Plot

After antagonizing several people by stamping out traditions, including Punch and Judy, abrasive mayor Una Drake is found dead in a hotel room. For all her moral stance she was in an affair with young gigolo Danny Ball though estranged husband Gavin seemed remarkably tolerant about it. She had been threatened by a friend of the Punch and Judy man and her daughter Hannah tells Jane that she had' hundreds' of enemies. Jane puts herself in danger to find out which of them killed Una.—don @ minifie-1

Children are at the beach watching a Punch and Judy puppet show. The new mayor of Lighthaven, Una Drake, is giving a press conference. The mayor notices the puppet show, and sees Punch assaulting Judy with a stick. Offended, Una stomps over to stop the show. She knocks over the puppet stand while the puppeteer's friend yells at her. The press, there for her press conference, begin photographing her fracas with the puppet show, with her giving the hand to the camera. She storms off.

It's night, and a body is washed up on the beach. It is the puppeteer, Harry Putman. Jane runs into the mayor at city hall and asks her what happened between her and the puppeteer. Una points out she has complained to Harry repeatedly in the past to "update" his show, without marital abuse.

John Holland, the puppeteer's friend, appears at the mayor's house, drunk and angry. He stumbles towards the mayor, yelling at her, saying she drove Putman to his death. He forebodes that someday she will get her comeuppance. She has him removed. The mayor's husband, Gavin, who she is separated from, arrives and drops off their daughter, Hannah.

Jane meets with John at his beach stand. John is holding onto Harry's gear. Gavin rents beach chairs, and the Punch and Judy show fed demand for chairs, so they had an amicable relationship. Jane asks if Harry could have killed himself, but John rejects the idea.

Una is having a lunch date with her daughter, but she is preoccupied with her handbag. She pulls out an inhaler, her datebook, and her compact, and preens herself. The daughter is put out. Una argues she's very busy. The daughter retorts that it doesn't explain why she's been out all night. The daughter proposes to hang out that night at a new bar in town, but Una has a prior engagement.

Cut to a swanky hotel room, with roses and champagne. A young half-naked man is on a bed, and he calls out to "Your Worship." Mayor Una appears in a negligee, leaping on top of him.

The mayor's husband, Gavin, is sitting alone at a table on a restaurant patio. He calls someone and leaves a message wondering where they are.

Davey calls Jane to the hotel, where a body has been found. There, he informs her the body is that of the mayor. She is found alone, bloodied, in a hotel bed, in her negligee. She was beaten to death with one of the champagne bottles. She was having regular trysts with a young man, Danny, who works in the hotel as a lounge singer. She made a 999 call before her death, sounding pained and in trouble. Jane wants to talk to the singer, but Davey pulls jurisdiction, calling first dibs.

Gavin is at the mortuary and identifies the body as his wife. He is surprised she was found at the hotel, since she has a place to live in town. Gavin puts the pieces together, and explains that she was supposed to meet him for dinner but never showed, which explains the message he left on her voicemail. Davey asks when he left the restaurant. Gavin asks Jane to visit and help console the daughter, Hannah.

Davey interviews Danny Ball. Danny was having a running fling with the mayor. Davey asks about yelling that was heard in the room, which Danny attributes to sexual activity. Danny says the mayor was in a good mood when he left her. Danny was performing on the hotel stage downstairs at the time of her death, so he is ruled out as a suspect.

Jane goes to visit at Gavin's. Hannah insists Gavin doted after the mayor, and their split was fairly amicable. Hannah wasn't really paying attention at the time, but thinks her mother's ambition caused her parents to drift apart, as Gavin is a man of simpler tastes. The mayor had a laundry list of potential enemies.

Davey picks up John and takes him to the station and asks him where he was the night of the mayor's death. John says he was drunk. He points out that John threatened the mayor in public, and she was dead the same day. John is elated at the news, but insists he was drunk the whole time.

Jane visits Danny after one of his hotel performances. Danny indicates that he and the mayor had a big argument about his career ambitions, which she derided.

Davey struggles with the case. He doesn't think John could have killed the mayor, and Gavin has an alibi. Gavin also had no financial motive as he stood to gain nothing from his wife's death, and by all accounts he and his wife were on good terms. Jane tells Davey about Danny's fight with the mayor.

Danny is kissing a girl goodbye in the hotel parking garage, when he is hit by a car. Davey is there with a police car and pulls the driver out of the car; it is the mayor's daughter Hannah. She insists Danny must have killed her mother, as she is arrested for vehicle assault. At the station, she insists it was an accident. Davey wonders how Hannah knew about Danny.

