- Rating: 6.90
- Year of issue: 1984
- Genres: Crime, Comedy, Thriller, Drama, Mystery
- Countries: United States
- Duration: 48 minutes
Mystery writer finds herself investigating murders that occur around her.
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In this Pilot episode we are introduced to Jessica Fletcher, a recent widow, who lives in Cabot Cove, Maine. Jessica is an English teacher who becomes a mystery book author thanks to her nephew, Grady Fletcher. Grady submits his Aunts manuscript to a publishing company who loves it and publishes it immediately. It is a best-seller and Jessica goes to New York City to promote her new book. While there Jessica gets involved in a murder while at her publishers home for a costume party. When her nephew becomes a suspect of the murder, Jessica must find the real killer.
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A mysterious man who briefly stops by Jessica's house turns up dead – supposedly swept overboard during a hurricane before Jessica even met him.
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Jessica visits her niece Victoria ‘'Vicky’' Brandon in San Francisco, who tells her that her fiancé, New York would be-actor Howard Griffin, isn't working in life insurance as he pretended. The ladies go to Mr. Drake's night-club which Vicky found out he's somehow connected to, see he's performing there as drag-queen, and worse: during star Michael Dupont's act Howard runs out in panic after finding Drake's shot corps. Vicky believes in Howard's innocence unconditionally, even accepts his weird job, so Jessica is determined to help initially unappreciative SFPD …
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When Jessica hears on TV that director-producer Jerry Lydecker is turning the movie after her respectable mystery book The Corps Danced At Midnight into cheap slash junk with sex and gore, she flies to Hollywood to protest, but studio boss Marty Strindberg, who sends her a junior lawyer, and Lydecker have a contract clause she signed waving her rights to object. When Jessica intends to apologize to Lydecker, she finds him killed on he set, and becomes the only obvious suspect. Fortunately LAPD Detective Mack Brody, an amateur mystery writer himself, has enough faith …
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While Jessica attends a hunting party, someone tampers in the stables with the normally quiet horse of the rich host, Denton Langley, which suddenly goes wild and causes him to have a fatal fall, yet the drug test Jessica suggests is negative. The will on videotape gives his shocked relatives and estate staff peanuts, $15,000,000 goes to Denton's pet hound Teddy, who is shortly after found drugged after biting old local Isaiah Potts. Family lawyer Marcus Boswell, who is constantly called by his broker, is challenged by the human heirs' lawyer on account of the dog's …
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An intruder kills rich old lady Allison Brevard while burglarizing her townhouse. When Jessica goes to a college to give a mystery writing guest lecture, she takes a secretary for the first time, not an older woman as she expected but bright, charming, extremely efficient student David Tolliver. Just when they celebrated ending the work in a restaurant, the police gets David for questioning about Allison's murder, just because he was seen meeting her and accepted gifts and dinners. Jessica grants David the benefit of the doubt and follows up on a call to meet about an…
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Jessica isn't looking forward to tell Cabot Cove that her historical research for Founder's Day proves the captain was actually a pirate and fought on the British side, against Washington's troops. Businessman Charles Woodley lands in hospital after the surging of a car without driver which seemed to be pursuing local Ethan Cragg. Local inventor Daniel O'Brien, who devised a remote control system for cars before he was fired, denies having agreed to a meeting with his former employer Woodley, shortly after the car under remote control strikes again, killing Woodley's …
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When Jessica visits her Kansas relatives, police detective Lieutenant Bert Donovan's family, she is invited by theme park magnate Horatio Baldwin and firmly turns down his project for another one based on horror elements from her mystery books. Shortly after Horatio is found dead in his self-locked office, apparently suicide, but actually got a fatal blow on the head before the shot. After Erica Baldwin becomes a rich widow for the fourth time, she hires Jessica to prove it was murder so the life-insurance can be cleared. Horatio's secretary makes a false confession. …
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Invited by Leo Peterson, a former dancer who defected long ago, Jessica attends a Boston performance of the famous Soviet Russian Rostoff ballet. She guesses something is up when Leo gets a program from the bottom of the pile with a code; after the performance they are joined in his car by defecting star dancers Alexander and Natalia Masurov but hear on the radio that KGB security agent Serge Berensky has been found dagger-murdered in their dressing room, so Jessica gives them short-term sanctuary at her home while she snoops. KGB Major Anatole Karzof declares to be a…
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English hypnotist Cagliastro is fired by casino-hotel-owner Joe Kellijian, because he does his glamorous wife Regina. Jessica saves her editor's assistant Joan Germaine's bacon covering for making a date for her with Cagliostro as inspiration for another mystery book. They overhear the master dare local press journalists Bud Michaels and rookie Andy Townsend to be hypnotized before a revealing interviewer so they won't remember a word unless he's a charlatan as they claim, Joan gets them invited too but they're late; when the door is opened after a scary bang, …
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US Congressman Wendell Joyner gets a fatal heart-attack at ‘s party, arranged by Congressman Dan Keppner and dodgy lobbyist Harry Parmel, actually at a party for a potential successor, officially in his bed. The governor of Maine demands Jessica to fill in as federal legislator for a few weeks till the party can officially select a new Congressman. She keeps on Joyner’s staff for her short tenure, notably helpful driver-press agent Joe Blinn and administrative assistant Diana Simms. Detective Lieutenant Avery Mendelsohn tails Jessica and explains he suspects Joyner to…
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Grady Fletcher invites aunt Jessica to be his guest at a Broadway show he's doing the bookkeeping for and meet both his girl-friend and has-been movie star Rita Bristol, whose prima donna-attitude and drinking endanger the show that was to be her come-back and the launch of daughter Patti Bristol. They all dine with others including son Barry Bristol, director Marc Faber and banker Si Parrish, the principal investor. On the way home, Pati is shot in the spine by street mugger Manny Farkus, who gets a fatal bullet from Barry. To reluctant Barry's surprise, the show …
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Jessica is invited to New Orleans by TV station WDX, but arrives two days early by mistake, so her host Jonathan Hawley has 48 hours to show her the ‘Cajun paradise’ (French quarter). Jessica soon notices the jazz show circuit can be nastily competitive; then clarinetist Ben Coleman dies from an apparent heart-attack during a recording, as she presumed actually curare-poisoning, but why and how exactly? NOPD Detective Lt. Simeon Kershaw gets help from Jessica investigating Ben's private, artistic and business context, even smuggling…
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When Jessica's recently widowed niece takes a cruise to get away from it all, a would-be murderer follows her.
