The Wonka Chocolate Factory had been a veritable monument when it was built over thirty years ago, and even though London had grown up hopefully around it since like fawning groupies aspiring to the fame of a beloved rock star, it still dominated the skyline for five city blocks in every direction. Countless smokestacks punctuated the roof, lazily oozing white smoke into the atmosphere, while the buildings stacked below them promised the sort of mind-bogglingly huge factory floor space that would certainly be a bitch to search, if it came to that. The whole thing was surrounded by walls thirty feet high, a fortress of the Lord of Chocolate. Presently the wind shifted, and Grissom, Catherine, and Pierce were gently caressed by the spicy-sweet smell of brewing chocolate. Catherine sighed in olfactory ecstasy, and Grissom glanced at her curiously.

"I could stand here all day as long as the wind kept up," she confessed, with a hint of embarrassment.

"Catherine," Grissom said mildly, "It's only chocolate. Try to stay objective, please?"

"Scrooge," Pierce grumbled, "Let the woman have her moment."

"I just don't see what the big deal is," Grissom explained, "It's been well established that the sensation of pleasure that comes from eating chocolate is nothing more than a chemical reaction that produces endorphins. There's nothing… 'magical' about it at all. Wonka is a man, not a magician." With that he walked up to the gates and pushed the intercom buzzer.

"Do you have an appointment?" said a female voice a few feet above his head. He stepped back to regard the videoscreen that had just come on. A surveillance camera peered glassily at them from just above the monitor. And framed in the monitor was the monochrome image of yet another Oompa-Loompa, identical to the others save that she was wearing a suit and a strand of pearls with matching earrings. Grissom raised an eyebrow, and then smiled

"Doris, I presume?" he greeted her, then flipped open his ID and showed it to the camera. "Gil Grissom with the Las Vegas Crime Lab – we spoke on the phone earlier. This is my colleague Catherine Willows, and this is Detective Pierce with Scotland Yard. We have an appointment to see Mr. Wonka."

Doris nodded slowly, her expression never changing. "Just a moment while I open the gates for you. Detective Pierce will wait outside - Mr. Wonka doesn't like detectives much." The monitor went blank. There was a dull clank, followed by the clunkety-clunkety-clunkety of gears working very hard to open the huge gates. Catherine offered Pierce an apologetic look, which he answered with a shrug.

"Never managed to get in before this, why should he change now? I'll wait outside the front door. I expect a full report after, though, just so you understand."

They started through the gates, which looked as though they could very well close behind them and trap all three of them in there forever if Wonka so wished..

"You'd think he was keeping Godzilla in here," Catherine said as they entered the vast courtyard, lined on both sides with vibrant red Wonka trucks like sentries.

"Nope," Pierce said, "Just his dream."

The reached the steel doors that led into the factory, and Grissom was just raising his hand to knock when one of them was snatched open from within by one of the most shocking apparitions either Vegas CSI had ever encountered, though to be honest the competition for that honor was fierce in Sin City.

Meanwhile...

"Wait – what?" Warrick asked into the phone, "When?"

"What is it?" Sara asked.

Warrick put his hand over the mouthpiece. "Veruca split this morning."

"Shit."

"Well, did she say where she was going?" Warrick asked the concierge on the other end of the line. Then, to Sara: "Find out where 'home' is for her, could you?"

Sara flipped through Grissom's notes, which included the business card Veruca had given him. She picked up the card and glanced at it. "My guess would be New York."

"Okay, thanks for your help, ma'am." He rang off with the hotel.

"Fortunately, she was helpful enough to give us her cell." She handed the card to Warrick, who immediately started dialing. He paced as it rang. Finally someone picked up.

"Hello?" said a woman's voice.

"Hello, is this Veruca Salt?"

"Speaking, who's this?"

"My name is Warrick Brown with the Las Vegas Crime Lab. We'd like to ask you a few more questions about Charlie Bucket."

She sighed impatiently. "Look, I already talked to your people."

"Yeah, about that… funny how you didn't mention that you knew him from before – unless you forgot about the Golden Ticket Giveaway."

"Don't be stupid," Veruca snapped, "That was ten years ago. I'm totally past that by now."

"All the same, we'd like to ask you a few more questions on the matter."

"Well, I have a business to run in New York. I don't have time to answer a few more questions on the matter, and I'm certainly not about to come all the way back to Las Vegas just because you say so."

