Castle Episode 7.09 Last Action Hero

Action movie star Lance DeLorca is found dead in an alley outside a theater. The guy was a pretty big deal in the ‘80s. Castle is a big fan. He's also mildly obsessed with his grieving widow, actress Kat Kingsley. Beckett tells her overexcited hubby to sit out this interrogation. She learns that Lance was in town to meet with his old onscreen partner Brock Harmon (guest star Ted McGinley) about the next Indestructibles movie.Castle and Beckett pay a visit to the movie set where they meet Brock Harmon's wife, Naomi Duvray (guest star Krista Allen) and his son, Trey. As for Brock, he says Lance got sober after beating cancer. That's why he gave him a part in the new Indestructibles movie he's directing. Brock is taken aback to hear his old pal was strangled with a garrote. That was his signature weapon back when he worked as a real-life CNI Spanish Intelligence assassin.

Lance made a phone call to Enrique Gomez of Interpol in Spain on the day he died. They were both CNI agents. Gomez is in New York, but he was inflight during the time of the killing. Ryan and Esposito learn that Lance was staying at a seedy hotel under the name Rico Cruise, his character from the movie Hard Kill. He had called Trey Harmon, who says he asked him about the New York club scene.

A blonde woman was caught on surveillance video at the hotel where Lance was staying. Enrique Gomez doesn't recognize the mystery lady. He says Lance asked about getting a bodyguard. Castle is crushed to learn that his hero was never a CNI agent. Before he was an actor, Lance was a goat herder. As for the mystery blonde, she's actually a redhead. It was Lance's formerly-estranged widowed wife, Kat Kingsley.

Kat says Lance needed $200,000 to set something right in order to live up to his onscreen persona. She admits that she was at the crime scene, but Lance was dead when she got there. Surveillance footage shows the victim using some nifty hand-to-hand combat moves to take down thugs in an alley. Ryan recognizes Ernest Howe as someone he saw on the film set. The guy says he was Lance's bodyguard. One of the men who attacked both of them in an alley accused Lance of wearing a wire.

Henry Allen Boothe (aka bad guy "El Jefe" in Hard Kill) made a career out of playing drug dealers in the movies. Then he quit acting. Boothe now runs a club that's a major hub for drug sales. It's the same club Lance visited. Castle is stunned when Beckett doesn't push harder during her questioning of Boothe. That's because she realizes that Lance hid a recording device in the guy's office inside a little blue slot car.

The investigation stalls. There's no way a warrant will be awarded for a search of Boothe's office. This news has Brock Harmon inviting Castle out for drinks with The Indestructibles. It's a dream come true for our favorite mystery writer. It may actually be a nightmare though. It turns out that the group of aging action heroes wants to do some real-life crime-fighting.

Castle and Brock break into Boothe's office to swipe the slot car. Beckett listens to the recording that's inside. She learns that Boothe used Trey Harmon to access all the clubs in the city to sell his drugs. The kid was trapped into doing his bidding. Lance tried to help by buying Trey out of his arrangement with Boothe.

Trey says he called his mom for help, but he didn't kill Lance. Castle wonders why the victim was so invested in helping this kid. The records of Lance's bone marrow transplant indicate that Trey was his son. Naomi Duvray knew that the truth would come out. She couldn't let that happen. Case closed.

Beckett gets upset when Castle admits that he never liked her apartment. Lanie understands why. To him it's just a place with creaking floors and noisy neighbors. To her, it is a place where she rebuilt her life. It's where she solved her mother's murder. It's where she fell in love. Beckett carves her initials in a post-something to let the world know that Kate Beckett was here. She turns off the light and exits out the door to start the latest new chapter in her life.