When Chuck was a kid, her dad distracted her from her chicken pox by telling her adventure stories. Ironic, considering it was her long-put-off desire for said adventure that got her killed. After the obligatory flashback, we start where we left off last week, with Ned rushing to his old bedroom on the warnings of the aunts that he has a squatter and Chuck revealing that her dad's alive again. Before they can much get into it, the aunts, fearful for Ned's safety, arrive, shotgun in hand. Chuck manages to thwart them from seeing either her or her dad while simultaneously letting her dad know that she knows that Lily's her mother. A strategically placed clown frightens Lily the hell back home, and Chuck emerges, puppy-faced, and tells Ned they need to talk. Ned, containing himself so well the babbling's at nil, says that she really doesn't want to hear what he has to say.
A winter storm is rolling in when Chuck approaches Ned on the rooftop, telling him she's too tired to think clearly and let him process what's happened. He says that if Charles is alive, someone else is dead. She tells him about Dwight and his attempt to off them with a sniper rifle, and that Emerson knows the whole deal. He wanted her to tell Ned, but Ned found her before she figured out what to say. Ned asks what would have happened if he hadn't; he can't even look at Chuck while she's explaining all this. She says she'd have brought him up to the roof and told him she was reckless and selfish, which Ned says she was, and while she'd apologize for deceiving him, and will continue to forever, she's not sorry she did what she did because she's so grateful her dad's alive again. It's overwhelming and she's not sure how to describe it. Ned turns to her and says that he understands the impulse, since he felt it with her, and he'll never be sorry he did it for her, either. Chuck throws a tarp over Ned and hugs the life out of him. She asks what's next; he says that her dad's back, and they need to talk about a lot of things, like what to do with her dad. Which, Ned says, they need to figure out together. "Are we together?" he asks. Chuck says they're so together, electrons couldn't get between them. He tells her she's beaming. She's not the only one: they see something like a bat-signal in the sky, but instead of the silhouette of the bat, it's that of a... person?
It's the body of Nora McQuoddy, lighthouse keeper, murdered and plastered to her light for everyone to see. The suspected killer is her husband, Merle. Which we find out thanks to the evening news, which the gang is watching at the Pie Hole. The lights go out, and Olive freaks everyone out by shouting "MERLE MCQUODDY. Out of all the enigmatic, esoteric local ghost stories, his is my absolute fave." A flashlight under her chin, she recounts the tale: Merle, a sailor, left his wife and child for a fishing trip, only to disappear without a trace. Mariners swear Merle haunts sea caves, crying out for someone to lead him home. "In actual fact, the facts were these," we're told. EH did leave 10 years ago for a sea voyage. He was caught in a typhoon and marooned on a deserted island. His wife Nora waited, and after said 10 years, Merle was rescued by a gay family cruise ship. But, Olive continues, Merle was not the man he used to be. He'd roam the beaches at night, fly into rages, and shun indoor plumbing. And now, he's a murderer. She's about to continue when the door flies open and a mysterious fisherperson fills the doorway.
It's Elliot McQuoddy, Nora and Merle's son. He's spilled out his entire life savings for Emerson to clear his father's name. Ned offers him pie, Olive a shoulder to cry on. But he prefers boobs, so she and Chuck bat him between them a moment. Elliot says that after 10 years of waiting, there's no way his father would have hurt his mother. He excuses himself, and Emerson helps himself to Elliot's pie. He's not taking the case: he thinks Merle was a few oars short of his boat, plus, Emerson doesn't work in the rain. Chuck tells him to take her third of the cut and she'll take a personal day to deal with her personal person.
