Recap of Last Week's Episodes
EPISODE 55 (released 1/16/12)
Sheriff Patterson is ready to question Roger about what happened to Bill Malloy, but Roger is more interested in asking the Sheriff what happened to Constable Carter. Apparently, he's on a permanent book tour after cracking the Bleeder Valve case, proving once again that these reality shows can make a star out of anybody. They break the news to Roger that Bill is dead. Liz tells him that Matthew found the body and pushed it out to sea to save the family from gossip. This is quite a shock to Roger, who all this time had thought that Matthew was stupid.
Sam shows up to visit Maggie. Apparently, Burke has cancelled his sitting again, to go look for Malloy, so Sam has come in to the Coffee Shoppe to see if any news about Malloy has come in over the grapevine. Unfortunately, since all the customers are non-speaking extras, they don't say much.
At Collinwood, Liz is serving hors d'ouvres. George says they'll know more about the case once they find Bill's body and perform an autopsy. Roger seems a bit uncomfortable about this, and wonders why you'd need an autopsy for someone who fell off a cliff. Wasn't it proven that Bill had drowned? Or didn't they all agree that he'd drowned? The Sheriff says that usually isn't good enough for a judge. They tend to be sticklers about the law, which is probably why most of them became judges in the first place. Roger persists in asking why you'd need an autopsy to determine how a man that fell off a cliff died. George says perhaps to find out if he'd been shot before he went splat. Liz tosses away the tray of hors d'ouvres, her appetite now shot.
Back at the Coffee Shoppe, Sam is trying to get that Full Confession letter of his back from Maggie. He's started to get cold feet, and reasons that the mere fact that the letter exists will keep anyone from harming him, even if it doesn't exist, as long as someone thinks it does. Maggie says that's not fair to her. If she destroyed the letter, and something did happen to Pop, she'd have no idea what had happened or who to get revenge on.
At Collinwood, George is grilling Roger. Roger says he last saw Bill at 10 p.m., until he realizes that that might make him the last person to have seen Bill alive. He retcons the time to 8 p.m. until Liz points out that Bill's housekeeper Mrs. Johnson saw him at 10:30, prompting Roger to put the time back to 10 p.m. Roger tells George about the meeting in his office once it becomes clear that George knows about it already. But he claims to have no idea why the meeting was called. Sam and Burke didn't know either, although he now remembers that when Burke realized that Malloy wasn't coming, he tried to come up some story that the meeting was about exonerating him of the manslaughter charge. For some odd reason, George puts away his pen and starts taking Roger's testimony down in pencil.
Roger tells George that Bill didn't seem the least bit upset when they talked. Liz, on the other hand, says that he'd seemed very upset indeed, and talked about having a difficult decision to make. Roger changes his story again to say that yes, Bill did seem upset, come to think of it. Very upset. Maybe even suicidal. George says strange, five minutes of talking with Roger, and he feels the same way.
At the Coffee Shoppe, Maggie is jumping to several wrong conclusions. As soon as Sam let it be known that the letter existed, Bill Malloy disappeared. Is he the one threatening Sam? Sam says that's rubbish. There's nothing the least bit suspicious about Bill. He's the most innocent, clean cut, clean living, upstanding guy he knows. Maggie says that for a sailor, that's actually pretty suspicious.
At Collinwood, Roger elaborates on his theory. Liz had talked about bringing Ned Calder back to run the plant. Perhaps Bill was upset at the thought of losing his desk job and going back to the boats, and decided to end it all. Liz points out that Ned turned the job down, but Roger maintains that perhaps Bill was taking no chances. George says that Bill was at the Blue Whale all day on the day he disappeared. Could he have been inebriated? Roger says yes, now that you mention it, he did seem absolutely blotto when they talked. In his condition, Bill might very well have walked off widow's Hill without realizing what he was doing. George wants to know how come Roger never tells him anything until he mentions it first? "Because I didn't know... that it was important, I mean!"
George leaves, but Roger still has to face Liz. Liz is incredulous that Bill called a meeting in Roger's office with Burke and Sam and that Roger claims to have no idea what it was about. Bill had talked about finding new evidence in the manslaughter case. Could that have been it? Roger says he'd thought it was going to be a surprise birthday party for him. ("But it's not your birthday." "That's what would have made it such a surprise.")
George shows up at the Coffee Shoppe, and asks Sam how the artwork is going. It's dull, almost like watching paint dry, which is why Sam stopped in for a bite. George takes a quick phone call, and tells Maggie that the Coast Guard has just pulled Bill's fetid, moldering, blue, seaweed covered body out of the ocean. As all of Maggie's dinner customers file out the door, George realizes that he might have come up with a better way of phrasing that.