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Famous painter Diego Santana celebrates his sixtieth birthday on his Mediterranean island retreat with his second wife, ex, son Miguel, daughter, protégé and a few friends. He is nearly killed by a massive flower pot thrown down by a left-handed shadow, and asks Jessica, who arrives the next morning by helicopter with gallery keeper Sir John Landry, to investigate in secret, helped by first batch guest police inspector Henry Kyle, but Diego is soon killed on a walk with his own crossbow, the weapon son Miguel excels at, who took another guest, art collector in …
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While highly respected P.I. Archie Miles, who even teaches at the police academy, is working on the old Danbury scalpel murder case, involving judge Lambert, for Jessica's research, he is shot in his office. His rather shady, clumsier partner Harry McGraw contacts Jessica as Archie was working on only two other cases, about allegedly adulterous contractor Ernie Santini and editor Priscilla Daniels of Femininity Magazine, who suddenly backs down on her political ambitions. Detective Lieutenant Starkey confides into Jessica the police wouldn't mourn Harry getting rid of…
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Jessica inherits from uncle Cyrus a holding company, the only asset being the crucial 4% in the Leopards professional American football team which two groups control at 48% each, and executive lawyer Brad Lockwood fails to make her sign proxy powers for it before she checks it out herself. She meets player Zak Farrell, his wife Kathy and adopted mute daughter Jill. Businessman Phil Kreuger is dead-eager to buy Jessica out for one share-holders group and move the franchise to a bigger city, coach Pat Patillo bids against him for the other group which wants to keep the …
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Jessica sets out to clear the name of a friend who is a prime suspect in a murder case.
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On the bus back from a convention in Boston, Jessica, Amos Tupper and a slew of passengers are forced to take refuge from a fierce storm at a remote diner where one of the passengers is discovered murdered in his seat, stabbed.
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While in the hospital with a fractured leg, Jessica investigates the murder of a fellow patient.
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An unpopular comic's life is threatened, but guess who turns up dead?
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Jessica has to unravel the secrets and threats at the funeral of a friend in Wyoming.
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Jessica's friend has been murdered, so Jessica masquerades as a wealthy widow at a luxurious tropical hotel in an effort to trap the murderer.
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A cheap tycoon with many enemies is found dead on the construction site of his high-rise hotel.
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Jessica's niece, an actress in a daytime drama, becomes a suspect when the head writer for the show is murdered.
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Jessica arrives at Crenshaw to hold the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree at the local college. The preceding faculty party is animated by host Dr. Jocelyn Laird's daughter Daphne Clover, who jumps into the pool naked and her beefy, drunk New York lover Nick Fulton who knocks down Professor Ron Mercer and a vase with one punch, still shirtless. Next morning Jessica finds Nick's corps under a construction site as if he fell to his death, but that must be staged as he has no dust on his shoes. Local Police Chief E. Griffin, who knows Jessica from …
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Jessica's redheaded British cousin Emma McGill has her fly over to London to attend her ‘funeral’ as requested by last will, but actually it's a staged car accident so they can sleuth who is behind three incidents Emma considers but can't prove to be murder attempts, in her view for ownership of her old-fashioned Mayhew music hall, which is in financial trouble but valuable if sold -would be-buyers even awaited Jessica at the airport-, half of the profits would go to her late co-founder's wimpy son Archie Weems and his greedy spouse Violet. Jessica turns to a Scotland…
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Scott Lodge thinks his wife Francesca is going crazy and trying to kill him. But when a phone call from her supposedly dead first husband precedes the fatal incident, Jessica must unravel fact from hysteria to find a killer.
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Jessica's fellow guests at a remote inn include an obsessive birdwatcher, an enthusiastic nature lover who likes to streak through the woods, a rich jerk and his shy wife, and a devoted fisherman whose wife doesn't sit home waiting for him. When Jessica sees one guest push another into the lake, she's determined to understand what happened and why.
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Under instructions from big boss Tony, local mobster boss Vince Shackman leans heavily on race horse trainer Mike Gann to settle his gambling debts by fixing a race, which takes quite a lot, including making a Panamese illegal jockey be replaced ‘sick’ by greenhorn Tracy Macgill, a niece of Jessica, who made a stop-over on the way to San Francisco to see her debut. When Tracey is arrested for the tranquilizer gun murder of Jack Bowen, Jessica fears the police won't solve the case and takes crash courses in betting and running a stable while investigating everybody …
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During Jessica's lecture in a woman's prison with an all-female staff, the doctor is found, killed by a morphine injection, with convict Mary's fingerprints on, but this is proven not to be the murder weapon. Next there is a revolt, which takes Jessica hostage but is ill-prepared: even the demands are a matter for debate. Jessica is now asked to investigate, and while she digs into malpractices apparently involving warden Gates, who has political ambition, and conflicts involving staff as well as prisoners, another staff member is killed. Jessica discovers things are …
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Amos eagerly retires, handing over his sheriff's star to real estate agent Harry Pierce, but then Beverly Gareth is found electrocuted in her bath. She was the heir to land of vital importance to Friedrich Hoffman's environmentally horrible 400 condos Cabot Cove coast development project. The town is flooded by gossip letters badmouthing -at least part are lies- Beverly, only one of which was sent by Elvira Tree, who is next found hung. Jessica, her guest New York travel reporter Michael Digby and Amos discover both women were murdered, how, by whom and why; meanwhile…
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Jessica visits Dr. Seth Hazlitt at the New Mexico archaeological dig paid by Gideon Armstrong, led by Southwest University professor Dr. Stan Garfield, on the site of an Anasazi village, and perhaps Coronado's legendary city of gold, to which story TV celebrity Dr. Aubrey Benton holds the rights. Every evening an Indian ghost costume wearer sings on a cliff, till Armstrong's guards climb up scare him off, but on Jessica's second night Gideon's young wife Cynthia shoots at him and local Navajo Indian guide Raymond Two Crows -already found suspiciously uninformed about …
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Jessica's nephew Grady is applying for a job with the Lila Lee Cosmetics empire. Lila's brother and partner Norman tries to soothe wounded feelings as Lila Lee tyrannizes their employees. Jessica is delighted to see former student Elizabeth Gordon, Norman's intended fiancée. When she's murdered, Jessica finds the killer.
