While on a visit to her cousin Abby, Jessica once again finds herself on the scent of trouble. Abby's employer dies in a suspiciously convenient riding accident, and when his lawyer presents the will, it turns out that he left most of what he owned to his hunting dog Teddy. The already uneasy situation comes to a head when Teddy apparently kills one of the family using an automatic gate, and Abby, as an animal handler, falls under suspicion of having trained him.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Age-Gap Romance: Apparently one-sided on Abby's part, but she saw the real Denton behind the facade and came to have feelings for him.
- The Alcoholic: Denton describes Trish as guzzling martinis down like root beer and even her own brother ribs her about her drinking.
- Amoral Attorney:
- In his will, Denton describes Spencer as lobbying for dictators and sarcastically mentions what a shame it is that his clients keep getting blown up. That said, Spencer proves to be more decent than Trish in the end.
- And of course, there's the killer, Marcus Boswell, who was Denton's personal lawyer, and worked with Trish to kill Denton before arranging her death.
- Morgana hires a lawyer to break her father's will, but considering Denton left his money to a dog, that's not entirely unjustified.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Trish hits her horse with a riding crop after failing a jump, much to Abby's annoyance. Later, she's revealed to be complicit in the murder of her father.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Abby points out that Teddy wouldn't know how to work the button by himself and someone would have had to train him to press it, which casts suspicion on her. Jessica turns the tables during a court proceeding by showing that Abby's whistle was not the trigger and then playing the bird call that was the signal for Teddy to press the button, causing him to go to the actual killer for reinforcement.
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: Denton's family is one Dysfunction Junction filled with members who are either promiscuous, greedy, not very bright, or just a little out of touch with reality.
- Broken Tears: During Boswell's Villainous Breakdown when the training he gave the dog gives him away as the murderer, he breaks down in tears when Jessica exposes him.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Denton says Morgana isn't a bad person (unlike her siblings), she just has no sense.
- Dirty Old Man: Downplayed. Denton (eighty) makes a few suggestive remarks and an "If I was 30 years younger comment..." but is clearly regarded by Jessica and Abby as a harmless kidder.
- Drunk Driver: Trish apparently drove home drunk often enough for security guard Barnes to be unfazed by seeing her pass out in the driveway. This time, though, it wasn't her.
- Everyone Has Standards: Spencer may have perpetrated fraud in order to break his father's will, but he could see that killing Jessica to cover it up (like Potts wanted to do) was an absurdly stupid idea, and was very eager to find out who really killed his sister and father.
- Granola Girl: Morgana is a basically a cleaned-up New-Age Retro Hippie, heavy on the New Age, whose hippie parenting is implied to have messed up her daughter Echo in some way.
- Informed Flaw: Echo is described as "messed up" by her grandfather in his Spiteful Will, but she doesn't do anything worse than listen to heavy metal music and make some surly remarks about relatives who do a lot to provoke her.
- Meaningful Background Event: When the guard goes to check on the passed out Trish, we hear a bird call amongst the crickets that seems innocuous at first but becomes significant later.
- Pet Heir: The victim leaves his entire estate to his hunting dog, Teddy. He closes the obvious loophole by adding a clause that if Teddy dies anything but a natural death, the ASPCA will get the estate instead.
- Pet the Dog: Aside from leaving his estate to his actual pet Teddy, Denton does make bequests to his servants, with a little extra for the security guard who watched over his art collection, and leaves his best friend an antique shotgun he admired.
- Really Gets Around: In his will, Denton calls Trish out for collecting men like she used to collect dolls, and says it'll get her in trouble. It's not clear if she was in a relationship with Marcus Boswell, but they *did* hook up to kill her dad, and he *did* end up killing her, too.
- Red Herring: Impressively, every time a clue is brought up that incriminates the killer, there's something attached to it that makes it seem to incriminate someone else, or provide another clue, like that the killer couldn't have come from outside.
- Refuge in Audacity:
- Jessica waltzes into Pott's workyard while the latter is doing some woodwork and snatches the bandage he's using to fake a dog bite injury... while wearing bright red clothes.
- The whole plan of Trish and Denton's murderers.
- Sad Clown: Although Denton presented the image of a vivacious joker, Abby could see how much he regretted how badly his family had turned out.
- Shout-Out: When chastising one of the relatives for his hysteria about Teddy, Denton's lawyer blames his paranoia on his having seen too many Stephen King films.
- Simple Country Lawyer: Marcus Boswell, lawyer for the Denton estate, has a folksy drawl, and familiar attitude with the locals, but is also a fairly shrewd man.
- Spiteful Will: Denton takes the opportunity to criticize every one of his relatives while recording his will.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: After Abby has a confrontation with Trish, Morgana warns her to be careful of Trish, because Trish's Gemini was ascendant and Abby's Capricorn was at a low ebb, and the night previous three owls were seen in a black oak tree. Well, she's right in that Trish is dangerous, but that's not why.
- This Bear Was Framed: Teddy the beagle is framed repeatedly by people attempting to get to the inheritance left by his owner. This starts with drugging the dog and faking a vicious dog attack and then escalates to training the dog to push a button that closes an iron gate on a woman's neck and kills her. The latter incident leads to Jessica having to work out who taught the dog to push a button in the first place.
- Video Will: Denton's will was recorded on a video cassette, which the lawyer touts as the newest will technology.
- White Sheep: For all their faults, Morgana and Echo are the only members of Denton's family who haven't done anything criminal or morally wrong.
- Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: Morgana says that she was looking out her window and saw her sister's soul departing from her body, letting out a cry like a mourning dove as she went. It's that last part which gets Jess thinking about a whistle being used to trigger Teddy. As it turns out, someone was wearing Trish's coat, and Morgana saw Trish's killer from a distance leaving Trish's unconscious body to be crushed by the gates, with the birdcall being the trigger to get Teddy to push the button.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Spencer and Potts try to get Teddy put down by claiming that Teddy went crazy and attacked them. Turns out Potts was faking his injury and Spencer had put something in Teddy's food to drive him temporarily nuts.
