Previously…
– Tori made an appeal to her former coworker, Lucy, to speak up if she is the victim of domestic violence. Lucy reacted poorly and told Tori to butt out of her life.
– Elly was surprised by the cold reception she received from Spencer after they slept together, but Spencer was plagued by the conversation he overheard between her and Travis about a secret they have been keeping.
– Brent had Natalie participate in a police line-up in hopes that the witness who claimed to have seen a redheaded woman outside the Ragan home on the night Loretta was murdered would identify her as the suspect. However, the witness didn’t think anyone in the line-up was the woman she saw.
– Elly came to see Brent at the police station, and the witness was shocked to recognize her as the redhead from the crime scene!

“That’s her!”

Brent Taylor and Elly Vanderbilt, who are standing in an open area within the King’s Bay Police Department’s headquarters, turn with surprise. Elly appears utterly flummoxed by the sight of this middle-aged woman with peroxide-blonde hair; her uncle, despite knowing that the woman is the delivery driver serving as a witness in the Loretta Ragan murder case, is nearly as perplexed. The shrill ringing of phones and the hum of regular office patter fill the background.

The driver looks astonished as she asks, “How’d you find her?”

“What? What do you mean?” Brent asks, his mind working double-time to keep up.

The driver points at Elly. “That’s the woman I saw. The redhead.”

“This is my niece,” Brent says, but in this moment, it hits him. Elly is a redhead. She has — had — an established connection to Loretta. And this driver has no reason to lie. “Are you sure?”

“Sure about what?” Elly inquires with confusion.

An unrestrained laugh cuts into the trio’s interaction, and they all look to see Natalie Bishop standing nearby with a smug grin on her face.

“It was you all along?” Natalie says with obvious satisfaction.

“What was me?” Elly responds, her eyes darting between Natalie and Brent as she attempts to make sense of this.

Natalie rolls her eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Your uncle dragged me down here for his dog-and-pony show. He was convinced his witness was going to say it was me that she saw at my house right around the time Loretta was killed — even though I have an airtight alibi. Now I find out that he was protecting you the whole time?”

“I am not protecting anyone,” Brent insists.

“That’s how it looks,” Natalie says. She turns her attention to the delivery driver. “You’re sure it was her?”

The driver furrows her brow. “Weren’t you one of the people in the lineup?”

“Yeah, because the commander here has it out for me,” Natalie says. “For shame, Brent. For shame.”

“Natalie, stop,” Brent barks. “Elly, we’re going to have to take a statement from you.”

Elly’s baffled expression persists. “A statement about what?”

Before anyone else can reply, Conrad Halston comes hurrying over to them.

“What’s going on here?” the attorney asks.

“Your little associate is in a world of trouble,” Natalie gloats as she folds her arms.

“Natalie, knock it off,” Brent warns her through gritted teeth. “Elly, I’ll find a room where we can get a statement from you.”

“Hang on,” Conrad says, physically inserting himself between Elly and Brent. “Elly, don’t say another word until we have a chance to talk.”

Elly appears shell-shocked as she takes this all in.

“I’m her legal representation,” Conrad asserts to Brent. “I need a few minutes with my client.”

Brent sighs. “Fine. I’ll get a room for the two of you, and you can talk while I find a detective to handle the statement.” He tells the delivery driver, “If you don’t mind, head to the front desk and wait for me there. I’ll be back in a minute.”

The driver nods and heads off. Brent begins to lead Elly and Conrad to one of the interrogation rooms that border the bullpen area.

“Good luck,” Natalie calls after Elly.

Upon hearing a light knock at the door, Tori Gray looks up from her computer monitor. She sees her cousin, Samantha Fisher, standing at the entry to the anteroom of the executive suite that serves as Molly Taylor‘s base inside the offices of Objection Designs.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Samantha says as Tori waves her in, “but did Aunt Molly sign off on the copy on those half-page ads yet?”

“Yeah! I caught her between meetings.” Tori rustles around on her desk for a minute before producing a manila folder, which she hands to Samantha.

“Thank you so much.” Samantha quickly flips through the contents of the folder, making quick mental notes about the handful of Post-it notes stuck to the pages. She closes the folder and says, “It always amazes me how much time and effort goes into a few sentences about pants.”

Tori leans back in her chair. “It’s crazy, right?”

“Very.” Samantha lowers the folder to her side. “Tempest and I were talking about trying to get everybody together soon: Travis and Rosie, you… Landon?”

A grin emerges on Tori’s face. “That would be fun. Maybe a dinner party! Or just a night out.”

