Chapter Eight
Twists and Turns

Abby, white lab coat discreetly buttoned to hide the shirt that'd been intended only for Gibbs' eyes or those of his team, enters the outer office of Director Jennifer Shepherd and greets Cynthia Sumner with as casual a wave as she can manage. Sumner reaches for the intercom button, announces the scientist's arrival and receives clearance.

Inside, Shepherd looks up from the file folder in her hands and she sets it on the desk.

The sun shining upon Shepherd from the large window overlooking the Navy Yard seems to give her an Angelic aspect, but Abby is never fooled, being herself the Mistress of Images. Is she here to receive celestial commendation or condemnation? "Come in, close the door."

Abby does so, not certain if she should be nervous over this summons. She'd worn her provocative shirt all day, hadn't really thought much beyond the humor - but did someone take offense and it reach this high? "Whatever I did, I assure you I didn't do it."

"No, but you're going to," Shepherd tells her with a disarming smile that washes away some of her nervousness. "Sit down," she invites.

Emboldened by Shepherd's ease, Abby takes the proffered seat.

"I'll come right to the point, since both of us have a lot to get back to. I've been in touch with representatives of 'The Science Channel' and they would like you to host a segment on their upcoming cable series 'The History of Forensics', specifically its advancements 1901 to 2000."

This is a lot better than being in trouble. "Sure!"

"It's an hour segment, 57 minutes actually, which is one of the reasons they asked for you and not Ducky." They share a grin; the venerable man can do 57 minutes on the introduction. "You'll be doing on-screen hosting and voiceover narration of dramatic reenactments and animation footage. They've sent the script and some of the footage already shot, you can check it for accuracy and tailor it a bit so it sounds natural, but you shouldn't change too much without their say so."

"Of course. I'm sure it'll be accurate; I watch the Science Channel all the time. Thanks, this'll be great. When do they want me?"

"Next Wednesday, you can have the day off unless we have a real disaster in the meantime, but I doubt we'll have that much that can't hold a day." They both know better than to make firm predictions.

"Thank you. I look forward to it."

"That's all."

"Thank you." She's out of her seat and across the room when Shepherd's voice calls her attention.

"Just one thing," the woman says and she looks back. "I'd appreciate it if you would keep the image of NCIS in mind when choosing a less-than-flamboyant wardrobe."

"Oh, of course," she promises. There has to be something 'not-so-flamboyant' in the back of one of her closets. Somewhere.

"You won't be covering 'Fingerprint Analysis'."

Abby feels the smile fall off her face. "No, Director," she agrees flatly.

xxx

Gibbs, DiNozzo and Palmer, who'd much rather go back home to bed, have picked Darla Ventura up from the Safe House, an anonymous home in the Washington suburbs where she's being guarded by Special Agent Marie Watson.

While DiNozzo and Palmer bring the woman out to the car, Gibbs remains behind with Watson. "What have you got?"

"She's still fixated on loss, still deep in grief. She can't understand why God would take her sister and husband, especially the way He did."

Gibbs sees the hand of God in none of this. "The sister was an asthmatic but Ducky says it was mild. The Commander wouldn't have been speeding on a dark, winding road." He pulls back from the conclusion. Would the man be so shaken by his sister-in-law's death? He doubts it. A Navy man, even a Storekeeper, doesn't get flustered easily. He takes out his phone; it's at this point that he'd call McGee.

"Ziva, look into the Commander's activities, did he have anything going on with Keitt? Copy Watson." He closes the phone without waiting for an answer. There are all sorts of motives for double murder, and until now this one hadn't occurred to him. "When we bring her back," he tells Watson, "I want you to keep digging until you're sure. If there was something, find out if she knew."

xxx

"Now when we go in," Gibbs instructs Darla Ventura as they get out of his Charger before the blue and white mountainside bungalow, "I want to know everything you can see that's different from the last time you were here." He hadn't spoken to her during the trip, he wants to watch her face to see her reaction to anything he says.

"Last summer?"

"Yes."

"Okay," she says dubiously, sounding uncertain why this matters. Inside the house, she looks around. "Well, Bob had moved that chair over there, I put it back. Those pictures were on that wall, I put them where they belong."

