Episode Recap Highlights: Peter Graves! Scene from the Opening Credits!
The episode opens on a burglar breaking in at the residence of a fancy lady (who has just come home). You know she is fancy because she is wearing a fur coat, pearls, and has a very specific kind of telephone that you would expect an older elegant woman to have. Oh, and she has a secret "invisible" door (to the bathroom maybe) that continues the trim on the wall. She attempts a phone call (no one picks up) and then notices that someone has searched the wardrobe and desks (the burglar has hidden in the room with the secret door; I thought I spotted a small rug which is why I guessed bathroom). She crawls around the floor to find a music box and as she sings along with the box, the man comes back into her bedroom and strangles her with the pearls (using the pearls in a way that I don't think would actually kill a person).
Cut to the Seattle Airport with Peter Graves (Dr. Edmund Gerard) picking up JF for an impossible mission! She is holding this cute little Chinese baby for some nuns and we learn another skill of JF's - awesome, she knows Mandarin! And she doesn't hesitate to correct Edmund when he speaks Japanese to the nuns. We learn that JF will be doing a lecture seminar at Edmund's college where he is Dean of Students. JF and Edmund arrive as his office to meet his capable secretary Amelia (Lois Nettleton). Edmund manages to put his foot in it within 2 minutes when he says that Amelia acts like his wife. She and JF share a significant look and she laughs awkwardly to cover the tension. One would think a trained spy like Peter Graves would pick up on body language, social clues, and be more observant in general. Amelia offers to find JF a secretary/assistant during her lecture. We learn that Edmund and JF are old college friends. She tries to enlighten Edmund on Amelia's feelings towards him, but he brushes it off (of course).
We catch up with JF as her hotel room. A student, David (Andrew Stevens), comes by to flip expected gender roles by offering to be JF's secretary. He shows off his superior typing skills and exposits that he has only worked for women. She tries to dismiss him, but he does his best Ms. Gooch impression and quickly takes her dictation. JF is sufficiently charmed, and hires David.
We head off to JF's lecture, which seems to consist of her reading/acting a scene from her first book, The Corpse Danced at Midnight (and another scene from the opening credits!). At the end of the lecture, an English prof named Todd introduces himself and a woman, possibly his wife/mistress. JF arrives back a her hotel to find David reading and he convinces her to go with him to dinner at a nice restaurant. He just can't turn off the charm (to the point that I am finding it slimy, but that could be because I read a lot of Jane Austen in my formative years. Therefore I am suspicious of extra charming/smooth men). He also manages to insult his female contemporaries by calling them bubble headed. Thanks, dude. I'm sure there isn't one lady in the Seattle that also understood Vonnegut. He also touches JF way too much for my liking. JF picks up the tab, mentioning that she wants to treat a starving student. David says he never claimed to be a starving student. We cut to him with a wad of bills and JF noticing his nice car. But before we can question if David might be a gigolo, Lt. Andrews (Greg Morris) from Seattle PD is at the hotel to pick him up for questioning -related to the murder of Alison Brevard (the fancy lady!).
As David and JF leave the police station, she uses her superior observational skills to determine that they are being followed (hint, hint, Peter Graves). The next morning, JF meets up with Andrews and not-so-subtlety hints that despite what David told her, she know that the questioning was not routine. If so, why were they followed by the police last night? JF clutches her pearls as Andrews tells her to stay away from David despite his (David's) pretty face. She sets the record straight regarding her relationship with David and says she believes that he is innocent. Andrew insinuates that David is (basically) a gigolo and Alison was a client.
JF returns to her hotel room to find David already there (the maid let him in her room, which is a little bit creepy). JF notices that her briefcase was open and suspects that David looked throughout. When she tries to stop work for the day, David presents his side of the relationship with Mrs. Brevard. He claims that Alison hit his car while drunk and then wrote him a check to cover the cost of the car. Allison wanted to avoid involving the police or the insurance company. David says that they had dinner a few times but he didn't care for Alison's drinking problem (she looked rather tipsy in the opening scene, remember).
JF is hashing out everything with Edmund and as they head back to his office, we learn that David and Edmund know each other. JF seems to have gotten over the her hesitancy to work with him. We also learn that David doesn't have an alibi. This seems like it will be shortly remedied with a potential alibi witness calling JF to set up a meeting at an abandoned warehouse at 10pm. Sounds like a really safe idea! The potential witness is named Lila, who appears to be ready to file for divorce from Jack (a gem of a guy who gets in a semi-violent argument with Lila in public).