At the morgue, Ned wants to get the interview over with so he can go buy Chuck's dad a welcome back to life gift. Emerson thinks Ned's gift should be another touch. Ned's horrified, but Emerson thinks Ned can't control one Charles Charles and he'll go around telling the world what Ned can do. Ned needs to tap that. Ned's like, I can't do that to Chuck when this is her chance at having a family. Emerson tells him to make it look like an accident: Dick Van Dyke over an ottoman and tap that ass. Ned shivers and prefers instead to deal with the dead grody body.Nora's like, melted. To her light. In a rather clever bit of staging, she's coverd in a white sheet with her hat on her back, making her look like a fried egg. Half her face is melted, so she's not so much with the talking. She does, however, tap out some Morse code that Ned understands thanks to Charles Charles having taught it to him and Chuck so they could talk via flashlight from their windows. She taps out PHCS. "Pick-HISS!" Ned says. "PEACHES!" Emerson corrects him that it's an acronym for Papen County Historical Society, which is bound to have stuff on Nora's lighthouse. They're on their way into the hall when Olive finds them, thanks to her ace PI in training skills. Plus, she got "Papa" Emerson a rain poncho, and one for ned. Awesomely, Olive's is dotted with olives, while Ned's is covered with pies and Emerson's with fish. Together, they are a crack crime fighting team. Ned leaves Olive and Emerson to it, to Olive's great disappointment.
Ned and Chuck have camped out at Ned's old place with Charles, who wants cake, not pie. He says that Chuck hates pie. Ned's like WHAAAT? Chuck says these pies won her over. This is like a fundamental issue, people, pie v. cake. My dad lives and dies for pie, for example, and someone who does not like pie has no place in his world. I could not live in a world without cake, however, so I am clearly not a very good daughter. Ned's come up with a list of things they need to discuss, the first being Charles' removal to Ned's place, since Lily and Vivan really get around for agoraphobes. Ned's pretty sure that if Lily and Vivan get wind of what he can do, it's only a short walk to angry mothers with pitchforks. Charles is leery of moving in with the dude who could kill him with one touch, and Ned assures him there are plenty of safeguards against it. But Charles is less worried for himself and more concerned about Chuck getting the second touch dead forever finger. He thinks no matter the precautions, there's no guaranteeing Ned won't accidentally bump Chuck into dead forever, so he'll make a deal. He grabs Ned by the arm, making Chuck gasp, and says he'll play by Ned's rules if he agrees never to see Chuck again.
Olive and Emerson have lured the head of the historical society to the Pie Hole under the guise of making the restaurant a historical landmark. His name is Gus Papen, the fifth brother of Papen County's first family, not distinguished enough to run the family's commercial empire with his elder four brothers. He turned Olive down, because apparently the Pie Hole was a magnificent architectural hooha before it was a pie. Emerson tells him to sit and answer some questions. Gus says that when Merle disappeared, Nora couldn't afford the upkeep of the house. He declared it a historic monument, used his family money to keep it going, and appointed Nora and her family stewards for life. Elliot's next in line to run the light. Gus tells the duo to talk to Annabelle Vandersloop, who was in a diorama with Nora.
Chuck gives her dad a walkie talkie to keep in touch, and her momento box with the photo of Dwight, Dad of Ned, and Charles. He thanks her, while Ned plunks a GIANT ass chocolate cake on the coffee table. Chuck leaves her boys to settle in together. Ned holds himself awkwardly, as usual, and hands Charles a moleskin book of rules regarding his alive again lifestyle. They are go nowhere, see no one, telephones are okay with aliases, double-bagged gloves, etc. Ned says he's really trying. Charles is like, how about we talk about how you killed me; I'd like an apology. Ned says he's sorry, and Charles says forgiveness is a ways off.
At Emerson's office, he and Olive talk to Annabelle Vandersloop, the awesome Mary Kay Place. I don't know why I so love Mary Kay Place, but I wish she lived next door to me so we could have cake and coffee and gossip about our other neighbors. Her accent would be so comforting. She and Nora were best friends, having met through a Notable Widows group that commemorated their husbands' deaths through diorama. Annabelle's diorama involves glitter and explosions, since her husband was a munitions manufacturer who died in a calmitous 4th of July related accident. She mocks Olive for wanting to dioram her dead horse because she's never had a husband. Apparently, when Merle came back, he and Elliot were desperate to bond over things Nora felt were out of bounds, like a father-son around the world boat trip. She put her foot down eventually, but not without getting melted to her light, it would seem. "Life," she sighs. "You can't make this crap up." She leaves, covered in cotton balls, and Olive tells Emerson that Elliot's full of crap.
