Forever S01E04 Recap: The Art of Murder

A large gala function is in full swing. The Carlyle’s matriarch is being honored for her contributions to the museum. Gloria Carlyle the matriarch is walking around making plenty of biting remarks to everyone. The gallery is still incomplete, which does not please Gloria. She heads over to her wing. A speech is being given about Gloria, and her generosity. A toast is made in her honor as she’s being murdered.

Jo has an officer take down all the names of the guests, and release them. CSI is scouring the scene, but Henry is a no show. Lucas has come in his place. Jo expresses just how important Gloria Carlyle is, how prestigious this case is. Lucas notes that she’s dead.

When Gloria died everyone, loved ones, enemies are all gone away. Everything is forgotten in death, but Henry doesn’t forget Gloria or what he owes her. Gloria has plenty of injuries, including defensive wounds. Jo is upset that Henry did not show up to the scene. He knows exactly who Gloria was, who her family is, but he never goes to that museum. Though he tells Jo that he didn’t know her, he did.

Lucas has a run in with a girl in the breakroom. He flaunts his ME status, and high profile case, babbling about murder and tox screens. She has to leave as her phone rings. She recorded what Lucas said, telling her caller that its confirmed to be murder.

Henry makes it out the Abe’s shop. He looks like hell, and Abe doesn’t think things are going to get better showing him the newspaper with the headline that the ME says it was murder. Henry is gonna need a whole lotta java. A hand pressed cup of coffee later, and Abe asks about Gloria. She was one of the most hated blue-bloods, but Henry says that she wasn’t always. Abe changes the subject to her belongings and asks if he hears about her estate sale to be put on the list.

Gloria’s son is very upset about the news being leaked. Jo asks what happened. Lucas tells Henry they need to talk. Henry knows that it was Lucas who spilled, he asks if she was pretty. She was, and he’s written a letter of resignation. Henry doesn’t accept to, sending him back to the office, telling him to keep his mouth shut, to not make anymore headlines. Henry and Jo head into the Lieutenant’s office. Henry makes an apology, but Mr. Carlyle wants to him pulled from the case. His mother deserves the best, which Henry is clearly not that, and he’s willing to call the Mayor yet again. The Lieutenant has no choice but to pull Henry, not that it’ll stop him from investigating.

Jo sends her partner, Hansen, to check security footage while she goes to the crime scene. Henry has never been removed from a crime scene. Even though he doesn’t have a body he can still look for clues. He prepares to go with her, but hesitates when she says that she’s going to the museum, but he really wants to solve this crime, so he grabs his scarf. Jo asks what’s his deal with the museum, he’s acting stranger than usual.

Abigail and Henry were headed to the museum, but it was closed for a private event. Abigail bluffs their way in with a little help from Henry.

Henry looks over the place where he and Abigail danced. Jo pulls him out of his revelry. Henry looks over the scene. He wants to follow her footsteps back. The vintage shoes that she wore allow him to follow her path. Gloria crawled to her final location. After she was pushed down the stairs she was forced to crawl back into the gallery. Henry determines that there was someone else. Hansen confirms it by the video footage. Lance Sharp is caught on the video, he’s Gloria’s granddaughter’s bad boy boyfriend.

Hansen and Jo interrogate Lance. Henry watches from behind the mirror. The Lieutenant catches him, but doesn’t thrown him out, even though he’s been removed from the case. She tells him to watch. Lance tells the detectives that he had no reason to kill her, he plans on marrying Sofia, but Conrad refused to give his blessing. He planned on asking Gloria, so when she left he followed her. The detectives found a 6 carat diamond worth millions in his loft. Lance claims that Gloria gave it to him for the engagement, and that she was acting oddly. Henry asks to borrow the Lieutenant’s phone and calls Jo. He wants to know what Gloria was mumbling. She was slurring her words, leaning on her cane. She also said something about a burning smell. It’s a symptom of a stroke in a Parkinson or epilepsy patient, but her brain has signs of neither. Henry rushes to the ME office, but Gloria’s body has already been released.

Jo goes to talk with Sofia, but she doesn’t want to talk, upset that Lance was arrested. To help him, she needs to cooperate. Jo asks about Gloria’s medication, but Sofia knows nothing about it. Her father won’t help either, he didn’t love her. Her family learned how to hurt each other for sport.

Henry looks over Gloria’s obituary. Past. Abigail marvels over being alone in the museum. Gloria notices Abigail’s beauty, how in love the pair are. She asks why he hasn’t asked Abigail to marry him yet. Henry confesses that he doesn’t think that he’s the right man for Abigail. She tells him that people in love always think they have forever, but that they don’t. She urges him to seize every moment, and introduces herself, the hostess of the party they crashed.