JF (wisely?) take a taxi to a late night meeting and see Lila collapsed, dead! Andrews and the rest of the police show up and he sends someone to pick up David. Turns out David was at home all night. David comes to the police station admitting that he was with Lila the night of Alison's death. David says that Jack has been threatening Lila in the vein of "If I can't have her, nobody can" (what a bummer that this still happens). Anyway, JF heads off to Dean Gerard's office and sets Amelia straight that JF is not interested in Gerard and is not her (Amelia's) competition. JF tracks down Jack who seems pretty blasé about Lila's death (at least act sad,dude! As a husband you are the number one suspect!). Jack says that lots of guys were interested in Lila, that David was only her friend, and that the real man of interest is Todd (the English Prof).
JF arrives late to her seminar, and uses it to hash out theories about the killer of Lila. She pushes pretty hard at Todd to see if Emily (his wife) would lie for him. JF arrives back at her room to find a note from David setting up another night time meeting, this time with Todd Lowery.
JF arrives at the English Department and finding the elevator out of order, she heads out the stairs after getting her Mace out of her pocket (nerd note: an out of order elevator and subsequent hike up some stairs was used to induce a heart attack in a suspicious retired judge in Agatha Christie's Towards Zero). She slowly goes up only to be pushed down a flight of stairs (scene from the opening credits!) with her Mace sadly rolling down the stairs. David quickly arrives on the scene; he went to find her after he heard about her altercation with Lowery at the seminar. Edmund and Andrews arrive at the hospital so see JF. Edmund accuses David of being the one that pushed JF down the stairs. Edmund reveals that Lila was with him the night Alison was killed (poor Amelia).
More that half-way through the episode, we catch our first glimpse of the (a green-screened) Space Needle with Edmund talking on the phone with Andrews. David has admitted to paying off Lila to create an alibi for him. Edmund gives JF some specifics about his relationship with Lila, namely he helped her get the job with Lowery which resulted in an affair. She wanted out, but couldn't get Lowery to let her go. She turned to Edmund for help (and they maybe had an affair). When Edmund and Lila were driving home from their meeting, someone tried to run them off the road (driving a dark blue or black car). We also get a look at Edmund's credit card, which looks like someone cut it out of cardboard and then did a mock-up of the MasterCard logo but changed it to BankMaster. Edmund accuses JF of being blinded by David's good looks and charm and she can't see him for the liar and murderer he is.
At the end of Lowery's class, JF rolls in to talk with him. She apologizes for pushing too hard in the lecture but he thanks her for knocking some sense into him regarding his relationship with his wife - (whom he calls "a terrific gal", how romantic). JF eliminates Lowery as a potential suspect by learning he owns a yellow station wagon. Andrews stops by to let JF know that they found the diamonds stolen from Alison Brevard. That lead them to the burglar which makes JF happy, but sheds no light on Lila's killer. She comes back to her hotel room to find David already there. When reminding him that she didn't want him to let himself into the room, he claims for have forgotten (creepy!). To get into a hotel room without a key takes quite a bit of effort and one would think during that time, he would have remembered that what he was doing was an invasion of privacy and explicitly against her consent. They have a mini-fight, and she determines that the person who called JF to set up a meeting didn't sound specifically male.
JF heads over to Edmund office to apply some heat to Amelia. JF tells her that Edmund is about to be arrested for Lila's murder as they have been seeing each other and his car was seen outside the warehouse where Lila was killed. Amelia is in disbelief and admits to driving a similar car to Edmund's. Amelia tries to pretend that she didn't know about Edmund's and Lila's affair (Amelia was the one that tried to drive them off the road). She (Amelia) admits to being the one that set up the Lowery meeting to scare off JF. Amelia tried to scare off Lila as well, following her to the warehouse. She killed her after Lila threatened to tell Edmund. He overhears Amelia's confession and tells her that he never knew that Amelia was in love with him. He claims that he could handle ending the affair with Lila, but Amelia is skeptical (as am I!).
JF and David meet one more time at the airport. David says that he is attracted to JF and that he is drawn to mature women, especially when they are bright and funny. JF tries to let him down easy but David is not hearing any of that. JF jokes that she may put him in her next book, but she isn't sure if he will be the victim, a suspect, or the killer (I think we can all agree, killer). We end with a very unsettling shot of David with a very intense expression on his face. I feel like these last 4 minutes are the beginning of a Lifetime movie about an obsessive fan. Creepy!
Show Stats:
Famous Guest Stars: Peter Graves (Mission Impossible), Greg Morris (Vega$ and Mission Impossible, but I don't think these two get the band back together and share a scene), Andrew Stevens (Dallas), Lois Nettleson (In the Heat of the Night).
Relative Count: 1 Nephew, 1 Niece
Body location: In an abandoned warehouse
Remaining Episode Count: 252
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