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After Mark Lee Reynolds's wife Stephanie has a car accident which at best leaves her cripple for life while he is wounded at the left shoulder, criminal John Detweiler who sees him picking up a woman in a bar where he tries to drink some courage calls her jealous husband, goon Cliff Anderson, who knows his Becky is serially unfaithful. Jessica is foreperson of the jury which must decide if Mark committed murder or only killed in self-defense. She makes everyone go over the crucial witness and expert testimonies during the trial and slowly makes them shift focus from …
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Bo Dixon is getting desperate as all his diner customers, even sheriff Tupper and his former waitress Cornelia, desert to the Joshua Peabody Inn on the Interstate. When he checks out the competition during breakfast and sees the owner Floyd Nelson row with the pseudo-French chef Alan Dupree, who wanted out of his three year contract by getting fired, there is a mild case of food poisoning and a fatal one: businessman Harrison Fraser III's wife Wilhelmina's best friend Betty Fiddler. While Dr. Seth Hazlitt calls in haughty health inspector Margo Perry and concludes on …
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When her friend Professor Ames Caulfield takes Jessica along to recover in the country after a literary conference, his car breaks down in southern Roper County, they'll have to stay a few days in the inn of Cassie Latham Burns, to his amazement a former student of his, whose charming adolescent son Matthew performs Country in Frank Kelso's saloon. Ames witnesses how the kid is publicly humiliated by slutty waitress Linda Bonner's brother Ed and his goons, including service station employees Andy Crane and Billy Willetts, all storm out furious and shouting threats. …
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In Oklahoma, Electrical Cathedral TV preacher Willie John Fargo gets Jessica's philanthropist friend Carrie McKittrick to leave his church most of her family's oil fortune by last will. After a heart-attack provoked by her stepson Harvey McKittrick and his son Sam McKittrick's opposition to the will, Carrie dies in the Cathedral's hospital, from cyanide poisoning. Now the heirs produce a deathbed will leaving everything to the family again, which Jessica proves to be posthumously ‘signed’ by Sam holding her hand. Examining the trails of the fatal syringe in the …
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Celebrity Richard Bennett gets Jessica to bid for him in San Francisco on suicided fellow star friend Evangeline's diary to destroy it. Before the auction she witnesses security guard Albert Cromwell reporting to auctioneer William Readford a failed offer of $5,000 to steal it for Evangeline's therapist Dr. Sylvia Dunn. At the auction, Richard's corpse is found in an armoire. SFPD Lt. Casey nearly arrests Jessica, speculating his check was made out in her name, but still doesn't do after Readford is found murdered too just when Jessica comes return to him the diary …
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Cabot Cove financial adviser Henry Burning is scheduled to be cremated suspiciously quickly after dying on vacation in Fransdale with his wife and sole beneficiary Connie Vernon, who claims it was a heart-attack but is accused during the church service of killing him by his mistress Phyllis Walters; when the closed casket gets knocked over, it contains another man's corpse. Amos wants to solve this case himself, while Jessica has a manuscript deadline, and gets on great with the widow. Phyllis implores Jessica to find her lover's killer, claiming Henry was ready to …
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Jessica is unhappy her nephew accountant Grady Fletcher's new employer is the publisher Christopher Bundy, who just purchased the magazine Literary Lines which is to run one of her stories and transformed it from classy content to ‘centerfold’ thrash. When they visit him in the villa where he lives with his sister Rachel and her son Tony and daughter Vanessa from different marriages, Bundy convinces her to stay the night and meet with his lawyers and assures her the security cameras record only images, no sound, and not in bedrooms. Jessica convinces the magazine's …
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Jessica is the guest of honour opening the children's fund benefit exhibition tournament in Elliot Robinson's Green River Racquet tennis club, where her young friend Carol McDermott has a managing position. Brian East, Carol's charming fiancé who dumped haughty fellow tennis player Cissy Barnes for her, is killed by a dynamite explosion in the car he borrowed from Carol. Investigating detective lieutenant Tad Travis is a fan of Jessica, but is killed by knife when he visits Carol at home; she claims the killer is her beloved sister Barbara, an alcoholic who was buried…
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Jessica goes to New Orleans during the Mardi Gras festival to check on cousin-in-law Calhoun ‘Cal’ Fletcher as promised to old aunt Mildred. As her hotel was only booked from the next night, she goes straight to Cal's place, but the only man in the Cyrano de Bergerac costume she was told he wears ignores her and storms with drawn sword into a room besides the party hall from where a fight is heard, which leaves a real corpse, Johnny Blaze, with Cal written in blood besides him. NOPD Lt. Edmund Cavette concludes from her eye for murder scene details who Jessica is and …
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Just when Jessica visits her Cedar Heighs senior friend Lloyd Marcus, who insists to show her a manuscript ‘from a friend’ to read and comment on, the mysterious local art thief strikes again, right there on houseman Forbes's day off, as he does every few months without any witnesses. Next day they find his daughter Julia is robbed in her home, but also killed. Jessica, rather then police chief Cooper, who retired from the NYPD, investigates, examining the crime scenes, neighbors, friends, other art owners…
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Favorite aunt Jessica arrives three days before the society wedding of Carol Bannister, who is convinced the silver leprechaun she receives among the wedding gifts is from her grandfather, Jessica's late husband Frank's brother Neil Fletcher, who is presumed dead. When the antiques salesman sort of recognizes his picture as the out of town buyer, Jessica guesses right he may be among Edgar Carmody's family circus which was in town then, and goes snooping there. She in on Neil's rail, as he works there as roustabout under the name Carl Schulman, as Edgar knows. Neil/…
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Only when Jessica tells Neil, who inflicted himself a nasty wound, that Charlie's bat was taken away by bully Hank before his murder, he admits he only took the blame to protect the kid before running after finding the bloody bat behind the corpse. Roustabout Brad Kaneally swears his hands are always roughed up, from work. Then there is another staged near-accident and Harry Kingman is found strangled in an inn while Neil is still in jail on the mayor's orders, sheriff Lynn Childs decides to brave him and help Jessica, who makes Brad tell her that he is a former boxer…
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When lieutenant detective Barney Kale is offered a trip around the world at his third and final retirement, he announces to delay it till Spring to finish full-time what he considers his only unsolved murder case, his friend Lowel Dixon's drowning ten years ago at Juniper Lake in the midst of a property development scandal. Local motel proprietor Jake Sanford informs everyone who was into it, including Seth Hazlit. Worying doc may get in trouble, Jessica and Amos go looking, and find ex-con Gary Roberts shot in Kale's cabin, the cop claims his accident at the lake …
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Another convoluted Michael Hagarty story, this one featuring hidden pasts, a secret society, and a murdered Embassy employee found clutching a white rose.
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Visiting her niece Victoria Brandon Griffin, Jessica finds her crumbled by her job in advertising to give husband Howard financial comfort to pursue his acting career, while he feels guilty for being a kept man. However Vicky gets arrested after finding her mean boss, Larry Kinkaid, skull smashed with an award her fingerprints are on, just after she resigned refusing to court a married client. Jessica forces NYPD lieutenant Spoletti to look further, notably the security guard's list of building visitors, including an obvious alias she traces to Christine Clifford, the…
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Retired Navy Dr. Wylie Graham takes a yacht in Cabot Cove near his friend Seth while working in the nearest hospital. Ladiesman David Everett, a former flame of Jessica, is in town to have an 18th century treasure ship found by four young people who entered a tontine: the survivors inherit any deceased member's share. Just after they locate the ship, diver Bill Ainsley had a nearly fatal accident, probably equipment sabotage. Next Alexandra Bell, drunk from the celebratory champagne at Jessica's, is run over after twen partner Coby Russell dropped her off with money …
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Respactable old-fashioned reporter Haskell Drake lands in hospital with a fit after his attack for sensationalist copy-doctoring at tycoon Lamar Bennett, who recently bought the Boston Daily Sentinel from equally conservative Walter Revere, gets him fired on the spot. Jessica tries to reason with Bennett on her old friend Drake's behalf but is told to come back at a celebratory drink in a hotel, where she witnesses Bennet getting a fatal brain hemorrhage while announcing Walter is fired too, which Jessica realizes can be induced by a combination of alcohol and pills, …
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In Part 2 of a crossover story with “Magnum, P.I.” (both episodes are shown on the “Murder” DVD, although not consecutively), Magnum has shot it out with a hired gunman at a party, killing him. Magnum claims the thug had fired several shots at him, including one just before Magnum returned fire. But the police can't find the gunman's weapon, and furthermore he was shot in the back. An overzealous police captain calls it murder one (huh?) and throws Magnum into the cooler pending trial. Jessica searches the crime scene and finds a shell casing which doesn't match …
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When an obnoxious out-of-town TV personality is murdered, it's up to Jessica to figure out the killer.
