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Kiss-Kiss, Bye-Bye
Kiss
Season 6
Number 13
Writer David Rambo
Director Danny Cannon
Original Airdate January 26, 2006
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Previous Episode: Daddy's Little Girl
Next Episode: Killer

Kiss-Kiss, Bye-Bye is the thirteenth episode in Season Six of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Synopsis[]

A socialite who has published a "tell-all" book about old Vegas becomes involved in a murder investigation when a servant working at her birthday party is shot to death and she's found hiding in a closet. The team begins to suspect her story isn't true when the evidence shows otherwise.

Plot[]

Victim: Tim Duke (deceased)

On the case: entire team

The episode opens with shots of old Vegas in black and white, transitioning to color. In the present, Lois O'Neill, a wealthy socialite, is hosting a birthday bash at her mansion and has invited most of the major players in town, including Sam Braun. While Lois celebrates downstairs, a man in a tuxedo is shown upstairs placing a gun down on a dresser and opening one of the drawers.

A while later, the man, identified as Tim Duke, is lying dead in Lois' luxurious walk-in closet with a gunshot wound to the chest; the gun is lying on the body. Greg notes that the mob used to leave the gun with the body after taking someone out, and Brass says that Lois, a famous singer and dancer back in the day, is also famous for being the girlfriend of Tony Constantine, one of the founding fathers of Vegas. Lois hasn't been seen in over an hour, and her assistant, Eve Girard, is the one who found the body. Greg notices a vault at the back of the closet. The door has bullet ricochet marks, and he finds bullet fragments in the carpet by the door. Eve opens the vault; inside, Grissom finds Lois hiding in the corner.

Lois tells Brass that she was upstairs changing (something she does multiple times during one of her parties) when she heard a gunshot and saw Tim crawling around on the floor. She closed the door to the vault just before the shooter started firing at her. Based on way Tim was killed, she guesses that it was a mob hit. When Greg asks Lois who would want to kill her, she signs a copy of her book, Kicks & Kisses, for him. She says that she didn't hold back in her book and named names, figuring nobody would care after all these years.

David Phillips tells Sara that Tim has been dead for one to two hours and was shot twice—once to the chest and once to the head. He pulls $1,000 and a crack vial from Tim's pocket, as well. The vial is consistent with the black burn mark on one of Tim's fingertips, and the assumption is that he got the money from dealing drugs. In Lois' bedroom, Catherine admires all the pictures Lois has of her with famous people. She finds one picture that includes her mother. Sara enters the room, and they find a flower arrangement with a note signed by Tony Constantine, who they assumed was dead.

Nick marvels at the detail for the evening's itinerary, as events are planned down to the minute. Eve hands him the footage from the outside security cameras as well as the guest list, mentioning that the guests' recent accomplishments were listed so Lois could personalize conversations. Meanwhile, on the second floor balcony, Catherine finds a handkerchief that was left behind; a flashback shows the assailant hopping the railing and dropping it.

In the foyer of the mansion, Undersheriff McKeen, who happens to be one of the party guests, tells Grissom that, due to the party's clientele and their connections, the governor has called him demanding that the guests be allowed to leave. Grissom tells him that nobody on the guest list came late or left early, so they're all still suspects. When Nick adds that only a few people were out of the room when Lois went to change, McKeen has Grissom hold them but release everybody else.

Sam Braun happens to be one of the guests who was out of the room when Lois was; he tells Catherine that he was just walking through the house at the time "saying hello to old ghosts." Bobby Jensen tells Nick that he went outside to smoke when Lois went upstairs, as he told her he wouldn't smoke in the house. He mentions that Lois had friends and enemies at the party, but refuses to elaborate on who those enemies might be. Grissom has the honors of questioning uncooperative pop star, Li'l Cherry. When he grabs her wrist after she ignores him and makes a phone call, he sees a burn mark on her finger. He also spots scrapes on her knees. She tells Grissom that she went to the bathroom when Lois left the room, but doesn't know what time she came back. Grissom asks to see her handbag, and she responds by trying to run. She's stopped by an officer and drops her handbag. Grissom, able to look through the bag now without a warrant, finds a crack pipe inside.

Li'l Cherry is brought to the station for questioning. Her lawyer says that the evidence against his client is circumstantial—she denies that the crack pipe is hers, denies any drug use, doesn't know the victim, and has no prior relationship with Lois. Brass and Sofia tell her that the crack pipe was found in her possession and that she was exhibiting signs of drug use at the party. Sofia adds that she was also at a recent party attended by Tim, who was also a crack user. They hypothesize that Li'l Cherry recognized Tim and wanted a crack fix; a flashback shows her stealing some from Tim. When Tim wanted a little "something" in return, she pushed him away and shot him. She then wiped the gun down with the handkerchief and escaped over the balcony, accidentally leaving the handkerchief behind and scraping her knees in the process. Li'l Cherry laughs and says that she scraped her knees because she was giving her bodyguard a "birthday present."

