Death of a Finance Bro

Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 10.

It’s Elsbeth meets Succession this week on our favorite crime procedural! Sort of. While it’s not a crossover episode — though could you imagine Kendall (Jeremy Strong) having to deal with Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) for more than three minutes? Pure comedy — Season 2 Episode 10, “Finance Bros,” does co-star Connor Roy himself, Alan Ruck, as not one but both of the titular bros. When one of them turns up dead, Elsbeth’s investigation makes its way to Wall Street, just as that divorce case from her past reaches what I am sure is the first of many boiling points. With that, let’s dive in.

It’s Double the Alan Ruck in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 10

The episode opens with Bill Hepson (Ruck), explaining to his brother Peter (also Ruck) why he’s decided to liquidate all his assets and give away the money after a near-death experience. Peter doesn’t think Bill’s troubles with his private plane were that big a deal, but the way Bill describes it, it seemed more serious than just turbulence. Either way, his mind is made up — and the fact that he chose to deliver this message while sporting borderline culturally appropriative garb makes me wonder if a visit to the Heiwa Zen spa played a part in this change of heart. Peter tells Bill he doesn’t think he’ll make it a week.

Peter makes an appearance on a financial news TV program, where Ava Mornier (Tina Benko), the host, asks him about Bill’s decision to withdraw from the company. Peter goes for the corporate spin, with boilerplate statements about wishing his brother well, even as Ava tries to provoke a more serious reaction from him, wondering that since Bill walked away and gave away his fortune, what’s to stop Peter from doing the same. She finally gets something of a reaction when he points out that she likes her job and the money she makes, so why is it hard to believe he feels the same? Then, of course, there’s the anger Ava didn’t provoke, but the one that’s been lingering under the surface the whole time. Peter is furious when a passerby mistakes him for his brother and thanks him for the shelter he built, and, following a digital game of golf in his office with a couple of colleagues, who comment on the “bad look” that is Bill’s new benevolent lifestyle, Peter takes matters into his own hands.

Dressed far more like his brother than like himself, Peter heads over to Bill’s apartment, and slips in after a neighbor leaves, taking advantage of their physical resemblance. On his way up to his brother’s apartment, he takes a call, mostly speaking in statements until he arrives outside his brother’s apartment, at which point he asks a question of the other speaker and demands a specific, detailed answer. Bill is initially happy to see his brother, but things take a turn when Peter tries to choke his brother, then throw him over the balcony, before eventually pushing him out of the window. Bill dies on impact, and Peter resumes his call, picking his brother’s pocket before he leaves.

Elsbeth Comes Clean to Kaya in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 10

Meanwhile, in the back of a car, Elsbeth finally shares the details of the Van Ness divorce case as far as her involvement goes. She says they brought her on board because Van Ness’s divorce lawyers needed a woman on the team after his ex-wife made claims that he had beat her, and reported her abuse to the police. Elsbeth adds that there wasn’t any evidence, and she should have just believed her, but at the time stuck too close to her belief that a lawyer should be objective, and didn’t listen to her inner voice telling her something didn’t add up. An inner voice that turned out to be correct, as she soon learned one of the other lawyers had suppressed the police report documenting her claims. Elsbeth says that as soon as the truth came to light, she left the team and moved to New York instead, to take a job where she could listen to her instincts. The audience for this confession? Officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson), who was wearing noise-canceling headphones the whole time — though with the noise-canceling off — to give both of them plausible deniability, as Elsbeth is still bound by attorney-client privilege. Blanke points out that in a case like this, if a police report was illegally buried, then Elsbeth should be allowed to defend herself.

There’s not much more either of them can do at the moment, not to mention the fact that Detective Smullen (Danny Mastrogiorgio) is outside waiting for them, so they leave it there for now, but at least their friendship is repaired! They arrive just as the ME’s are taking the body away, and Smullen tells them they’re canvassing the neighbors to see if anyone saw anything. Blanke notes that they found a $10 bill stuck to the body, but notices something about it looks off, which they confirm by comparing it to another bill. As Smullen agrees to look into it, Peter arrives, demanding that someone do something about his brother’s death, saying it could have been anyone in the neighborhood taking advantage of Bill. Smullen pulls him aside to ask him some questions, and Blanke follows, leaving Elsbeth to poke around on her own. She heads over to the donut cart across from the building, and explains to the owner, Duncan (Ethan Herschenfeld), that she’s there to help investigate Bill’s death. Duncan is devastated to hear that Bill is gone, and tells her that he used to see Bill every day, and that he was generally friendly and tipped well, but that morning, he was irritable, ignored Duncan completely, and was yelling at someone on the phone. That doesn’t sound much like Bill… but it does sound awfully like Peter.