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Jessica visits a rural revival of a play she was in with her late husband Frank and present stars Julian Lord and Maggie Tarrow. On opening night, something scares Maggie out of performing, and her understudy Barbara Bennington is killed by cyanide poisoning of her red wine on stage. Local chief of police Merton P. Drock, who plays the butler, never solved a real murder, but trusts Jessica will provide him with the ‘script’, yet keeps on making precipitous conclusions and accusations as the links appear with the breaking off of the productions 30 years ago, when …
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Only after arrival at Wenton, Vermont Jessica learns she was asked by her orphaned literary protégé Dorian Beecher, who succeeded as boys boarding school poetry teacher to the car accident-drowned daughter of local dentist Penn ‘Doc’ Walker, to play Dorian's ‘mother’ to impress his employer, Wenton Academy's pedigree-obsessed owner Edwin Dupont, whose daughter Sarah he loves, rivaled only by the studly riding instructor Nate Findley, an obnoxious womanizer who even did headmistress Charlotte Newcastle. Walking home after an embarrassing saber fight in a pub with Nate,…
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While on a flight to London, a wealthy woman's chauffeur dies suddenly, and when the priceless necklace he was carrying turns up missing, it becomes a case of murder.
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Grady nurses Jessica who must stay in bed with her bad back for weeks, bored to death. During a hurricane she overhears a crossed-up call from a raspy male voice about selling a Cabot Cove estate and killing an old male relative. Seth, Grady and Amos think she imagines the hired gun, but indeed that night widowed lumber millionaire Jedediah Rogers is found shot in his lavish estate where he lived alone with his sons Adam, Gordon and Morgan, who wanted him to leave the business and have no alibis, and orphaned granddaughter Leslie Cameron who was about to be made the …
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College music student Michael ‘Mike’ Prentice discovers that his professor Tyler Stoneham published a song based on a theme part of one of his assignments as his own composition, under the alias Alden Gilbert, but can't prove the plagiarist theft. The professor's wife Christine Stoneham also suspects him of adultery with a student. Professor Harry Papasian, Stoneham's assistant, is furious not to be mentioned as co-author on their new music dictionary. Stoneham is found stabbed to death in the archives where Mike was looking for the original partitions, enough for an …
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Jessica visits Denver for a TV book review program at KBLR, where her friend Dr. Jayne's husband Steve Honig produces arrogant Kenneth Chambers's program The Bottom Line, which exposes faulty products, or when he has his way picks his victim and even doctors the story unethically, while grossly abusing all staff. Janitor Bert Tanaka finds Chambers shot twice in his office chair shortly after he unjustly fired production assistant Ryan Monroe. DPD Lieutenant Lou Flannigan, who was Chambers's unofficial police consultant, lets Jessica ‘observe’. The murder weapon is …
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Jessica visits her old friend Harry McGraw (Orbach) in New York who has become wrangled in the high stakes game of boxing.
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Irene Rutledge can't afford a bike for her son Tommy, and Jessica lets him earn her husband's old bike by working in her garden. Artist Simon Thane says he has been working on a special canvas all summer, but hasn't let anyone see it. When Simon is found dead and the mysterious painting has disappeared, Amos arrests Irene for murder. But Jessica is convinced that Irene is innocent.
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Mack Howard and Murray Gruen were a celebrated comical duo but party in anger. Murray's daughter Corey brings their friend Jessica along to his own Hiawatha lodge for her and Mack's son Kip Howard's engagement dinner. Murray however makes a scene, claiming Mack stole a fortune in royalties on videos of the duo, denied by Mack and his agent who claims there is no profit. Then Murray is stabbed in the back and suggests he only saw a color, that of Mack's robe. Later Murray's agent Phil Rinker is found hanging in the store-room, suicide according to a note apparently in …
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Jessica is visiting her nephew Grady who has a job working as an accountant at an investment firm. He likes the work and is very busy and working long hours, even if there is supposedly a ghost in the building. He returns to the office late one evening and finds his boss, Ralph Whitman, dead. To top it off, there's also an IRS auditor sniffing around looking into one of the firm's investment funds, Neptune Ventures. Grady becomes the prime suspect in the case but Jessica works with police Lt. Timothy Hanratty. She soon learns that Whitman's wife visited him at the …
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Jessica visits C., an Idaho town, to comfort Linda says her husband, mayor Jim Stevens, just died in a car accident, or did he? His hot-headed pa Harry Stevens is dead-set to prove his death was the work of the corrupt sheriff Orville Yates and his hard-handed deputy Wayne Beeler, who are in cahoots with Kate Gunnerson's illegal gambling. Shortly after they go trough Jim's effects Harry storms out after seeing a ciphered reference, but is killed and left by the road, plundered even to his boots. State police captain Ernest Lenko confirms his raids and corruption …
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When Jessica is pampered in the luxury suite of a hotel, she's approached shyly by restaurant employee Georgia Wilson, whose husband, accountant Sam, was recently released after 30 years jail, assuring he was framed for the shooting of his boss Richard Jarvis, who actually offered Sam his last $10,000 for help when his firm went bust, to make his suicide look like armed robbery so the insurance would pay the Jarvis family a fortune, only someone else really killed him. Their son Rob Wilson became a cop hoping to help his father, now puts all his experience at her …
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Jessica is recording one of her murder stories on a tape for the blind in the Red River Studios at night, when director Randy Witworth allows it as a favor to producer Greg Dalton, whom he blinded in a car accident. During one of a recent series of mysterious power cuts interrupting recording sessions, Randy is fatally stabbed in the back with a steak-knife from the Dalton kitchen. Police lieutenant Faraday considers mystery writing a harmless hobby for useless women, real sleuthing man's work, Jessica's attention for a spilled bottle of expensive nail-polish just too…
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Jessica jaunts to Paris at the beckon of an old friend whose fashion boutique is in financial trouble. When a local loan shark is found murdered, Jessica must dig deep to ensure her friend is not fingered as the murderer.
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Andrew Durbin returns to Cabot Cove, on parole after serving 20 for a murder he says he did not commit. As a college student 20 years before, he had been hitchhiking on the outskirts of the town when he got a lift from someone driving an expensive two-seater sports car. They were forced off the road by an erratic driver coming in the opposite direction and the driver of the sports car was seriously injured. Durbin went off to find help and when he returned, he found the driver dead and later learns there is $100,000 in bearer bonds missing. He's now returned seeking …
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Jessica obeys a Canadian court summoning to Quebec to give testimony in wealthy fledgling author friend Jim Harlan's trial concerning the death of his young wife Patricia in their country house's fire in his alleged absence. Nationally reputed Attorney Oliver Quayle refuses to acknowledge arson as murder mode; instead he fights the evidence, claiming it could be an accident, despite convincing indications she was even killed by a blow on the head before the fire. The couple was heard to fight over a nasty divorce. Jessica can't resist to do her own investigation, even…
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Jessica visits a convent to see a former sorority sister and winds up searching for a nun's killer.
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A tyrant's demise puts Jessica on the trail of several of his betrayed executives.
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Jessica's British cousin, Emma MacGill (played by Angela Lansbury), is charged with an old flame's murder.