"I meant with the house." Gibbs knows building, he can certainly tell new things from old, but without floor plans he cannot tell precisely what Ventura had spent three months reconstructing.

"Well, that wall's gone." She points to the left, to the kitchen. "There used to be a wall between the living room and kitchen." The combined space now takes up the whole front half of the house, from living room right to patio walls. "And there was a lot done on the patio."

"Show us."

They go through the kitchen and inner door to an enclosed patio that extends from front of the house to rear and looks as though it hadn't been part of the original structure even before winterizing. Gibbs had already noted the difference in the foundation when he'd inspected the outside.

"He put in a lot of insulation, redid the bathroom, and in the bedroom the walls used to be fake panels, why I don't know, but he replaced them with real wood and added the drop ceiling throughout."

"What more was he going to do?"

She looks at him blankly. He usually feels an urge to dispose of such an expression, should one of his team present it to him, with a slap to the back of the head but can't use that method now.

"I don't know. Not much, I suppose."

Gibbs would suppose so as well. The house, as is, looks perfectly acceptable. Large living room with bedroom beyond it, den opposite that behind the kitchen with bath in between, enclosed patio... "Palmer."

"Yes, sir?"

"Stay here, we're going down into the town. I want a record of everything that was done in this place when we get back. You know what to look for."

"Yes, sir." She knows indeed. She's to conduct a low-key interrogation that won't alert their prime suspect to her new status.

Returning with Gibbs to the waiting car, DiNozzo wonders "It looks to me like a done job. I know some people who'd be happy here."

"Then why was Ventura's car stuffed with more than 600 pounds of building supplies he'd picked up that evening?"

xx

The drive down the snaking road is a white-knuckle trip for DiNozzo. Granted there are guardrails, but the hill falls off from the other lane, vanishes into empty air.

"Commander Ventura took this hill at 49 miles an hour. It was pitch black beyond the range of the headlights and on that stretch he didn't slow or turn."

"Could he have slowed to 49?" DiNozzo speculates, doubting it. That fast is too high in the bright sunlight and he wishes Gibbs would slow too. He doesn't like the way his stomach knocks against his diaphragm at the top of every rise and tries to escape out his bowels at the base of every dip.

"Abby says the brake line was attached at either end, but the line itself melted."

"You figure the wife went and cut the line while hubby was checking sis?"

"I don't know." He accelerates slightly. "Too many things aren't fitting."

"Well, in the meantime, couldn't you slow down too?"

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. For the sake of future DiNozzo's, perhaps."

"Not much of an incentive."

"Heh heh."

x

As they descend, Gibbs picks up speed. His normal headlong pace is okay on a flat road, not when winding down a bobbing, snaking road. "Boss?" DiNozzo finally ventures as they descend, turn right and enter the stretch of road toward the un-guard-railed turn where Ventura had lost his life.

"What is it, DiNozzo?"

"You're not going to take us off that cliff at 50 miles an hour, are you?"

"No, DiNozzo, I wouldn't do that." He increases speed slightly on the death stretch toward the vacant spot in the guard rail ahead.

"Well, good, because you had me wor-"

"Ziva estimates 49."

The turn is coming up fast. "Boss?" It's coming up too fast! "Boss?" Tony grips the front board, wishes he'd gone to church. "BOSS?"

At the last instant Gibbs twists the wheel right, tires shriek but DiNozzo bites back his own as the edge of the cliff comes too close, far too close, then shifts away. Gibbs fights the car back into the right lane, applies the brakes and the car drifts to a stop. Granted they didn't have 600 extra pounds of lumber, but now that he's felt the slope and the forces involved, he's satisfied. "Yes?" He turns to his white friend. "Hey, you okay?"

DiNozzo peals his fingers off the glove dash. "You ever hear the expression 'at 65, Saint Christopher gets out and walks'?"

"Then you had nothing to worry about. We were doing 49."

xxx

"That always sticks," Darla Ventura says as Michelle pushes the bedroom door closed.

"Your-" She bites it off. She had been about to ask why, with all the renovations Robert Ventura had done, he hadn't gotten rid of so simple a problem. A few moments with a palm plane would trim the wood, but the man has died barely 40 hours ago and will fix nothing ever again.

