Jessica arrives in New Orleans to promote a book, by accident two days early. She drops in on a friend who runs a TV station, but all is not relaxed in the Big Easy. Just after completing a special performance and just before taking a major trip to Las Vegas, renowned jazz artist Ben Coleman drops dead, apparently of a heart attack. But Jessica smells foul play, and busies herself looking amidst Coleman's survivors for the sour notes of murder.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Absence of Evidence: Jessica finds evidence of how the murder was committed by noticing what wasn't on the clarinet — namely, the coffee stains that should have been there had it not been wiped clean after Ben played it.
- Alliterative Name: Callie's married name is Callie Coleman.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Eddie has strong feelings for Callie, who still loves Ben in spite of his cheating. Ben, who was planning to kill Callie when he left her so that she couldn't reveal she'd given false testimony that helped him beat a murder rap.
- Cassandra Truth: The killer (Eddie) confesses that he knew Ben was plotting to kill Callie and the intended victim wouldn't believe him, so he killed Ben before he could follow through.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Ben and his brother used to be young criminals who are implied to have killed at least one person. His brother died in a gang fight, and Ben made it big, albeit addicted to drugs.
- He's Dead, Jim: One of the attendees of Ben Carson's last concert is a young doctor who pulls back his eyelid before declaring the jazz musician a has-Ben and gone.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Ben was planning to kill his wife Callie with a rare poison he had picked up overseas. Instead, one of his friends kills him with the same poison to protect her.
- I Am the Band: Ben Coleman was unsurprisingly the main draw of the Ben Coleman Quartet, whom he planned to dump after he made it big.
- I Call It "Vera": Ben called his prized clarinet "Miss Emma".
- If It Bleeds, It Leads: Carl, Turnbull, Jonathan's boss at the station, shows up at the crime scene annoyed with him because he had to learn about Ben Carson's death through Jonathan's cameraman, which only gives them an hour to edit the footage in time for the 11:00 news. Disgusted, Jonathan refuses to hand over the tapes, and when Turnbull says he'll take it up with the station manager, he says they'll go together. The manager sides with Turnbull, the footage airs, and Jonathan quits in protest.
- Instrument of Murder: A jazz clarinetist who was planning on firing his back-up band before signing a huge recording contract and killing his wife was murdered with a poisoned clarinet reed.
- Jerkass:
- Ben and his brother are implied to have been complicit in the murder of a liquor store clerk while robbing him, with only Callie's false testimony saving them from being arrested. He eventually married her, and rewarded her for fifteen years of faithful marriage by cheating on her and planning to poison her. Ben also planned on dumping his fellow band members after sixteen years together, including one, Eubie, who had helped him develop his talent and written several arrangements for him, even helping him get by in lean financial times. Also, Ben was smuggling drugs out of South America, which would likely have meant jail time for the whole band if he'd gotten caught, even after Aaron warned him about the dangers.
- Carl Turnbull and his station manager put footage of a man's agonized death from curare poisoning on the 11:00 news.
- Mood-Swinger: Eddie's a little simple-minded and unstable. Callie tends to talk to him like a very large child as a result.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Ben had been cheating on Callie for a while and didn't want to take her to Las Vegas when his big break came. However, he didn't want to run any risk that she would tell the truth about a robbery/murder incident for which she gave him an alibi, even ignoring Eddie's assurances that she wouldn't do such a thing. So he decided to kill her, which backfired when Eddie used the poison on him.
- Pet the Dog: Ben was apparently kind to Eddie.
- Red Herring: Callie takes the cup Ben drank from off the piano in the commotion, making it look like the liquid was poisoned. It wasn't, but she acted as though it were to divert suspicion from the real killer.
- Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Ben Coleman is a talented up-and-coming jazz clarinetist who's doing heavy drugs and cheating on his wife with a number of women. His manager Aaron has tried to stop both of these things, but cynically thinks that it'll be less than a year before Ben burns himself out and that it was a shame he'd die before he really hits it big/develops his talent to perfection.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Subverted; initially Jessica and the others suspect the coffee that Ben drank from contained the poison, but Callie also drank from it on camera. The poison was elsewhere.
- Venturous Smuggler: Aaron, the manager of Ben Coleman's group and a number of other jazz acts, supported a number of starving musicians by smuggling all kind of things all over the world—except for drugs, which he wouldn't have anything to do with. It does a little to make up for his lack of management talent.