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A handyman who has been paying attention to more than the houses of various Cabot Cove ladies needs Jessica's help when he becomes the prime suspect in a murder.
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A bomb kills a TV producer who stole a plot from one of Jessica's books.
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To look into a small-town murder, Jessica poses as the sister of the slain woman.
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A Native Indian lays claim to Cabot Cove, throwing the town in chaos. When a local industrialist is found murdered, all signs point to the town's supposed new land owner.
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Jessica and her nephew get more than they expected while staying at a posh New York hotel managed by Grady's old fraternity buddy.
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When Amos' sister & her in-laws descend upon Cabot Cove, Jessica hosts a dinner party with homicidal results, leaving the finger pointing at the Sheriff's sister.
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Jessica visits her niece Carrie Palmer's husband Leonard Palmer, who actually forgot his own anniversary date, being an obsessively comets-devoted astronomy researcher at the Astro-Physics Institute where director Russell Armstrong and high-profile, high-maintenance careerist scientist Dr. Thor Lundquist insist they attend the reception they hold to land a Defense contract Leonard disapproves of. That night Leonard is seen rushing out without signing out or closing up his computer-programmed telescope, which is manually pointed at a 30 miles away vacation house owned …
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Jessica convinces Seth to visit his estranged brother. When the brother is found murdered, the pair must try to figure out if a cursed ruby from India is responsible or whether a more sinister, human element is at fault.
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Jessica is summoned to Savannah to help a friend with his play and receives an offer of marriage she didn't expect. Even more surprised are the man's plotting family.
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While in Conneticut for a convention, Jessica hears the dying confession of a hit man and uncovers a mysterious safe house housing an important foreign dignitary.
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The Gambini family winery is the take-over target of organized crime and it's up to Jessica to uncover who is behind the murder of a mafia hit man.
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The death of an eccentric shut-in brings the burden of executing her will to Jessica. How does the legend that Benedict Arnold once slept in the woman's house and a possible “treasure” fit into the puzzle?
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Jessica is delighted to return to New York City with the announcement of her nephew's impending engagement. But when a restaurant employee is found dead, the engagement is threatened. Norman Fell and Sonny Bono guest-star.
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Jessica's niece is smitten with a rodeo rider and refuses to believe he could have committed a murder.
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21. Deadpan
When one of Jessica's former students brings a play based on one of her novels to Broadway, she finds herself in the middle of a war of words between rival critics. Dean Stockwell and Lloyd Bochner guest star. -
Jessica comes to the aid of yet another dear old friend running as a senatorial candidate. When the candidate's campaign manager is murdered, Jessica must help prove her innocence.
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A chance encounter with her old British intelligence friend Michael Hagarty leaves Jessica standing over a dead Bulgarian diplomat and accused of murder. Incarcerated, she has to leave it up to Grady and Michael to prove her innocence.
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After her publisher announces his impending retirement, Jessica heads to NYC where she is simultaneously wooed by potential new publishers and a smooth-talking jewel thief.
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Jessica is perplexed by the apparent murder of an elderly man points to two simple-minded, spinster sisters he was living with. First appearance of Ron Masak as the new sheriff Mort Metzger.
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A massive storm results in Jessica snowed in at a ski lodge with an Olympic men's ski team and a murderer on the loose.
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When a former student is arrested for murder, Jessica heads to West Virginia to bail her out. The unfriendly town hinders her investigation.
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In New York City researching her next book, Jessica is drawn into a mystery involving a priceless tiara, a reclusive former actress and a news reporter accused of murder.
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Jessica is summoned to California where a recently recovered Air Force plane could pin a decades-old murder on her dead husband Frank.
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Lee Goddard successfully coaxed Jessica to join him at his ranch in Arizona after the harrowing events of the previous episode, but intrigue and murder follow them there when a mysterious psychic joins them.
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Grady's wedding day arrives, and so does an unpleasant fate for the shrewish housekeeper of his prospective father-in-law's estate.
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The murder of a womanizing gambler leads to double lives being exposed in seemingly quaint and old-fashioned Cabot Cove.
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Jessica aids yet another dear old friend in his search for his missing grandson.
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While in New York, a missing shoe on the discovered dead body of a homeless person leads Jessica to believe the supposed accidental death was not an accident.
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Jessica is suspicious when the appearance of the ghost of a long-dead witch burned at the stake coincides with the release of a book on the very subject.
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Jessica is detained in Moscow when a spy attempts to smuggle film out of the Soviet Union in her handbag.
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Jessica is summoned to her old alma mater when one of her college professors confesses to a murder Jessica believes he didn't really commit.
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Jessica is detoured on her way to LA at a seedy truck stop where a series of murders makes it apparent she isn't there by accident.
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A vindictive, tell-all work of fiction mirroring Cabot Cove sends the townspeople into an uproar, and when a murder occurs following the plot of the book it's up to Jessica to separate fact from fiction.
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Jessica heads to Montana to aid a young friend editing the last manuscript of the late writer Trevor Hudson, but when murder results she must weed through the lies of Hudson's scheming family to uncover the truth.
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Jessica encounters a man in Boston whom she is convinced is her neighbor from years back, but when the man denies it–and his wife claims the man is dead–Jessica recruits Harry McGraw to dig to the bottom of the mystery.
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Jessica visits her nephew Johnny, recently recruited onto a Major League Baseball team, and then must solve the murder of a scheming news reporter.
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Eudora McVeigh, a rival mystery writer, arrives at Jessica's door with seemingly friendly intentions, but the discovery of a corpse and a web of deceit follows her to Cabot Cove leading Jessica to suspect the woman of ulterior and sinister motives.
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Jessica fears the worst when Seth is poisoned, meanwhile Cabot Cove is abuzz when Eudora McVeigh is determined to fill Jessica's role in solving a local murder.
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Jessica is detoured from a scheduled book tour after encountering MI6 agent Michael Haggerty and he convinces her to pose as his wife in Greece.
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Cabot Cove's young, new priest finds himself in a sticky situation when a murderer confesses their crime and he recruits Jessica to help him uncover the truth without violating his oath of silence.
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Jessica narrates a story from 40 years ago when another female mystery writer helped to solve a mysterious murder aboard the Queen Mary.
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In Palm Springs, Jessica teams up with the local chief of police to figure out who killed a local investor and what happened to a large amount of money.
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Jessica narrates the story of an ex-football player turned private eye who investigates the murder of his old teammate with the help of a savvy pooch.
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Jessica's acquisition of an old bureau at a rummage sale unleashes a chain of events that leads to the death of a local volunteer fireman in a furniture store.
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Voodoo black magic is the apparent cause of death of her host, leaving Jessica to figure out the truth while visiting an old friend in Jamaica.
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Jessica is drawn into an appropriately melodramatic situation when a renowned opera singer is accused of murder in San Francisco.
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On a dark and stormy night on a remote island, Jessica finds herself in the middle of a wealthy family squabbling over the inheritance of a millionaire.
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10. Class Act
Jessica narrates the tale of a burnt-out police detective sent to teach a university criminology class and challenges his students to solve a real homicide. -
Scandal abounds during election time in Cabot Cove when the Mayor is reputed to have a secret wife who comes to confront him with murderous results.
