The Mysteries of Laura Episode 1.08 The Mystery of the Mobile Murder

A party bus cleaner picks up the aftermath of a crazy night, but finds more than empty bottles and discarded underwear - there's a dead lady in the bus bathroom!

At the precinct, cops are clustered around the sign-up sheet for the annual Gladiator Rock-n-Run competition, Billy and Meredith among them. Laura walks in and is attacked by Nicholas and Harrison, who are visiting Jake at the office. When they hear of the Rock-n-Run event, they beg their dad to do it. Just then Alejandro Padilla, the good-looking DEA Agent who has a thing for Laura, enters and starts flirting with her. When he mentions the Rock-n-Run race, a jealous Jake blurts out that he's joining his squad in the competition. This is going to be painful...

Not as painful as Jane Doe's night. Laura and Billy check out the party bus and learn the victim died of blunt force trauma to the head between one and three a.m. The party bus driver reluctantly that admits that after the Wall Street guys who hired him went home, he picked up a group of women to make some extra cash. The last time he saw the dead woman was when he dropped them off at Hunk-a-Riffic, a touristy all-male strip club.

At Hunk-a-Riffic, Laura corners a half-naked cocktail waiter to get some more info. He remembers the victim and how she ordered an unusual drink: chartreuse and tonic with extra mint. When he asked her about it, she said she was more into green drinks than men with green eyes. Laura takes this to mean she was referring to a green-eyed stripper - and she soon finds one dressed as a sexy cop. So, what's a detective to do at a strip club? Not get a lap dance?

While Silver the stripper gyrates all over her, Laura tries to get information out of him about Jane Doe. While he claims he doesn't remember her, he does shoot a warning look at a busboy eyeing Laura's purse. Billy takes off after the busboy, while Laura grabs the hot cop. The pair has a habit of stealing women's purses while they're getting lap dances. Billy finds a pen in Jane Doe's wallet from the Reeding Hotel.

At the hotel, Laura and Billy come upon a convention for Garden of Glow, a cosmetics line run by Margot Preston, a 59-year-old fountain of youth expert. She's giving a motivational speech to hundreds of her adoring saleswomen, chanting her name and screaming her praises. Soon she will announce the Gold Leaf Woman of the Year, an honor awarded to the company's top saleswoman. The nominees' headshots are featured on stage - and one of them is Jane Doe, aka Julie Campbell from Alaska!

When Laura and Billy attempt to interview Margot, she brushes them off and directs them to her lawyer. They do manage to corner an overeager young saleswoman, Heidi, and learn from her that Julie had issues with Danielle Bailey, the reigning Gold Leaf winner.

Laura finds Danielle at a tanning salon. She says Julie vanished at Hunk-a-riffic, and she and the other Gold Girl gals went back to the hotel. Danielle complains that Julie kept bugging her for Garden of Glow secrets and she told her to back off. She hates Julie because she made the Gold Circle in less than a year - all because she has some sugar daddy in Jersey buying up all her products.

Billy and Meredith trace Julie's buyer to a warehouse in Hoboken, where they locate Julie's storage locker full of articles, facts and photos of Margot Preston. "The truth behind Garden of Glow. The lies of Margot Preston" is scrawled beneath the display.

Julie Campbell of Alaska is really Julie Peters of New Jersey, and she appears to be putting together a case against Garden of Glow. Billy interviews Julie's roommate Ethan, who explains that Julie was working on a story exposing Margot as a fraud. Julie's mom was a rep for Garden of Glow who put all her money into the company, only to die penniless. The night before Julie died, she called Ethan and told her she found her smoking gun and was ready to confront Margot.

Meanwhile, Jake has hired Billy and Meredith to train him for the Rock-n-Run competition and he is suffering. To add to his problems, Agent Alejandro isn't giving up on Laura, telling Jake if he drops dead at the Rock-n-Run, he'll bring Laura as a date to his funeral.

At the hotel, Billy and Laura learn that a few hours before Julie's murder, Margot ordered room service for two - including a chartreuse and tonic, extra mint... Julie's drink! When they interrogate her, Margot admits Julie said she was going to bring her down, so she offered her $100K of "nuisance money" to keep her mouth shut. But Julie turned her down and left, so Margot had double the money wired to her room to hopefully convince Julie. To prove it, she takes the detectives to her hotel suite to show them the cash.

On the way up, they run into Heidi, who is giddy at finally getting inducted into the Gold Circle. She brags that she's staying in a suite just like Margot, explaining that one of Margot's rules for success is "to spend like a success." Up in the room, Laura notices the hotel walls are incredibly thin and comes up with a new theory: maybe one of Margot's followers in a nearby room heard the fight and decided to defend their leader. As it turns out, Heidi's room is directly beneath Margot's...

One to make a scene, Laura decides to announce her findings on stage at the Garden of Glow closing ceremonies. She announces that, after noticing the birthdate on a Xanax bottle in Margot's bathroom, she learned that Margot is not a 59-year-old who built an empire on looking half her age; she is a 43-year-old who built an empire by duping hundreds of women! The crowd is shocked, but none more so than Heidi, who races up to defend Margot's honor. Laura takes this opportunity to announce that Heidi heard Julie threaten to bring down the company, followed her and murdered her in the party bus.

While Laura is cracking the case, Jake is cracking every bone in his body at the Rock-n-Run event. Despite his misery, he manages to finish the course - dead last. But hey, he made his kids proud, right? Wrong - they totally forgot they even suggested he sign up for it. It's tough being Captain Booty...