Mother Daughter Murder Night

Lana tells Beth that Ricardo likely died by the Rhoads estate and that perhaps there is a link between Ricardo’s murder and Hal’s death. Lana thinks that the deaths could have been due to a property battle. She wonders if Paul knew either of the deceased, and Jack says it is possible because Scotty, a good friend of Paul, spoke at Hal’s funeral. Jack asks her grandmother if she is going to go to the police with her ideas, but Lana is determined to find proof first because she does not believe they will listen to her otherwise. Jack says she wants to help.

Beth and Lana watch a murder show, and Jack learns that her mother and grandmother used to have Mother-Daughter Murder Club nights during which they would watch detective shows. This was before her mother became successful but after Beth’s father left. Lana remembers the time as being very stressful because of their sparse living arrangements and the work necessary to build her career.

Beth sees Scotty O’Dell and Paul carrying Styrofoam coolers inside while Beth meets Martin at the yacht club. The yacht club has been booked for the day, so Martin and Beth go for a drive in Martin’s Maserati. Martin tells Beth that his mother died in a burning barn along with some of their workers when he was 15. After that, Diana moved abroad, and his father was frequently distracted. Things got worse with his father once Martin went to MIT. Hal did not go to his graduation because he had to work on the farm, all the while implying that Martin was not living up to his responsibilities on the farm. Martin is a success in the nanotech industry, and Beth tells him that she understands how it feels to fail to live up to your parents’ expectations. Lana remembers telling her mother that she was pregnant as a teenager. Her mother wanted her to have an abortion, but Beth refused. Lana believed that Beth ruined her life. Beth proposed she live in a house her mother owned, and her mother agreed to let her live there rent free. 

Martin and Beth stop for a burrito, and Martin explains that since Hal’s strokes, Martin had been visiting his father once a week. Beth describes Hal as solid, “like an oak tree” (138). Hal was never interested in Martin’s work even though Martin saw them both as entrepreneurs with big dreams. They talk about Paul, and Martin believes Paul has some kind of side hustle. She tells Martin about Ricardo’s death, and she realizes that Hal died a day after Ricardo did. Martin tells Beth that he is hoping to sell his father’s land to help fund a startup, but he has to convince Diana and Victor that it is the way to go. She tells Martin that Lana will figure out what is going on with Victor, and she expresses frustration that her mother always puts herself at the center of things. Martin does not trust Victor, saying that the man tried to manipulate Hal into signing off on the land.

Lana tells Beth that she thinks Martin is possibly involved in the murders, but Beth does not believe her; Martin was at a nanotech event on the Friday when Ricardo died. She tells her mother that Victor had been harassing the Rhoads about the family property, but Lana tells her that Victor told her that Hal wanted to partner with the land trust.

Lana feels awful because of the chemotherapy, but she goes to the equestrian center to meet Diana, and Diana tells her that both she and her father love horses. Diana explains that she wants to open a wellness ranch on the property rather than sell it, and she had just begun to talk to Hal about it before his death. Diana is determined to bring her brother on board, and she explains that Martin does not think the document Hal signed with the land trust is valid. She thinks her father wanted them to keep the land, but he may have been pressured by Victor.

Lana arrives at Victor’s office, and she parks between an old pickup truck and a BMW. She does not like the young and beautiful receptionist because she believes such women are hostile to women of Lana’s age because they fear becoming old like them. Victor says that the detectives came to the office, implied the trust may be at fault for the death, and then accused one of the naturalists of killing Ricardo. Lana thinks it is harassment. Victor shows her a map of how land has changed hands over the years and how people keep taking it from those who were there before them. He thinks that people should, instead, hold the land together for everyone to enjoy through the years. Ricardo truly believed in this project, and people trusted Ricardo because he is well respected in the area.

Ricardo was working on three projects, including the Rhoads one, when he was killed. Lana notices that on the Rhoads calendar, there were some doctors’ appointments listed and surmises that Ricardo went to Hal’s doctor appointments with him. When she is alone, she takes pictures of a letter of intent. She then sees a piece of paper fall out telling Victor that the letter’s author has to go a different direction because someone he loves has an idea for a project that would not work with the land trust. She does not know who the letter is from, and she takes the paper. Lana is not feeling well when she hears a fire alarm, and she cannot open the office door. She wonders if she has been intentionally locked in. Seeing fire, she breaks a window with the metal heel of her Jimmy Choo shoe and manages to escape the building. When she gets out of the window, she sees Victor coming toward her, but she moves past him and collapses in front of a firefighter.

Beth and Jack rush to the hospital, where Lana is unconscious. When they get there, they find out that she not awake but that she will be okay. As Beth and Jack spend the night in the hospital, Beth looks at a stone in her pocket that she found early that day that reminds her of the life she built for herself and her daughter. She thinks of the autonomy that her mother lost when she had to come to Elkhorn because of her cancer.

On Friday, when Jack and Beth get to the hospital, they find Lana awake and moving. Getting right to business, Lana tells them she thinks Victor played a role in Ricardo’s murder. Beth tells Lana that she understands that the murder case is important to Lana; Lana was in law school but had to drop out to raise Beth when Lana’s ex-husband, Ari, suddenly left. This made her feel “disposable and desperate, a stock whose value had plummeted to zero” (175). This incident is what convinced Lana that she needed to take care of herself and her daughter and that she would make sure she would never again be at the mercy of another person. Cancer has set her back, however, as the doctors make her feel irrelevant.

Detective Ramirez arrives at the house with Detective Choi, who is investigating whether the fire was arson. Lana tells them that she was trapped in the office during the fire, but Detective Choi does not find this significant. Lana sees a picture of the likely explosive device, and Choi explains that it might be a device that orchardists scare birds away. They think it was remotely activated, and it could have been triggered either by someone inside or by someone in a car. Lana tells them about the truck and the BMW, but they checked both cars. Lana wonders if whoever detonated the bomb was trying to kill her because she was investigating the murder, but the detectives do not take this seriously. 

Ramirez takes Lana to get her car, and Ramirez is angry because she worries that Lana, someone’s grandma, might ruin the investigation. Ramirez is the first Latina woman to be given a murder investigation in the county and she doesn’t want anything to mess it up. When they get to the car, Lana asks if that the kayak tour was booked after Cruz was already dead, and Ramirez confirms this.