CSI: Miami

Armando Diaz finds himself locked in a tight, dark space, bruised and bleeding. He desperately cries for help. Later his body is found in the bushes outside a fancy hotel, Graciana. Tripp and Horatio talk to the hotel manager, Craig Seaborn, who is concerned that this might be bad publicity for his hotel. He knows Armando, he takes care of the hotel pool. He stresses that Armando can't have been killed at the hotel. Horatio doesn't believe the murder took place there either; Armando appears to have been dumped there post mortem. He asks Seaborn about a keycard found in Armando's pocket. It's the key to the penthouse suite. It looks like Graciana is going to lose it's reputation; the penthouse is most likely where Armando was killed.

Alexx tries to examine the victim while Delko processes the scene, but she is bothered by Erika Sikes who wants to get a good shot of the scene. She tells Sikes to have some respect for the dead and sends her away just as Delko and Calleigh arrive at the scene. Alexx asks Wolfe if he's still seeing her, and he seems uncomfortable with the question. She turns her focus back to the victim and confirms that he was killed somewhere else. He has a head wound and they bleed a lot, yet there is no blood on the scene. Wolfe tells her that they suspect Armando was killed at the penthouse, which Delko points out has already been revealed on the news by Sikes. Wolfe insists that he didn't tell her but Delko doesn't believe him. They find white fibers on Armando's head, possibly cotton which might have come from the towels that he handles as a poolboy. But why would a poolboy be in the penthouse? Delko, Wolfe and Calleigh decide to head up there. Calleigh forgot her processing kit and gets the backup from Delko's Hummer.

The Chief wants to talk to Horatio. There has been rumblings about Horatio's team, which seems odd since they have the highest solve rate. But since Wolfe is an open leake to the press, Delko has money trouble and Calleigh quit Firearms which she was especially trained for, the team is not looking so good. They can expect a visit within the next eight weeks to determine the character and the case handling of the team. Horatio is not concerned with the character of his officers, but the Chief suggests he should stay out of the case with the dead poolboy and just observe so that he can see how the team handles things. Horatio assures him that they will be ready for the scrutiny.

Back at the Graciana the three CSIs are in the elevator, heading up to the penthouse. Calleigh is displeased with the shape Delko left the backup kit in; there are no swabs or evidence bags. She opens Delko's kit to borrow some of his, in spite of his protests. As she opens the kit Wolfe notices rolling papers. Delko says they're not his; someone must have borrowed his kit. Wolfe makes a sarcastic comment about it and Delko gets angry. Wolfe remarks on how Delko jumps to conclusions concerning Wolfe and Sikes, but he doesn't like it when people jump to conclusions about him.

Meanwhile Tripp is talking to Beth, Yvette and Felicia, the three women who rented the penthouse. They are surprised to learn that their room is now a crime scene. Tripp shows them a picture of Armando and they recognise him as the guy who applied tanning oil on them. The CSIs arrive and Calleigh stops to ask the women how Armando might have gotten the key to their room. Yvette suggests he might have stolen it from one of them down by the pool. Calleigh doesn't believe that, and neither does Tripp. The three women are on a "wives weekend" away from their husbands, which includes sun, spa and lack of sex.

Inside the penthouse Delko and Wolfe are being snyde towards one another. Delko finds blood on the carpet. Something definitely happened there. Wolfe remarks that confrontations usually start in the bedroom or the bathroom. Calleigh decides to process the bathroom, while Delko goes to one of the bedrooms and Wolfe stays out in the sitting room.

The three CSIs each embark on their own investigations, following their own leads. Horatio observes but stays out of their way.


Calleigh

In the bathroom Calleigh finds castoff splatters on the ceiling, but no pool of blood on the floor to go with it. Tripp joins her and concludes that someone must have cleaned the floor and forgotten about the ceiling. With the help of an U/V light she finds evidence of a pool of blood having been on the floor. All the towels are missing, so whoever cleaned up must have used those. Calleigh goes out to talk to the cleaning lady and check her cart. She finds the bloody towels as well as a towel rod which has both blood and hair on it.

She takes the rod to Valera to see if the blood belongs to Armando. She goes out in the hallway and overhears Wolfe talking to Erika Sikes. He tells her he's "good for the rest" and she replies that it's a pleasure doing business with him. Delko and Calleigh exchange looks. She then goes to see what the news is on the hair she found on the rod, and is told that it's African hair.

