Cassie continues to follow the trail of odd happenings as she looks into the burned truck while Jenny and Beau must investigate a string of robberies involving hot rod cars. Meanwhile, the camp drama continues when Tanya and Donno question Luke over Paige. Read on to see what happened this week in “The Bag and The Box.”
Homicide and Hot Rods
The crime of the week investigation gets underway when Beau gets a call about a homicide and a stolen car. It’s not just any car though, it’s a 1979 Firebird Trans Am that Beau finds very impressive. The homeowner awoke to hear a commotion and sent her husband to check on things. The man found a robbery underway and is killed when the intruder hits him over the head and stole the car.
The car turns up on the side of the road in decent shape except for the trunk that’s been ripped apart. Jenny concludes they must be looking for a hidden compartment. Beau has Poppernak discover another Firebird was stolen a week ago in Billings and finds there are only three registered in the state. The first stolen car changed hands a couple of times after the original owner, Mickey Prescott, went to prison. Poppernak suspects he hid something in his car and might be trying to find it. Beau heads out to talk to the final owner while Jenny and Poppernak question Prescott at his apartment. Prescott tells them he was home alone during the robbery and that he’s far too old to be pulling late-night heists. They believe him and leave.
Beau arrives at the house of the next owner to find the door open. The man who greets him seems friendly enough and listens to Beau’s information when they both hear a thumping noise from another room. The man says it’s just his dog and goes to check on it. While he’s gone, Beau is suspicious and finds a photo laid flat. Picking it up, he sees a man with the car who is definitely not the man he was just talking to. He interrupted the robbery and races down the stairs to find the man tied up and the criminal crawling through a window. As he tries to speed away in the car, Beau leaps on the hood and manages to put a tracker on the car before he’s thrown off into the road.
Back at the office, the pieces fall into place when the tracker suddenly goes offline and they hurry to its last location to find the car in a parking garage with a dead body inside. The same man who stole the vehicle. Jenny realizes the connection and asks Poppernak to look into Prescott’s prison records. He finds that they were in prison at the same time, so Jenny and Beau race to his apartment. Prescott’s at his table, a lockbox, and gun before him. Beau and Jenny talk him down from either suicide or suicide by a cop with the promise at a look at the item in the box. He agrees and Jenny cuffs him as Beau opens the box to reveal… a mint-condition Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card worth millions.
The Case of the Burned Vehicle
Following up on the burned-out truck, Cassie finds herself once again at Sunny Day Excursions to ask after the truck in Buck’s name. Cormac sees Cassie arrive and escorts her to his parents’ tent where Sunny refuses to leave Cassie and Buck alone (suspicious much?). Together they tell Cassie that Buck sold the truck a long time ago for cash and they don’t remember to whom. She’s suspicious that the title never transferred and Sunny promises to look through their records back home when the camping trip is over.
Cassie and Denise go over the details again when she returns and it’s clear she’s not buying what Buck and Sunny told her. Neither can decide why Buck and Sunny would lie about the truck, but until things make more sense Cassie isn’t giving up. Cassie plans to do a composite sketch of the guy in the truck (Walter), while Denise decides to poke around on some online forums to see what anyone might know about the bleeding heart murder. She thinks the hearts carved in trees and the heart on the foot of the wooden hiking toy could be pointing in that direction.
After the case is solved, Cassie meets up with Jenny and Beau to show them the sketch. Jenny says she’ll ask Poppernak to run it through the system for any outstanding warrants. Cormac turns up at the same bar and Cassie talks to him about the truck. He wants to help her and asks Cassie to be honest with him.
Walter and Paige
Paige is more than a little upset that Walter wasn’t able to find her bag and the notebook she asked him to retrieve. Walter says there’s a chance that Sunny might have the journal so he returns to the camp to look again. When he does, Donno finds him lurking on the outskirts and the two have a rather interesting exchange wherein Donno asks if he lives in the woods. Walter says he’s hiking, but his lack of a water bottle and general “guy who lives in the woods vibe” makes Donno suspicious. They threaten each other a bit and Donno gives Walter advice to be quieter if he’s going to creep around, he’d spotted him five minutes before he approached.
Walter presses Paige for more information on the notebook when he returns to the cabin and tells her about Donno. She finally tells him that she and Luke stole a lot of money and were hoping to lay low until the suspicions died down. However, she thinks Tanya and Donno must be the people they stole from.
Walter reveals his own history at last. As a child he had a friend named Meredith. His adoptive parents didn’t like her because she hated them for how they treated Walter. He says they hurt Meredith and made him watch, so he burned down their home while they were asleep inside to protect Meredith. Paige seems shaken by it. He grabs an axe and says he will protect Paige.
The Camp Drama Continues
Over breakfast, Avery slyly asks about Luke and Emily tells him that Luke went hiking with ‘the new couple’ Tanya and Donno. Carla isn’t impressed with their continued interest in Paige’s disappearance. Emily accidentally lets it slip that Avery was poking around in Luke and Paige’s tent but he covers quickly by telling Carla that he was worried about the missing couple. He didn’t want to alarm Emily so he didn’t tell her the real reason he was in there. He claims he thought Emily might call in Beau if she thought it was a real issue. Carla buys it (barely) but it doesn’t look like Emily is as gullible.
Meanwhile, on their hike, Donno and Tanya take Luke back to the sight he and Paige split up. He spins a tale about someone taking her as Donno continues to threaten him with a knife. Luke divulges that Paige’s notebook has an account number in it worth $15 million, but he doesn’t know the seed phrase needed to decode it. He knows the words but not the order they go in. Tanya doesn’t believe that she managed to sneak back and steal her bag away without anyone noticing. Donno, though, thinks someone may have taken Paige when he spots the bloody heart carved into the tree.
Donno does some target practice with a bow and arrow while Luke and Tanya watch. He tells them about his encounter with Walter and he doesn’t believe that Walter doesn’t know Paige.
The Big Twist
Mary goes for a run alone on the trails to clear her head and stumbles across Paige’s bag. Things are strewn about so she suspects an animal must have found it. On her way back to camp she runs into Sunny and Buck who she tells about the bag. Sunny sends Buck back to camp with the horses and has Mary take her to the bag. On the way, Mary notices Sunny knows which direction to go and (foolishly) points it out. Once they reach the bag, she also realizes Sunny said she’d heard from Paige. Sunny fumbles to come up with answers to her questions. When Buck walks up behind her she begins screaming for help. Buck stabs her from behind with his hunting knife and Sunny catches Mary’s lifeless body.
Big Sky: Deadly Trails airs on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/9 p.m. CT on ABC. If you haven’t already, be sure to catch up on the first two seasons on Hulu, check out our other content on the show here (including episodic recaps), and stay tuned for more updates.
