Trama

Ned, Chuck, and Emerson go to Olive's nunnery to solve a murder. However, Olive is nervous that she will reveal to Chuck the secret identity of her real mother.

Young Olive Snook (Samantha Bailey), at nine years, etc., etc., etc., tries to get herself an Arabian horse by digging through the earth. Instead she finds a dinosaur, which she traded with a Saudi royal who, as requested, brought her a horse. From this, Olive learned the value of digging.

Cut to present day, Olive digging for truffles with Pigby and Sister LaRue (Mo Collins). She says "pull" the pig yanks on truffles.

Sister LaRue teaches her about truffles, what to smell for. (Apparently they smell like male pigs, which is why sows make the best hunters.)

Ned (Lee Pace) brings Chuck (Anna Friel) breakfast and sees a Mr. Pennebaker leaving. That's the end of the story, Chuck says. She found her family tree from third grade, unfinished. The aunts were no help because they're step aunts. It's got some empty branches.

So Chuck is looking for her own answers, with the aid of Mr. Pennebaker.

Ned thinks digging just gets people dirty.

At the nunnery, Olive (Kristin Chenoweth) talks to God, asking for a sign if she's not meant to stay. Sister LaRue drops out of the sky.

The priest announces to the sisters that LaRue killed herself by jumping from the belfry. Olive isn't buying it.

Olive visits Emerson (Chi McBride), who gets a hearty chuckle seeing her be-nunned. She offers to pay him in prayer. He agrees, thinking of his daughter.

Olive briefs him, telling him not to bring Chuck and Ned. Instead, he does. Olive is worried being near Chuck will make her spill her secrets.

Mother Superior (Diana Scarwid) and Father Eduardo De Donde (Michael Hitchcock) greet Father Dowling (Emerson) , Father Mulcahey (Ned) and Sister Christian (Chuck), posing as Vatican investigators.

Moms Superior says the less than stellar truffle harvest has strained the church's finances. Olive isn't allowed to help because she has a penance list to complete, written out by Superior.

Ned stands over LaRue's body, feeling awkward about Mary and Jesus figures watching him. "Well, it ain't like he never done it before," Emerson says, "remember Lazarus?"

Ned vents to Emerson about Chuck's digging into her past and Emerson says let her dig.

Ned pokes LaRue, who revives swearing and wondering where her diamonds are. She says she was shoved. Then she gets up and takes off. Ned follows, shouting "nun on the run!" He drops her by clamping his hand over her pie hole.

Chuck looks into LaRue's past and finds she was a fungi specialist before joining the convent and comes from a long line of longshoremen.

Chuck confesses she dug through Olive's file, too. That part of her application was left blank. Chuck thinks she's the reason Olive joined the convent and she wants to fix it.

Ned's candles flicker, they find a wall that's really a door. Mother Superior emerges as they hide.

Emerson catches up with Olive, who says LaRue spent tons of time in her room. He knocks on the wall in there. It's hollow. He knocks on it and tons of stuff pours out including CDs and top shelf fem pads, which are forbidden.

They hear a nun in the hall. She confesses Sister LaRue used to give her candy corn for doing her chores. Emerson runs her off, giving her Olive's penance list. Ned and Chuck bust in, telling them about the secret door. Olive begs off with the feminine products.

They theorize that Mother Superior might have knocked LaRue off for running her black market.

"What if LaRue's guilty pleasure wasn't soft lips or harlequin tingles, what if it was bling and she smuggled ice into the penguin house for herself?" says Emerson.

Chuck: "If Mother Superior found LaRue's shiny stash...."

Ned: "...Then all it would take is one push and the convent would be back in black."

Ned and Chuck share a by-proxy high-five via Emerson.

Chuck visits Mother Superior, asking to see her visitors log. Ned and Emerson visit Mother Superior's secret lair. The bricks don't match and the mortar is wet. Emerson busts through "Jericho-style" and they find a secret passageway.

Chuck talks to Mother Superior about how her family reacted when she became a nun, she talks about missing the mother she never knew, but she trips up on some basic nun lingo. She wants to call Pennebaker.

Ned and Emerson find the exit to LaRue's secret door, a restaurant kitchen with fancy appliances.

The scary Swiss chef (Graham McTavish) there ties them up and threatens them with a butcher knife. But he starts crying when they break him the news.

The facts were these: Sister LaRue found the passageway, bearing truffles and he would supply her with contraband. Eventually, they started hooking up, but in a romantic way.

The last time he saw her they made love (on the same table where Ned and Emerson are eating the meal he's made for them) and she gave him a rare Italian white truffle. Emerson notices the note on convent stationary that came with it, calling the chef "a vile man who will stew in the juices of his sin for all eternity."

