Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

Vero drives Finn to collect the kids from Georgia’s house, and Finn explains to her sister the new arrangement, where Vero will be moving in for room and board. As Finn picks up a sleeping Delia from in front of the TV, the channel displays a headline of man with Russian mafia ties being acquitted in a recent case. Finn apologizes to Georgia for making her miss her night out with the OCN boys, but Georgia asserts there will be plenty more, as the mafia gets away with everything. They will keep doing so as long as Zhirov bails them out.

As Finn leaves, Georgia claims she has been worried about her, and is glad Finn is not alone anymore. Finn almost confesses to Georgia but remembers Patricia’s warning about Harris knowing dangerous people. With the kids asleep in the car, Finn directs Vero to Steven’s house, where they can find a shovel big enough to dig a hole and bury Harris.

Finn and Vero steal a shovel from Theresa’s shed and drive to Steven’s farm, where they bury Harris in a patch of freshly turned earth. Vero suggests they keep doing this for money, and Finn immediately shoots down the suggestion. When Finn questions whether they are doing the right thing, Vero holds up Harris’s phone in response.

Finn recalls the first time she met Vero, when she was working as a bank teller. Finn had been in line with her kids, both growing incredibly cranky, and Delia had needed to pee just as Finn reached the end of the queue. When she stepped out and came back, Vero immediately ushered them to the front and chatted sweetly with the kids, but the irate customer behind Finn complained about Vero and got her fired. Finn offered Vero a job as a sitter, which Vero immediately accepted.

The two women arrive home and Finn types in the keypad to open the garage door; the motor grinds and the door doesn’t move, and Finn remembers it is broken. She manually pulls it up so Vero can pull in beside the minivan, looking to see if Mrs. Haggerty’s curtains remain closed. The old woman is the one who discovered Steven’s affair, having seen him bring Theresa back to the house one day. After Vero is parked, Finn lets go of the garage door, which crashes down loudly. Luckily, the children don’t wake up, and Vero and Finn tuck them into their beds before putting everything they can in the washing machine and cleaning themselves up before bed.

In the morning, Finn comes downstairs to find the house cleaned and organized. The kids are eating breakfast, Delia with freshly cropped hair to disguise her missing chunk. Vero asks Finn to get dressed, as she is meeting Patricia in an hour; Vero texted her from Finn’s phone, confirming the job is done. To Finn’s refusal, Vero presses that they both need the money, indicating a fresh letter from Steven’s attorney asking for full custody of the children.

Finn meets Patricia at Panera Bread again, once again in disguise. She gives Patricia Harris’s keys, wallet, and phone, but Patricia insists Finn must get rid of them, taking just one key from the ring. Along with an envelope of money, Patricia also gives Finn another slip of paper, a referral for a friend of hers from Pilates who is having issues with her husband. The name, Andrei Borovkov, seems oddly familiar, and Finn is shocked at the sum of $75,000. Patricia leaves before Finn can refuse, and she watches the woman drive out in a brown Subaru. Finn tucks the note in her bag, wondering what to do with it.

Finn drives to the parking lot of The Lush and leaves Harris’s belongings inside his car after wiping them down. However, when she tries to leave, her van doesn’t start. Julian sees her and arrives to help jumpstart the van using his car battery. To his question, Finn lies that she dropped something in the parking lot the previous night and came back to find it, which disappoints Julian, who hoped she came back for him. After Julian leaves, Finn texts him on a whim, and he replies immediately, saying she can pick him up anytime.

Finn gets home exhausted; between her and Vero, they have managed to clean up their tracks, but she still feels like she is missing something. As she pulls the garage door shut, she berates herself, thinking over all the different ways she could have prevented this situation, when she suddenly remembers something.

Finn checks the motor that automates the garage door, and finds it disconnected from the pulley. The only way to disengage it is to pull the emergency cord, which in turn is the only way to manually open and shut the door. The motor had been working when Finn arrived from the bar, as she had used the keypad to open it; she didn’t shut the garage door when she went into the house, but when she came out, it was closed, and the pulley was disengaged from the motor. Finn realizes someone else had pulled the cord when she was inside, meaning that she didn’t kill Harris after all.