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Jessica narrates her newest novel about a bumbling private eye and his girlfriend inadvertently solving a murder by trying to cash in on a dead relative's will.
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A womanizing Cabot Cove landlord is found murdered and Jessica must prove the innocence of a young boy's mother who is accused of the crime.
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Jessica's trip to New York City to meet with her stockbroker becomes complicated when the broker is found murdered and his secretary charged with the crime.
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Intrigue abounds in sunny California when Jessica's niece Victoria is accused of the murder of a rich movie heiress in Beverly Hills.
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Murder occurs at the reunion of a variety show, site of a similar crime 25 years earlier.
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A show cancellation coincides with a network executive's murder.
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Jessica's friend, police Lt. O'Malley, and his rookie niece solve the case of a businessman's wife's apparent suicide.
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Jessica's friend, former jewel thief Dennis Stanton, solves a high-society collector's coin theft and murder.
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When a murder is committed shortly after the release of a mentally handicapped man, Jessica helps the man's sister prove his innocence.
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While Jessica is out of town, her nephew Grady and his pregnant wife Donna house sit. When waken at night they find a peg-legged man murdered on the living room floor.
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Cross, double-cross, and triple-cross as Michael Hagarty and representatives of other governments try to elicit information and money from a Mafia family.
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Jessica is accused of false testimony and bribery in the death of an escaping murderer.
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Jessica tries to exonerate a temporary employee accused of her husband's murder.
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Dennis Stanton tries to clear a man of charges he murdered an unscrupulous divorce attorney.
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Jessica reopens a 16-year-old murder case at the urging of a dying author who felt injustice was done.
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Jessica's night at a political fund-raiser turns to murder.
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The owner of a new, hot fitness club in Cabot Cove has secrets that lead to murder.
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Out on parole, Jessica's former publisher tries to woo her back into the fold.
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A alleged Twain manuscript begets greed, deception, arson, and murder.
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Jessica gets enmeshed in feuds, infidelity, and murder in Nashville.
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Dennis Stanton investigates when a prominent pianist's wife is murdered shortly after the pianist's hands are badly burnt.
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A quiet dinner out for Seth and Jessica ends abruptly when he is forced to care for an injured Mafia kingpin. Will Seth and Jessica survive?
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Dennis Stanton must prove his innocence when he is accused of murdering a flames estranged husband.
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Sheriff Metzer defies political pressure and arrests an ambassador's son for various charges, including reckless driving, and trying to bribe an officer. Later, the son is found dead, and Metzger finds himself charged with murder.
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A fan, posing as Jessica, is arrested and later murdered.
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An IRS-plagued women may have killed her informer husband.
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A clash between Kentucky Thoroughbred breeders leads to murder.
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The presumed dead perpetrator of a 20-year-old bank robbery resurfaces, then is murdered.
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A shy ventriloquist is suspected of murdering a ruthless comedy club owner.
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Jessica is pulled into a murder investigation by a woman who claims Jessica's husband fathered her son.
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During Jessica's trip to Amish country, her escort is accused of murder.
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The poisoning deaths of three customers point to the local diner owner.
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A writer is murdered after sending Jessica a manuscript exposing a kidnapping scam.
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Jessica takes a teaching position in New York, gets an apartment and finds its previous tenant murdered.
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A professor and ex-cop challenges Jessica to a race to solve a series of campus muggings.
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A murdered writer leaves a devoted sister, a grieving husband, and a tangle of secrets for Jessica to sort.
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Sheriff Metzer assumes his younger brother, the black sheep of the family, is guilty as charged, of murder.
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Jessica accidentally discovers a box of computer tapping which leads to murder when she trades in her typewriter for a computer.
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Jessica probes a 20-year-old unsolved murder after attending the funeral of a New Orleans jazz great.
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When a friend is charged with murdering her abusive husband, Jessica tries to help.
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Jessica tries to disprove charges against her friend's boyfriend, suspected of murdering a Las Vegas casino manager.
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Jessica is the first women to speak at a function at an all-male club, then a member is murdered.
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Len Cariou reprises his role as Michael Hagarty, this time to use Jessica to smuggle information out of Russia.
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Jessica unravels the death of a ballerina after she dances a ballet that has killed everyone who has tried it.
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Cabot Cove suspects a woman playing a witch in a community play is the real thing.
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The would-be producer of the movie adaptation of Jessica's latest book dies.
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Jessica probes a Monte Carlo murder for which her hotelier friend is a suspect.
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Jessica gets involved in a British Intelligence operation's cover-up of a double agent's murder.
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An actress neighbor involves Jessica in her husband's murder.
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Jessica tackles the mystery of a man who apparently migrated from Ireland to New York for the sole purpose of taking revenge on an old friend of hers, but is killed himself.
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A computer programmer's death may mean a malpractice suit for Seth, but Jessica suspects murder.
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The noise and costumes of the Mexican “Day of the Dead” fiesta make it hard for Jessica to identify a killer.
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A playwright haunted by his wife's suicide loses another family member to murder.
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Seth is thrilled that Ben Oliver, an old Army buddy long thought dead, is alive and coming to Cabot Cove. Then PI Lawrence Jarvis turns up, claiming that Ben robbed a jewelry store. Ben does so well at the mechanic job Seth got for him that owner Mason Porter promotes him to boat salesman, to which his nephew objects. Jarvis tells Jessica he will catch Ben, no matter what it takes. When Mason Porter is found dead with $60,000 missing from his company safe, and $10,000 is found in Ben's room, it is up to Jessica to clear him by finding the real killer.
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In Milan for a film festival, Jessica is caught between a hot director who wants out of a contract, a possessive producer who wants to keep him but is having money problems from late billings, an ingénue's father who used to be a successful screenwriter, an angry former partner of the producer, a rival producer who wants the director for a picture, and the producer's partner who may know something about the late billings. But whose agenda included murder?
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Jessica's former student Randy Sloan is back in Cabot Cove to research a 30-year-old murder that someone wants to stay buried. Pretty waitress Sally Bates interests both Randy and rich boy Neal Latimer. But is the secret Randy has discovered worth killing to keep?
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Maxwell Hagen is a prominent businessman and philanthropist. When Jessica is kidnapped and taken to Hagen, he recognizes she is not the missing informant his thugs were supposed to get, but Hagen pretends it must have been someone else. With the help of newspaperman Brynie Sullivan, Jessica tries to locate the mystery woman before Hagen's thugs do.
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In Ireland to research a new book, Jessica is a guest at a house supposedly haunted by a weeping ghost. The owner, Neal Gillen, fears he is going to be murdered and has asked the help of Jessica's ex-policeman friend Sean Culhane. When Neal dies, the possible suspects include his apparently loving wife, his cousin who has been dipping into the corporate accounts, a neighbor whose land Neal bought cheap, and a village girl who had her own agenda.
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Jessica appears in a comic strip accusing various people of wrongdoing and triggering a lawsuit – but the author insists he had nothing to do with it and his inker is killed in his studio.
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In Silverville, New Mexico, Max Teller has turned a ghost town into a tourist attraction, but a bank loan officer wants to buy it, a former cohort in crime arrives to blackmail him, and a thieving hand that he fires threatens him. When the Silverville Museum burns, mysterious Sheriff Keeyani appears to get word from the spirits that it was arson, but Jessica realizes he is covering standard police procedure with a show. Max is killed, and it may have been related to treasure missing from an 1898 holdup.