The chef grates some truffle on Ned's food, noting that at $4,000 a pound they call it the "diamond of the table." Emerson stands to leave. The chef says he will not rest until they find out who killed her.

At the nunnery, Olive reads LaRue's note.

Emerson thinks the chef did it. Olive agrees with their theories, except says that it couldn't be a white truffle because they only grow in Italy. She storms out.

Ned follows, telling Olive that Chuck is sorry. She says she's not mad at Chuck, she's mad at him because she told him she had feelings for him and he didn't feel the same way. Besides, she can't go home, what if she slipped and told the secret to Chuck?

What secret? Ned asks.

Olive tries to keep it in, but Ned says he won't stop digging and he'll set Chuck on the path. Olive begs him not to.

What if he guesses? He offers.

She takes him to an old photo of nuns. He spitballs what it could mean: are freemasons involved, does it have something to do with the sacred feminine?

A game of charades ensues during which he figures out the nun was pregnant and gave the baby up. When Olive covers one eye in the photo, he guesses that its Lily and that Chuck has a cousin she doesn't know about.

He finally gets it: Lily is Chuck's mother.

Ned now wishes he didn't know.

Before she leaves the room, Olive sees the list of penances and notices the handwriting on it and the note to the chef are the same.

Chuck sits, forlorn, over LaRue's body. Pennebaker found nothing. She's a person with no past and no future because of how she is. Ned has something to tell her, but stops to ask how she is.

Chuck worries that maybe she didn't move on to the natural transition to the afterlife. She says she's absolutely alone and she doesn't know if she can go on. Ned asks if she wants him to touch her again. Father Eduardo interrupts.

Meanwhile, Olive and Emerson confront Mother Superior over the chef note. She confesses to writing the letter and then asks if Emerson would like to summon his associate, M*A*S*H's Father Mulcahey.

She was tipped off by Chuck's ignorance of nundum. "Sister Christian is nothing but a heavy petting power ballad," she announces.

"We're motoring," Emerson replies.

They turn to find dozens of angry nuns blocking their path.

Father Eduardo wants Ned to hear his confession, but Ned needs to unburden himself. They switch. He's upset that he seems to have screwed up his friends' lives. He says he prayed every day for his dad to return to get him from boarding school and forgive him for whatever made him leave. His dad was the one who taught him to run. Father Eduardo says if he's ever going to change he has to rectify his past if he's ever going to have a future. Then he suggests Ned tell him who he really is.

Eduardo and Mother Superior lock up Emerson and Ned. Eduardo visits Olive, who tells her that Mother Superior is no killer.

He hands her his laundry, covered in bat poop, just like the belfry. He starts to explain when Olive whacks him on the head with a washboard.

Olive runs screaming. Emerson busts out of the locked room. Up in the belltower, Chuck goes looking for LaRue's ghost, to chat. She examines the bells, realizing they're not bronze, but brass. So Sister LaRue couldn't have been polishing. Chuck pulls a cord and Sister LaRue's secret truffle laboratory opens up. Chuck hears Olive's screams from below, as she's chased by Father Eduardo. Chuck turns to look and is knocked over the railing.

Olive runs in zig zags from the priest (alligator escape style) as Chuck hangs over the edge of the belfry. Emerson catches up with the priest, who says he was trying to help Sister LaRue. The nuns arrive. Olive, up in the belfry, tries to hoist Chuck up over the side. As she starts to lose her grip, Chuck tells Olive that Pigby killed LaRue, accidentally going after her when she had truffles in her hands and knocking her over the side.

Pigby bites onto Olive's dress and, as she commands him to pull, helps get Chuck back up over the side. But only seconds after they hug, Olive is then knocked over the side herself.

As she falls, she reaches an internal peace... and then she reaches a cartfull of hay Ned has hauled into place below.

The facts were these: Sister LaRue was hired to create a test tube white truffle. When funding was pulled, she fled to the nunnery. She used the chef to get her supplies. Mother Superior wrote the note to return a wayward sister to the flock and the priest ended up telling the false nun to take her truffles and leave. As she gathered up a handful of them, Pigby struck.

The priest thought his condemnation lead LaRue to kill herself.

Olive tells Ned that Mother Superior wants to rebuild LaRue's lab and continue her work, to fund the nunnery. She's been tapped to be the new head of truffle operations.

Ned apologizes for taking off when things got messy with her. He says he knows how it feels to be abandoned and he's sorry.

Olive says she just came out to see if she could catch a ride home.

Ned says he's going to tell Chuck Lily's secret. Olive is keeping Pigby.

Back at the apartment, Ned has broken the news to Chuck and waits for a response. She's crying happy tears. It inspires him to do his own digging.

He re-presents her third grade family tree so she can fill it in.