- When the department's evidence supervisor is murdered in the bar's bathroom while Ham and Grace are there, they must divide their time between finding the murderer and fending off an IA investigation.
- At a party at Louie's, a soon-to-be-retired OCPD employee has his throat cut in the men's room, just outside the stall where Grace and Ham are fooling around. The nature of the slaying indicates it might have been murder-for-hire, and the detectives scour video footage from the party for the killer. The search for a motive eventually leads to the employee's eccentric wife (Amy Madigan). Ham's brother Rafe is home from fighting in Afghanistan, and Grace and Leon Cooley have dreams and visions about each other, fueling Rhetta's curiosity as to what Earl may be up to.
- Grace and Earl drink beer, Leon falls off his stool at the end of the bar. He grabs Grace, she tries to get away. Earl looks on. Cut to Grace telling Rhetta about that dream, which shes had every night that week, while they're at Louie's bar.
A cute delivery guy walks in and Grace makes eyes at him. Rhetta gets beer spilled her by Ed, a stodgy coworker as he argues with Zeke, another coworker, over change. Bobby films the proceedings. Hams little brother walks in. Hes in the Marines. Grace helped arrange his surprise visit. Ham thanks Grace later in the bathroom stall with his mouth. Then other parts. Theyre interrupted, mid-gratitude when someone walks in. They giggle quietly and are about to start back up again when they see blood pouring in under the bathroom stall. Ed lies, throat-slit, on the floor.
The team processes the scene and Grace asks Bobby what happened to the cute delivery guy. Grace asks Zeke, the guy arguing with Ed earlier, where he was. Ham says he nearly ran into him on his way out. They hear honking. Its Eds wife waiting to give him a ride home. Grace goes out to break the bad news. His wife is reading a book and ignores Grace. She keeps honking for Ed as Grace talks to her. When Grace breaks the news, assuring her they wont sleep until they find out who did it, her only reply to the news of her husbands death is: You should sleep.
Grace and Ham settle on a cover story, they were setting up a practical joke: chocolate on the toilet seat. Captain Perry comes in, disheveled, clearly interrupted from a date and bearing a shamrock bar tattoo on the inside of her wrist. She hauls the would be jokers outside, not thrilled a civilian police employee has been murdered in a cop bar surrounded by cops. She's particularly displeased that two of her cops were doing it during the murder. She's not buying the "joke" cover story, but Grace sticks to it in the squad room.
The delivery guy is Melvin, who didn't make the rest of his route. There are three other suspects including Zeke and "brown shirt guy," whom none of them can remember. They're stumped on motive for the death of the guy who runs the evidence room.
The widow arrives. She asks Graces if she slept. They go to the morgue, where the widow Gretchen acknowledges nobody liked him. She brought a wave noise machine to put next his corpse. She starts singing "Venus" - yes, the Bananarama song. After a brief potentially awkward pause Grace joins in. ** Actually, it's the original version of "Venus" that Shocking Blue released in 1970. More in keeping with a song played at their wedding--Ed was getting ready to retire. Bananarama didn't cover "Venus" until about 1986.
Cut to Rhetta working the scene in the bar, dusting a bar stool.
Then Leon in jail, trying to ignore Earl, who is trying to cheer him up and snapping rubber bands at him. Earl thinks Leon has given up. Leon says his appeals have been denied, but Earl's talking about his soul. Leon says he's been having weird dreams about Grace.
Grace visits Rhetta in the lab. She found Leon's fingerprints on the barstool right where Grace said they were in her dream. But nothing else.
Captain Perry reviews Bobby's tape from that night. Grace and Ham spot the mystery man, but can't see his face. At the end of the tape, Ham runs out draped in the toilet paper Grace wrapped him in. Not his most dignified moment. Perry tells them they'll be meet with IA. They keep it together until she leaves then bust out laughing. "We are so screwed," Grace says when the laughter dies.
