"What killed Kathy?" a retired blackjack dealer, Henry Fontana, 77, wondered Thursday as he and five friends ate lunch at a bagel shop near the Las Vegas Strip. "Everybody at this table has a theory. It's a potboiler, all right."

"Kathy" was Kathy Augustine, 50, a Republican state controller impeached and convicted by the Legislature in 2004. When she collapsed in Reno on July 8 and died three days later, it was reported that she had suffered a heart attack, although she was known to exercise regularly and appeared to be in good health.

Ms. Augustine's husband, Chaz Higgs, a 42-year-old critical care nurse, said he had found her, unconscious, in their bedroom.

But preliminary autopsy reports revealed no evidence of a major heart attack, and three days after his wife's death, Mr. Higgs was found bleeding in the bedroom of the couple's other home, in Las Vegas. He had slit his wrists, the police said. Mr. Higgs was treated at a local hospital and released but did not attend his wife's funeral in Las Vegas the next day.

Lt. Jon Catalano of the Reno Police Department said that the death was being investigated, adding that he expected toxicology reports by the end of July. "If she had had an obvious massive heart attack, we would've known that by now," Lieutenant Catalano said.

"There are questions," he added.

Those questions have cast some suspicion on Mr. Higgs, in part because of how he and Ms. Augustine came to marry. Mr. Higgs helped care for Ms. Augustine's previous husband, Charles Augustine, when Mr. Augustine was hospitalized after a stroke in 2003. He died a short time later at 63; the couple had been married for 17 years. Three weeks later, Ms. Augustine married Mr. Higgs, her third husband.

"People are definitely talking about it because they always thought Kathy was a little eccentric," said Robert L. Forbuss, a former chairman of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and a prominent Democratic activist. "The whole tie-in with her husband and previous husband is wickedly unusual."

In light of the mystery surrounding Ms. Augustine's sudden death, her stepson Greg Augustine, 36, is wondering what caused his father's death. Mr. Augustine said that his father had been improving and was moved to a rehabilitation ward just before he suffered massive organ failure and succumbed to what the death certificate said were complications from the stroke.

"We just chalked it up to natural causes, and Kathy married Chaz a few weeks later," said Mr. Augustine, of Thousand Oaks, Calif. "If the coroner comes back and says perhaps she was killed, the first thing I do is call the police and start an inquiry into my father's death."

Ms. Augustine's only biological child, Dallas, has said she will not comment until autopsy results are available. Her brother, Philip Alfano, of Modesto, Calif., issued a statement on Tuesday saying, "While our family hopes and prays she died of natural causes, we are extremely grateful an investigation has been launched."

Mr. Higgs did not respond to telephone messages left this week, and no one answered the door at his Las Vegas home. In an interview with The Las Vegas Review-Journal conducted the day before his suicide attempt, he said he was offended by suspicions voiced by Ms. Augustine's family that he might have been involved in her death.

"I loved this woman who died," Mr. Higgs said, using an expletive to describe the insinuations, which have spread beyond the family and can be heard from one end of the state to the other. "It is just crazy for people to assume I had something to do with it," he continued. "I asked for the autopsy. I want to clear it up. My wife was a healthy 50-year-old woman who dropped dead. I want to find out what happened. People don't know what went on in our home. She was frazzled and stressed out."

Yet the notion that Ms. Augustine was emotionally overwhelmed comes as a surprise to many who knew her. By all accounts a hard-nosed politician, she was impeached and convicted in 2004 for using state equipment in her 2002 re-election campaign. The Legislature censured her but allowed her to stay in office.

Rather than retreat from the political scene, as many Republican officials hoped she would, Ms. Augustine, barred by term limits from running again for controller, decided to seek the Republican nomination for state treasurer.

Her decision so angered the chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, Paul Adams, that he persuaded the party to pass a rule allowing it to withhold support from any candidate who had been impeached or convicted of a felony.

Ms. Augustine's major Republican opponent for treasurer, Mark DeStefano, said that at public appearances he was often asked his thoughts about the circumstances surrounding Ms. Augustine's death. "I just try to say something nice about her," Mr. DeStefano said.

Jon Ralston, a prominent state political pundit, said Ms. Augustine appeared on his television program 10 days before her death "full of energy and vigor." And when he spoke to her a few days before her collapse, Mr. Ralston said, she "was in great spirits, very optimistic."