They head to the lighthouse, which is not open for an open house, as the realtor thought. He advanced Elliot $10K for the sale before finding out that he couldn't sell the building after all, since it's a protected historical landmark. "This is so not how the Secret is supposed to work." Heh. Elliot said he and his father were going out of town and needed money fast. Emerson has this theory: Merle offs Nora, Elliot hires Emerson to push suspicion of Merle so they can steal money to take their forbodden father/son boat trip. But given the squally weather, they can't go anywhere. Olive and Emerson decide to wait them out; Emerson admits he hates rain because he and his ex used to hole up with soup and brandy until the sun came out. Olive, fidgeting, whistles on a bottle and figures out that the haunted caves filled with the sounds of moans were because of wind rushing past the openings. Elliot knows those caves backwards. Olive chest-bumps Emerson and takes off with a booyah.
At the Pie Hole, Ned tells Chuck her dad scares the crap out of him. Plus, it sucks that they can't see each other anymore. She says they will, just when her dad's not around. She realizes that her dad's terrorizing her first boyfriend, and it's just like the high school experience they never got to have together. They make out with the help of some Saran Wrap, and Chuck leaves to shop for her father, leaving Ned sighing longingly after her. And staring into the scaryass face of Charles Charles.
Ned evicts a restaurant full of customers when charles won't go upstairs, given that he wants to berate Ned for necking with the daughter he swore he wouldn't see anymore. Charles goes foraging for cake, not made of chocolate, much to Ned's shock. Because who doesn't at least TOLERATE chocolate? Ned tells Charles that he can't go out the way he is; Charles says people will assume he's a burn victim. He's been out for an hour without so much as a look. Why should he play by the rules when Ned doesn't? Besides, the scary stories of pitch forked mobs will be after Ned, not Charles or Chuck. Ned tells him that the mob wasn't after Frankenstein, but his monster. Charles tries to leave, Ned blocks him, and then they start dueling with mops. Ned is actually the more aggressive of the two for a moment, warning Charles not to touch him. He knocks the dead man into a storeroom and slumps to the floor, agog.
In the caves, Emerson and Olive quickly find Merle. Turns out that Nora was stepping out on him, which he found out when Elliot was at the movies the night she died. He ran to the caves, and after she was discovered, Elliot hatched the plan for their escape. He doesn't know who her paramour was, but he has a necklace with a spoon on it. Olive recognizes it as a Dutch love spoon, which lovers gave each other to represent the sweetness they'd feed each other forever. "I've read the entire Harlequin library," she enthuses. Emerson guesses Nora was killed by a jealous lover who hadn't yet heard his girlfriend was leaving her husband. The back of the spoon reads AP + NM. AP=Augustus Papen, or Gus.
Chuck returns to the Pie Hole to find her dad faking injury and Ned just freaking out. She sends her dad upstairs and Ned tells her how unwilling her dad is to play by the rules and how ready he is to expose their secret. Chuck offers to talk to him alone, without Ned, severing their "working together" thing, and calls it all a normal boyfriend-girlfriend-girlfriend's dad dynamic. Ned's like, this is so not normal, I can't pretend it's normal, and if you want to handle this alone, so be it.
Upstairs, Chuck's dad wants to take off to parts unknown. Chuck will close her eyes and point to a map and that's where they'll go. Chuck doesn't think this is the answer to a misunderstanding. Charles reads some of Ned's rules, which are nattering and weird just like Ned. He says that the daughter he left behind was destined for greatness, not living under lock and key by rules of coming and going. He thinks Chuck doesn't have a life, she has a freakshow. They're only freaks with Ned, though, but they can be anybody anywhere else they want to. Chuck sighs and says she wants things to be how they used to be. When you were nine? She cuddles up on his chest, and he asks her to come with her. Pie, he says, is simple and limited; it's pastry and filling. Cake is complex, layered with treasures. "Which one do you choose?" he asks.
