Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 14: Scenes From an Italian Restaurant

Elsbeth is in her righting-past-wrongs era: reopening the Merton murder, working a case that hinged on details from a long-ago crime, and now securing the exhumation of a victim from 1998. The trigger is a cheesy real-crime tour of Lower Manhattan whose guide recites the facts of the murder of Del Ponte family soldier Goldie at Pupetta's Restaurant, killed with a corkscrew and two bullets to the chest while eating the same dish the tour group is served, a killing said to have sparked a 1998 war between the Del Ponte and Nova families.

Elsbeth's questions come at once: how could Eddie Nova have got the drop on a man facing the front door, why use a corkscrew, and why shoot him with his own gun rather than bringing one. It sounds like a spontaneous crime of passion, not the work of a veteran hitman punishing a suspected FBI informant.

The sole witness was a waiter named Gene, now married to the restaurant's namesake Pupetta, and he is hit by a hit-and-run driver before Elsbeth can meet him; the injury is to his shoulder. Pupetta arrives at the scene very quickly for someone who works ten blocks away and performs the grieving widow until she learns he will be fine after corrective surgery. Detective Fleming, who investigated the murder back then, says the summer of 1998 was brutal for her: the cycle of violence that followed took the lives of almost her entire family, 14 members in one summer.

He himself never believed Eddie Nova did it, and noticed that anything pointing away from Eddie was quickly brushed aside, so he fetches his stored case board and files.

The physical detail Elsbeth adds is the many scratches on Goldie's face and chest, which hardly look like defensive wounds in an unexpected double-tap shooting - and Pupetta, who now wears a French manicure, has told Elsbeth she wore longer, pointier nails in the 1990s. Gene, previously so eager to meet Elsbeth, then claims to remember nothing at all from the day before, after Pupetta has sailed into his hospital room to whisper supportive-sounding nothings in his ear.

Pupetta is also insisting that their son Gene Jr., a Wharton graduate who dreams of Wall Street, work at the family restaurant, which Gene Jr. describes as a business it is hard to leave and a mother it is hard to refuse; she later turns up at Elsbeth's building to warn her away from him.

The hypothesis the three of them develop is that Goldie was meeting someone at a motel near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway - the tour says the FBI, but Gene Jr. is a full head taller than either parent and a dead ringer for Goldie, which suggests Pupetta was the person meeting him and that she killed him after he rejected her and the baby she was carrying. Judge Crawford blocks the way: his influence over other judges stops the NYPD's exhumation request, but he also hands Elsbeth the answer, since a new confession in the case would require the police to reopen and re-investigate.

Gene Sr., wanting to protect his son and having had no role in the murder beyond covering for Pupetta, agrees to give a false confession to trigger the exhumation.

Sure enough, one of Pupetta's fingernails - carrying her DNA and a decorative element custom-designed for her - is still embedded in Goldie's chest, and DNA testing proves that Gene Jr.'s parents are Pupetta and Goldie, definitively identifying Pupetta as the murderer. Gene Jr. is spared the choice between defying his mother and a life of crime, and embraces Gene Sr. as his true dad.

Alongside the case, Kaya is still working as a standard patrol officer and is annoyed by it, unaware that Lieutenant Connor and Captain Wagner are keeping her in the role of Elsbeth's minder because finding a replacement is a very tall order; and Teddy is increasingly unsettled by how easily Elsbeth and Roy get on, and with neither of them wanting a long-distance relationship, the question of ending it is left open.

The case turns on a body that was never examined properly. Fleming had been skeptical from 1998 and had noticed that evidence pointing away from Eddie Nova was brushed aside; with Elsbeth's questions and the scratches on Goldie's face and chest, the hypothesis becomes that Goldie was killed in a confrontation with a woman wearing long, pointy nails rather than by a hitman. Judge Crawford blocks the exhumation through his influence over other judges, but he also supplies the loophole: a new confession would force the police to reopen and re-investigate. Gene Sr., who had no role in the murder beyond covering for Pupetta and wants to protect his son, gives a false confession to trigger it.

The exhumation delivers two results. One of Pupetta's fingernails - bearing her DNA and a decorative element custom-designed for her - is still embedded in Goldie's chest, and DNA testing of Gene Jr. proves his parents are Pupetta and Goldie. That identifies Pupetta as the murderer and explains her pressure on Gene Jr. and her warning to Elsbeth.

Unresolved inside the episode: Judge Crawford's campaign against Elsbeth continues and is not answered here - the Merton case is still open, with six episodes left in the season at this point; Kaya is still a patrol officer and does not know why she is being kept there; Teddy has not decided whether to end things with Roy; and the episode does not show any arrest or charge against Pupetta.