An x-ray of Tim's body shows that he suffered from calluses and old fractures to the ribs. He had also had his nose wired to his skull to keep it in place, something Doc Robbins says is common with boxers and accident victims. Warrick asks if he has ever seen one on a waiter.

Sara processes Lois' closet and finds a bullet hole in the carpet. Insisting that they're looking at a piece of Vegas history, Greg suggests they use a snake camera instead of cutting up the floor. As they feed the camera through the floorboards, they find a $10,000 brick. One floor below, Sara removes the light fixture from the ceiling and removes several stacks of bills.

It's discovered that Tim Duke's real name is Vincent Pullone. He was a former boxer, which explains his past injuries, and he also had a rap sheet that included multiple assaults and theft. Nick goes through the security camera footage and sees Vincent getting out of a car that pulled up at an entrance separate from where the guests were entering the party. Around the time of the murder, the same car pulled up to the same entrance and waited for Vincent, but he never showed up. Nick runs the license plate on the car and finds that it's registered to a Nanci McGonigle. Meanwhile, Hodges tells Catherine that the handkerchief tested positive for gun oil and partially burned gunpowder; however, it's negative for prints or DNA.

Greg tells Grissom that the money found in the floorboards came back negative for prints and that every bill predates 1965. They're interrupted by the arrival of Lois and some waiters; she wants to provide the department with a token of gratitude, but gets told that the department can't accept anything that might influence the outcome of the case. Before she leaves, Grissom tells her about the money found in the floorboards, which totals approximately $1 million; she realizes that it was probably left there by Tony to take care of her. Grissom asks her if anyone else would know about the money, and Greg mentions some names from Lois' book. Lois mentions that the people who want her dead have been in the business for a long time, and she implores the lab to "catch up."

In the A/V lab, Nick and Archie review the security tape of Nanci's car pulling up to the mansion entrance. They see Vincent run back to the car, where he hands over a piece of paper. Upon zooming in, they see that the paper has a two-dimensional barcode on it. It turns out to be an airline boarding pass for Nanci and Vincent, with the final destination being Sardinia. According to the airline global distribution system, Nanci boarded the flight.

Eve Girard is brought in for questioning, where it's revealed that her prints were found on the light fixture in the hallway. She admits to Sara and Sofia that she found the money when she was replacing the fixture and took a $10,000 brick for herself. Despite claiming to not know Vincent very well, she says that they dated and that he needed money, which would explain the $1,000 found on his person earlier. Eve is surprised to hear that Vincent was planning to fly to Sardinia with Nanci, but doesn't know who in the house gave him the airline tickets.

In autopsy, Doc Robbins shows Grissom that the fatal bullet passed through Vincent's heart, stopping it immediately. It then transected the spinal cord, which would've paralyzed him. Furthermore, the bullet wound in the brain doesn't have any blood in the wound tract, meaning that the heart had already stopped pumping blood. The doc estimates that the shot to the brain occurred at least ten minutes after the shot to the heart. All of this information contradicts Lois' earlier story of her seeing Vincent crawling around on the floor after the first shot was fired. Grissom shoots down Doc Robbins' theory that Lois' memory is flawed due to her age.

Grissom and Brass find Lois sitting down in a fancy restaurant with Bobby. When told that she misremembered the events from the night before, Lois suddenly becomes flustered and excuses Bobby and herself from the restaurant.

Greg, Sara and Warrick sit in the break room thinking about the case. Warrick asks Greg if Lois mentioned anything in her book about the money under her floor, and Greg says that Tony skipped town in 1965—around the same time the famous Pan Am heist occurred. When Tony returned, he had enough money to build Lois a house. The three note that somebody bought Vincent, a washed-up boxer and drug user, two tickets to Sardinia and wonder if he was hired as a hitman. This would make Lois' story correct—she really was the target. Greg suddenly realizes that they have photos of the outfits Lois was wearing the night of the murder and that they should be tested for blood and gunshot residue.

Catherine and Sara go through the catalog of outfits in Lois' bedroom closet. They're unable to find the clothes Lois was wearing, as they have apparently been sent to the cleaners. However, they know that the jewelry wouldn't have been sent there. A canary diamond ring that Lois was wearing is found in one of the drawers and brought back to the lab.

