Among wealthy socialites, dark intentions stir in a museum gala to honor Gloria Carlyle, a woman in her nineties with the tongue of a woman in her twenties. It isn’t long until she turns up dead, the circumstances around her demise grim and uncertain.
Detective Martinez arrives on the scene, under pressure from the mayor and rich lurkers who have already contaminated the crime scene. To make matters worse, Henry has not arrived on the scene and she is informed by Lucas that he won’t be showing up at all.
Back in his office, we see Henry pondering this crime and remembering a time long past. A time when he met Mrs. Carlyle in her glory days, when he snuck into an event of hers at the very same museum in which she met her end. When Martinez confronts Henry over his refusal to show up at the crime scene, he remains cryptic as ever before proceeding to call Gloria’s death a murder.
Detective Martinez quickly finds a workaround for this, under the condition Henry investigate the scene of the crime with her. With his hesitance over revisiting the museum overridden by his desire to uncover the truth, they set off to delve deeper into the case. Once there Henry uses an original FBI fingerprinting kit coupled with his knowledge of Gloria’s shoes, which helps him determine the method of her murder. He deduces she was shoved down a flight of stairs and then tried to crawl away from her attacker before finally succumbing to her injuries. Martinez receives a call from the station that they have taken a suspect into custody and the pair heads there to see if circumstances match.
The suspect is a young man who was seen heading to the east wing minutes before the estimated time of Gloria’s death. To make matters worse, he has a ring in his possession worth three million dollars that was the property of Mrs. Carlyle. The man claims he is innocent and that he only went to speak with Gloria to ask permission to marry her granddaughter and the ring was a gift she gave along with her blessing.
With knowledge gained from Henry’s questions, he determines Mrs. Carlyle’s death was not, in fact, from being pushed. A toxin report taken by Lucas, in an effort to redeem his mistakes, shows traces amounts of a medication that can induce a stroke in large doses. Henry now suspects Mrs. Carlyle’s son as the primary suspect since he posses that very medicine. Combine that with recent threats by Gloria to push him out of the will and he seems all the more likely.
Another foil is added to the case when Mrs. Carlyle’s nurse is revealed to be the inheritor of her fortune. This causes a push from the family to label her as the potential murderer, especially considering her access to a variety of medications.
Now, all these years later Gloria finds out she has but months to live and decides to take her own life with the intention of dying in front of the painting of the man she loved.
From there, we see Henry in the past spurred by words from Gloria which inspire him to propose to his girlfriend of that time. She accepts and they leave the party in high spirits. Whether their relationship ended on such a high note or situations forced them apart, akin to the events surrounding Gloria Carlyle, remains to be seen. Despite all the sadness he has witnessed, and likely endured, Henry believes Gloria’s end to be a happy one and he himself looks forward with hope.
