The Mentalist 1X17: Carnelian, Inc.

Guys. I figured out the secret. If I just suspect everyone at different points during the episode, and I'm bound to be right! 🤣

Okay, so we've got a strange email that tells us to show up at specific coordinates at a specific time because something bad is going to happen. And it does. As they are waiting, a body falls out of the sky.

Apparently, some company was on an adventure retreat and during their skydiving outing, his chute didn't open and he fell to his death. The instructor guy tells them that he personally checked every parachute the night before and they were all fine. So, someone who had access to the airport (which seemed to be a lot of people) tampered with it before morning. However, the parachutes were given out at random so the person who cut the straps would have had no way of knowing who was going to get that particular parachute.

After the incident, another message is sent. An anonymous person claims that unless the company makes an apology for being greedy awful, they will continue killing people. The boss claims they have to show strength and the retreat will continue.

Back at the office, Grace finds a connection between the company and the a person who had access to the airport. They bring him in to talk to him and he tells them the company cheated him out of 50K. And when he complained, they fired him and he lost his health insurance and now his wife is dying. He's got a great motive, but Jane tells us he didn't do it, so he's out.

Another message shows up and it's cryptic, but Patrick figures it out pretty easily. He and Lisbon rush back to boss guys place because there is a bomb under his bed. They get him out, but once the timer finishes counting down, nothing happens. When they talk to the bomb squad, he tells them one of the wires was loose, but had it not been, it would have been bad. The guy who made this knew what he was doing.

The company is not doing great right now, so Jane suggests maybe it's someone who wanted to buy the stock cheap. Grace traces it to (potentially) one of the women on the retreat. She, back Jane and Lisbon go. When they get there, they find out they are all out playing paintball. Except, the woman they wanted to talk to got shot with a real gun and is dead.

The long and short of it is that this was all orchestrated by boss guy. The woman who got shot was planning to leave the company for a competitor and also charge him with sexual harassment. He killed the first guy to make it look like people at the company were dying randomly at the hands of the anonymous letter writer. He also planted the bomb under his bed, but was smart enough to make sure it didn't go off.

Patrick tells him he can cut a deal (does he have the authority to do that?). They won't got after him for the death penalty, but he's got a write a check to the employee he screwed out of the 50K. And he does. A check for 500K. That extra zero goes a long way. Not in cancer treatment, but still. Jane's a delight.