Back at the precinct, Smullen updates Captain Wagner (Wendell Pierce) on the case, saying they have a suspect in custody: a young man with a black eye and a split lip who was caught near the building trying to break a $100. He seemed a likely suspect, as Peter told the police Bill was known to carry a lot of cash on him, and his wallet was missing, pointing to a likely mugging gone wrong. Elsbeth is skeptical, pointing out to Smullen that the theory of the mugger following him home and them fighting is unlikely because Bill’s TV was on, and a mugger wouldn’t wait for him to settle in first before making a move. While it’s true he might have just left it on before going out, Elsbeth’s bigger issue is that the entire basis for their theories is made up of what Peter told them. His brother might have known him well, but Elsbeth reminds them that they don’t actually know how Peter felt about his brother. She doesn’t get much further, though, when she catches sight of Carter Schmidt (Christian Borle) being escorted into her office by one of the officers.

Van Ness’s Lawyers Cause Trouble for Elsbeth in Season 2 Episode 10

Elsbeth catches up with him and demands to know why and how he’s there to begin with. He tells her Van Ness is in town on business, and he used the opportunity to come to her with a warning: his firm wrapped their investigation on the buried police report, and in order to protect themselves, should news of the report come to light, they plan on pinning the whole thing on Elsbeth, as she was “outside counsel” and not a full member of the team. Elsbeth is understandably furious, more so when Carter adds that it was determined Elsbeth was in the best position to take the fall since she doesn’t currently practice law anymore. The fact that she would lose her job with the police if such an accusation of gross misconduct were to come to light doesn’t seem to register with Carter, who maintains that he’s not the bad guy in this, because at least he came to warn her. Blanke comes to get Elsbeth, as Smullen asked them to go update Peter on their progress, but notices she looks stricken. After catching her up, Elsbeth puts her dilemma into perspective: she can’t say anything in her own defense, as Van Ness would come after her for breaking privilege, and her saying anything would just seem like damage control anyway.

At Hepson Capital, Peter comes to greet them, and just as they make it to the conference room, Blanke receives a message from Smullen telling them that the suspect they took into custody isn’t the one who killed Bill, as he had an alibi and an explanation for his injuries. They ask if there was anyone else who might have wanted to hurt Bill, but Peter says it could have been anyone given how ruthless they were in rising to the top. Elsbeth pokes around the conference room and notices old bills encased in glass and displayed, and Peter explains that Bill used to collect old paper currency. On the subject of his departed brother, Elsbeth asks how Peter felt about Bill’s sudden shift in priorities, and his answer here too doesn’t give them much, a standard boilerplate about how different they were. Elsbeth asks then whether anyone ever used to mix them up, and when Peter says yes, she mentions that Duncan told her he waved at Bill, who blew him off, leading her to think he was waving at Peter instead. After quickly saying that he didn’t go over to Bill’s much, Peter excuses himself, telling them he will get them the information about where he was at the time of death, but he has a meeting to get to — a lie as we quickly discover — and that all further questions can be directed to his assistant.

Back at the station, Smullen tells Wagner and Elsbeth that they tracked down a handful of people, all of whom had been given $100 bills from Bill, and all of whom confirm that Bill was beloved in the neighborhood, leading him to now agree with Elsbeth that the mugging idea doesn’t hold up. With the neighborhood telling Smullen that they would turn in anyone they suspect might be behind it, they need to look in a new direction. Smullen suggests someone from Wall Street, and Elsbeth goes a step further, suggesting that Peter is behind it. Wagner squashes that immediately, as Peter’s assistant Jessica (Bridget Kim) emailed them his alibi: he was doing a phone interview with Ava Mornier’s financial news program. Elsbeth, Smullen and Blanke watch the interview and hear Peter bashing a man named Conrad Deckles (Ed Moran) — and the dialogue sounds an awful lot like what he was saying as he climbed the stairs in Bill’s building. While they don’t know that part yet, Blanke at least narrows down who Peter is talking about. Deckles, she explains, was the founder of Telnon Technology, which Hepson Capital bought controlling shares in, after which they forced the board to fire Deckles. That sounds like a good motive to them, and given that Deckles made an in-person appearance on Ava’s show the morning of the murder, it meant he was in town.

While Smullen goes to track Deckles down, Elsbeth suggests to Blanke that the interview might have been prerecorded, since Peter was “on TV” at the time of the murder, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was talking to Ava right then. However, a quick follow-up with Ava at the station confirms she never prerecords her interviews, and she further shows that the call log indicates he was calling from his office in Manhattan. She tells Elsbeth that him calling into her show uninvited wasn’t unusual, as he likes to control both the personal and more importantly the financial narrative, and that gives him an opportunity to do so. Elsbeth heads back to the station to find Smullen interrogating Deckles. Deckles tells Smullen that after the interview he went to a bar he can’t remember the name of, but remembers it was in midtown. Add that to the fact that he paid in cash, and things aren’t looking good on the alibi front, though Deckles does suggest that if he were going to kill one of the Hepson brothers, it wouldn’t be Bill.

