Jessica comes to visit a young couple, Christie Morgan and Tod Sterling, members of rival horse-breeding families that break into a bitter fight about the ownership of a couple foals sired by Sterling's prize stallion. Jessica brings in her PI friend Harry McGraw to help investigate, and the pair quickly have their hands full when Mr. Sterling turns up dead in the stables, with Mr. Morgan accused of being his murderer.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Hypocritical Humor: One of the bystanders asks Ms. Emmaline Bristol (who claims she can talk to horses) if the last horse told her who would win the race. She tells him not to be silly; horses aren't prophets (ignoring that most people would find talking to animals as bizarre as knowing the future).
- Immediate Self-Contradiction: When Jessica initially calls Harry, he's not all that interested in the "job" because he thinks his latest bet on a racehorse will bring in lots of money. When the horse loses, he resumes talking to Jessica and brightly asks about the job as though he hadn't just tried to dismiss it.
- Make the Dog Testify: Jessica brings in a "surprise witness", King Paragon (a stud stallion), with Ms. Emmaline (who claims to talk to horses) translating for him. Diana decries it as a farce...but Jessica's real motive was to get everyone down to the stables, where the blood and dye marks were buried in the straw.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Jessica insists that there were no tricks to King Paragon's description of the murder, and it doesn't seem likely Ms. Emmaline (who definitely believes in her own abilities) would go along with them if there were. Jessica also seems to believe in Ms. Emmaline's abilities in the final scene. Harry is still convinced they're putting him on somehow.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Judge Harley is in the middle of a dispute between two powerful families, but he seems legitimately interested in justice being done. He even agrees to Christie's unorthodox request for the group to meet down at the stables, though he warns her she'd better have a valid reason.
- Red Herring:
- Mr. Morgan and Mr. Sterling were quarreling over the ownership of two highly-bred, very expensive foals when Mr. Sterling died, and in fact they even had a fistfight the night of the murder. However, Mr. Morgan is guilty of nothing more than decking his rival (after Sterling punched him in the nose).
- Mr. Sterling had dye on his clothes when he died, and his girlfriend, Althea Mayberry, claims she threw a hair dye bottle at him. She also wrote him a nasty note about how deeply he hurt and embarrassed her by giving his daughter her position as hostess. However, she didn't kill him.
- Shout-Out:
- Althea insults Diana by calling her "Lady Chatterley" and "Miss Piggy".
- When Miss Morgan calls in her father's lawyer, Mark Mason, Harry comments grimly that he wishes Mark's first name was Perry instead.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Christie and Tod, like Juliet and Romeo, are young lovers who come from feuding families. When Christie says they'll get married immediately after their fathers stop fighting, Tod quips that at that rate, they'd better elope. Naturally, Mr. Sterling ends up dead with Mr. Morgan as the prime suspect.
- Twin Switch: It comes out late in the episode that King Paragon had a very similar-looking brother called Knight's Sword. King Paragon was killed by a lightning strike directly before he was supposed to be shipped to Mr. Sterling, and one of the stablehands used hair dye to cover Knight's white sock and pass him off as King.
