The Mysteries of Laura Episode 1.05 The Mystery of the Terminal Tenant

An elderly woman with poor eyesight lets herself into the apartment above hers, looking for the source of her ceiling leak. Lillian Greenberg walks into the bathroom and turns off the faucet, and then looks over at the bathtub, where she squints to make out a skeleton floating in a tub of blood and guts...

At the precinct, Laura has come up with a new visitation plan for Jake and the kids. Instead of dropping them off at his place for the weekend, Jake can sleep over at her house - while she spends the weekend at a fancy hotel. Not a bad deal!

But before she can max out Jake's credit card on room service, Laura has to content with the not-so-appetizing human soup marinating in Lillian's neighbor's bathtub. The corpse was dissolved in sulfuric acid, which means they'll have to rely on dental records to identify the victim. The apartment belongs to Mark Harris, who Mrs. Greenberg describes as a sweet boy who was a virtual hermit until he met his girlfriend Corinne. Nothing was stolen, so the victim must have known his attacker.

It turns out Mark rents his apartment out on a peer-to-peer rental site. Max pulls up Mark's past renters and finds that weekend's renter was Cody Roberts. Laura and Billy head back to Mark's apartment to go through his stuff again when they're surprised by a young man and woman entering the apartment. It's Mark and Corinne! The person in the bathtub isn't Mark after all - it's Cody. Mark and Corinne don't know much about him, other than he was supposed to vacate the apartment that night. Mark does, however, mention seeing a woman in a black Escalade who was eyeing the apartment from across the street.

That night at Laura's house, Jake meets Nora, the mother of the twins' friend Ethan, and the two divorcees hit it off. While Jake enjoys an impromptu date, Laura finds a flier for Melody Buddies, a mommy and me music class, in some of the stuff Cody left at Mark's house. Tomorrow's 9am class is circled, so Laura reluctantly agrees to check it out. But first, she checks out the five star amenities of her swanky hotel room.

The next morning, Laura and Billy attend the music class, where Laura befriends an agitated mom. She's waiting for someone named Christie... well, actually something named Crystal Meth. Turns out that Cody is her dealer. He showed up one day at class, and looked so innocent - he even stutters a little when he's nervous. He caters to the frazzled mom clientele, along with his partner, who deals out of a roller blade rental place by Rockaway Beach.

So Meredith and Jake hit the beach to conduct a sting operation on the roller blade rental place. All is going well until the dealer gets tipped off and makes a break for it. The detectives follow him to a dilapidated house, where they find him throwing suitcases out the window. Jake pulls a gun on him, but before he can nab him, the guy blows up the house! Jake is knocked back, but Meredith cuffs him.

Spike explains that he booby-trapped his own house, figuring it would give him a chance to escape if Jimmy, the biggest meth dealer in the city, came after him. Once Spike found out his partner Cody was dead, he figured he was next. Cody wanted out of the meth business, but Jimmy doesn't let anyone quit and live. Spike doesn't know where Jimmy is - he's never even met him - but he knows Cody always picked up liquid meth from a bodega in Queens.

Laura and Billy check out the bodega and find a bunch of thugs walking out with two bottles of liquid meth. When they badge them, one guy punches Laura in the face. Back at the station, Laura can't wait to lay into him, until he reveals himself as Alejandra Padilla, an undercover DEA agent who's been after Jimmy for months. The NYPD and the DEA join forces to hit Jimmy's meth shipment the next day - although Alejandra wants one more thing out of the deal: Laura.

That night, Nora stops by the house unexpectedly. She's upset about something her ex did and wants a shoulder to cry on... and a mouth to make out with! She suddenly puts the moves on Jake, straddling him and dropping her pink thong in his lap. Just then Laura calls wanting to come home because she misses the boys, and Harrison sleepily comes downstairs, asking Jake why he was wrestling with Ethan's mom. Jake quickly puts out both fires, convincing Laura to enjoy her night off and Harrison that he's just having a dream.

The next morning, the bust goes down without a hitch, but as Laura watches through binoculars from an abandoned warehouse, she notices a stylishly dressed woman slipping away from the scene as the cops cuff a bunch of thugs. Could Jimmy be a woman? Who else would know that worn-out moms were an untapped market for crystal meth?

Jake and Laura decide to put Jimmy in a line up to see if Mark can identify her as the woman watching his building from the escalade. He's still shaken up, but manages to identify Jimmy as "number t-t-t-two." Wait, Cody was the one who stutters when he's nervous! Laura realizes Jimmy didn't kill Cody, because Cody is Mark. He wanted out of the meth business, so he staged his death and found the perfect identity. Mark was a loner who sort of looked like Cody and whose only neighbor was a half-blind old lady. Cody gave Mark an acid bath to erase all identifying features, figuring the police would identify the victim as Cody and the killer as Jimmy. The only flaw in his plan was he couldn't get rid of his stutter.

To prove her theory, Laura sits Mark down for a few "quality control survey" questions to test how well he knows his fake identity. Mark answers too well - he's clearly been practicing. But how does Corinne fit in? Laura has a way to prove who she is as well...

Max brings in Mark's dentist, Dr. Cheng, to compare Mark's dental X-rays to the ones NYPD took of Mark at that station. They're totally different, disproving Laura's imposter theory. That is, unless, Cody somehow switched out Mark's dental records with his own… which is exactly what he did. On his way out, Dr. Cheng hands out brochures, the back of which features staff photos. Guess who works for Dr. Cheng? Corinne.

And now Lillian's back! She shows up at the precinct to report her wallet stolen. Of course, Mark had a spare key to her house and helped himself to some getaway cash. Luckily he isn't too hard to find and soon Cody and Corinne are busted at an ATM taking money out of Lillian's account. Mystery solved!