Jo tells Henry what she found. Gloria threatened to kick Conrad out of the will. He’s managed to get a probate judge to allow him access to her townhouse. He’s doing the estate sale right now. Henry wants to rush over to it, but can’t. He calls Abe, but Abe is already there. He asks Abe to get to the bathroom. He needs to know medications that she’s taking. Abe prepares to head up, following a nurse up. He sneaks into a room, hiding from her, and makes his way to the bathroom. Gloria had a whole lot of medications.

Jo thinks that she knows Henry’s secret, why he avoids the museum. Jo guesses that its his taste in art, but he confesses that it reminds him of someone. He doesn’t reveal more about Abigail. Abe has completed his mission and sent over the pictures of Gloria’s medications. None of her medications would have caused a stroke in her temporal lobe. Henry notices Mr. Carlyle shaking, he concludes that he has epilepsy. He asks about his medication usage. Conrad takes the medication that killed his mother.

Hansen can’t believe Henry’s gall wanting to interrogate Carlyle, since he’s such a wealthy and prominent man. Jo thinks that since he does take the medication that killed his mother they have to bring him in. The Lieutenant agrees.

Conrad admits to having a strained relationship with his mother though she constantly wrote him out of the will. He of all people had the most to gain since he was currently out of the will with her living.

Past. Abigail tries to make sense of the artist line up in the room, and unknown Argentinian painting amongst famous ones. Henry introduces her to Gloria who stops by for a chat. She tells Abigail that she has someone special by her side, and Abigail knows that she does. Abigail asks if she has someone special herself, and Gloria admits that she does though he was unable to be there tonight. A young Conrad rushes his mother to leave, his father waiting.

Conrad’s lawyer has had enough of the questioning, and puts the conversation to an end. Henry knows the type of drug, and Conrad’s admittance of hating his mother helps. But they have no body, no tox screen, no proof there was any drug in her system. They don’t have her body. Jo and Henry arrive at the ME office, and Lucas took a long lunch, which is suspicious. He asks Lucas where he went. Lucas went to the funeral home and did a biopsy of Gloria’s liver. He claimed that one of the attending Dr. left his wedding ring in the body, and he needed to retrieve it. Jo scolds Lucas over his actions, but Lucas needed to fix his error. Henry tells him it’s the best thing he’s ever done. Jo tells them that she didn’t hear any of this. Henry finds that Gloria had 3xs the normal dose of the medication, and it was taken three hours prior to her death, which rules out Conrad. She was only with her nurse. Hansen arrives with a newspaper. Gloria’s will was just read, the nurse got everything.

The nurse is brought in. Should she be charged with murder, the lawyers can contest the will and get the money back. She was with Gloria for 20 years. At first she treated her horribly, but in time Gloria was much nicer to her. The night of galla Gloria said she was cold so her nurse lit a fire. It shouldn’t have been cold that night, it was a hot summer night. It doesn’t add up to Henry, he wants to go to the penthouse, and thankfully the Carlyles no longer own it. Henry heads over to the fireplace, inside he finds a burned document. Jo is surprised that people still do that, but Gloria was from that time. Henry remembers that the initials match that of the Argentinian painter. One of the antique dealers fret over a missing champagne glass. Henry knows that Gloria never drank. Henry calls Hansen who’s still questioning the nurse. He asks her what Gloria had for dinner. He knows that she wasn’t given the medication at home. Her dinner would have accelerated the medication. Conrad is upset that Jo and Henry are in the home. He doesn’t want them there, or solving the case. Henry goes down to Gloria’s car, and finds the hidden bar, with the medication. She was drugged in the car. Henry puts all the pieces together. He knows the killer.

Carlton’s attorney accompanies him to see who killed his mother. Gloria killed herself. She chose the night because it was for her, and she had the chance to tell everyone what she thought of herself. It was her suicide note. She planned everything perfectly, but Lance held her up. The medication was coursing through her too fast. She fell and dragged herself to the front of the painting. Fernando Costa was a rising painter at the time, and she loved him. Carlton confirms the story. His father said that he threatened to destroy the young artist, so Gloria relented and stayed. His father said he wooed her back, but she never forgave him, and Carlton never forgave her. She donated millions of dollars to keep his painting on display and to die in front of it.

Jo understands how its hard to go back to places that hold a lot of memories. She still cannot go to the restaurant that she went to often with her husband. Henry finally tells her Abigail’s name, which delights her.

The nurse got to keep the fortune, a lot was donated to the museum as well. Gloria saw her fortune as a curse, and she saved her family from it. They won’t starve, they’re still very well off. In the end Gloria was with her love.

Abigail makes Henry promise that they’ll never end up like the Carlyles. He has no intention of ending up that way, he loves Abigail dearly, and promises to do so for all of his days as he asks her to marry him.