“SING ME A MURDER”
SYNOPSIS
It’s a typical work day for Samantha Kinsey (Kellie Martin) and her assistant
Philby (Clarence Williams III) in the Mystery Woman bookstore, except for the fact that
Philby is uncharacteristically grumpy. It seems that a former colleague from his secret past (was he a spy or wasn’t he?) has died and Philby finds it hard to work up much excitement about a never-read first edition of an Agatha Christie novel that the store has just acquired. Samantha, on the other hand, is very enthusiastic when young Jason
Hurd (Brad Rowe), manager of the Ramblers (a once-popular Peter, Paul & Mary-esque folk music trio), wants to stage a benefit concert in town on the grounds behind the
Mystery Woman bookstore. The Ramblers were popular before Samantha’s time, of course, but she’s a diehard fan, having grown up listening to her parents’ records. She agrees to let the concert take place.
Soon Samantha is meeting the Ramblers themselves – Steven (David Naughton),
Dan (John Getz) and Carly (Ellen Greene) – as preparations for the concert are under way. The singers are older, of course, but they’ve aged gracefully. Carly is especially warm when she chats with Samantha, although clearly she’s a little spacey. Philby, back from a fishing trip, is brought up to speed; he wasn’t a folk-music fan, but he goes along with the plan because it’s clearly important to Samantha. Meanwhile, Samantha prods
Philby for details about the fishing trip, only to learn that Philby really had been called back into duty as a government “consultant” regarding a midnight bank robbery in
Bloomington, Indiana.
Later, each of the Ramblers arrives late for their rehearsal. Dan arrives first; he was delayed by some nostalgic shopping at a poster shop nearby. Next to arrive is
Carly, looking fabulous after getting the full-on beauty treatment at the Curl Up and
Dye. Last to arrive is Steven, who says he needed to make a stop to get a new guitar string to replace one that had broken. When Carly mistakes Philby for one of the trio’s old roadies, Dan delicately explains to Samantha and Philby that she has erratic moments now and then because of a bad drug experience back in ‘74; but Steven,
Carly’s longtime husband, takes good care of her during those difficult moments. After rehearsal, Samantha and Philby join the Ramblers for dinner at Bell’s B&B, where the trio and their manager are staying. Just as Samantha, Philby, Steven and Carly are about to be seated, there’s a commotion upstairs. Dan has discovered that Jason Hurd, their manager, has been stabbed in his room. He’s dead!
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HALLMARK CHANNEL / MYSTERY WOMAN, “Sing Me a Murder” Synopsis
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It isn’t long before Bell’s B&B is an official crime scene. Police and coroner are on the scene. Chief Connors (Casey Sander) arrives to run the investigation. He’s clearly annoyed but not really surprised to see Samantha there; although she sees herself as being an amateur sleuth, he regards her as a busybody. Chief Connors shows no skills for diplomacy when questioning Steven, Dan and Carly. From Bonnie (Tina
Lifford), the woman who runs the B&B, he learns that the victim had two visitors earlier in the afternoon, one of whom had one blue eye and one brown. It also so happens that a knife from Bonnie’s kitchen is missing. Later that evening, the singers tell
Samantha what a crass, unlikable individual Jason Hurd was. And Carly announces that, despite the tragedy, the show will go on.
The next day, Samantha is at the courthouse pumping her D.A. friend Cassie
(Nina Siemaszko) for information about the case. It so happens that the forensics investigator discovered one suspicious fingerprint in the murder room. The print belongs to Marshall Bolen (James Intveld), a record producer and importer/exporter from Los Angeles. Probably he was one of the two men who visited Jason the afternoon he was killed; possibly he’s the killer. Chief Connors is having the man picked up and brought back to town.
Back at the Mystery Woman bookstore, Philby is on the computer gathering information about known criminals with bi-color eyes. Whoever that might be, it’s not
Bolen. When the suspect is brought back for questioning, his eyes are brown. The man admits to coming to see the victim, but says it was strictly business; he wanted to sign the Ramblers to a record contract. The second man, he claims, was a stranger to him, a rival record producer. He tells Chief Connors that they went up to Jason’s room together, only to discover his dead body, so they left as quickly as they could, not wanting to be involved. Chief Connors doesn’t buy this story.
Meanwhile, at Bell’s B&B, Steven, Dan and Carly are fretting about the murder.
Carly says she feels responsible because she had “mean thoughts” about Jason. At that moment, in walks a young man the Ramblers know as Harmony (Austin Peck), even though he introduces himself as Bill McGuire. He is Steven and Carly’s son. He’s also their attorney. He’s a shark in the courtroom who couldn’t be more unlike his hippie parents if he tried. And in no time at all, he’s in Chief Connors’ face, pushing his buttons. When the chief threatens to arrest Harmony, Carly blurts out, “No. No! I did it.
I killed Jason Hurd!”