This leads her to Beth, who says the hair must have gotten there when she hung up her towel. Calleigh tells her it didn't get there by casual transfer. Beth then tells her she had gone up to her room to take a shower when Armando knocked on the door. He wanted to return a book she had forgotten. Before she knew it, Beth found herself in bed with Armando. However he was unable to get an erection. He went into the bathroom and took Viagra, and told Beth it was her fault. She was offended and slapped him in the face. When he hit her back she grabbed the towel rod and hit him with it. Calleigh doesn't believe it was self-defence since Armando was hit three times. Beth is shaken and says she just lost it. She begins to write out her confession.

Calleigh goes out into the hall and runs into Delko. She is quite pleased with herself and tells him that Beth is writing out her confession. Delko is confused. His evidence suggests something different.


Delko

In the bedroom Delko finds that Calleigh took all his swabs and evidence bags. He goes out to the cleaning lady's cart and gets some q-tips and laundry bags. He then returns to the bedroom and is informed by Tripp that Felicia was staying there. Since she is married and her husband is not with her she should have been the only one to sleep in that room. However Delko finds a condom on the floor. Tripp raises an eyebrow at the use of a hotel laundry bag to place the condom in but Delko shrugs it off. Tripp finds two more condoms and Delko spots the cause of the blunt force trauma to Armando's head. There's blood on the headboard, but not enough to suggest a fatal wound.

Delko hurries down to talk to Felicia, who said she had to go right after Tripp questioned her. Delko stops her just as her husband is about to load her luggage into his car. Delko collects her bags instead. Tripp wonders what Felicia's husband, Steven, is doing there during Wive's Weekend and he's told that Felicia called him and wanted to be picked up. They can't leave yet; Delko needs to collect Felicia's DNA and finger prints for the investigation.

Delko goes back to the lab just in time to witness the end of Wolfe's conversation with Sikes. He takes his collected evidence to Valera and remarks that Wolfe is unbelievable, handing cash to Sikes. Boa Vista walks in as Delko complains that Wolfe is just out to get his face on TV. She remarks that he's a good CSI, so who cares if he likes the media? Delko can claim that Sikes is a risk to their cases, but he can't deny that she helped them out on their Mala Noche case. Delko turns his attention to Valera and reminds her to do her job properly. Boa Vista thinks he has trust issues.

Meanwhile Alexx is waiting for Delko, Wolfe and Calleigh to show up for the autopsy. She finally tires of waiting and gets to work without them.

Delko finds laundry detergent on Felicia's suitcase while Valera determins that the condoms were used by Armando while he had sex with Felicia. Delko brings her in for questioning. She is ashamed of what she has done to her husband. It wasn't even Armando who came on to her; she was the initiator. When she came back to her room after her massage he was there, holding a pack of ice to his head. He claimed he was there to return a book to Beth and had been let in by the maid. She noticed that he was very turned on, and they soon ended up in bed. She didn't see him hit his head, but since he was behind her she might have missed it. She never saw that he was hurt.

Delko goes out to the hall and runs into Calleigh, who tells him she has found their killer. Delko begs to differ. He tells her about the condoms he found and his conclusion is that Armando died from the head wound he got during sex. Calleigh is convinced that Beth killed him with the towel rod. Wolfe comes up to them and informs them that they are both wrong. Wolfe has the actual killer.


Wolfe

Wolfe begins his investigation by expanding the crime scene to include the hallway between the penthouse and the elevator. He talks to officer Jordan, who is willing to help him out. He notices a blood trail on the floor, leading to the stairwell. Wolfe and Jordan go out into the stairwell and find a pool of blood, complete with a shoe print, on the floor below. Wolfe draws the conclusion that Armando fell and that caused the blunt force trauma to his head. Jordan spots a contact lense on the floor which Wolfe bags. He then notes that there are no hand marks on the rail, which means he didn't fall, since he would have grabbed the rail if he did. And since he hit his head he most likely didn't jump, since he would have landed feet first. That means he was pushed, which equals murder.

