15. When Your Number's Up

Complete story — includes the ending

Sherlock and Joan investigate two murders in which the killer leaves envelopes of cash on the victims equating to their "worth". The probe leads the two to investigate an airline crash which killed over 80 people and the amount that each would receive as wrongful death compensation according to an equation formulated by attorney Arlen Schrader. When Dana Powell, the wife of one of the crash victims, reports being shot at from her back yard, Sherlock becomes suspicious, as the first two shootings were at short range. Powell gives a seemingly tone-deaf television interview, which forces the airline to drop its method of calculation to making the same flat payment to each next-of-kin. This is puzzling, as Powell's husband was a highly successful broker. Then they discover that the husband had a fatal disease, with only a few months to live. The police obtain a search warrant for her mansion, where they find incriminating evidence. Meanwhile, Joan moves into the basement at the brownstone, and seals the interior door so that in future she will have a physically separate space, but still be able to work closely with Sherlock.