Warrick grimaced. "It would really be easier on all of us if you just cooperated."

"Don't you dare threaten me. I know how people work. Ever since I inherited Daddy's business, everyone's been trying to dig up dirt on me to smear the Salt name. Well, I'm not about to participate in this farce. I know my rights. Any questions you want to ask, you can direct to my lawyer."

Warrick scribbled down the name and number, and afterwards had never been so relieved to get off the phone with anyone in his life.

"Jesus," he said, cramming his visceral reaction to the entire conversation into that one word.

"Didn't go well?" Sara asked.

"I might need a crucifix if we manage to get her back here. She lawyered up so fast I think I got whiplash."

Sara grinned. "Then Brass is really going to enjoy extraditing her back to Vegas."

Looking at Willy Wonka was like almost like looking like some sort of confection on two legs. He was tall and lanky, made even taller by the addition of a black top hat which offset his burgundy suit in an Elegant Gothic sort of way. His brown hair (chocolate brown, Catherine couldn't help thinking) was shot with streaks of silver and framed his face in a vaguely disorienting pageboy bob. The portion of his face visible below his almost bug-eyed dark glasses was shockingly pale – what Greg might have called a "hacker's tan". Aside from that particular piece of real estate, Wonka was entirely covered, shielded from the outside world by every means possible, including a pair of dark purple gloves that Catherine was surprised to see were made of rubber or latex. A germophobe, maybe.

"Good morning!" he chirped at the investigators with a disquietingly broad grin, baring the sort of perfect white teeth that Grissom had seen in the mouth of the late Charlie Bucket. "You said on the phone that you'd come and now you're here, though it certainly took you awhile. You're pretty," he added to Catherine, apropos of nothing, but then continued unabated, "Come in, please, I don't get visitors very often, but that's why I usually keep the gates locked, to keep them out. Ha ha ha!." He turned sharply and vanished inside, leaving Grissom and Catherine no choice but to follow. Catherine offered Grissom an uneasy look, which he answered with a shrug.

They found themselves in a rather industrial-looking corridor, lined on both sides with utilitarian doors. The floor was polished to a mirror-shine, and their footsteps echoed hollowly.

"Just toss your coats anywhere you like, someone will get them," Wonka prattled on without looking back.

"We don't have any coats," Catherine protested.

The chocolatier stopped in his tracks and looked back at them as if the possibility had never occurred to him.

"It's the middle of July, Mr. Wonka," Grissom informed him patiently.

"Oh! Well that would explain it, wouldn't it?" Wonka smiled, satisfied by the solution to that mystery.

"Do you have an office where we can talk to you?"

"Well, this place seems as good as any to talk to me, which of course you already are – which only proves my point," Wonka replied briskly.

"I see that," Grissom said, conceding the point, "But I think you might want us to talk someplace a bit more… private."

Wonka tilted his head in almost kitten-like curiosity at Grissom's grave tone. He took off his sunglasses at last, revealing brilliant violet eyes that sparkled like a child's, even though according to their notes so far Wonka himself must have been at least fifty years old.

"Mr Wonka," Catherine finally said, "Do you know a Charlie Bucket?"

Wonka brightened. "Oh yes! Charlie's my assistant, though you can't talk to him right now, since he's not here. Nope – not anywhere in all of England. I sent him to Las Vegas in the States so he could oversee the opening of a specialty shop, and I expect him back in a few days." His eyes flickered back and forth between the two investigators for a moment, and his smile slipped a notch. "Er… why?"

"We're with the Las Vegas Police Department, working alongside the FBI," Grissom explained, "Mr. Bucket was discovered several days ago in the Nevada Desert, a few miles outside of Las Vegas." He took the postmortem photo of Charlie from his pocket and handed it to Wonka.

The chocolatier frowned. "That's really not a very good picture of Charlie – why he looks almost d…" He broke off suddenly. He looked at Catherine, and deep in those vibrant violet eyes she saw his world crumble. It was like watching a high-ride building implode, a common enough occurrence in Las Vegas. "I see," he said in a very small voice, "That's… that's very sad… I…" His voice broke. His lip started to quiver, and his eyes filled, then overflowed. His knees wobbled, and the two CSIs each took an arm and guided him to a seat on the cold linoleum, where he wept like a child.