I suppose the 4th episode of Murder in a Small Town finally brings some intrigue and mystery to the otherwise straightforward show. The episode follows a Gone Girl-like scenario where a man mysteriously disappears after his home office is vandalized with blood, presumably his own. The story follows Cassandra’s childhood bestie, Emma, who has shown up after a really long time. Emma and Casandra happen to meet each other one night, and Cassandra invites her over for dinner. That same night, Emma’s husband Charlie goes missing while Emma’s at dinner. Now it’s up to Karl and Cassandra to determine what happened: Is Charlie dead or alive? Meanwhile, things are changing in Karl’s life too, because his daughter’s in town for a complicated reason, and she’s now going to live with her father. However, will Karl be able to break through with her?
Spoiler Alert
What Happened to Charlie?
Murder in a Small Town episode 4 begins six months in the past. It’s Charlie lying in bed and Emma holding a gun to his face, asking him why she isn’t good enough for him. The screen cuts to black when we hear a gunshot. 6 months later, Cassandra invites Emma to dinner because she needs her to help with raising funds. Clearly, Emma and Charlie are super rich, so Cassandra basically just wants her friend to help her financially, for the moment at least. Cassandra wants funding for a Gibsons hub where there’ll be art on display and such; Emma auctions off the name of this “hub.” At the end of the night, Emma gives Cassandra a heartfelt message, telling her that she wishes Karl and her well. Cassandra senses there’s something wrong, but Emma doesn’t say anything; instead, she asks her to wait until she gets in the house. As soon as Emma’s in the house, Cassandra hears her screaming frantically.
Karl comes by immediately to check what’s happened and learns that Charlie’s gone missing and there’s blood all over his office. At the same time, he discovers a bullet hole at the top of the bedpost, which was simply hidden with a photograph. Karl then questions Emma, specifically about the bullet hole, because he finds it odd that it wasn’t fixed, only temporarily covered up. Emma behaves like she’s guilty of killing her husband with the way she reacts to Karl’s questioning. Later, Cassandra tells Karl that, 6 months earlier, at the same time Emma claims the gun went off by accident, Emma had met her for coffee and things were a bit strange. Cassandra says Emma wasn’t being herself. Cassandra helps Karl a lot in this case; I suppose it also helps their relationship get a bit tighter, but they’re still struggling to say that they’re actually dating.
Anyway, Karl learns from Emma’s brother Blake that she’s a perfectionist thanks to their mother. She doesn’t actually mean to hide information; it just ends up happening because she can’t stand it being known that Charlie and she weren’t the perfect couple. Additionally, Charlie’s been embezzling money from Emma’s brother’s firm for the past 6 months. He used to be an employee there. Additionally, it seems Charlie didn’t have the best relationship with his in-laws either. So, Officer Yen and Karl realize that theirs was basically a loveless marriage, and Charlie must’ve staged his own disappearance.
It turns out Charlie is actually alive and has been having an affair. Karl connects the dots and figures out that Charlie had an accomplice on the day of his disappearance. At the same time, Charlie makes his way to his office to find a thumb drive, presumably the one with information about their embezzlement or the affair in general, that he accidentally left behind. It seems he went from one controlling relationship to another because even the woman he’s with now seems to be in charge of everything in Charlie’s life. Anyway, he ends up getting caught by Blake in the office, but his other woman stabs Blake (yikes) because he knows Charlie’s alive. Now they can’t leave him stabbed there, so she gets Charlie to smother him with a pillow too.
Anyway, there’s only one way Karl can get to Charlie physically, and that is by tracking Emma, so he plants the seed, “Charlie is alive,” leaving Emma to figure out where her husband might be. She leads him to a house that Charlie’s parents had left him. Of course, Emma wants to kill her husband now, because he killed her brother. More importantly, all Charlie really ever wanted was for Emma to leave him alone, but she doesn’t seem to want to let go of her porcelain life even after it’s been cracked. “For better or for worse,” as they say, so Emma pulls the gun on him, but Karl shows up then and saves the day as always.
Does Holly Meet Cassandra?
At the end of Murder in a Small Town episode 4 (that’s a lot of murders), Karl returns home to a tired Holly. It seems she feels betrayed that he left their family and then started dating Cassandra without a word to her. She feels like he doesn’t care for her and he left the family for this new girlfriend, but Karl clears out the misunderstanding and apologizes for being “absent.” All he wants is for her and her sister to be happy. Holly’s been kicked out of her previous school because she was caught smoking marijuana on the school premises. Now Karl makes her promise that something like that won’t happen again or she’ll be sent to her mom to be disciplined. Finally, Karl takes her to meet Cassandra, and the episode ends with their first meeting. I have a feeling this is going to be great for the both of them, but we’ll see how that goes. This episode was both wholesome and gave each character some room to grow on their own. Even Yen got praised by Karl, which is lovely to see because she clearly really cares for the job. On the other hand, Cassandra wasn’t simply a showpiece, and we get to see a little bit more of her, even though it’s not necessarily more about her, but hopefully that’ll change soon.