He goes back to the lab and runs into Sikes, who needs to ask him something. If it concerns the case she can forget it. It's not about the case; she needs to get reimbursed for the DAT recorder he destroyed a while back. It costs $500, more than Wolfe can afford. Sikes doesn't care. He broke it, he'll pay for it. He doesn't have much money on him; he'll give her the rest when he gets his paycheck. She takes the money and remarks that it's a pleasure doing business with him.

Wolfe goes down to the Firearms lab, where Shawn Kimsey is drowning in work since Jim Markham has taken yet another personal day. Kimsey scans the photo of the bloody shoe print and they find a logo for Prada. This leads Wolfe to Seaborn, who tells him that someone in the penthouse called and needed him to move a body. He figured it was an accident and went up there, but to his surprise there was no body. He cleaned up the blood in the bathroom and hid the towels in the cleaning cart. Then he heard a scream coming from the stairwell. He found Armando's body and moved it. Wolfe doesn't get why he would put it right outside the hotel lobby. Seaborn says he didn't put him there; he put him in the trunk of his car. Then Armando turned out to be alive. Seaborn opened the trunk and Armando tried to bribe him with a ring to be let go. Seaborn took the ring, which he knew didn't belong to Armando, and watched him leave. Wolfe takes a look at the ring and finds that it belongs to Yvette.

He brings Yvette in. She claims she had nothing to do with what happened to Armando, but the contact lense found in the stairwell belongs to her. She breaks and tells him that she and Armando had sex earlier that day, and when she later discovered that her ring was missing she went to find him. She ran into him in the stairwell and they argued, which led to pushing each other, which led to Armando going over the rail. Before she could grab the ring from his pocket someone entered the stairwell, so she ran.

The three CSIs have now all finished their investigations, all three with different results. They argue over who has the right woman when Horatio interrupts and asks them what the cause of death was. They reply that it was blunt force trauma. But Horatio knows something they don't. During the autopsy, which they all failed to show up for since they assumed someone else went, Alexx found that the cause of death was a broken neck. Wolfe thinks that proves his theory, but Horatio points out that he didn't have a broken jaw which he would have gotten if it was caused by a fall. Someone broke Armando's neck for him.

Horatio sends his team to find out who broke Armando's neck, but this time they are going to work as a team. They compare notes. Armando had a violent encounter with all three women but neither led to his death. Beth saw him take Viagra, which means he was with her before he was with Felicia. The last woman he was with was Yvette; then he was with Seaborn. They can't tell whether or not Seaborn lied when he said he didn't kill Armando, since they all assumed that one of the others was going to tape lift the victim's clothes for trace. They need to stop assuming that one of the others will do the work; either confirm that someone else has done it or do it yourself. Wolfe gets to work on the clothes and finds that they are covered in lint. Calleigh remembers that Delko spotted traces of cotton in Armando's hair earlier, and Delko fills in that Felicia had laundry detergent on her bags. Calleigh concludes that they have missed a crime scene.

The three of them head over to the laundry room of the Graciana and find a bloody hand print. The strength required to snap Armando's neck that way rules out all female suspects. Delko concludes that the manager did it, but Wolfe thinks they should find whoever put the hand print there. It might belong to the last man in the picture.

Together the three of them process their findings and bring in Felicia and Steven for questioning. The hand print is Steven's. The CSIs have reached the conclusion that Steven spotted Armando in the parking lot and followed him to the laundry room. Steven points out that he didn't arrive in Miami until after the investigation had begun; he was in Miramar which is 45 minutes away by car. Felicia confirms this, but Calleigh points out that since she called him on his cellphone she can't be sure where he was. The pictures Delko took when he got Felicia's luggage shows that Steven's windshield had been subjected to rain. Miramar hasn't had any rain the last couple of days, but Miami has. This places Steven in Miami during the time Armando was killed. Felicia is shocked. She can't believe her husband was spying on her, especially since he hasn't shown any interest in her for two years. It dawns on her that she wasn't the person he was there to spy on.

The three ladies are brought together. Yvette admits to having had an affair with Steven, and he was furious that his mistress cheated on him. Felicia is shocked. Her maid of honour was sleeping with her husband. The three women don't even seem to know each other anymore. It's clear to Beth that they do know each other; the problem is that they don't like each other. Calleigh, Wolfe and Delko watch the scene and wonder if they know each other as well as they think, and if they, just like the three women, don't like each other anymore.