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Michael Hagarty needs Jessica's help when he tries to prevent his estranged daughter's engagement to a man who is later found dead.
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The father of Jessica's editor disappears with $150 million.
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The future son-in-law of a prominent Cabot Cove family is suspected in a shooting.
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Jessica records one of her novels for the blind and while at the recording studio Jessica is invited to a taping of a rock video. When a murder happens during the taping Jessica tries to find the murderer.
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Seth's old friend, actor David North, returns to Cabot Cove to try out a play in the local playhouse. At auditions for the minor roles, Lyman Taggart gives a terrible reading but is convinced the director and North are out to get him. At dinner that night, Taggart shows up again and threatens North. Meanwhile, North's former manager Eric Benderson shows up and moves in. As Seth tries to reassure a hard-drinking North, Taggart tries to enlist Jessica's help to get him in the play, and threatens her when she brushes him off. When Taggart crashes a cast party, Benderson …
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Slumlord Frank Fernandez is acquitted of the murder of City Councilman Roberto Galvan, but Galvan's family is sure he was guilty. Father Michael intends to run for Galvan's council seat, but Frank Fernandez threatens him, and he reveals to Jessica that Fernandez is his father. Frank discovers his son Raymond is selling drugs. But when Frank is killed, the more Jessica investigates, the more likely it looks like one of the Galvan boys did it.
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13. Dead Eye
The discovery of a 30-year-old corpse brings a collection of interested to people to Miami, including the first appearance of recurring character Charlie Garrett. Jessica is attending a writers' convention and accompanies the dead man's daughter Laura as more murders line the trail of missing negatives. -
In the Midwest for a book tour, Jessica is to be featured on KGAB radio, whose killer DJ Marcus Rule is broadcasting rumors that may kill David Osterman's state senate campaign. Jessica is visiting little Easton not only to promote her latest book but to visit Jonathan Baker, the son of an old friend. Rule wants to move to a larger market, but he and station owner Colin Crowe threaten each other. Jessica decimates Rule on the air and attends the grand opening of the station's 25,000 watt transmitter. But the surprise of the event is the discovery of Colin Crowe's body…
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Jessica must unravel the reason behind the murder of a popular florist.
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In New York, Alice Morgan never leaves her apartment, haunted by dreams of her mother's murder five years earlier. When she sees the dream-murderer, architect Jordan Barnett, on television, she is terrified. When he comes to her door, she is convinced he did murder her mother. Alice's psychiatrist seems mostly interested in insulating her from other people. When Barnett is killed, is Alice out of danger, or in even more danger?
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In Cabot Cove, fisherman Henry Riddett is making illegal arms deliveries for businessman Martin Fraser, who is desperate to keep his company afloat. Fraser has not shared his company problems with girlfriend Eve Simpson. When Riddett quits, he is found dead on his boat before he can warn Sheriff Metzger. Fraser's only hope for a big order to revive his company is a subsurface monitoring device that isn't functional yet. Financial adviser Carl Ward discovers the illegal sales and demands a piece of the pie or he'll go to the feds. Shortly thereafter, Ward is found dead…
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Dana Ballard is a compulsive liar who will apparently say anything to get what she wants. When she applies for a job with stockbroker Ethan Stevens, she gives Jessica as a references and manipulates her answering machine to have Stevens call for her for the reference. Needless to say, Dana gives herself a very good one seeing as Jessica, who had caught her out in a lie, wouldn't likely do so. When Dana is arrested for murdering Stevens - she's found unconscious just a few feet from his body with the gun in her hand - apparently having been knocked out in a struggle. …
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After Jessica takes an interest in Tommy Remsen, an aspiring writer and the boy who delivers her groceries, she helps him out after he claims to have seen a man standing over the body of Monica Evers, another grocery customer. The police don't find anything and accuse him of making it all up. Tommy becomes a suspect however when he runs off after an argument with his father. The police eventually find Monica's body and determine that she was strangled. They also find the body of the man Tommy saw leaning over her body but when they find where Tommy is hiding, Lt. …
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While enjoying a Caribbean cruise given to her by her editor as a reward for finishing her latest manuscript early, Jessica finds herself investigating the murder of Janet Fisk, who was killed with her own gun. Jessica's old friend and retired insurance investigator Dennis Stanton is now the chief of security on the cruise ship. She's also been giving advice to Molly Altrip whose boyfriend is something of a cad and one of the murder suspects. Molly is questioning her relationship with him and seems t have taken an interest in Philip Polachek, a member of the crew. …
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In New York City, Jessica begins to investigate when a young policeman is killed. She had only just met John Bondy who was dating a computer consultant Paula Raynor. Out on a date, Paula found him dead in the front seat of his car after which she was knocked unconscious. Sgt. Vince Lofton feels somewhat responsible for Bondy's death, a new recruit to his squad who was there to help identify a crooked cop on his team. Lofton is something of a hothead and Jessica is concerned with his vigilante approach to justice. She realizes that to keep him from killing the wrong …
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Well-known romance novelist Sibella Stone has come to Cabot Cove and taken up residence in a old dilapidated lighthouse. Her husband Derek Hartman is with her along with his daughter Valerie and her arrogant British boyfriend. When her assistant Marian King is killed while wearing Sibella's cloak on an a dark night, it doesn't take much to conclude that Sibella was the intended target. Several people may have had a reason to her dead. Derek was having an affair with Marian and Valerie's boyfriend needed her help to get his visa problems solved, something she agreed to…
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Jessica Fletcher has finally accepted House of Dunbar tycoon Brian's wife Emma Soon Dunbar's invitation to visit Hong Kong; while she's admiring Burmese jade, her host gets kidnapped, asking a $200,000 cash ransom. Police Insp. McLaughlin suggests the ransom will probably be quickly paid and insure a release, it's almost routine in the last years before the PRC's takeover, and so it happens. Unlike Emma, Brian is inclined to believe it was just another move by his merger-candidate Kai Kuan, whose son David is actually dating Brian's daughter April Dunbar, a forbidden …
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Jessica helps her friend Margaret Johnson and preservation committee president Carol Collins fight against a New York development project which would cause a historical building, where Ernest Hemingway, author of For Whom the Bell Tolls (hence the title), once had an apartment, to be torn down if the last adjoining building is sold to them, but Nolan Walsh holds out with his pubs lease, even throws developer Eugene Gillrich out after promises and threats quite violently in public. Eugene and his wife Lee are desperate to save the project, while his brother and partner…
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Two teenagers making out in the cemetery get the scare of their lives when a man crawls out of a grave. Jessica's house needs electric and plumbing repairs, but her handyman Charles Wetherby is called away to her anger by grumpy rich client Lawrence Baker who recently moved into the mansion Borbey House, a huge contract. Dr. Howard Sorenson, the visiting grave riser, congratulates Jessica in the library on her book research on sepulchers, in his occult field of research. Jessica's assistant Molly Holt's boyfriend Dave Perrin keeps looking for his sister Laurel who's …
