'Ridley' Recap: Season 2 Episode 4

Ridley airs Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes.
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Another person has been found dead – is it related to the reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of Kathy Hadderly upon the discovery of her body years after she was reported missing?

Ross Enderby, the boyfriend of the ex-detective Jean Dixon, was found dead in Jean’s home. There are signs of a struggle, and it looks like he fell backwards and hit his head on the corner of a coffee table. Jean suspects that she was the target of the attacker, because she received a threatening note on her car warning her to stay away from the Hadderly case. She doesn’t tell the detectives about the fight she had with Ross before his death.

The detectives also find a kitchen knife under the kitchen island with some blood on it, but there are no cuts or stab wounds on Ross.

The detectives already suspect David Hadderly killed his wife Kathy, so they wonder if he was involved in Ross’ murder – and they find camera footage of his car near Jean’s house around the time Ross was killed. David says he drives when he can’t sleep at night. He was drunk, and ended up at his brother Andy’s house to sober up.

Andy says that David’s daughter Sam called him earlier that day because David was drunk. David assumed the police were going to arrest him, especially because he believed Jean had a vendetta against him. Andy says David told him he was sorry, but didn’t explain for what.

When the police search David’s house, they find Kathy’s missing earring from the night she disappeared. And the military confirms that, on the night the detectives believe Kathy was killed, there was a Sergeant Hadderly at a military reserve camp near where Kathy’s body was found.

But then Ridley recalls seeing the reserve’s crest on display in Andy’s home, and calls back the military to check on the sergeant’s first name. It was Andy, not David.

Andy’s wife Lynne admits that she knew Andy had affairs, but she never left him because she didn’t want to end up alone. When the detectives put out an appeal for information about Kathy’s missing earring, Lynne recognized it – she had found it in the pocket of Andy’s military jacket. But when she went to look for it, it was gone. She thinks Andy planted the earring at David’s house. She also saw Andy burning leaves, unusually, and found a phone amidst the ashes.

Andy is arrested and questioned. He denies everything, but a witness at the military reserve camp saw him returning to the camp around 3:00 am the night Kathy was killed. And the phone that he tried to destroy only texted one number: Kathy’s daughter Sam. Andy was the one sending the texts that made Sam think Kathy was still alive.

Andy breaks down and says that he loved Kathy. They had been considering starting a life together – and then she asked to meet him at the hollow tree, a common rendezvous for them. She told him that she was ending their affair; she wanted to start a new life not with Andy but with Sam. He begged her to change her mind, she refused, he got angry, she screamed, and he strangled her. He kept her earring in memory of her, then framed his own brother. And he made up a sighting of Kathy after her disappearance to deflect blame.

But he claims not to know who Ross is, and says he didn’t threaten Jean.

Ridley’s habitual mistrust of people often pays off, but he decides to ignore it for the sake of Annie and his late wife, and accept Annie’s boyfriend Harry’s offer to help with the struggling jazz club.

Geri tells Farman about Jack’s up-to-no-good new friends and his lateness in getting home to watch his new baby sister. Farman orders Jack to watch Meadow while she and Geri go out to dinner, but when they get home he’s not in the house. He’s outside smoking with his friends. Farman is furious.

An ex-colleague and -girlfriend of Ross appears to speak to the police. She says he was kind when she first met him, but became abusive once he moved in with her. He became violent when she tried to kick him out, and she filed a complaint at the police station where they worked. But senior officers covered it up in exchange for Ross’ early retirement. And she wasn’t the only one to face that pattern of abuse from him.

Cameras show that Ross’ car was near Jean’s when she received a threatening note. He’s the one who put it there. His phone shows that he put a tracker on Jean’s car – and that tracker shows that her car never left her house the night Ross was killed, even though she said she drove to visit her daughter, Molly.

Confronted with this, Jean admits that she killed Ross. After he threw her out of the house for trying to kick him out, she eventually returned. He apologized and tried to kiss her, but she was resolute in making him leave. He said he’d kill her before letting her and attacked her; she fought back and he fell and hit his head.

But that doesn’t explain the kitchen knife found with blood on it – and Jean insists no weapons were involved. She doesn’t know about the knife. And the blood on it is not hers or Ross’ but Molly’s.

Ridley finds Molly at a ridge where her mother likes to sit. She says she’s glad Ross is dead. She was going to confess to killing him but waited too long and then her mother had been arrested and she didn’t know what to do.

When she first met Ross, he was an ideal boyfriend to her mom. But then he started lying about Molly to turn Jean against her, and asking Jean for money. So Molly started looking into him. She noted his phone password, then looked at it and found he had been messaging other women on apps and arranging meet-ups.

Molly set up a fake profile to lure him in, and he took the bait. He asked to meet, and Molly agreed. She saw Jean’s car and assumed she was at home. But when she confronted Ross with the fake profile, he locked the door and aggressively demanded her phone. She grabbed a kitchen knife in defense and he struggled with her. In the tumult, she pushed him and he cracked his head.

Jean apologizes to Ridley for everything. She will be charged with perversion of justice; Molly’s charges might be reduced because it was self-defense. Ridley and Jean make up, and he promises to be there for her.