Catherine returns to her office and finds her mother lying on the couch. A bit tipsy from a night out with friends, she removes a handkerchief from her pocket to blow her nose. Catherine sees that it's a very similar handkerchief to the one she found at the crime scene and takes it as evidence. Her mother reveals that she has been spending more time with Sam Braun recently and that the handkerchief was a gift from him. Later, Catherine sits inside Sam's limousine and confronts him about the handkerchief. He shows Catherine the handkerchief he has on him and admits that he let Lois borrow one at the party. Despite Sam insisting that he's going to treat her mother better this time around, Catherine remains incredibly skeptical, even bringing up the fact that he stabbed a showgirl years ago.

It's revealed that the canary diamond ring Lois was wearing tested positive for gunshot residue. When Grissom and Brass go to the mansion to have Lois brought in for questioning, they find her lying on her bed dead from a gunshot wound.

When Doc Robbins examines the body, he notes that the containment of the blood indicates that Lois was lying down when she was shot; either she was asleep or she was surprised by someone she trusted. Grissom tells Greg, who is now on the scene, that Vincent's airline tickets were purchased with a credit card under the name of Double-X Associates. Greg recognizes this as being Lois' company, and Grissom says that the only two people authorized to sign on the card were Lois and Eve. As he examines Lois' body further, Doc Robbins notices smudges on her eyelids. When Grissom processes the body later on, he's able to lift fingerprints from the eyelids.

Greg informs Grissom that the gun found on Vincent ended up being traced back the Pan Am heist, as did the serial numbers on the money found under the floorboards. Grissom lets Greg in on what he has learned—Lois' body was riddled with advanced tumors. Greg figures that Lois knew she was going to die and that she wrote her book because there would be nobody else to tell her story once she was gone. Based on what he has read and what he knew about Lois, he tells Grissom that Lois would've wanted to go out looking fabulous, but would only have been murdered if she called the shots.

In interrogation, Bobby Jensen tells Grissom and Brass that Lois staged her exit like a pro, writing a book and hosting a party. Hiring Vincent was the only mistake she made. A flashback shows Lois instructing Vincent on how and where he would kill her; however, when she caught Vincent stealing from her, she shot him and fired some bullets into the vault door to make it look like she was the target. She then wiped the gun and left it with the body. Brass found out that Lois wired $250,000 to Bobby's sister with the thought that she first offered the money to Bobby, but he refused. Another flashback shows Bobby shooting Lois and closing her eyes after the deed was done.

In the end, Doc Robbins has another celebrity death picture for his scrapbook, and Catherine meets Sam and her mother for dinner. Grissom, meanwhile, sits down in his office and starts to read Greg's signed copy of Lois' book. The episode closes with a transition to black-and-white shots of old Vegas being shown again.

Cast[]

Main Cast[]

Guest Cast[]

Episode Title[]

  • The episode title is possibly a take on "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a name originally referring to James Bond. The phrase has also been the title of several songs, as well as a 2005 film starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Val Kilmer.

Music[]

  • Almost Like Being in Love by Frank Sinatra
  • Where Are You? by Frank Sinatra

Notes[]

  • Nick tells Bobby Jensen that he's familiar with his daughter's case and that he's sorry for his loss. Bobby's daughter died in the Season Five episode Formalities.
  • When speaking to Sam in the limousine, Catherine brings up the fact that he stabbed a showgirl, referencing the episode Inside the Box.
  • The inscription in the book Lois gave to Greg reads: "To Greg, the best is yet to come! Lois O'Neill XX"

Trivia[]

  • Jonathan Banks reprised his role as Bobby Jensen, previously appearing in the Season 5 episode Formalities. He is well-known for his role as Mike Ehrmantraut in the shows Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul and also appeared in the CSI: Miami episode Long Gone, where he played Oscar Duante.
  • Faye Dunaway played Lois O'Neill. She is an acclaimed actress known for her work in such classics as Chinatown, Bonnie and Clyde, and Mommie Dearest in which she portrayed Joan Crawford.

See Also[]

CSI:Las Vegas Season 6
Bodies in MotionRoom ServiceBite MeShooting StarsGum DropsSecrets and FliesA Bullet Runs Through It, Part 1A Bullet Runs Through It, Part 2Dog Eat DogStill LifeWerewolvesDaddy's Little GirlKiss-Kiss, Bye-ByeKillerPirates of the Third ReichUp in SmokeI Like to WatchThe Unusual SuspectSpellboundPoppin' TagsRashomamaTime of your DeathBang-BangWay to Go
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