Chief Connors is ready to arrest Carly, but Samantha delicately talks him out of it. Carly does have an alibi, after all; she was having her hair done at the Curl Up and
Dye between 5 and 7 o’clock, the general time of the murder. But Connors is swayed more so by the notion that arresting Carly, a somewhat famous entertainer, would bring unwanted media and publicity to his quiet town. Besides, Marshall Bolen is still the
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HALLMARK CHANNEL / MYSTERY WOMAN, “Sing Me a Murder” Synopsis
– Page 3 more likely suspect at this point. Later, Samantha asks her old friend Francine (Ashley
Laurence) of the Curl Up and Dye a few questions and learns that Carly’s alibi isn’t rock solid, that she could have slipped away for a few minutes, even though it isn’t likely.
Philby digs up a lot of information about Marshall Bolen, the leading suspect.
The man might profess to be a record producer and importer/exporter, but he has a shady past that suggests his real profession involves criminal activity. That evening, at the concert rehearsal, Bolen, who has just been released on bail, shows up claiming to have the Ramblers signed to an exclusive contract. “I own you,” he says – which promptly incites a fight between Steven and Bolen. Steven breaks his guitar over
Bolen’s head before Philby separates them.
Chief Connors’ search of the entire Bell’s B&B leads to the discovery of the murder knife, which has been hidden beneath the mattress of Dan’s bed. Connors makes an arrest, although Dan protests his innocence as he is led away by officers.
Connors also confiscates the victim’s laptop computer.
Samantha learns from Cassie that Marshall Bolen has also been ruled out as a suspect after acing a polygraph test. The police are running fingerprint tests on the murder knife. Philby continues to uncover provocative background information about
Bolen, who happens to have changed his name after a prison term. Marshall Bolen is actually a man named Tom Brady who served time for profiteering, money laundering and extortion. It seems that Chief Connors’ background check wasn’t thorough enough.
Harmony, meanwhile, is up to his legal tricks to get Dan released. The fact that there were no fingerprints on the knife helps his cause. Connors still considers Dan his leading suspect, until he gets wind of Bolen/Brody‘s criminal past.
The following morning, when Bolen is being released from the hospital, before
Chief Connors can pick him up for further questioning, the man steps into a sedan he has arranged to take him out of town. Or so he thinks. Instead, Philby is at the wheel and Samantha is in the passenger seat and they’ve got questions for Bolen, who can’t get out of the vehicle because of the automatic door locks. From Bolen, they learn that the other man who visited the murder victim, the man with bi-color eyes, is an old prison buddy. But he still denies any involvement in the murder as Samantha and Philby turn Bolen over to Chief Connors. And sure enough, the second man also aces a liedetector test. Which again leaves the three members of the folk music group as the only logical suspects. But which one is responsible?
A little more of Philby’s background digging (this time on each of the Ramblers), some deductive reasoning on Samantha’s part and some pointed questions directed at
Carly unearths a shocker: Steven is not really Harmony’s father. Dan is! But Steven was never let in on their secret.
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HALLMARK CHANNEL / MYSTERY WOMAN, “Sing Me a Murder” Synopsis
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Samantha offers Philby‘s services to the small-town, budget-strapped police department. They need someone to retrieve deleted files from Jason Hurd’s laptop computer (there might be telling evidence there), but they’ve got nobody with the tech skills. So Philby is elected. Meanwhile, Carly has officially been eliminated as a suspect as well, because the time of the murder has been pinpointed to 5:30, when she was having her hair done.
The next day, at the Mystery Woman bookstore, while Philby is working away at the victim’s computer, Samantha decides to take Steven’s broken guitar to be repaired.
That’s when she has a “eureka” moment. She has solved the case! After Philby does a little more research to find evidence that supports her theory, they decide to set a trap.
Samantha meets again with the Ramblers, who are preparing to leave town, as
Chief Connors has no conclusive evidence to hold anyone. She tells the Ramblers some of the things that they’ve discovered, that their dead manager wasn’t really giving the money raised from this and past benefit concerts to charity; he was pocketing everything. Samantha also tells them that Chief Connors is close to having the evidence he needs to make a murder arrest; incriminating evidence about the concert scam, she says, is probably stored away in the laptop computer, which Philby is going to decipher.
Samantha adds that she and Philby must attend a Book Fair in L.A. that evening, but once they’re back, Philby will probably be able to find what he’s looking for in no time.
The trap has been set.
That evening, someone breaks into the Mystery Woman bookstore and, in darkness, finds the laptop computer at Philby’s desk. Then the lights go up. Samantha and Philby are waiting for the killer to take the bait. It’s Steven! Chief Connors is there, too, and makes the arrest for the murder of Jason Hurd.
Later that evening, after midnight at Bell‘s B&B, Samantha explains all to everyone else. Steven and Jason were in on the benefit concert scam together; the proof of this could be found in deleted files on the laptop computer. Steven also knew all along that he was not Harmony’s father, that his Ramblers partner Dan was. What
Steven didn’t know was that Jason had a second scam working: While touring the country with the Ramblers concerts, Jason Hurd, Bolen and Murdock were casing banks for future robberies, the very series of robberies that Philby had been investigating.
When Steven got wind of this, his temper got the better of him and he murdered Jason.
Then he stashed the knife in Dan’s room to frame the man who had fathered a child with his wife. And Samantha figured it all out after breaking Steven’s alibi. He had claimed to be buying a new guitar string, but she noticed that none of the strings had been recently replaced when she was taking the guitar to be repaired. Clever sleuth!
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