Murder She Wrote Recaps: S3E2: Death Stalks the Big Top, Part 2

While trying to clear her brother-in-law Neil's name, Jessica runs afoul of the obstructionist mayor. In a rare display of hypocrisy, she tells him he has no authority to get involved in a police investigation, but no one calls her on it.

After a rival circus promoter is also murdered, Jess is knocked out with a chloroformed rag and dumped in a burning motel room, only to be saved at the last minute by a recently released Neil.

Later, she confronts the true murderer under the big top and somehow gets him to reveal his actions by convincing him to theorize about what he WOULD have done if he HAD committed the murders. When Jessica realizes this won't be enough for a court of law to convict the man, she has a couple of carnies start shoving him into a cage with a hungry tiger until he panics and reveals where he hid a bloody hacksaw, which is enough to seal his fate.

The episode ends with Jess revealing to Courteney Cox and her father that Neil is alive and well. The father considers faking his own death to escape from his terrible wife.

Murder She Wrote Recaps: S3E1: Death Stalks the Big Top, Part 1

We start the episode by meeting yet another Fletcher niece: a pre-Friends Courteney Cox. When she anonymously receives a silver leprechaun in the mail, she takes it as incontrovertible proof that her grandfather Neil (Jessica's late husband's brother) must have actually faked his death in that boat explosion so many years ago.

Jessica tracks Neil to a traveling circus, but when she's stonewalled by the tight-knit carny community, she must resort to a classic Fletcher ruse. Disguised in a plaid muumuu and heart-shaped sunglasses, she befriends a baby elephant and baby chimpanzee and infiltrates the circus just in time to see Neil being carted away for allegedly murdering a stagehand that had unsuccessfully hit on all the women of the circus the previous night.

TO BE CONTINUED...!