CSI: Miami

Season 4 - Episode 5 - Three-Way

Written by Marc Guggenheim & Ildy Modrovich
Directed by Jonathan Glassner

The crime scene is the beautiful five-star Graciana Hotel.  Tripp and Horatio stand over the dead body of Armando, the hotel’s sexy Latino pool boy.  Horatio finds a key to the hotel’s penthouse suite in Armando’s hand.  Alexx concludes that Armando was killed elsewhere and subsequently placed on the hotel lawn.  

 Tripp questions the three beautiful women occupying the penthouse -- Beth Jacobson, Felicia Hardy and Yvette Travers, all in their early thirties.  They’ve checked into the penthouse for a “wives weekend” --  spa, sun, no husbands and no sex.  Chief Burton warns Horatio to keep his team in line because someone at the department’s higher level is gunning for them. 

 The team launches their investigation in three phases.  Calleigh heads into the penthouse’s bathroom; Delko takes the bedroom and Wolfe’s investigation starts in the main room.  Calleigh’s probe reveals a towel rack missing from the bathroom wall, and a wad of towels with blood and hair meshed inside -- all wrapped tightly together and hidden in the maid’s cleaning cart.  DNA confirms the hair sample as Beth Jacobson’s.  Alexx lends a helping hand to Foster and his female victim, and discovers a surgical sponge in her abdomen which caused a massive infection, sent her into toxic shock and killed her.  Beth admits to having “an almost” sexual encounter with Armando.  She claims she used the towel rack as a weapon to protect herself when he went a little berserk on her.  Delko’s investigation in the bedroom reveals three used condoms under the bed.  Tripp confirms that Felicia was in the bedroom.  Delko catches Felicia just as she’s about to leave with her husband, Steve Hardy, who came to the hotel to pick her up. 

 Privately, Felicia admits she and Armando had an intense sexual encounter during which he bumped his head; she left him injured and bleeding.  Delko watches as Wolfe hands Erica Sikes some cash, and assumes the worst.  Calleigh and Delko compare evidence, each of them thinking that their suspect is the murderer.  Wolfe enters, certain that his evidence points to the real killer.  He reveals that Armando was pushed over the railing in a nearby stairwell, where he finds a shoe print belonging to the hotel’s manager, Seabourn.  Seabourn tells Wolfe that he got a call from one of the women in the penthouse asking him to move a body.  He responded and found Armando’s body in the stairwell and put him in the trunk of his car.  Later, Armando came to and escaped, according to Seabourne.  Alexx approaches Dr. Kessler about the surgical sponge left inside his patient, and she subsequently gets Dr. Kessler to confess he has Parkinson’s disease, which attributed to the sponge incident.  While Calleigh, Delko and Wolfe argue over which of the three women is the killer, Horatio interrupts to tell them Armando’s cause of death is a snapped neck, not something a woman could likely have done.  Further investigation leads to the hotel’s laundry room, where a print belonging to Steve Hardy is discovered.  Hardy confesses to having an affair with Yvette, his wife’s best friend, then killing Armando out of jealousy.  Horatio tells Delko that the money Wolfe paid Erica was for a debt he owed her and nothing more, and advises Delko to take care with his own finances.  Delko assures Horatio he’s on top of it.