'Whitstable Pearl' Recap: Episode 6

Whitstable Pearl airs Saturdays at 8:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the previous episode. 
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On a gray late afternoon on the shore, fishermen are gathering in their nets when they make a grisly discovery in one of them: a really old, coiled-up skeleton.

Mike and Nikki arrive to investigate. They learn that the skeleton is about 30 years old, and speculate that it must have gotten dislodged from a sand bank out at sea and has washed up with the fishing nets. A point of interest: the skull has a bullet hole in it, so it could be murder. “And there’s something else you should know,” Nikki tells Mike.

Cut to the local bowling alley, where Pearl and her son Charlie are having a great time. Charlie brings up Mike; he’s okay with Pearl seeing him, but asks her to let him know when Mike’s staying over so he can interrogate him about his intentions and “hide all his crack.” They’re still laughing when Mike himself appears, and Pearl suggests, jokingly, that Charlie interview him right then. Charlie launches into it, but Mike is clearly not in a jovial mood – it turns out that the skeleton is Pearl’s father, who went by “Flash.”

Back at the restaurant, Pearl, Charlie, and Mike listen while Dolly drunkenly reminisces about her husband. “His death feels more real now,” Pearl muses. The night Flash disappeared, he had been out drinking. He left the pub, Dolly recalls, but never came home. The next day, one of his boats was found out at sea and everyone assumed he had bolted. Dolly can’t think of anyone who had disliked Flash or would want to harm him.

Later, Pearl tells Mike, who is trying to comfort her, that Dolly has it wrong: Flash did come home that night; she heard his footsteps on the stairs before she fell back asleep. “So she was lying,” says Mike. “She remembers it wrong,” Pearl counters. Reluctantly, Mike tells her about the photo he removed from the collage at the bar, of a much-younger Dolly canoodling with Vinnie, confessing that he tore it up. Pearl take umbrage to that – what does the photo have to do with the discovery of her dad’s skeleton? Then she puts it together: “You think Dolly’s a suspect?” Has he spent the evening with the family only as an investigator? Mike denies it, but Pearl isn’t having it. “Go,” she tells him, incensed.

Pearl, Charlie, and his girlfriend Ruby erect a shrine to Flash – appropriately, on the beach. As she and Mike observe at a distance, Nikki is convinced that Dolly should be considered a suspect; she thinks Mike has gotten too involved with Pearl’s family to be objective.

In search of other suspects, Mike and Nikki go to talk to “Stanley the Giant,” a tall reedy fisherman who had been fired from Flash’s crew years ago for smuggling drugs. Stanley freely admits to committing the crime and lies that Flash and Vinnie did, too – saying that “they all paid the price.” Dolly later explains that drug smuggling is a common practice among fisherman, but that Flash refused to engage in it. Stanley had lied to Pearl because he is still holding a grudge against Flash. Pearl is now relieved to know that her dad made his money honestly. “He adored you,” Dolly tells her, “and that’s all that matters.”

Apparently it’s not all that matters to Pearl. When she asks Dolly why Vinnie had a key to their house, Dolly doesn’t give her an answer.

Cut to Nikki and Mike, who are viewing Flash’s police file and the accompanying photos. Apparently, he harmed Dolly and she refused to press charges. They conclude that Dolly had a motive to kill Flash. The next day, they are following Dolly as she angrily confronts Stanley on the pier and attacks him with pepper spray, warning him, “Never lie to my daughter again.” She storms off as Mike and Nikki watch.

Determined to get to the bottom of why Vinnie had a key to their house, Pearl approaches Vinnie's ex-wife Tina, who has a low opinion of Flash and defends Vinnie, who she claims was often the butt of Flash’s abuse. Was Vinnie sleeping with Dolly? Pearl asks. Vinnie always told Tina that he wasn’t, but after he didn’t come home one morning, Tina knew he was lying. That same day, Flash and his boat went missing. Tina followed Vinnie as he met up with Dolly at a beach cottage.

Mike and Nikki continue to tail Dolly along the shore, following her as she unlocks the door to said cottage. She furtively enters and emerges with a small metal box, examining the contents. Mike and Nikki decide to get a warrant and bring Dolly in for questioning, and Mike goes to the restaurant to tell Pearl; Charlie and Ruby angrily order him to leave her alone. Meanwhile, Pearl is paging through her mother’s photo album; she realizes Tina was telling the truth and leaves in a rush. Dolly later finds the open photo album and realizes what Pearl has found. Dolly goes to intercept her, but Nikki and the police get there first. “We need to talk,” Nikki informs Dolly.

Pearl has now located and broken into Dolly’s cottage, and that’s where Mike finds her, revealing what they found in the police report: Flash had repeatedly beaten Dolly. Gently, Mike tells Pearl that it doesn’t mean that Dolly killed Flash, but they do need to question her. Pearl accepts this, confessing that she learned how to pick the lock by watching a YouTube video. Mike has a warrant to search it for a gun, he tells Pearl, “to clear Dolly.”

At the restaurant, Nikki questions Dolly about the photos from the police file, of her much younger and battered self. Resentfully, Dolly asserts that the police let her down back then, and she isn’t inclined to help them now, even if it’s possible that Flash was murdered. She tells Nikki to go ahead and charge her.

Back at the cottage, Pearl finds an envelope – the last note that Flash wrote to Dolly. She asks Mike to read it to her: “I was a bad husband, but I tried to be a good father. This sickness stops with me.” Flash knew the sea would take him, and he didn’t want to be found. He asks Dolly to burn the letter after reading.

So Flash killed himself and Dolly never told Pearl. It’s a crime to conceal a suicide note, Mike tells Pearl…but only if someone finds out. Together, they burn the note.

Dolly is aware that Pearl now knows the truth. And one more thing: Vinnie knew about Flash’s temper – that’s why he had the key to their house, and it was Vinnie who found Flash’s abandoned boat. As Dolly breaks down sobbing, Pearl thanks her for keeping Flash’s secret from her. Later, they scatter Flash’s ashes in the sea.

Now that they have the true cause of Flash’s death, Dolly is exonerated. And as she goes to keep her mother company, Pearl tells Mike she needs some space and time away from him. Mike understands, and thinks about returning to London.