It was a dark and stormy night, and Nathan Ford was left holding the bag for the murder of one Morris Beck.
Three days before that, the team met with a woman who is explaining that several buildings built by Beck have collapsed. She comments that he should be shot for it. She was part of a law firm, and was pursuing a suit, but Beck got her fired and is stalling until the suit gets dismissed. They need to get Beck’s original blueprints.
Nate and Sophie pose as representatives from a Middle-Eastern construction firm, and get Parker into Beck’s file room to download the prints, but they get something else: a set of numbers. Nate realizes they’re GPS coordinates which show the location of Beck’s house out on a private island. That must be where the actual blueprints are. But how to get in?
Fortunately, Beck’s having his yearly gala, a murder mystery, so that will be their cover.
At the gala the team looks the place over when Beck, drunk, comes out welcoming and insulting his guests at the same time. Potter then calls for the mystery to start, and asks that all cell phones be handed over to security. Beck goes off to get into costume when Sophie is confronted by Marco Capriotti, head of the union Beck tramples on. He warns her to stay away from Beck before someone comes and makes him move along. He then introduces himself as Ray Hammett, from Salem P.D. He's here representing the city police.
Meanwhile, the team is running into problems: there's no way off the island, especially with a storm overhead, the house has an independent power supply that hasn't been upgraded in ages, so there's nothing for Hardison to hack into. And the storm keep playing havoc with the power, causing intermittent blackouts. He is able to use the wiring to find out what's using power in the house.
Beck comes out in costume and announces the contest, with a prize of $100,000. While that's going on, Parker and Nate come up on the level behind him to check on the next power draw when the power flickers and someone grabs Beck, throwing him over the railing, where he lies dead. Nate comes out a moment later, and Beck's daughter says he did it.
Sophie manages to calm the crowd and convince them that this is the actual mystery. Nate and Eliot take Beck's body, while Sophie starts mingling with the guests seeing what they remember. Detective Hammett is not convinced and begins examining the site where the body fell.
Eliot examines Beck and figures he was killed with a Neck Snap before he fell. Nate has Parker and Hardison continue looking for the safe and Sophie control the crowd. Eliot warns him that he better solve this, or he's going to take the fall for it. As though to drive the point home, Detective Hammett comes up looking for Beck. Eliot and Sophie manage to divert him, but he's already suspicious.
Eliot points out that the killer is still there, since he can't leave until morning, just like the rest of them. Nate thinks back to what he saw and asks Eliot to help him find the killer. Based on Nate's description, he zeroes in on Capriotti. Nate saw something shiny in the perp's inside pocket, and Eliot finds Capriotti has a flask. Possible, but not enough to go on.
Hardison is still trying to locate power draws, but Parker keeps thinking there's something off about the dimensions of the halls. Then she vanishes. Meanwhile Hammett is still convinced Beck is really dead, and Sophie is forced to go along, while Eliot approaches the next suspect, Case. He has a smartphone in his inside pocket. Another possible, but Nate isn't sure.
Hardison runs into a guard who begins following him when someone grabs him. Parker shows him the secret passages she discovered... which leads right to a secret room hiding the blueprints. Eliot is still talking to Case when Nate remembers hearing clothing rip. Case doesn't have any tears, so it must not be him. Parker and Hardison emerge with the news about the passages and the safe, but they can't leave until they've proven Nate didn't do it.
Hammett pulls Sophie into a room where they can talk and begins telling her that he knows she's not who she says she is, and he knows who Nate is. Sophie tries to convince him she doesn't know anything, but he cuffs her to a chair and heads off. She tries to warn Nate, but he's off comms.
Nate has just figured it out when Hammett kicks down the door. Nate starts to explain that whoever did would have had to know that Beck would arrive drunk and give a speech on that balcony and about the secret passages, which they used to escape. There was one thing that was different about when Beck died: the power surges consistently happened after each lightning to the power station, but that time the power went out before a lightning strike. Meaning someone cut the power, while the killer took out Beck.
Nate figures it's the daughter. She got some guy to to the deed for her, while she cut the power. But they weren't counting on Nate being there. Meaning he's the only one who knows what really happened. He then asks to see Hammett's inside pocket, where he has his shiny badge and a few tears in the lining. Hammett seems impressed that Nate figured it out, then asks what's to stop him from killing Nate right now?
