 Chicago businessman Philip Sparling orders a  not real smart guard dog . A month later on Martinique, Melanie Venable asks Jessica whether her boy Hilton has any writing talent, but she hasn t even read his manuscript yet. She s saved by the "hotel des Deux Perroquets" s owner, Lauren Delagre from Cabot Cove, whose teenage son Jeff(rey) -who digs the receptionist Collette- is the repairman, while daddy Maurice plays poker and loses half of the hotel to Graham Farrow. After a phone call from hotel guest Charlie Garrett, Sparling calls a woman in Washington, D.C. it s the Martinique hotel- she checks in as schoolteacher and amateur-writer Norma Willens. Garrett tells Jessica, whom he knew, he was hired by Sparling to find his missing wife Dorie; he bumps into her as a hotel guest, but a burly man soon tells him to stay away from her, the second time using fists; she calls him it s about a stolen fortune and she doesn t want to return; he helps her escape, but a masked sniper kills her. The French police arrests Charlie but Jessica believes his protestation of innocence, finds a stray bullet, witnesses him being roughed up by Farrow s goon after he and Sparling asks each-other for it over the phone and sees the stash where he hid the money is empty, even recognizes the foot print near it as belonging to Norma Willens and yet ...