The Mystery of the Cure for Loneliness starts off with two young boys spying on their neighbours with a camera and them discovering the body which appears to be a drug over dose. It also appears Mr. Tony Abbott is back in the sack with Laura and likes to leave hickies on her neck for Jake and the entire precinct to see (I thought she was no longer seeing Tony, I like him and all but I don’t know he doesn’t seem right for her) however, back to the case, Laura is certain the scene in front of her is too neat for a suicide but Jake is ready to cross off murder as a possibility.
Nina Dickerson, 22 years old, is the victim on the floor in her apartment, Laura finds it odd that a she would set the dinner table for two and then kill herself. Reynaldo, their ME, has a look at the body and the victim has no hair on her at all, it appears she was a cancer patient. Jake finds an empty bottle of hemlock in the victim’s bin which makes his decision of suicide easy; however, Laura is still set on murder, for her the whole scene doesn’t make sense.
As Laura is leaving the crime she speaks to the landlady and finds out Nina was a nice girl but was very lonely before she was diagnosed with cancer but after she had much more people in her life that she always spoke with. The lady even tells Laura they spoke of dying together and Nina said she always wanted to be buried in a white dress because she was never married and wanted to wear it for something. Laura finds this fact odd, because if Nina really did want to kill herself she would have done it in a white dress, however, the dress Nina was found in was a dark blue floral dress.
Laura being her stubborn self (not saying it’s a bad thing if anyone was faking a suicide I would love her on the case) gives Captain Santini her doubts about the crime being a suicide, Santini doesn’t agree with her but accepts there is a lot of unanswered questions so she sends, against Laura’s wishes, Soto and Bose to the food delivery service that deliveries food to cancer patients in New York City, Love Reach.
Soto and Bose speak to the lady in charge of Love Reach and tell her of Nina’s death and how it might be a possible suicide. The lady doesn’t believe Nina was the type to end her life, Nina was a very strong individual that wouldn’t just give up. They find out who delivered last to her apartment and it was a guy named Ted Burns, however, when they catch up to him he says he wasn’t the last one to see her alive, when he left the apartment Maureen Ross, a grief support counsellor, was there with her.
Soto interrogates Maureen and she tells him that she would never have tried to hurt Nina, she used to drive her every Tuesday to chemo and just drop her off and pick her up later, no one ever saw her because Nina never wanted her to be seen as weak needing a lift to chemo. When Nina home she said she was feeling nauseous for broth and crackers.
This doesn’t make any sense for Laura because when they searched the apartment there was bags of junk food in her bin, unless there was no chemo. Her cooking in her apartment, her perfect nails they should have been ruined from the chemo. Laura runs off in a hurry to the ME office to confirm her theory, Reynaldo being ready for her, tells her there is no sign of cancer in Nina’s body and she has small hair growth on her head.
With this new development in the case Laura and Jake head back to Nina’s apartment to find evidence of her faking her cancer, at first they can’t find anything but then Laura uses her spidey-sense and looks in the dirty laundry basket to find a box of Nina’s wax machine and drugs to keep any fat off her, they also find a photo album of friends Nina had made through her fake-cancer.
Bose finds a blog that Nina’s has been writing about the different stages of her cancer, stage 1 through to 3 and as her cancer gets ‘worse’ the more people that are following her blog and her sickness, however, Bose finds a draft on Nina’s computer about remission. Nina was ready to dump the act of having cancer and pretend she got better, she already had the friends she wanted she wasn’t lonely anymore. With this evidence in front of her Santini has no choice but to approve of the investigation and admit it can’t be a suicide. With that Laura runs to the crime board and crosses out suicide and writes murder, I’d say she is pretty proud of herself.
Max brings over a visual of the money trail of the foundation, all the money has been drained from the account, however, April nor did Nina not touch the money because neither of their cards or cheques were used. Someone had skimmed their card and withdrew the money slowly from ATM machines. Soto and Bose retrieve the ATM footage and can clearly see the guy taking the money is a junkie, Soto goes to the park near where the ATM was because a lot of Junkies hang out there, he sees his guy and chases him down. The guy runs in an apartment building and gets to the roof he tries to make the jump across to another building and falls to his death, Soto tries to pull him up but doesn’t succeed.
Not all is lost the bag the junkie had on him was Love Reach merchandise and they find out he has a grandmother that is in the program and Ted Burns is the delivery guy on the job and same guy that delivered Nina’s last meal. Jake and Laura finish each other sentences by theorising what happened. Ted drained their account and figured they would be dead before anyone realised the money was missing, however, he found out Nina was faking it and helps her with the con. When Nina wanted to walk away from the scam Ted didn’t want her to stop so he killed her. This theory is confirmed when they find hemlock in his apartment.
Max looks up Ted’s financials and finds out a lot of people have changed their will before dying to add him in it, one person had left him a boat and Laura thinks that’s his escape route. Bose and Soto head down to where the boat is docked, however, they beat Ted there and he makes a run for it. Laura and Jake are there to chase him down and make their arrest. When they get Ted he admits to everything and has no remorse for what he has done. All the stolen money is retrieved and is going back to the foundation, Laura tells April that Nina faking her cancer was wrong but she did it for the right reasons, their friendship they had made was real.
The episode ends with Laura going home and Tony sneaking in the back to have some more fun time, however that is quickly interrupted by Jake because he was giving her a night light for the twins. Jake and Tony see each and have an awkward greeting and Jake says his goodbyes, Laura catches him before he leaves and wants to make sure her being with Tony is okay. He tells her he is okay with it but I’m sure he is hiding his feelings, they both are.
Out of ten I would give this episode a 7.5, I’m looking forward to tonight’s new episode, how about you?
