“Redemption”
The bookstore is closed for renovations when Samantha (Kellie Martin) first meets Jim
Carter (John Ratzenberger), a mystery novel aficionado who has been admiring her
photography through the window. Samantha lets him in, even though her incompetent
plumbing contractor, Tyler Bell (David Lascher), a high school boyfriend, has turned the
shop into a disaster zone. Samantha is dealing with Bell’s latest crisis when Philby
(Clarence Williams III), the bookstore’s enigmatic manager and a former cloak-anddagger man, discovers a valuable rare first edition has gone missing from the table
where he had left it moments before.
The case of the missing book soon grows more serious when gunshots shatter the
bookstore’s windows, Bell’s office is ransacked and Carter turns up dead outside a
homeless mission. Police Chief Connor (Sander) suspects the transients who hang out
at the mission.
At the B&B where Carter was staying, the owner hands a beautifully lacquered red box
to Samantha. Carter told Bonnie, the B&B owner, that Samantha likes mysteries and
here’s one to remember him by. He asked that Samantha give what’s inside to his
daughter, Kerry.
Samantha and Philby, hesitant to open the box, bring it to Dr. Logan’s office to have him
x-ray it. We see the outline of a key, a star shape with ribbon attached, small square
shapes and a rectangular shape.
In Cassie’s office, Samantha opens the box. Inside is a key, a Silver Star, two post-its
stuck together and a folded letter. She and Cassie look at the post it notes. On the top
post-it is a crude drawing of two wavy parallel lines. The second post-it is a crude
drawing of the sun with rays sticking straight out of it. Samantha doesn’t get it.
Back at the Mystery Woman bookstore, Samantha finds Jerry Dell looking up at the
ceiling grumbling. He explains to her that one of his guys is out sick so he hired a temp
named Eddie for The Haven but Eddie’s messed up some of the work. Meanwhile,
Philby has discovered that Jim Carter was in the Army 5th Cavalry, stationed in Vietnam.
At the homeless shelter, Samantha and Philby ask Revernard Tucker about the sketching
on the post-its Carter left behind. They discover that Rev. Tucker was in Vietnam and
Cambodia and he goes on to tell them that the box was most likely a religious artifact
which might have even held the cremated ashes of a holy man. The signs are a sun and
maybe a river on field maps, two wavy parallel lines mean water.
At the store, Philby learns that Jim was Jim Wolfe, gunnery Officer, 5th Cav. United
States Army. Sitting at her desk, Samantha spots Post-its next to a copy of Navajo
Sunset. She and Philby look at it and realize the picture of the sun isn't about the sun.
It's about the sun's rays. And the wavy lines aren't a river, they're a creek. Ray
Creekwater. The clue is in the book. As Samantha and Philby go to leave the store,
someone shoots at them. They take cover and two more shots hit the store.
Later, Philby gets a fax that says two men from Jim's unit went to Cambodia with him.
One was an Alan Butler, now deceased and the other was Jerry's father, Daniel Dell.
Samantha’s astonished. She goes to confront Jerry Dell who claims he knew nothing
about Carter but suggests there may be a connection between the robbery at his shop
and Carter’s death.
Back at the Mystery Woman bookstore, Samantha goes to read the next Ray Creekwater
mystery. Suddenly she sees the missing rare book. A business card for the store falls
out of the book and on the back it says tick-tock.
Philby receives another fax with the 5th Cavalry roster -- Reverend Tucker was the
commanding officer. Tucker reveals to Philby and Samantha that he, Jim Wolfe, Alan
Butler and Danny Dell went into Cambodia. Their mission was supposed to be top
secret. Truth was, they were just stumbling around looking for something to report.
They captured a local. They were going to kill him but he said he had a map to some
treasure. He offered to exchange the map for his life. So, they took the map and let him
go.
Once they found the ruby, fighting broke about between the men. Jim came up with a
plan. They sent the ruby home to a mutual friend, Paul Case, with instructions to hide
the box. They asked him to send the location of the hiding place to Jim and the key to
the hiding place to Danny. That way neither of them could find the ruby without the
other. Paul Case died in an automobile accident almost a year ago. Jim was wounded.
After Danny had been rotated home, Jim spent months in a VA hospital. When he got
out he devoted himself to drinking for a lot of years and he never came back to get the
ruby. Until now, when he heard Danny died. But first he wanted to make amends to his
daughter and then return the ruby if he could.
Later, Samantha, returning from her walk, spots Jerry who's entering the Mystery
Woman bookstore with a ladder. Philby arrives and realizes that whoever shot at them
was just trying to scare them because hitting them by the front door would have been
easy. Someone was telling them to stay away from the store. Maybe they think the
ruby is in the store. Cassie calls her. The autopsy is in. Whoever stabbed Jim used a
weapon that was broken on one end.
At the store, Samantha and Philby find Jerry lying on the bathroom floor covered in
plaster, he’s fallen. Then Samantha notices her posters on her walls. The third poster
from the left is The Devil rising over Four Corners. Turning over the poster she finds a
hand-written message that reads: a box within a box. The laurel's victory crowns death.
Another riddle!
At a coffee shop, Samantha and Philby are sitting at a small table. Samantha looks
unhappy. What's bothering her is that Jerry lied about all the work he was going to do
to the bookstore. All of it sudden it hits her! It's something Sherlock Holmes once said:
‘When you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the
answer.” She realizes they’ve been looking for Eddie, but he doesn’t exist.
Samantha explains that Jerry lied about hiring a temp named Eddie. He wanted throw
suspicion off himself, knowing that Chief Connors didn't like the men at the Haven. Jerry
said that his father died without saying anything about Vietnam. Samantha knows he’s
lying again and that when he saw Jim's 5th Cav. tattoo, he knew he must be Wolfe
At the store, Samantha and Philby pull up just in time to see Jerry packing up his truck.
They tell him they have found something that was stolen from Mystery Woman, a red
lacquer box!
Jerry runs back to Dell and Son Plumbing looking frantic. He unwraps a rag to reveal the
red lacquer box. Confused, Jerry stares at the box in his hand. From behind him, Jerry
Samantha and Philby are clapping. Samantha tells him he’s solved Jim’s murder. He’s
been caught red lacquer handed. The night Jim broke into Mystery Woman, Jerry was
following him. When Jim stayed in the store for such a long time, Jerry figured he was
hiding the ruby in the bookstore. So Jerry killed Jim to get him out of the way and
began demolishing Mystery Woman to find the ruby.
At Haven, Samantha visits with Tucker, they’re both glad it’s over. The Reverend
explains to Samantha that Jim knew he was being followed but he didn't want to go
straight to the ruby until he could deal with whoever was following him. As a backup,
he put the key and the clues in the box and gave them to his landlady to give to
Samantha if something happened to him.
At the Mystery Woman bookstore, a young woman, Kerry Wolfe walks in and
approaches the desk. She is Jim’s daughter. Samantha gives Kerry a letter from her
father.
--HALLMARK CAHNNEL--