Earl visits Grace at home, eating onion rings. Earl asks her if she's curious why she's dreaming about Leon. She's focused on the case.
At Ham's apartment he feeds his brother who's about to ship out and Butch reviews the case. Given how clean it was done, his brother says it could be military. He brags about military training over cop training. The brothers engage in an arm wrestling contest. Ham wins, but breaks his brother's arm in the process. (Fun fact: Kenny Johnson is a championship arm wrestler. Really.)
Grace meets with her favorite IA guy, who wants to know where the chocolate from the joke is. Grace says she threw it out and it must be with the other trash collected from the scene. As he shows Grace stills of her with her shirt off in the bar (she removed it to staunch the bleeding, she says), she notices IA guy has the same shamrock stamp on his wrist Perry did. He points out the condom found on the floor. Ham's up. Grace tells him Butch and Bobby found Melvin the delivery guy. Dead, also with his throat slit.
Ham meets Grace at a closed Louie's bar. Ham gets off the phone with his brother, who's reporting for duty despite the break.
They retrace the events of the night and realize at some point the music stopped. Ham told someone to unplug the juke box. Grace plugs it in. Bananarama.
Grace meets with the widow Gretchen. She puts on a happy face for about two minutes, until Grace asks why she sang "Venus" in the morgue. It was the first song they danced to at their wedding. Then she blurts out a confession. Gretchen hired someone to kill Ed because he was going to retire and she couldn't stand the thought of having to be around him all the time.
Grace takes Gretchen to a line-up room where she picks out her gardener, whom she paid $75 and a tuna sandwich to kill her husband. The second man is a busboy at a restaurant whom she paid $50 and a carrot cake to kill her husband. Number three, she can't remember his name but she gave him a certificate for a dozen tickets to the cineplex in exchange for which he'd kill her husband. Number four is a teller at her bank, where she opened up a checking account with the assurance he'd kill her husband.
Grace asks if she paid anyone else to kill her husband. Gretchen says that pretty much covers it. When Perry asks why she wanted him dead, Gretchen says: "Well, have you even met Ed?"
Perry tells the sleep-deprived team they've got no case against the kooky widow.
Perry wants to know if they've excluded Zeke, the employee Ed was going to fire. They're getting punchy and speaking in British accents, but Grace thinks it might all be about the change they were arguing over.
She goes in to talk to Perry, reassuring her IA guy will find chocolate among the evidence. Then Grace tells Perry pillow talk with IA is a dangerous game. Busted. They agree they've got each others' backs.
Back at her apartment Grace reviews the evidence to strident Christian music. Then she grabs a condom from her bedside table and goes to meet Ham in the evidence locker. But she loses her urge when she walks by Leon's box of evidence.
In his cell, Leon tries to make a guitar out of rubber bands and a juice box. The guard comes for him and takes him to see Rhetta.
She has a question for him. She asks if he's been having dreams about Grace. His are different. He helped her get a kite out of the sky and in another he helped her get an apple from a tree. Rhetta says in Grace's dream she needs his help.
Back at headquarters they've found Zeke's fireable offense: he was swapping rare evidence quarters out with regular ones to make a slight profit. Grace still can't find where Gretchen would have gotten the money to pay to have Ed killed. She gives Ham's brother a going away knife and says she has the answer to Gretchen's money mystery.
They go visit Gretchen, who offers them some of Ed's Civil War memorabilia. Grace tells her they want to see Ed's inventory list. Grace says they'll figure out which pieces she sold to hire his killer. Grace says she's not under arrest yet, but will be someday. Gretchen sings "Venus," delighting in her single kookiness.
At home, Grace has Leon's evidence box. Leon dreams with Earl. He's in the bar, a guitar leaning against the white bar stool. Grace stares at the box, but doesn't open it. Leon picks up the guitar and strums it. Grace approaches the box. She opens it, a bright light blinds her. Leon lays down a sweet blues riff as Leon plays the spoons. From the corner of the bar, Grace looks on.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content