Finn confides in Vero, and they theorize that someone else who wanted Harris dead must have followed Finn from the bar and closed the garage door while she was inside. They didn’t use the keypad because the motor would have been two loud. There also had to be at least two people, as one person would have needed to catch the door as it came down, to shut it silently. In a bid to puzzle through what might have really happened, Finn begins to write about the events that have transpired so far, changing the names as she goes.

Finn writes through the night, only waking up in the afternoon the next day, but no closer to solving the mystery. Patricia has been unreachable, so Finn heads down to the address on the paper, hoping to meet her. No one opens the house door, and the lights are off, so Finn takes the mail from the mailbox, hoping to find some information.

Amongst the bills, she finds a bank statement addressed to an LLC: “Milkman Associates.” The charges are mostly to upscale restaurants and hotels, and there are 12 deposits made into the account for the same sum of $2000, on the first of every month. However, the half a million dollars the account had accrued was cleaned out the week before Harris was killed. Finn deduces Patricia used some of it to pay her.

Before Finn can return the mail, a black Lincoln Town Car drives up to the house, and a man disembarks and knocks on the door. When no one answers, a second man, the driver, goes around to the side of the house with a blade in hand; after he returns empty-handed, the two men drive away.

Finn rushes to return the mail and check the garage, finding the brown Subaru parked there, covered in bumper stickers: “Stick figures of a man and a woman and two stick-figure dogs trailed across the glass” (125). Beside the back door, she finds a note stuck to wall with the blade, which reads, “YOU’VE TAKEN SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME. YOU HAVE 24 HOURS BEFORE MY PATIENCE RUNS OUT.—Z (125-26).

Finn looks for a pet door to enter and check on Patricia, and to her surprise, there is one. It suddenly strikes her that Patricia may have called the police after the men’s arrival, so she rushes home quickly.

Finn is woken up by her children in the evening; she has been sleeping all day. She heads downstairs to find the house clean, laundry done, and dinner cooking; Vero has even used some of Patricia’s money to pay the bills, having started an LLC in Finn’s name and using the fresh account to make the payments. Steven won’t find out about the money, because by the time he realizes the bills have been paid, Finn will have a new book—Vero reveals she read the file Finn left open on the computer. She asks about Julian, whose Instagram account Finn had been looking at, as well as about Andrei Borovkov.

Before Finn can answer, the women are distracted by the TV, where news of the Micklers going missing in two separate incidents is being reported. Finn recounts to Vero how she tried to contact Patricia earlier that day, and what she witnessed. To ensure there is nothing tying them to the Micklers, Vero breaks Finn’s phone and throws it down the garbage disposal, after Finn copies out Julian’s number. However, Vero is horrified to learn Julian is the bartender from the story; even after Finn confesses she was wearing a wig and used Theresa’s name, Vero warns her against contacting Julian.

Finn looks up Patricia on a computer in the local library, determined to discover where she went. She finds a picture of Patricia alongside some animal shelter volunteers; Patricia and a volunteer named Aaron are holding up puppies for adoption. Finn suddenly remembers the friend Patricia mentioned from Pilates class; if Patricia confided in her about a contract killer, she must have told her other things, too.

When Finn looks up Andrei Borovkov’s wife, the search results bring up the case of a triple homicide that she remembers Georgia mentioning; the accompanying pictures shows two men ducking into a car in front of a courthouse. Finn recognizes them as the men in the Lincoln; she also realizes why the name seemed familiar, as it was playing on the news when she picked up the kids from Georgia. Andrei is the man whom the OCN was hoping to nab. Andrei works for a businessman named Feliks Zhirov with ties to the Russian mafia, and Finn remembers Harris mentioning the name. Finn realizes Patricia and Irina Borovkov’s husbands are in the mafia business together.

Finn clears the search history and returns to an empty house, with the kids at Steven’s and Vero out on a date. Despite all the stress, she finds it relaxing to come home to a clean house. Irina’s note is missing from her drawer, and Finn assumes Vero threw it away. Finn impulsively calls Julian, who is glad to hear from her. He tells her he has had a crazy couple of days, as the police have been investigating Harris’s disappearance at the bar. A busboy remembers him leaving with a blonde woman. Julian told the police the only blonde woman he remembers is “Theresa,” and that she left the bar alone. Finn is relieved Julian is an alibi rather than a witness. They flirt, and Julian reiterates his desire to take her out. Finn promises to call again when things aren’t so complicated.