Olive's just told Annabelle Vandersloop about Gus and Nora. Annabelle says she told her whole club about how Olive's dead horse, and how they all think it's better to have loved and lost than be Olive. She leaves, thumping a white handprint of papier mache dust on Emerson's lapel, bidding goodbye to Sad Miss Snook. Emerson drops a file he found snooping in Gus's office: a proposal to remodel the Papen Harbor Lighthouse. Into a water park with a slide! Seems Gus wanted to join his more ambitious brothers, and Merle's return gave him an out. Kill Nora, frame the kooky husband, and elbow his ranks up the Papen Family ladder. He could remodel to his heart's content, as long as Elliot wasn't in his way. Olive finds an appointment notation for Gus and Elliot to meet at the lighthouse that night. They take off.
It's snowing now, and Gus has Elliot dangling over the side of the lighthouse. This gets a unanimous "Oh HAY-ULL NO!" from Emerson and olive. They rush up to where Gus is hanging onto Elliot for all he's worth. Gus says he's trying to save Elliot. Elliot says Gus didn't do it--the narrator tells us that it was Elliot who did. With a nor'easter coming in, he wanted to do his mother proud by raising the signal flags. But he slipped and went ass over teakettle over the side. They get Elliot in and ask Gus if he doesn't want to kill all the McQuoddys. Gus denies it, but before we get any further, the lighthouse beam goes on and the whole entourage finds themselves at the wrong end of a harpoon gun.
Except it's a flag gun, unfurling a banner for the Papen Harbor Resort and Day Spa. Gus gives the starting note, and an accapella group marches up the stairs and starts singing, all wearing fishing raincoats. Emerson pulls his gun to get everyone to shut up. Gus says this is how the evening entertainment begins, and he wanted to show Elliot so he could see how he was honoring his mother. Gus says he and Nora cooled it to see if she could make things work with Merle, but Elliot knows they couldn't. Olive's like, great plan, but nix the glitter, which is all over the windows. Who'd they get to decorate, Annabelle Vandersloop? Emerson tweaks to the fact that Gus was seeing Nora AND Annabelle, proven by the dusty papier mache print on Gus's balding pate. Gus says he denied Annabelle every time she came on to him, but once, years ago, they did connect. "So, burned lover spears a best friend and frames ghost husband to take the fall," he says. And, he says, he hopes the accapella group is missing a baritone.
But downstairs, Annabelle is waiting with a barrelfull of the gunpowder that offed her exploded husband. She was saving it for a rainy day, and look! It's here! She picks up a match, and Gus is like, what is with you? Annabelle asks why he has to deny their love when what they had was so much more special than whatever he had with Nora. He couldn't let go, so she eliminated the lighthouse keeper, and now she'll blow up everyone else. Annabelle lights her match, and Gus says that doesn't understand what killing everyone will solve. Olive raises her hand, saying she does. Annabelle called her Sad Miss Snook because she recognized Olive's sadness for her own. "The rest of you don't know what it's like to know in your heart that you belong with somebody, and if you could only eliminate everybody else, maybe he'd finally, finally grasp what you've been trying to show him and that feeling you've been dying to recapture!" What can you do but decide not to love Ned? Or Gus? You can't! "So you know what I say?" Olive says, and blows out the match.
Annabelle goes to jail so she can be sad about her 30 year sentence instead of her broken heart. Merle and Elliot became partners in Gus's hotel, used the money to go on their around-the-world trip, and reestablished their familial bond. Emerson counted his cash, a reward from the PCHS, which he shared with his junior PI in training, one Olive Snook. Emerson wants to talk about how she's in love with Ned and whether or not she's going to kill Chuck. Because if she ever gets fed up with all that Pie Holing Pie Holeyness, she can come work with him. Olive says she thinks she's winning him over; he says she made him love the rainy day again. And with that, they share some celebratory cigars.
Outside the Pie Hole, Chuck tells Ned that when she was a little girl, she was pretty sure her dad was the strongest bestest dad ever, and he died on his pedastal. And now he wants to leave and take the adventures they missed out on. "All I have to do is choose cake over pie," she says. Her dad wants to be the dad she dreamed of, someone who could keep his little girl safe and happy. But she's not a little girl, and she's chosing to stay. She's already safe and happy, and they have adventures every day. Charles is waiting upstairs with an apology so they can start fresh. Ned thinks he's a good dad; Chuck thinks Ned is a good man. They go upstairs, but Charles has chosen, too, and he's chosen: anywhere but here.
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