Meanwhile, Jane is talking to Danny in the hospital. He explains he dated Hannah last year but found her too clingy. That's how he met the mayor, who he then started seeing, but couldn't let Hannah know.

Hannah heard about her mother seeing Danny through a university friend, and spied on her mother's phone to prove it. She planned to confront her mother about it the day she died. She found out her mother had skipped out on spending time with her to see Danny instead, and felt betrayed. Davey suggests she wanted her mother dead, and she admits it. But she insists she didn't go to the hotel. Davey shows her the photos of her mother's battered head, and Hannah has a breakdown. Davey insists if Hannah is the killer, which she admits, she must have gone to the hotel, unless there were two different murderers.

In her office, Jane muses about what Davey said. The mayor's head injuries were so severe as to cause instant death. If so, that means she couldn't have made the 999 call after being hit. Jane tries to deduce why Una called 999 if it wasn't because of the blunt trauma. Jane theorizes that Hannah had tried to kill her mother first, her mother made the 999 call, and then after that someone else finished her off. Jane also notices that the mayor had had a nose job, but doesn't see why.

Clint finds out that the mayor had been to the hospital twice for injuries that in context sound suspiciously like abuse injuries, including a broken nose. The mayor left her husband right after the second incident, after which she got her nose done.

Jane points out that the restaurant where Gavin was to meet Una is very close to the hotel. Clint tells her that the restaurant has really slow service and you can sit there for a long time without being noticed.

Jane visits Gavin, who is touchy. She asks him about his wife and why they separated. He says the mayor was letting her ambition get ahead of her family, and he felt abandoned. He went to counseling hoping they would get back together. Gavin isn't aware that Hannah has been arrested for his wife's murder.

Davey interviews Hannah. He has found in the postmortem report evidence that the mayor had suffered an allergic reaction causing anaphylaxis. He asks if the mayor was allergic to anything, and Hannah says shellfish. Davey confronts Hannah with two of her mother's inhalers which he found in Hannah's bedroom, which she must have taken from her mother's bag. Hannah admits she snuck some shrimp onto one of her mother's food items while her mother was away from the table. But Hannah says that her mother's allergic reactions weren't simply caused by shellfish, but by a combination of shellfish and intense activity or exercise. Hannah knew her mother was going to see Danny, so calculated that the shrimp would start the ball rolling, and her mother's activities with Danny would then trigger an attack.

Jane tells Gavin that Hannah has admitted to killing her mother, but Gavin insists that's impossible. Jane notices that Gavin still wears his wedding ring, even though the mayor hadn't been the day she died, although she had worn it that morning. She must have taken it off that day. Gavin admits that he knew that his wife was seeing the lounge singer. He followed her that day to the hotel.

Hannah admits the danger of her actions, but assumed that when the attack started, Danny would be with her and call for help. Hannah didn't realize the effects would kick in while Danny was downstairs on stage. She didn't mean to actually cause her mother's death. Hannah flatly denies having anything to do with her mother's head injuries.

Gavin is telling Jane he saw his wife with Danny. He expected to confront her at dinner, but she never showed. He realizes now that while he thought the dinner was going to lead to reconciliation, it must have been for her to ask for a divorce. He resents that he was earnestly trying to make amends to reconcile with his wife, but in fact she was never planning to return to him, instead she was cavorting with the lounge singer in a posh hotel, living it up drinking champagne. Jane asks why he thinks she was drinking champagne.

Jane then realizes Gavin visited the hotel room. Gavin left the table at the restaurant and went to confront his wife at the hotel. Enraged, he found his wife asleep (actually in anaphylactic shock) on the bed, grabbed one of the champagne bottles, and bashed his wife in the head, killing her.

Davey calls Jane, but Gavin grabs her phone and stands in her way. Gavin grabs a kitchen knife and assaults Jane, who tries to talk him down. Davey has arrived at the house with uniformed police. He saves Jane from Gavin, and embraces her. Gavin is arrested.

Davey remarks how Gavin's actions were pointless, because Hannah's actions would have resulted in the mayor's death anyway. Davey is just happy that Jane is alright, but gets evasive when she challenges him to say why. He is saved by a phone call from his wife.

Back at the beach, the Punch and Judy show is on again. Punch gets a talking to by the policeman about assaulting his wife, and tells him to attend anger management. It turns out John has taken over the Punch and Judy show. Jane tells Jack that they have found that Harry drank himself drunk and fell asleep on the beach, and then drowned when the tide came in.

The next morning, Jane enters Coroner's Court. Her verdicts: for the death of Harold Putman: Death by Misadventure. For the death of Mayor Una Drake: Unlawful Killing.