“We still need to have people over to our place for an official housewarming,” Samantha muses. That thought lingers in the air for a second before she adds, “So things between you and Landon are… good? Promising?”

“Promising, for sure. To be honest, I think we’re both a little worried about ruining our friendship, so we’re taking it slow even if we never talked about doing that.”

“Do you want to take it slow?”

“Not really,” Tori admits with a laugh. “Landon is– he’s great. Even with all his, uh, quirks.”

“Or maybe because of his quirks,” Samantha suggests.

Tori is considering that when the phone on her desk chirps with an incoming call. She reaches for it immediately and answers.

“Molly Taylor’s office,” she says in a practiced, polished tone.

“Hi, Tori. You have a visitor waiting at reception,” the voice of the current receptionist says over the line.

“A visitor? Molly isn’t expecting anyone, I don’t think.” Tori quickly pulls up her calendar on the computer screen to double-check.

“The visitor is here to see you,” the receptionist clarifies. “Her name is…” There is a slight pause as the receptionist double-checks. “Lucy Champlain.”

Phone in hand, Tori freezes, caught completely off-guard.

—–

Inside a windowless interrogation room, Elly and Conrad sit on one side of a scuffed wooden table. Across from them is a detective sporting a black mustache and a few days’ worth of stubble, wearing a polo shirt underneath a beige blazer. Brent sits in the corner of the room, observing but otherwise uninvolved, as he knows that he should not be the one to question his own niece in a high-profile murder case.

“So you admit that you were at the Ragan house on the date in question,” the detective says as he jots down a quick note on his legal pad.

“I have nothing to hide,” Elly tells him. “I went there, yes.”

With his head still focused down on the pad, the detective raises his eyes. “What reason did you have to go there?”

“I was looking for Spencer,” she explains. “I needed to talk to him.”

“Did you find him there?”

“No. I think he had already left for the Objection event.”

“Did someone tell you that? Did you look for him yourself?”

Conrad shoots Elly a cautionary look, but she simply nods at him, a wordless assurance that she has this under control.

“Again, I have nothing to hide,” she says. “I went over to try to talk to Spencer before the Objection party. But I never even went into the house. I never made it to the front door.”

The detective scowls. “You went all the way there and then changed your mind?”

“I was running on adrenaline,” Elly explains. “I had gotten a call from someone — someone who freaked me out.” Her eyes flicker toward Brent now. “His name is Mike Anatoli. He’s a– he’s someone I used to be involved with.”

She sees the sympathy and concern in Brent’s face, despite his efforts to maintain his professional façade, at the mention of the older man who coerced Elly into having an abortion.

“What does that have to do with Spencer or Loretta Ragan?” the detective asks.

“Spencer had helped me confront Anatoli once before,” Elly replies. “He flew to California with me. I needed to talk to him, that’s all.”

“Yet you claim you never went inside the house?”

“My client never went inside the house,” Conrad interjects. “That’s her statement. A word like claim is editorializing.”

The detective looks annoyed but scratches out something on the legal pad.

“I stopped myself before I rang the doorbell,” Elly continues. “I was worried Loretta would be home. Which I guess she was…”

“What happened then?” the detective asks.

“I left. I backtracked to my car, which was down the street, and I left. I went back to my apartment, got ready, and went to the party.”

In that same slightly accusatory tone, the detective presses: “Do you have any witnesses who could back up your story? Anyone who can verify the timeline of when you left and returned back home?”

“My stepmom saw me leave,” Elly says. “But I didn’t see her or my father when I got back. I ran upstairs, changed into my dress, did my hair, and left again.”

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Conrad cuts in. “Are you going to place my client under arrest today or not?”

The detective glances back at Brent, who doesn’t offer much in the way of a response. Elly wishes that he would step in, though she knows that he cannot without compromising the entire case and perhaps his job.

“I don’t believe we’re at that stage right now,” the detective says, “but I’m going to suggest that you don’t leave town or do anything rash, Ms. Vanderbilt.”

Elly lets out a sigh and looks to Conrad, and this time, it is his turn to give her a reassuring nod.

—–

“What a day!”

Natalie tosses her purse onto the large island as she breezes into the kitchen. Her husband, who is stationed at the opposite end of the island sorting through the mail, glances up with a mixture of annoyance and surprise. His glower suggests that he isn’t going to respond to her at all, but after a few seconds pass, he takes the bait.

“Why the hell do you sound so happy?” he asks. “Weren’t you down at the police station being questioned about a murder?”

