The Mysteries of Laura Episode 1.07 The Mystery of the Art Ace

It's early in the morning when an elderly dumpster diver discovers a dead body in Little Korea. Blissfully unaware, Laura is rocking out to Janis Joplin while dropping the boys off at school, then it's off to meet Jake at the murder scene. Laura's indignant to notice several cases of empty beer bottles surrounding the dumpster - who doesn't recycle?! M.E. Reynaldo is already on the scene. David Sarkissian of The Sarkissian Gallery was killed by blunt force trauma to the head between midnight and 4 a.m. The wound is oddly shaped and contains an unknown sticky substance. Noticing a suspiciously large crotch bulge, Laura investigates to find a wad of $20,000 cash in David's pants. Why didn't the killer take it?

Laura and Jake proceed to The Sarkissian Gallery, where the avant-garde art evades Laura's sensibilities. David's sister Angela is devastated by the news of his death... though her father Julius claims he's not surprised, based on the life David led. Angela explains her dad always thought Julius was a screw-up. She has no idea about the money in his pants, but David did frequent a Little Korea karaoke bar. Jake shows David's photo around the bar, and while his back is turned, Laura gets on stage to belt out her Janis Joplin jam. Sending proprietor Mrs. Kim to get Laura off the stage, Jake wanders into a VIP room in the back... which is set up with a casino-quality poker table and wet bar. Mrs. Kim admits she recognizes David; he may have been at the poker game, but all the players all go by nicknames. Learning the next poker game is tomorrow night, Jake takes her list of nicknames, promising to return.

The next morning, Jake enlists the best gambler he knows to go to the poker game undercover: Laura. She claims she's too rusty, but Jake knows there's one person who can get Laura back on her game. Despite her emphatic no, Laura visits the only person who can say "no" as emphatically as her: her dad, disbarred lawyer Leo Diamond. Father and daughter are clearly combative and estranged, and Leo immediately starts in on Laura - she should apologize for Thanksgiving! Refusing to concede anything, Laura slams the door on her way out. In the meantime, Max has done some research on Mrs. Kim's list of poker player nicknames and come up with a hit: pro footballer T.J. Cantrell. A peek at T.J.'s Instagram account indicates that he's currently at a downtown strip club, so Billy and Meredith check it out. T.J. isn't interested in coming down to the precinct, so Meredith grinds her thumb into his ripped rotator cuff and slaps on the cuffs. Down at the station, Billy offers to tell T.J.'s wife about his dalliance with the strippers - unless he gets Laura into that night's poker game.

Laura finds her dad at a park in Queens to ask for help a second time. In the spirit of quid pro quo, Leo agrees to help in exchange for time with his grandsons. Laura agrees to set up a date the next day with one caveat: no sweets. That's when she pulls a massive bag of betting candy out of her purse and a competitive game of Texas Hold 'Em replete with smack talk begins. Apparently Leo was never the best dad. But it's not long before Leo declares Laura ready for her undercover game.

That night, Laura gets herself dolled up and hits the poker game, communicating with her team over a wire. She's not pleased to hear Jake has brought Leo along to advise. Laura ticks through the players, getting names when she can so the team can vet them. She takes note of hot cocktail waitress Bridget Michaels, whom she suspects runs the game. When Laura asks the players point blank who cleaned out David Sarkissian the other night, she's met with silent stares, so she pulls out her badge. An angry dude flips the table and Laura sends the team after Bridget, who has bolted. An extremely aggressive Meredith chases Bridget down and tackles her into a pile of garbage.

Back at the precinct, Bridget tells Jake she does in fact run the poker game, but she had nothing to do with David's death. He was a terrible card player, so she approached him to launder her profits by selling her paintings, which she would resell at auction. David offered her a better deal than her last cleaner, Titus Bosch. Meredith confirms Bridget's story. David laundered over $300,000 for Bridget, which means the cash in his pants belonged to Bridget. It turns out that Max is familiar with the art scene and knows all about Titus Bosch, whom Meredith remembers seeing with Julius Sarkissian, two days before David's murder. When Max mentions there's a major estate auction that afternoon, Jake sends him and Meredith to eyeball Bosch. Max is in heaven, and quickly seats himself next to Bosch, who refuses to talk and focuses on buying a painting, Max starts a bidding war, hoping to pressure Bosch into spilling his beans. After Max wins the auction, Meredith offers to sell Bosch the painting provided he tell what he knows. Bosch has an alibi for the night of the murder, but it's true, he did talk to Julius about David stealing his business with Bridget.

After learning the sticky substance in David's wound is a particular framer's glue, Jake and Laura return to The Sarkissian Gallery to question Julius. Claiming his operation is clean, Julius pulls out the gallery's handwritten ledger. When Jake mentions the glue, Julius admits David was no restorer and asks to call his lawyer. Much to Jake and Laura's surprise, Julius confesses to his son's murder, though there are clearly holes in his story. Laura is just reviewing the ledger when Leo drops by the station with the twins, who are all hopped up on ice cream. Furious, Laura pulls Leo aside to remind that the only rule she gave him was no sweets. When Leo tells her to loosen up her tight ass, and why did she ruin her marriage, Laura turns the conversation back to Thanksgiving: Leo invited Jake to dinner, right after Laura found out he was cheating on her. Leo admits he was operating out of fatherly concern, hoping she could work things out with Jake. A light bulb goes off in Laura's head, and she rushes off to show Jake the Sarkissians' ledger. It seems Angela transcribed David's sales, so Julius must have known she was in on the money laundering, and confessed to cover for her.

Laura and Jake rush down to the gallery for that night's opening. Laura distracts Angela while Jake cases Angela's office, finding a bedazzled bowling pin with blood on it. When confronted with the bowling pin, Angela admits to entering David's sales in the book. After Julius met with Bosch, Angela and her boyfriend Will told David he had to stop, but he wanted to do one more deal. Just then, Laura notices an art piece called "99 Bottles of Beer Not on the Wall," composed of empty beer bottles and created by Will. Recalling cases of identical beer bottles next to the dumpster where David was found, Laura knows Will is their culprit. Will must have asked David to sell his pieces to Bridget, and when she failed to re-sell his terrible art, the deal fell apart. Admitting things got out of hand with the bowling pin, Will breaks a bottle and holds it to Angela's throat. Laura throws something into the wall of bottles and when Will is distracted, Jake cuffs him.

That night, Leo stops by the house to apologize to Laura. He only tried to save her marriage so she wouldn't end up like him - alone and eating crappy TV dinners. Of course, Laura is microwaving crappy TV dinners at that very moment, and there's enough to share with her dad.