Previously on The Mysteries of Laura, The Mystery of the Convict Mentor brings back their former Captain turned killer. He heard a lead from prison from a cold case he knows kept Laura up at night. Laura trusts her gut and follows his lead and actually closes the cold case. Even though she hasn’t completely forgiven Dan Hauser yet she hugs him at the end of the episode which helps ease his guilt. Also we find out Bose and Soto are secretly dating, well not too secretly because Laura already knows all about it.
Ok now to the last episode, The Mystery of the Watery Grave. The episode starts off with a 911 call from a girl that says she is being chased down in the car by motorcyclists, during the call the line goes dead and her car is found in the river, with what appears to be a smash in the front windscreen from the victims head, however, the body is not in the car and Reynaldo thinks it might have been washed away in the accident, the license in the car belongs to Isabel Van Doren, wife of Terrence Van Dorn publisher of the New York Ledger.
Laura and Jake head over to the husband, Terrence and he sounds upset and heart broken, he didn’t even know she left in the morning. Jake mentions a motorcycle appears to be involved and Terrence says that it wasn’t an accident because an article was recently published in the New York Ledger about motorcycle flash mobs. After the article was published he had been getting death threats and because Isabel was driving Terrence’s car they could have mistaken it to have been Terrence in the car.
Meredith catches a lead about the motorcycles and knows where they will be so she goes undercover as a motorcyclist, however, that doesn’t last long because one of the guys get angry at a car and smashes their window, causing Meredith to pull out her badge and knock him out.
They bring the guy in for questioning and Jake interrogates him, he has an alibi for the night the 911 call was made and tells Jakes that his group of bikers wouldn’t have acted in violence towards the Van Dorns because they had currently filled a lawsuit about the misleading article published about them and were looking to get over $1 million when they won the case.
So the bikers are out of the questions, who else would have motive you say? Well the Ledger has made a lot of enemies with the stories they have covered so any one of his enemies could have run Isabel off the road.
Jake goes back to see the grieving husband to get a list of all the people sending hate mail, when he finds him going into the office trying to do things other than at stay home and think of his wife. Terrence asks his assistant, Beth, to give everything Jake asks for, she tells him of Terrence’s ex brother-in-law from his first wife, Claire, who died in a tragic kayaking accident, which the brother strongly believes didn’t happen and he killed her himself.
Laura brings the brother in for questioning and he tells Laura how nothing Claire did for Terrence was ever good enough and he used to hit her and she used to cover it up.
Bose listens to the 911 call again, trying to listen to the make and model of the bikes and she believes everything in the call was fake and staged to make it look like Isabel was run off the road. Laura remembers there being a plastic bag found in the car and she figures there must have been ice in there to hold down the accelerator and would have melted when it hit the water.
Their current theory is that Terrence killed Isabel then staged the murder and called 911 played the fake call and then made the car run off the road, the perfect murder. How are they going to prove it, well they do have a fantastic team, I think they will be fine. Jake spots a water taxi in the crime scene photos and figures the husband could have fled the scene by that mode of transport but when they ask the driver he doesn’t remember seeing a guy that fits Terrence’s description, he does however say yes when Laura shows him a picture of Isabel. Which is impossible right, she is the victim here, or maybe she is the one that staged the murder to get away from her husband.
Laura and Jake looks at the cameras where the water taxi docked and they don’t have any solid evidence just a woman they kind of looks like Isabel with a hood over her head and baggy clothes. While they are looking over this evidence, Terrence comes into the precinct to have a word with Santiani. He basically threatens Santiani that her detectives are not doing their jobs and will take the case from her and have it reassigned, however, Santiani reassures him her team is doing everything they can to find out what happened to his wife. Oh that Terrence is a huge arse and Santiani sees right through that and lets them try to find Isabel.
Laura finds out Isabel used to go to a women’s right place to donate money to, when Jake and Laura head over there they realise the lady in charge seemed really close to Isabel and by any chance she would have known about Terrence hitting Isabel and she would have helped her escape. Max looks at her finances and sees she rented a truck that Isabel used when she got off the water taxi; thankfully the truck has GPS that Meredith is able to hack into and finds a hotel at the nearest locations that fits Isabel’s description.
Laura heads over there by herself to see if she can talk to Isabel, woman to woman. When she gets there Isabel has a gun to her because she is scared if Terrence has her also on his pay roll. Laura managers to claim her down and she hears Isabel’s side of the story. She tells Laura how he used to hit her and only recently he kicked her until she passed out and when she came to he kicked her again and threaten to kill her like he killed his previous wife. Laura promises not to make Isabel go back and to find a way to get Terrence behind bars.
So now that we know that Terrence was behind his first wife’s death we can jump to the quick facts of the case; Laura needs to prove that Terrence killed his first wife, Claire. They get their hands on the original file for when Claire’s death was ruled an accident, the only interview they conducted was with Terrence’s assistant, Beth, which she swore that she saw Claire get onto that Kayak and the police ruled it an accident.
Jake goes to Beth to try and get the truth about her not seeing Claire that day, she admits to it but Terrence’s lawyers come before she could say anything else. Terrence goes to the press and tells them all about Laura and Jake not doing their jobs probably and they shouldn’t be working together because they are ex-husband and wife. Despite him saying this Santiani is on Laura’s side, for once, and gives her permission to take down the SOB, sorry for the language.
They get to search his house without a warrant, using the press against him because if he denies a search it would make him look guilty, they don’t find a body but traces of where the bones were buried, he has moved the body.
While following a different lead Laura realises that in previous interview with Isabel’s assistant he said that Terrence adored his mother and still visited her grave every week for the pass year, however, when talking to an art dealer he said Terrence hated his mother.
Laura figures out that he must’ve been bringing Claire’s remains one by one hiding it in his family’s crypt. She brings Isabel out of hiding to give Laura permission to enter because only family can give that permission and she finds the bones of another person other than his mother in the grave.
This scene when they confront Terrence with the evidence of Claire’s body was very well done. He thinks he has bet them again when he realises they would have had to go into his family’s crypt and without permission the evidence found wouldn’t be held in court, however, when Isabel walks around the corner and says she gave them permission, his face is priceless. Even though he thought he was always one step ahead of the investigation Isabel was at the finish line.
We find out that Santiani was in an abusive relationship and that’s why she was on Laura’s side to catch Terrence and Jake tells Laura she doesn’t have to forgive him just yet but he isn’t going to give up and he wants to date her.
I really enjoyed this episode, usually we don’t know how the killer is until the last couple of minutes and this episode we knew by about half way down the episode. It was a nice change to how it was done. I would give this episode a 9/10 and I look forward to the new episode tomorrow, The Mystery of the Dead Heat.