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In New York Jessica gets interviewed and followed by sweat young profile-writer Ben Forman; his agent Dean Richards is threatened in her presence by bully competing producer Harrison M. Kane, who tells his publisher Carter Drummond he'll buy the magazine and tries to recruit Ben directly. Dean bitches to photographer Hans Dietrich and star model Kathryn Scofield who is intimate with Hans. Ben follows Abby Peters who he heard being roughed up by Kane, who is found dead by electrocution in the hotel bath shortly after. NYPD Lt. Artie Gelber investigates and soon …
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Cabot Cove's own youngster Alex Hooper, who got his first job with virtual reality-video game expert Michael Burke, has got Jessica to write a murder script ‘A Killing at Hastings Rock’ for their firm Marathon to design one about. The test version has grave program flaws, which may sink the firm by missing a nearby press presentation deadline- Jessica promises to rewrite the script so the failing character is no longer needed. Two partners secretly go to Redwood Concepts where James Lindstrom tells its CEO John/Charles Crowe he demands a bonus for dealing with him now…
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Jessica visits horse trainer Matt Cleveland on Wally Hampton's stud ranch in Virginia's Blue Mountains, where everybody is elated about the prospects for their promising racehorse Swift Prince. Matt is clobbered down and Jessica finds a mysterious syringe, but it's a stimulant injected in Prince, three days before a major race, so unlikely still to be detected even if it makes him win. Meanwhile Catherine Noble's neighboring ranch is financially troubled, so daughter Tracey Noble can't get a grand wedding, and their partner, Lloyd Mentone, schemes with the Hamptons …
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Jessica visits Fiona Delaney Griffith, the widow of Richard, a friend of her late husband in Cork Ireland, where the family runs a traditional factory of Woollens, blankets. Cousin Ambrose Griffith was about to take over management from Fionas son Sean and move the site too far for many villagers to keep the only jobs in the region. Elder son Patrick Griffith, who was away over ten years fleeing his unfair father, is furious, and has an affair. Ambrose is found murdered in Father Timothy's church. Jessica also believes the old cripple local poet William Mahaffy that …
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Sheriff Mort Metzger is shot at by an unknown in his office, but not hurt. Jessica came home for the annual rummage sale she's in charge of this time, but her New York accountant warned her financial situation requires an audit and local accountant Sam Bennett didn't even answer- he's gambling at Lou Keramides' clandestine casino; the sheriff gets the judge to sign a search-warrant for his restaurant, where Jessica and Dr. Seth Hazlitt insist to talk to him but a tip-off allowed him to clean it in time, again. Deputy Ethan Loomis has an affair with Sam's in-living …
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Dave Novaro claims Jessica's book “The Uncaught” is a thinly disguised version of the murder of his wife Janet (whose mother died of grief six months later), except that he was acquitted in court -albeit merely for lack of evidence- five years ago, not ‘his character’ in ‘her version’, so he demands millions as compensation for damages to business, health and marriage. His wife Iris Novaro complains to him this makes him absent, while she tells her lover Rick Konig she couldn't bring herself to tell him about them at such a time of stress. To Jessica's surprise, NYPD …
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Jessica comes to the rescue of her friend, actress Glenda Highsmith, who is mounting a play in Martin Kramer's London theater based on a Fletcher-mystery in a defective adaptation by the in principle uncooperative dramatist Mae Shaughnessy with her younger house-mate Brett Dillon. Jessica and others get strange calls from Empire magazine reporter Malcolm Brooker about an affair between Glenda and John Camden, the 17th earl Glenhaven. The actors have their own bothers- waning glory Lawson Childress is drinking a bit much, worrying about Glenda; rising start Franklin …
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Jessica flies to Indian territory in British Columbia (Canada) and gets stuck because of plane trouble in Dominion, a town near Hobart Creek, where the Aurora Hills Mining Company is denied passage by armed natives, despite a contract signed by the territorial government, till old Joe Quill convinces them to wait a few days for legal action, which comes in the person of Jessica's locally born co-passenger Peter Henderson, a cynical realist, who warns Joe's grandson, nature-drawing artist George Quill, to stop using arms. Mine executive Rick Shipley and another miner …
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Jessica attends the opening of a new restaurant in which a young friend has invested after the Mob has taken it over. But when the chef is killed and her friend Lorna is arrested, Jessica is the only one who can find the real killer.
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In New York, Jessica donates a painting to a charity auction organized by an old friend from Cabot Cove, putting her on the scene when an art dealer of dubious honesty and taste is killed. When her friend becomes the prime suspect in the murder, Jessica must wade through a sting and a missing painting to find the real murderer.
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Back in Cabot Cove to orchestrate a surprise birthday dinner for Seth, Jessica is drawn into what looks like a small-time theft by Charlie Garrett and an apparent Mob connection.
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In New York, Jessica's publisher Edward Graham seems to be cracking up following the death of his wife. But was a fall from the top of the building suicide or murder?
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Jessica's teen writing class has two promising students, Alida and Chris. But when Chris' loan-shark stepfather turns up dead after pursuing Alida and fleeing a hit-and-run, Chris is the prime suspect.
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Jessica has worked to have Larkin sold to a museum, but an embezzled pension plan leads to a rival bid and murder.
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Boston, 1974- a security guard is shot when trying to stop three robbers get away, the very next moment the police arrests them. Present (1990s), schoolboy Jimmy Taylor who works as part-time busboy overhears a man who did 20 years of jail demand Julia Harris to get paid for not having her friend Stanley put away for life. Sheriff Mort Metzger got many reports on a prowler, but all descriptions are contradictory. Dr. Seth Hazlitt remarks local computer store owner Evan Rafferty is particularly grumpy, perhaps because he doesn't want his son Will to start a boating …
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19. Roadkill
At Houston space control for research, Jessica overhears Sam Mercer promise NASA's LG computers order, essential for the IT firm, is on its way, but the truck gets robbed by masked men on the open road in plain daylight. Her friend and host Wayne Platte, the truck driver, got hurt, and the firm was in bad enough shape, now suppliers demand immediate payment and insurance considers them a bad risk. His son Rob Platte, a college drop-out who works in the roadhouse, seems only interested in country singing, which doesn't bring in good money. Roadhouse owner Willie … -
While handyman Richie Kanpinski repairs her sink, Jessica remarks a busker plays the clarinet beautifully outside the museum where pianist Leslie Walden is rehearsing for a benefit. Her guardian and manager Byron Tocoski is impossibly demanding on everyone, even quick to fire professionals; he is startled by the suspicious arrival of Leslie's dad Hank Walden (the has-been clarinetist) who walked out on her ten years ago and came to nothing. Byron, watched by Hank from outside, tells Leslie, who approaches legal majority, he arranged for them to be married in Munich …
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Before she goes to the Cabot Cove carnival with Seth, Jessica notices some jewelry is missing- she was burglarized. Sheriff Mort Metzger gets reports from other victims but is most surprised after 22 years to meet Joanna Sims again, a college girlfriend who ran off with then jock Don Sims; she's now the traveling carnival's assistant manager. Jessica and Seth are surprised to hear from Don's co-owner Carl Dormer that the carnival brought very little money in despite good attendance, according to him people just didn't spend money, but young local grocer Richard Binyon…