"Tell me about your husband," she says instead, sitting down on the edge of the large bed beside the older woman. She'd had the renovation tour - with four rooms and a bath it hadn't taken long - but Ventura had been unable to sleep in the Safe House and wants to rest. The bed has been stripped of sheets and cases, all the bedclothes brought to Abby's lab. She could send for the bed as well if she were to decide she needs it but it's quite large and could possibly damage the door unless it's disassembled. Gibbs doesn't favor disassembling anything in the house unless it must be done.

Darla sits down upon the bed, resting her back against the footboard before Michelle can stop her, and to Michelle the mattress looks very comfortable after a sleepless night of intense sexercise. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to rest for a bit on the end?

"He was the sweetest, gentlest, most loving man in the world," Darla says mournfully. "Always doing something for someone else."

Michelle smiles. "Sounds like my husband."

"Tell me about him?"

"I'd rather hear about yours." She's not here to discuss Jimmy. She's supposed to determine if this woman killed her sister and husband. "Where did you meet him?"

"We met at-" She breaks off, gasping hard. Michelle knows she's trying to keep from crying again. As Darla pants, trying to regain control, Michelle racks her brain to come up with a subject that will be less emotional. Thus far, she hasn't had much success.

xx

Gibbs and DiNozzo arrive in town, a community that reminds Gibbs of home, that blend of rustic and sub-suburban that for decades seemed to characterize Middle Americana. He expects to turn a corner and come upon a red brick General Store or perhaps a plate-glass fronted Malt Shoppe.

"Where do you suppose we should start?" DiNozzo asks.

"Ventura told us her husband'd gotten the wood at Strucker's." He pulls the car up beside a glass and metal, hinge-door telephone booth, as much a 21st Century anachronism as anything they've seen thus far. That it has a telephone book suspended from a chain is even more of an anomaly. "When we finish there, I have some questions for the Troopers and that Sheriff."

xxx

Michelle stretches, trying to do it discretely. She'd finally gotten the woman talking, reflecting on more pleasant days, and doesn't want Ventura to think she's getting bored by the recollections. She's not bored, but she is tired. 'Last time I pull an all-nighter with my legs wrapped around Jimmy's hips.' She grins, cautious that the woman doesn't see. 'Yeah, right!'

That hadn't been their only position by far, and Jimmy really does have so much stamina. 'More than I do right now,' she reflects, feeling her eyes start to droop. She used to cheat, drawing on the power of the cosmos and getting a reputation with him of being insatiable, but now she's just tired. Her head is heavier than when she'd been caught drifting off at her desk.

"I remember once," Darla continues, "we drove to New York, the two of us, to see Cher perform in 'La Bohéme'." She sighs heavily. "She really does - did - have such a beautiful voice. Okay, it wasn't Lincoln Center, you probably need contacts as much as talent to get there," she sighs, "but it was spectacular nonetheless. We went to Junior's later, the food was great, but the cheesecake - to die for."

'Would she get mad if I lay back?' Michelle thinks wistfully. 'Better not, her sister died on this bed.' She's not sure how Darla can sit here and wonders if it means anything that she can.

But keeping her eyes open is becoming more of a chore.

xx

Gibbs and DiNozzo step out onto the curb in front of 'Strucker's Lumber, Est. 1894'. Old Mr. Strucker, possibly not the original but DiNozzo isn't sure, had been helpful though not informative. Ventura had indeed been there the evening before last to pick up molding, lumber and other supplies. Strucker and the agents had gone over the list of several months worth of orders, but Gibbs found nothing remarkable in any of it.

Even the latest order was well explained - Ventura was going to build a trio of dog houses before getting the dogs. Apparently, though Darla prefers cats, Robert had always wanted dogs. It was a simple explanation, right up to the point where the order had been picked up at 2:30.

Looking up and down the street in an attempt to get a better sense of the town, Gibbs wonders "If Ventura had the stuff at 2:30, why'd he tell his wife it wouldn't be ready until after dark?"

"Did he?" That's one of the problems when the only testimony comes from the witness who's the potential suspect. "She said he got in at ten."

"Let's assume he did."

"Okay. If he did, he hung around town with a car full of building supplies for over 5 hours." He looks about the intersection. "Doing what?"

"Let's find out."

DiNozzo grins. "I know what I'd do."

