Grave Matters

time to run 'em yet.'

'Got a pen or pencil?'

'Shoot.'

Catherine gave him the number she figured belonged to Vivian's best friend.

'What are you, Catherine-psychic? That's one of the two!'

'The number comes up on her cell phone a buncha times. Give me the other one, would you, Sam?'

He did and said, 'If we have the best friend, we may have the mystery guest at Vivian's room.'

'Did that mystery guest sign in, Sam? At the guard shack?'

Vega sounded a little embarrassed as he admitted, 'When I went back to check, the shift had changed. I need to go back and talk to the guard who'd've been on duty. Sorry.'

'Hey, even the most diligent detective can get overworked, and tired….'

Vega laughed. 'Okay, Cath. We're even.'

And they broke the connection.

Catherine set the phone numbers aside to run later. No point in getting too deep into this, until she knew what, if anything, they were into…and that she wouldn't know until after the autopsy.

The final item before her was Vivian's wallet.

A black nylon tri-fold number, the wallet had one zipper pocket on the outside. Catherine opened it, finding nothing. She undid the snap and laid open the wallet on the desk. The first section was the fold-over outside, the next a coin purse with what Catherine assumed was Vivian's spare car key and a dollar-and-a-half in change. The front of the coin purse was a four-pocket credit card holder with a cardboard educator's discount card from a bookstore chain, an insurance card, a Visa card, and an ID from a cost club superstore.

Not much help.

The final section held Vivian's driver's license and a clear plastic credit-card holder with four more credit cards-a department store, a house-and-garden store, a women's clothing store, and a MasterCard. Behind the three sections was a wider one with seventy-two dollars. Absently, Catherine wondered where Vivian Elliot's checkbook was. Other than that, everything seemed pretty normal with this woman-exceedingly normal.

Over the next two hours, Catherine cataloged the evidence and sent the biohazard materials off to the lab. She'd already spent the better part of a day on the Elliot case and still didn't even know if it was a crime.

Time to go to the morgue….

There, she found David, Warrick, and Dr. Al Robbins hard at work. Robbins was performing the Vivian Elliot autopsy with David's help while Warrick looked on.

She slipped on a lab coat, gloves, and a paper mask, now matching her outfit to the others; they might have been a team of surgeons saving a life, not investigators probing a death.

Stepping up next to Warrick, across the table from David and Robbins, she asked, 'Anything?'

Robbins said, 'How about cause of death?'

'How about it?'

'Myocardial infarction.'

'Heart attack.' Catherine frowned in thought, looking at the exposed organ in question. 'Caused by?'

With a facial shrug, Robbins admitted, 'I think David's probably right…about the air embolism.'

Warrick said, 'Shared that theory, did he?'

This was the first Catherine had heard about it.

Robbins nodded, his eyes on his work. 'I had gone through the autopsy already, and could find no good reason why this woman was dead. Her heart seized and stopped…but there was no real damage apparent before the event. She wasn't overweight, didn't have high cholesterol, minimal artery blockage-nothing, really, for a more or less healthy woman of her age.'

'Natural causes maybe?' Warrick said with a silent chuckle. 'A euphemism for 'who knows what killed her?' '

'A woman of her age could have a heart attack,' Robbins said, 'in the 'natural' course of events…but that doesn't really happen much. Something went very wrong with this woman's heart…and I can't find any reason for it.'

David stepped forward. 'Doc-I, uh…took X-rays of her when we brought her in.'

Robbins looked surprised. 'You did?'

David swallowed. 'I thought, you know…you might want them.'

The medical examiner gave David a sideways look. 'Good idea.'

David's relief was palpable.

'David,' Robbins said patiently, his eyes on his assistant. 'What do they say in Missouri?'

David thought about that. Then he asked, tentatively, 'Show me?'

'Right. Why don't you?'

Spring in his step, David stepped out of the room, then came back in a flash carrying a large manila envelope. He handed it to Robbins, who grabbed his crutch and limped over to the light box on the wall.

Warrick flipped the switch and Robbins slapped the film up and began to study it. Moments later, he shook his head and moved on, taking that X-ray down and putting up another. On the second film, he found what he was looking for.

'There,' he said, pointing to a dark spot near the center of a chest X-ray.

'What are we looking at, Doc?' Warrick asked.

'The dark spot in the pulmonary artery, Warrick. That's an air bubble.'

Catherine drew in a breath, then asked, 'And just how did that air bubble get there?'

Robbins gave her a grave glance. 'I found no needle sites other than the IV catheter…. My guess is that's where it went in.'

'Easy entry,' Warrick said.

But Catherine was fighting the urge for immediate acceptance of the theory with a Grissom-taught insistence upon other options. 'Could the air bubble be left over from the trauma of the car wreck?'

Robbins shook his head. 'Doubtful.'

'Possible?'

'Anything's possible…but my judgment is, in that case, it would have come up before, if it was going to. I think David is right.'

Warrick's expression was grave. 'You think we have an angel of mercy on our hands, Doc?'

'God knows it wouldn't be the first time someone killed the people they were supposed to be caring for.'

Catherine turned to Warrick. 'Get Vega on the cell. Tell him it looks like murder and we're going to investigate it like one. Until or unless we find evidence that it wasn't…this case is a homicide.'

'I'm with you, Cath. But what do you want me to tell Vega we're doin' next?'

Catherine thought for a moment, then said, 'The lab work is going to take some time…and we've already been to Sunny Day….'

'Vic's house?'

'Vic's house.'

An hour later, Vega's Taurus pulled up and Warrick parked the Tahoe in front of Vivian Elliot's stucco home on Twilight Springs in Green Valley.

An average home for the neighborhood, pretty much matching the tile-roofed design of the others, the Elliot place had a lush green lawn that looked freshly mowed, a pair of well-tended small bushes on either side of the front door.

Catherine had gotten Vivian's keys from the late woman's purse. The missing checkbook hadn't been in there either, and Catherine could only wonder if someone had made off with it. She unlocked the door and the three of them entered.

The entranceway was small, a hallway, really, that led to the back. To her left, Catherine saw a short cherrywood table with a ceramic pot in which a peace lily bloomed.

'Lawn looked mowed,' Warrick said, looking around. 'That lily's healthy enough.'

'Thriving,' Catherine said.