When the Grammy-winning gospel singer asked what was wrong, he replied, "They found her!...They found her upstairs and I'm not going back up there."
Cissy couldn't get a clearer explanation from her son, she recalled, and finally she asked if her daughter was dead.
"I was told later that I screamed so loudly that the whole building must have heard me," Cissy wrote, "but my mind was absolutely blank, except for one thought: My baby was gone."
Back at the Beverly Hilton, investigators were combing Whitney's suite, trying to get a handle on what, exactly, had happened. At the same time, an A-list crowd was trickling into the hotel for Davis' party, unaware of what was transpiring upstairs.
The final coroner's report released in April 2012 stated that a "spoon with a white crystal like substance in it" was found in the room, as was "a plethora of prescription medication bottles," along with an open bottle of champagne, food and other personal items. A small mirror found in a drawer had "a white powdery substance" on it, the report also noted.
The autopsy determined Houston's official cause of death to be accidental drowning, with atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use "just probably immediately prior" to drowning listed as contributing factors.
Toxicology tests turned up traces of Benadryl, Xanax, marijuana and Flexeril, a muscle relaxant, in her system, but none were considered factors in her death, per the report. Assistant Chief Coroner Winter had told L.A.'s ABC 7 that Houston's prescriptions were "pretty normal" and quipped that he had more prescriptions than were found in her room.
The postmortem also detected mild emphysema (she had been rumored to be suffering from a lung ailment), pulmonary edema and benign tumors in her uterus, the report stated.
Whitney's body remained at the Beverly Hilton until 1:35 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 12, Winter later telling Vanity Fair, "The family maybe wanted to spend a few minutes with her before we loaded her off."
Bobby Brown was on tour with New Edition when he got the news of his ex-wife's death—"Just say a prayer for my daughter, say a prayer for her mother, and if you find the time please say a prayer for me because I am going to need it," he said onstage in Mississippi—and flew out to L.A. to be with his grief-stricken daughter Bobbi Kristina, who was briefly hospitalized twice in 24 hours after Whitney died.
Brown told Extra, "Obviously the death of her mother is affecting her; however, we will get through this tragedy as a family."