"Yeah, DiNozzo, I know. But he hadn't seen his wife in three months. Not knowing Keitt was there, he'd figure she's been just as lonely."

"You mean why get take-out when he's got an entrée waiting at home?"

Gibbs' hand comes up fast but he reconsiders and doesn't strike. "Yeah."

"All right, if he did go straight home, then did he and the Missus kill Keitt?"

"If so, I hope there's a motive. It's not money, her insurance is twenty thousand. If something was going on between Ventura and Keitt, whose motive covers Keitt's death? Darla Ventura says he didn't know she was up there, but if he did know then why kill her where only two people could be the suspects? Why not take her out in Brooklyn? And if they did kill her, why the mad dash down the hill? It wouldn't be to get help; he'd take his time for that. And that much weight added to the car, Abby says an additional 600 pounds, would throw the inertia off on that turn. We did it at 49, he'd've had a harder time with it but he could've made it. He knows the road in light and dark."

"Break fluid," Tony reminds him.

"I haven't forgotten, but like Abby says, it's too hinky. The fluid seemed new, what mechanic changes it and doesn't notice a leak in the line? With as much as leaked into the driveway, Ventura should've noticed something long before the crash."

The more Gibbs turns this case over in his head, the worse he likes it. "Let's look around; see if he did stay in town until dark."

xxx

Michelle, mentally drifting, gradually becomes aware that something is missing in the conversation with Darla Ventura. It takes her some time, but eventually it comes to her that what's missing is words.

She forces her head up. All unnoticed, it had drooped forward. Opening her eyes is almost too much of a challenge. Focusing, blinking away sleep and refocusing, she finds Ventura slumped against the footboard, apparently asleep.

It slowly filters through Palmer's sleep-addled mind that this is wrong. Sitting up is a chore but, fighting her own lethargy, she manages to get further down to the end of the bed. She grasps and shakes Ventura's shoulder. "Mrs. Ventura?" No movement. "Mrs. Ventura?"

This is too wrong. She pushes herself off the mattress and staggers, clutches the bedpost but nearly misses, nearly slams to the floor. She clings tightly to the wood, the room tilting. Her body feels like it weighs five hundred pounds. She shakes her head hard, can't clear it, lets go of the post, takes a step and staggers when the room tilts in the other direction.

She barely catches her balance, wobbles drunkenly. 'Wrong ... Something's ... I... Door ... got to...'

She takes a step toward the door and the room tilts again. She forces another and the room goes out. She feels herself stumble in a dreamlike fugue, barely feels any pain when her knees bang to the floor. She doesn't know she's falling forward, doesn't feel-

xx

Gibbs and DiNozzo return to the car and get in. All the people in the places they'd visited where Ventura had been seen agreed on one point: he was in town well after two thirty. He'd shopped, had gotten a haircut, had bowled two games with friends and then had a meal in the Continental Diner.

"Not in much of a hurry to get home," Gibbs muses.

"The missus said he thought he was getting an extra-hot meal when he got in," DiNozzo counters.

"None of this makes sense."

"Ziva found Keitt had a Life Insurance policy for $20,000," Tony reminds him. "Darla's the beneficiary."

"But that was the only one."

"And it's hardly worth it when together they pull in close to ninety grand."

Gibbs puts the car in gear and his cell phone rings. Driving one-handed, he pulls it out. DiNozzo's relieved the call came now rather than when they're back on that hill. "Yeah, Gibbs."

/Ziva. I am looking over Commander Ventura's credit card purchases from three months ago and found something unusual. While he was stocking up on all the building supplies, he also ordered 775 square feet of quarter-inch thick plastic./

Gibbs snaps the phone shut, tosses it on DiNozzo's lap and presses hard on the accelerator. The engine roars and DiNozzo clutches the door as the car launches toward the road back to the hill.

"What is it?" DiNozzo demands when he gets the belt secured against G-forces that left half his blood back at that far curb.

"Get Palmer on the speaker."

All of their phones have the same speed dial codes for this reason. DiNozzo grabs the discarded phone from the seat between them, activates it and the speaker buzzes and buzzes and buzzes. "She's not picking up," he reports unnecessarily.

Gibbs stomps on the accelerator, tires shriek and G-forces slam the men backward into their seats.