The Mysteries of Laura Episode 1.19 The Mystery of the Dodgy Draft

Laura's distracted by the possibility she may be pregnant, but not too distracted to argue NCAA pool picks with Jake over breakfast. Babysitter Alicia has news: both of their picks suck, and she knows because her eldest son Horace, a blue chip high school forward, has been recruited by every major college team in the country. When Laura excuses herself to take a phone call, she quashes all basketball talk, but the minute she leaves the room, Jake offers Alicia $100 for her picks. Moments later, Laura's out the door, having caught a new case at the Botanical Gardens, where Reynaldo examines the corpse of 21-year-old college senior Treva Forster. It seems Treva hit her head while falling onto a rock, which killed her instantly. The only other leads: chalk on Treva's shoulder, and a raw Taser burn on her neck. Meredith offers to track the Taser discharge, which is barcoded, while Frankie reports to the gift shop, where a group of second graders have been asking about their missing teacher's assistant. Teacher Mrs. Borland says it was rumored Treva was having an affair with a high school student, while one of the kids insists she went missing right after she yelled at a giant with a dragon. Laura decides the affair rumor is the winner, then waves off lunch, prompting Meredith to pull her aside. Declining food isn't Laura's style, which means she either has man trouble, or she's pregnant. Laura admits it's not man trouble...

Jake delivers the bad news to Michael Forster, Treva's father. This week, Treva canceled out of their Italian dinner date - maybe because she was spending time with another teacher's assistant named Alexis Holden? It's not long before Max and Meredith have the goods on party girl Alexis, who called in sick today. After formulating their next steps, Meredith grills Laura - was it Tony? Did she use protection? A frazzled Laura admits it was really hard for her to get pregnant the first time, so she's taken a blood test and is waiting on results.

Frankie and Meredith knock on Alexis' door. When the only answer is the sound of moaning, Meredith kicks down the door to find Alexis on the couch, sick as a dog. Alexis insists neither she nor Treva ever slept with a student. Treva was focused on her old boyfriend Marco Williams, who's starting point guard for the Milman State Dragons in the upcoming NCAA tournament. Since the team's practicing at the arena right now, Frankie and Meredith decide to check it out. Spying the cops, Marco runs for it - and is only stopped when Laura whacks him with the team's dragon mascot head. As Billy and Laura cuff Marco and take him back to the station, Coach Nash and several cheerleaders including Sara Shaw lay into Frankie and Meredith. Marco wouldn't hurt a fly! Sara admits to being Marco's girlfriend, then stalks off, leaving cheer coach Dawn Grant to tell the detectives that if Marco isn't back by game time, the team is toast. Marco's value to the team becomes evident when their expensive lawyer appears to explain that if he's unavailable to play, the university will cut him from the team and void his scholarship. Realizing the lawyer represents the school, Marco dismisses her, then tells Laura he would never hurt Treva - he loved her, as a good friend. At the Botanical Gardens, they argued about bar owner Phil Hooks, who wanted him to shave points during tonight's game. Nevertheless, Laura is bound to hold Marco until he's cleared for murder, which could well mean that his basketball career is over.

While Frankie and Meredith confirm Phil's alibi, Max tracks the buyer of the Taser that burned Treva, Slava Krupski, who is also playing in the NCAA Tournament. Max advises Laura to consult the "expert in the conference room," who just so happens to be Alicia, working picks for Jake. Alicia knows Krupski has a lot of attitude, and there's no way he could guard Marco, whom he was due to come up against in the next game. Since Krupski's team just tipped off, Laura rushes back to the arena with Billy to ask Coach Stintz for a word with his player. When Stintz refers them to the team's public affairs office, Laura puts Plan B into effect, sending Billy to set up a player to start a brawl with Krupski on the court. Laura lays in wait for Krupski in the locker room, where she asks him about the Taser - which he claims he bought for fun. He had so much fun zapping his teammates that Coach Stintz impounded his Taser. After the game, Laura cuffs Stintz and hauls him down to the precinct. Since Marco couldn't have had access to the murder weapon, Laura preps to release him while Billy interrogates Stintz, who has an alibi. While he was on a recruiting trip to Scranton, someone must have stolen the Taser from his hotel room. The only person with access to his room? Cheerleader Sara Shaw, Marco's current girlfriend, who dropped a science scholarship to Cornell to be a cheerleader at Milman. So why was she in the hotel room of a coach from an opposing team? It turns out Stintz was recruiting Marco, and since he can't talk to his prospects directly, he spoke with Sara and her coach Dawn Grant. When Laura arranges for Marco to have a police escort to the game, she slyly asks about Sara's whereabouts - Marco thinks she's at the arena, getting ready for the game.

Frankie and Meredith find cheer team assistant Emily prepping a bowl of chalk for the night's game. Emily says that Sara was so happy to hear of Marco's release that she went on an emergency run to the lingerie store... which is where Laura finds her. Before long, the two women are discussing how to hold their boyfriends' attention. Chewing her chalk-covered fingers, Sara admits that her boyfriend started calling his ex a few weeks ago... but she's not a problem anymore. Laura pulls out her badge, and pulls Sara down to the precinct, where Sara offers her mom - cheer coach Dawn - as her alibi. Overbearing momager Dawn demands Sara's release as Laura realizes Dawn has been controlling her daughter's life and grooming her to be a trophy wife. Frankie presents an interesting morsel: Dawn was an NFL cheerleader in the '80s, and though she was engaged three times, there were no weddings. Jake orders Frankie, Max and Meredith to review surveillance footage covering the route from Dawn's hotel to the arena. Finally, they spy Dawn buying a hot dog, which they know can't be for Sara... so Laura and Frankie question the vendor, who admits to not changing his hot dog water very often. Laura plays the rookie card, giving Frankie the task of finding the smoking gun - in this case, the Taser Dawn used on Treva - at the bottom of the hot dog water tank. Dawn admits she just wanted to scare Treva, who fell "funny" and hit her head on a rock.

After arresting Treva, Laura takes a personal call from her doctor. Although she won't tell Max what was said, she shakes her fist at the heavens, thanking God, then blindsides Max with an enormous kiss, smack on the lips. That night, Laura is just texting Tony when he shows up at Calligan's bar. Laura tells him the good news - the herbs she was taking for seasickness resulted in two false positives. Interestingly enough, Tony wouldn't have minded a positive positive...