“Shhh,” she snaps. “Where’s Peter?”

“He’s upstairs doing his homework.”

“Okay.” Nevertheless, she continues speaking in a somewhat hushed voice. “They made me stand in a line-up like some common criminal. Luckily for me, the witness said it definitely wasn’t me she saw, so Brent’s the one with egg on his face now.”

“So that’s it? What happens now?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Natalie sneers. “It just so happens that the woman the witness saw here on the night Loretta died walked into the police station while we were clearing out.”

Spencer’s dark eyebrows jump upward. “What? Who was it?”

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, but your little friend Elly was lurking around this house after we left for the gala.”

Natalie watches as Spencer goes white, processing this shocking information.

“Elly? Was here?”

“The witness was sure it was her,” Natalie says. “Brent was holding her for questioning when I left. Conrad offered to represent her.”

“What the hell,” he mutters, more to himself than to her.

Natalie shrugs. “I’m going to go check on Peter.”

Spencer doesn’t even acknowledge her as she exits the kitchen. As she ascends the stairs, Natalie cannot help the smirk that creeps across her face.

I’m finally free of you, Loretta, she thinks. No one will ever know what you were holding over me now.

—–

Back in the kitchen, Spencer plants his hands on the island, catching his breath the same way he might after running a 10k. It feels as if the wind has been completely knocked out of him.

All he can think about is the exchange he overheard between Elly and Travis, how they discussed some secret that they’ve been keeping. Spencer’s mind jumped to the idea that they might have hooked up, and that’s what Travis doesn’t want Rosie to know. In light of this new information about Elly, though, his thoughts have shifted.

“What if it’s something completely different they’re hiding?” he says aloud, attempting to get his head around the idea.

—–

Tori’s breath catches in her throat as she moves through the office, uncertain what to expect. When she pushes through the glass doors that lead out to Objection’s reception area, she spots Lucy immediately: slouched in one of the minimalist leather chairs, hugging her elbows, eyes swollen. Her strawberry blonde hair is pulled up into a messy twist.

“Lucy?” Tori asks cautiously, though she can already tell that something is very wrong.

Lucy stands up too fast, and her face crumples the moment their eyes meet.

Instinctively, Tori looks to the receptionist and asks, “Maeve, are there any private meetings rooms open?”

Maeve consults her computer and quickly rattles off a list. With a hasty thanks, Tori leads Lucy back into the inner sanctum of the Objection offices and toward one of the smaller rooms — one without glass walls that allow all happenings to be observed by others.

As soon as the door shuts, Lucy sinks into one of the rolling chairs around the plain white conference table. It looks like her bones have given out on her.

Tori waits and waits but finally has to ask, “What’s going on?”

Lucy stares back at her, and then her shoulders slump in defeat. “You were right. About Bryce.”

“Oh, no.”

“I kept thinking I could fix it. That he’d change.” Lucy’s words come out in a messy tumble. “He would, for a little while. Then it would start again, out of nowhere. Last night he broke my phone. I was up half the night wondering if I should slip out, but every time I thought about moving, I panicked.”

“How did you finally get out?”

“While he was in the shower this morning,” Lucy says. “I threw a few things into a backpack and left. I have my passport and some clothes, at least. But there’s so much I forgot.”

“You can get it all later,” Tori says gently.

Lucy shakes her head. “I don’t know. And I’m scared he’ll go to the restaurant and make a scene. I just… I couldn’t stay.”

“You shouldn’t have stayed a second longer. What you did by leaving — that was so brave.”

“I’m so sorry I snapped at you,” Lucy says. “I was so stupid. I really hoped he would stop.”

Tori feels her heart cracking inside her chest as she looks at the broken woman in front of her. “Lucy… I wish I’d been wrong. I went through something similar. It was so scary. He kidnapped me and I had to make a break for it, too. You’re safe now. We both are.”

Lucy nods, but it’s the kind of nod that is desperately trying to believe.

Reaching out her hand, Tori waits, and finally, Lucy takes it.

“You can stay with me tonight,” Tori says. “I mean, I live at my grandma‘s house, with my mom and dad and my brother. So it’s not my space, but I know none of them will mind. We’ll figure this out for you.”

She watches Lucy struggle to find a response, gulping down a huge lump in her throat.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Tori reassures her.

END OF EPISODE 1256

Will Tori be able to help Lucy start fresh?
Is Natalie truly in the clear now?
What will Spencer do with his suspicions?
Talk about it all in the comments below!