The answer comes when the power goes out, and Nate takes off into the passages. Beck's daughter comes in demanding to know what the shooting's for, but Sophie's there and knocks her out. Hammett follows Nate into the library, but Nate gets the drop on him with the wrench that was supposed to be the "murder weapon". He then takes Hammett's phone and calls Detective Bonnano.
Later, Case is on TV praising Beck for being a good humanitarian. The client is satisfied, but Nate's not very happy with how it turned out, and more particularly with how each one of them thought he might have actually done it at one point or another. Sophie tries to dissuade him but eventually leaves him to think, leaving one last thought:
- Sophie: Are you climbing back into that bottle because of what you think we see in you, or what you see in the mirror?
Tropes stolen in this job:
- Actor Allusion: Nate is dressed as Ellery Queen, a character most famously played on television by Timothy Hutton's father Jim.
- All Part of the Show: The team uses this to keep the guests in the dark as to what's really happening.
- Author Avatar: John Rogers mentioned on a blog post that after three seasons of researching white collar crooks who — unlike the show's villains — tend to get away with it, he was suffering from "asshole fatigue" as the production process for Season 4 began. Nate seems to be having the same problem as of "The 10 L'il Grifters Job."
- Blatant Lies:Sophie: I've never heard of this Nathan Ford person in my entire life.
- Bookcase Passage: Several running under the house, and the hiding place of the episode MacGuffin.
- Chekhov's Gun: The wrench that was supposed to be the murder weapon is hidden in the library, where Nate takes down Hammett.
- Clear My Name: They have to prove that Nate isn't the killer.
- Closed Circle: The murder takes place on an island during a storm, with no way in or out. Which means the killer is someone at the party.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Nate is in McRory's at the end doing this.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Nate remarks to Hammet that Beck's daughter must be working with the killer, her cutting the power and her accomplice doing the deed. If you remember that Beck's daughter was seen next to the main switch while making out with a man dressed as a old-time London 'Bobby' policeman, you might get suspicious of the only real policeman at the party - about five seconds before Nate realizes that Hammet was the accomplice.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the episode sets up a fairly standard job for the team at a murder mystery dinner party, only for it to derail when their mark is actually murdered; the rest of the episode is them trying to solve that, and also to clear Nate's name when he ends up being framed for it.
- How We Got Here: How Hammett ends up accusing Nate of murder.
- Meaningful Name: the actual police detective is named after legendary mystery author Dashiell Hammet.
- Mystery Episode: The team attends a mystery dinner party hosted by their latest mark, which turns into an actual murder mystery when the host winds up dead.
- Neck Snap: How Beck is killed.
- Patricide: Beck's murder was orchestrated by his daughter in order to get the inheritance.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Nate figures out Beck's daughter has been doing this.
- Pull the Thread: Hammett begins doing this to the team's cover.
- Shout-Out: The episode title is one to Agatha Christie: "Ten Little/Lil' Niggers" and "Ten Little/Lil' Indians" were both original titles (one British, one US) of her legendary book And Then There Were None. The party itself has a ton of them, since the guests were supposed to come as detective characters. See if you can spot them all:
- Nate goes as Ellery Queen (originally played by Hutton's own father).
- Sophie dresses as Irene Adler.
- Eliot goes as Charlie Siringo.
- Hardison represents The Hardy Boys, though he thinks he's Encyclopedia Brown. (possibly Justified given there's two Hardy boys, and none of the illustrations involved knickerbockers.)
- Parker is Nancy Drew.
- Potter is dressed as Mannix.
- Tom Case is dressed as Inspector Bucket.
- Thomas Magnum.
- Miss Marple.
- Dick Tracy.
- Mr. Moto.
- Sherlock Holmes, at least two of them.
- Several that could be Lt. Columbo.
- Nero Wolfe. (For bonus points, Hutton co-starred in the TV adaptation A Nero Wolfe Mystery.)
- Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
- Sophie introduces the team as Mystery Inc. as part of their cover.
- Who Murdered the Asshole: Beck has made enough enemies to provide a case of this when he's killed.
