Her final resting place in limbo, Anna Nicole Smith's body was embalmed Saturday and then locked away in a medical examiner's office.
After being searched for cameras and signing statements promising not to talk about, write about or draw any images of the model's corpse, two embalmers from a Fort Lauderdale funeral home began the work about 9:15 a.m. and finished around noon.
"They did a good job, and the body's able to be viewed," Dr. Joshua Perper, the Broward County medical examiner, told the Miami Herald. "She will look virtually like she looked in real life."
Following the embalming, Smith's body was placed in a black body bag and sealed with evidence tape, Perper said, and then stored in a refrigerated room.
''The body's well under lock and key and inaccessible to anybody who doesn't have the key,'' Perper said, per the Herald.
Smith died Feb. 8 at age 39. Perper's initial autopsy proved inconclusive; he is awaiting the results of toxicology tests before making an official finding.
Her body was ordered embalmed on Friday by Broward County Circuit Judge Larry Seidlin. Seidlin had waited until a DNA sample was taken on Thursday as part of a paternity dispute over Smith's five-month-old daughter, Dannielynn.
The judge has called for more hearings beginning Tuesday to determine who will take custody of the remains. Smith's companion, Howard K. Stern and her mother, Virgie Arthur.
Stern wants the body buried in the Bahamas alongside her late son, Daniel. Arthur wants to take the remains back to Smith's hometown in Texas for interment.
Aside from the burial and paternity issues, the model's estate needs to be sorted out. Her will designates Daniel as her sole heir. But the document was signed in 2001; Daniel died last September, days after Dannielynn was born. Presumably, the infant stand to receive the bulk of Smith's estate, including any inheritance from late husband J. Howard Marshall's contested oil fortune.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the doctor who reportedly prescribed methadone to Smith while she was pregnant with Dannielynn said in a statement that the treatment was "medically sound and appropriate."
The remarks came a day after the Medical Board of California launched an inquiry into Dr. Sandeep Kapoor following a report on tmz.com that indicated he wrote a prescription for the former model in someone else's name.
Experts tell E! Online that while methadone is best known for treating heroin addicts, it can also be used as a painkiller.
Stocks of the drug were reportedly found in Smith's house in the Bahamas. A medical examiner has said that Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel, died last September of a heart attack brought on by lethal combination of methadone and antidepressants.