Jessica's attempt to prove her new secretary innocent of killing a university student is complicated by the fact that he's already under suspicion for another murder.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- The Alcoholic: David claims that Alison Brevard was rarely sober as long as he knew her.
- The Alibi: Lila was about to provide one for David (namely that they were together) when she was killed. It turns out that David paid Lila to phone Jessica and lie for him.
- Ambiguous Ending: Was David actually a killer or not? We never truly find out, and since this is the only episode he appears in, we never will.
- Catch the Conscience: During one of her lessons, Jessica talks about how one would go about setting a murder, and asks Professor Lowery about how a girl's lover might go about killing her hm, hm? Lowery thanks her later, since being confronted like that made him realize how foolish he was being and he resolved to reconcile with his wife.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Amelia was stalking Dr. Gerard while he was seeing Lila, and nearly drove the pair of them off the road in an effort to scare him after one of their dates.
- Crazy Jealous Guy:
- David alleges that Lila's husband David Kowalski may have murdered her because she was seeing David off and on and it was finally getting serious. While Kowalski is jealous, he didn't do it.
- Todd Lowery, whom Lila was a teaching assistant for, was also seeing her and is set up to look like one of these. It turns out not to be the case, however.
- Dramatic Irony: In the opening of the episode, we can see a photograph of David Tolliver and Alison Brevard sitting hand-in-hand and smiling for the camera, meaning the audience knows that he's being deceptive every time he says he didn't know her well.
- Drunk Driver: David alleges that he met Alison Brevard when she totaled his parked car by running into it while she was drunk and wrote out a check to replace it.
- Hopeless Suitor: Amelia had been in love with Dr. Edmund Gerard even while he was married to his deceased wife, and for years had to content herself with seeing how happy said wife made him.
- Likes Older Women: David (grad student) makes his attraction to Jessica very clear, and is implied to have been in a romantic relationship with the first victim, a widow.
- Love at First Sight: Jessica was expecting a female secretary, but when she answers the door, she meets David, a handsome young man who quickly proves intelligent, talented and well-read. "Love" might be pushing it, but she does end up rather flustered and never quite seems to know what to make of him.
- Meal Ticket: Lt. Andrews implies to Jessica that David was treating Alison Brevard like one of these until he (may or may not have) killed her. David claims that he got the new car because Alison totaled his old one, and that he'd paid back the other loans, etc. she'd given him.
- No Ending: While the killer of Lila Schroder is revealed, Alison Brevard's killer remains a mystery unsolved for the rest of the series.
- Oblivious to Love: Professor Gerard had no idea that Amelia was in love with him for years and years, even when his wife was still alive.
- Office Romance: Amelia the secretary had been in love with Dr. Gerard for years, and she killed Lila out of jealousy, since Lila was seeing the professor.
- Really Gets Around: Lila Schroeder Kowalski was seeing David, Dr. Gerard, and Professor Lowery at roughly the same time.
- Shameful Source of Knowledge: Lila Schroeder calls up Jessica to tell her that David has an alibi for Alison Brevard's death. When she's killed, David reveals that he and Lila (who was technically still married) had been seeing each other off and on and that he'd been with Lila when Alison was killed. However, as Lt. Andrews points out, with Lila dead there's no way of proving this one way or the other. And it turns out that Lila had been with Doctor Gerard when Alison died, as he tells David and Jessica.
- The One That Got Away: Prof. Gerard jokes about Jessica being this for him, though it seems he was just as happy with Gwen, the woman he ended up with.
