver, who got her in trouble with drugs. Logan got sick of it and called the cops, but it got his mother put in jail too. Enver just got out of prison, but claims that he found God and is making amends. So he met with Logan at night, even paying him $1,000 to get him to come, apologized, and that was that.
Enver’s story checks out and Logan stopped back at his place to pick up a duffle bag, that hasn’t been found yet. He dropped the bag off at the gym–it’s got climbing materials, lock picking tools, and the gun Tommy Fulton was missing–but it wasn’t Logan who dropped it off. Carter Wexland used Logan’s keycard to drop the bag off. He’s also a motocross biker but Logan hired him to help him with a break-in. Logan wanted to get into an office on the 15th floor. When he did, he sent the duffle bag with the tools back to Carter and told him to take it to the gym. Carter wanted a cut of the burglary, but Logan told him it wasn’t about money, it was about a friend who died.
Castle and Beckett head to the office Logan broke into. The law office of Brett Zaretsky is installing a new window, but Zaretsky claims ignorance to the break in and Logan Moore. He stonewalls them out of the office, so Castle and Beckett try a different angle: the mother.
Logan’s mother, in jail because of her dealings with Enver, doesn’t want to believe her son is dead, but gives them the information on the friend who died. It was Jay Dixon, a kid Logan used to hang with back in the Bronx. He died when he was 12 in 2008 and Logan never got over it. They find an out of date camcorder that Logan purchased to bring with him to the burglary a few blocks from where he was murdered. There’s a bullet hole, but a piece of tape remained stuck when the killer ripped it out.
Turns out, Jay Dixon was murdered, possibly by Tommy Fulton, who is in the video threatening Logan if he tells. Zaretsky is Tommy’s lawyer and he doesn’t want Tommy to say anything (because he’d be implicated too) but Tommy didn’t kill either Logan or Jay, so he wants to confess what he knows. When Zaretsky continues to tell him to keep his mouth shut, Tommy fires him on the spot. According to Tommy, he liked to record the guys, Logan, Jay and their friend DK, doing their tricks. Jay was the best out of the three, but DK was jealous. When Jay taunted him too much, DK snapped and slammed him against a beam. Repeatedly. DK then bribed the guys with 5 million dollars if they gave him the tape. But the money wouldn’t come in until his trust fund was released on his 21st birthday. Tomorrow. Logan had been trying to get access to the tape before they turned it over to DK and he destroyed it. DK is non other than party friend Ross De Koning, who gave the helpful hints about the Albanian. Castle and Beckett catch up to him at his birthday bash and arrest him for both murders. “You’ll have plenty of money to sped on your defense.”
I loved the at home and Ryan/Esposito stuff, both really funny and classic Castle banter between both duos. At home, Castle has been struggling with Kate being better at him than Scrabble. In their rematch, she appears to be losing, but then hits him with QUIXOTIC. Triple Word, Triple letter on the X and Bonus points for using all her letters. When Castle tries for a third rematch, Kate chooses a different game. Poker. Strip poker. That game is much more fun and they both win in the end. ;-)
And poor Ryan and Esposito. They spend the entire episode bribing Castle–Ryan gives away a secret family recipe, from Jenny’s side of the family!–and bickering between them, only to find that Castle already chose Alexis to be his best man. Which, really, duh. They should have figured that. “I can’t believe we just got beat by a girl.” The case wasn’t really anything out of the ordinary, but fun and funny relationship antics make for a really good filler episode.
Quotes
“Oh, so you know the lingo. Any extreme sports in your history I have yet to hear about?”
“Well I mean I think catching killers is pretty extreme. And then there’s marrying you…”
“Ah yes, I admit I am extreme. Extremely handsome.”
“Yup, with a high degree of difficulty.”
“Maybe Logan Moore is like Erin Brockovich but with a skateboard instead of other assets”
“Brains?”
“Yes. Brains.”
[Photo via Ron Tom,ABC]
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