While organizing a benefit, Jessica meets an up-and-coming piano virtuoso, Leslie Walden, and her controlling maestro, Byron Tokofsky. Jessica is concerned about the young woman and her mystery-solving prowess is called for again when Tokofsky turns up shot to death and the police blame Leslie's estranged father.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Murder: When doing The Summation, Jessica reprovingly points out to one of the culprits that Leslie could have been the one who played the fatal composition. The man retorts that it wouldn't have happened; Tokofsky's ego was what killed him as much as anything else.
- Chekhov's Gun: A mysterious, unsigned composition arrives at the penthouse directly before Tokofsky tells Jessica to leave. It turns out to have been instrumental in the murder.
- Foreshadowing: Hoyt tells Jessica he was upgrading Tokofsky's sound equipment for much of the week. This gave him the time to put together the contraption that killed Tokofsky.
- I Have No Son!: When her father tries to reconnect with her, Leslie is confused about how to feel. After he criticizes Tokofsky's plans for her, she yells at him that from her perspective, he doesn't exist anymore.
- Maybe Ever After: Solly, Jessica's piano tutor, and Leslie don't exactly get together, but they receive a good amount of Ship Tease and plan to meet up, given that they have gigs in the same area around the same time.
- The Mourning After: Leslie's father plunged into a grief-stricken spiral of alcohol and drugs after his wife, Leslie's mother, died. He managed to pull himself out of it sometime during the decade in-between, but he shows no interest in other romances. He even turns down Ms. Cross' offer to buy him a drink, saying that's how he met his wife. Now he wants to reconnect with his daughter and give her the support that he should have earlier.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Hank, Leslie's estranged father, has been trying to reconnect with her and disapproves of Tokofsky's plan to marry his daughter once she turns 18. He was also within shooting distance the night Tokofsky was murdered, leading the police to arrest him. Naturally, he's innocent.
- Pull the Thread: Jessica finds it odd that an aspiring composer would place a sour chord in something intended for the eyes of a piano master...until she realizes the chord was a trigger.
- Recurring Character: Lt. Peter DiMartini returns after his last appearance in "The Dead File."
- Songs in the Key of Lock: The killers set up a system which unlocks the secretary behind the piano and fires the gun hidden within when a certain sour chord included in the composition is played.
- Wife Husbandry: Tokofsky has been guardian to a musical prodigy for 10 years. He announces his intention to marry her (despite her clear discomfort about the change in their relationship) when she turns 18. This provides one of the possible motives for his murder when he becomes the Victim of the Week.
