Author's note: My readers may notice I am posting this a couple days early. Well, I'm leaving for a sci-fi convention tomorrow and I'll be gone the whole weekend, so I figured I might as well post this early. Enjoy!

Greg did not, in fact, regain his powers of coherent speech until Viola had finished her toilette (which left her every bit as blue as when she started) and uncoiled her spine, settling herself in a perfectly normal sitting position by the dressing-room table, crossing one knee delicately over the other, and tilting her head at him in a charmingly attentive pose. Then she tilted her head the other way, peering at him critically.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" she said with a laugh, "Relax, already – I won't bite you or anything. You'd think this was the first time you'd been in the same room as a girl."

Greg had found in the past that attempting to consciously relax oneself in certain stressful conditions tended to have quite the opposite effect, so he was not entirely surprised that it didn't work this time, either.

"Do yo-u—" His voice cracked slightly and he cleared his throat. Suddenly his pulse was roaring in his ears, and he felt like he was going through puberty all over again. "Do you know a Charlie Bucket?"

"Not for a while now," she replied, "Not since the Chocolate Factory, anyway. I heard he got a pretty sweet deal, though, working as Wonka's apprentice. Why do you ask?"

"He's dead."

"Dead!" Viola's blue eyes widened in shock, and one hand flew to her mouth. "Dead how?"

"We suspect foul play."

"But that's stupid – who'd want to kill Charlie? I though he was a bit of a loser early on in the tour, but afterwards I looked back and thought he was kind of nice."

"What changed your mind?"

"I got juiced."

Greg blinked. "You mean… juiced as in… drunk?"

"Come on, I was twelve. I mean juiced as in what you do to a lemon to get the lemonade out."

"I'm… still not sure I follow." Greg had a very bizarre mental picture in his head right now.

"Okay, first off, if someone like Willy Wonka tells you not to chew a stick of experimental gum because not all the glitches were out of it, do what he says."

"It turned you blue?"

"It turned me into a blueberry," she replied, as casually as if this were a perfectly normal effect for untested chewing gum, "A really big blueberry. And I think something happened when they juiced me. You know the stuff in lemons that makes them really sour?"

Greg nodded, at last on familiar ground. "Citric acid."

"Well, I think when they took me to the juicer they squeezed the sour stuff out of me, too."

"Oh. Well, that's… good?"

"And I was as flexible as a rubber band afterwards, so it was no big loss. Of course, I'm still blue – but I've turned that into a plus."

"What about the other kids on the tour? Have you been keeping up with them since?"

"A little bit. I heard Mike Teavee developed a morbid fear of televisions."

"How can you have a fear of televisions? They're everywhere."

"Well, you know that one girl in The Ring whose friend got munched in the first scene?"

"Yeah?"

"And later on she was in the mental ward because she thought the TV was going to eat her?"

"I gotcha. I bet there's a story behind Mike's fear."

"Nothing a couple years of therapy couldn't cure. His dad bought stock in Wonka Chocolates soon after, so I bet it got really exciting in the Teavee household later on." She waved a hand dismissively. "Mom liked to keep up with the beautiful people. Now that the Teavees are divorced and Mr Teavee is rich as hell she thinks she's got a chance with him. Whatever."

"Have you heard anything else?" Greg did enjoy hearing the gossip, but gossip wasn't going to solve a murder case.

"I understand Mrs. Gloop put Augustus on a severe diet after they got back to Germany. Last I heard he was the spokesman for powdered diet shakes in Europe."

"What about Veruca Salt? Keeping up with her?" This was the question he most needed an answer to.

Viola looked at him. "We've kept in touch – why?"

Argh. Too heavy-handed. Grissom was really the king of the subtle interrogations.

"We met up with her in Vegas," he explained, "Apparently she's been coming to watch you perform. Not that I blame her – you're amazing up there." He grinned.

She smiled in return, clearly flattered by his compliment. Score one point for the lab rat.

"Yeah – she likes to be seen at a big show like the Cirque – doubly so if she can say that she actually knows one of the performers."

"Has she been coming to the Cirque all week?"

"Well, ever since she inherited her daddy's peanut business she's certainly rich enough to. The thing is…" She trailed off and stopped.

"What thing?" Greg prompted.

"Never mind. It probably isn't important."

"One thing my boss always taught me, no clue is ever unimportant." He hoped he looked and sounded serious enough to convince her.

"Well, the funny thing is, I didn't see her in the audience on the fourth."

"Well, something like that draws a crowd, right? Especially on the Fourth of July."

"I didn't just miss her," Viola replied sharply, "You don't 'just miss' people sitting in the first row. Especially if it's the same seat every night."

"And if they make a point of being seen?"

"Exactly! I bet you have to deal with the bourgeoisie every day."

Greg thought of all the DNA samples he'd processed over the years while holed up in his lab very far away from what Viola called the Beautiful People. "Yeah, sort of."

"So, is there anything else you'd like to know? I want to help any way I can."

Okay, Sanders, play it cool. You're about to Ask For Her Phone Number. "I don't have any other questions right now… is there a number where I can reach you in case anything else comes up?"

"Well, I could give you my manager's pager…" She smiled. "Or you could just leave a message on my cell."

Greg experimented in consciously not sweating as he replied, "Your cell would be good."

"All right." She found a pen, and then glanced around briefly. "Do you have something to write on?"

He stood up, patting his pockets in the strange Macarena of one who has misplaced his keys, but failed to locate a notepad. Of all the things not to bring along…

"Oh, for heaven's sake. Here." She grabbed his wrist and wrote ten digits on the back of his hand in hot pink gel pen. "There. You can write it down properly when you get back to the police station, okay?"

Greg gazed at the phone number that now graced his hand with something akin to wonder. He valiantly did not cheer, though in his mind he was performing an endzone dance. "Th… thanks," he stammered, "Um. Have a good evening, then."

He made it into the car and shut the door before he let out a whoop of victory. The Tahoe was well-insulated, so that anyone looking in from outside saw only a silent pantomime of the one-man victory party going on in the front seat.

The party was cut short, however, when Greg felt a deep, vibrating shockwave jolt the floorboards of the vehicle. When he looked around, he distantly saw the distinctive red glow of fire a fair distance down the Strip. The jolt had been an explosion!

"Shit," he muttered under his breath, as he got the car started and peeled out towards the scene. Steering with one hand, he dialed his cell with the other.

"This is Greg Sanders of the Crime Lab!" he shouted into the phone, "I'm en route to the site of an explosion on the Strip – I need to talk to Captain Brass immediately! Jesus—!" He jerked the steering wheel to avoid a collision with an SUV. When he'd reached the other side of the othervehicle, he caught his first glimpse of the scene. "Shitshitshitshitpleaseno…"

But there was no mistaking the charred, slightly canted sign in front of the flaming wreckage, with its jolly image of the familiar purple ringmaster that was Willy Wonka.

"Brass here," Greg distantly heard the gruff police captain through his cell. He felt sick and didn't really want to respond.

"Captain…" He managed to croak, "The Wonka shop has exploded. I'm coming up on the scene now. Send fire crew, ambulances, paramedics, everything you got. We… we probably got injured. There were a lot of people camped out in the parking lot." He finally pulled into the lot and swallowed hard.

"I'll send Nick and Sara out to take over for you, okay? Just stay put."

"Yeah, that… that would be good."

He clicked the phone shut and let it drop to the seat, wondering, through a fog of shock, who would possibly be twisted enough to firebomb a candy store.