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Wagner Has Elsbeth’s Back in Season 2 Episode 10

Elsbeth is waiting for Smullen outside the interrogation room, where he expects her to start poking holes in his conclusions, but just then Blanke catches up with them, and tells Elsbeth that Carter’s firm issued the press release after all, and that Wagner is looking for her. In his office, she finds not only the chief, but Lt. Connor (Daniel K. Isaac) — whose change of heart where she’s concerned is so obvious, because he isn’t trying to immediately force her out the door. She offers to resign immediately for the good of the precinct, but Wagner stops her, asking whether any of it is even true. She says it isn’t, and that won’t matter in any case, but Wagner reminds her that she once had his back when it seemed like even the truth wouldn’t save him, and says he’ll have her back in turn.

Blanke finds Elsbeth in her office, watching more of Ava’s show. She offers to tell Wagner what Elsbeth told her, so it’s not Elsbeth breaking privilege, but Elsbeth tells her that she can’t repeat what she knows. With that at a dead end for now, Elsbeth tells Blanke that she’s been watching hours of his interviews, and among other conclusions has realized that Peter is regularly rude to his staff while on the phone, and to Ava as well, barely letting her get a word in edgewise, much less asking her a question. The only time he does ask her a question, Elsbeth notes, is during the interview he’s using as an alibi. At that point, he asks her a question, and doesn’t respond for 32 seconds, and Blanke notes he also sounds out of breath. Elsbeth speculates that he might have used that window to kill his brother. The only problem is, the call log showed he was in Manhattan. However, a different clip from a different day, where he is seemingly telling Ava to shut up though she hasn’t said anything, sparks inspiration in Elsbeth.

She heads back to Peter’s office, ostensibly to give him an update on the case, but updates don’t really appear to be top of mind for her. She also uncharacteristically gets Peter’s assistant’s name wrong, as well as Ava’s prompting a correction from him each time. It’s clear she’s stalling for something, and. a frustrated Peter reveals that he knows about the Van Ness press release. Elsbeth lets that roll off her back and continues fishing, wondering who else might have wanted to hurt Bill, and continuing to forget Ava’s name until Peter shouts it at her a few times in a row. That yields the desired result as Ada, a tech assistant along the lines of Alexa, turns on and begins speaking. Peter has to tell it to shut up a couple of times before it does, and Elsbeth notes that while the tech is sensitive enough that it mistakes “Ava” for “Ada,” and has interrupted him while he’s been on calls in the past, it didn’t interrupt him the day of the murder. Peter makes an excuse, but Elsbeth has all she needs to go on. She heads over to Wagner’s for poker night and gleefully confirms that she believes Peter wasn’t actually in his office on the day of the murder. Since that isn’t enough to dismiss Deckles outright, they don’t take that idea any further just yet, but instead rope Smullen in on their brainstorming as they try and figure out a workaround to Elsbeth’s attorney-client privilege with Van Ness.

The next day, Smullen heads over to the crime scene alone, and just as he makes it to Bill’s floor, gets a call from Saskatchewan, Canada. Confused, he answers — as someone who gets a lot of spam calls from random cities, Smullen is either braver or more foolish than I am — and is surprised to hear Elsbeth on the other end of the line. He turns to find her standing there, and she runs into him, simulating a tussle in the hallway before forcing Smullen towards the broken window. The pair of them tell the very confused detective that Blanke figured out the hole in Peter’s alibi: he used a VPN developed by one of the companies they invested in to make it look like he was calling from his office, then asked Ava a specific question, and used the time she was answering to kill his brother. They tell him that they asked Ava’s show to provide the metadata for the call, but the outlet won’t hand it over without a warrant. While they figure that out, Smullen tells them that he discovered that Hepson Captital had taken a giant position on cobalt shortly before Bill died, and when the price jumped shortly after his death, they sold their position for a huge profit, on Peter’s orders. None of them knows what this means, but luckily Elsbeth knows someone who does.

The Killer Gets Clumsy at Hiding His Tracks in ‘Elsbeth’ Season 2 Episode 10

While they try to figure that out, Peter meets Ava for lunch. As the meal wraps up, Ava reveals that the police came by looking for the metadata on her call logs, suspecting the use of a VPN, and deduces that Peter wasn’t really in his office. He asks her what it will take for her to say nothing, and she names her terms, stating that is her first and only offer. Peter turns her down, threatening her job in the process, and leaves her with a $5 bill to cover his half of the meal. Ava stays behind to pay, and is joined shortly after by Elsbeth, who tracked her down using an old interview she had given. Elsbeth asks why Bill’s death would have impacted the price of cobalt, though suggests it may have been a coincidence with the timing, but Ava says that Bill’s charity was funding research into alternative battery technology, given the horrific environmental impact and human rights abuses surrounding cobalt mines. With Bill out of the picture, cobalt would remain a component in batteries, which drove the price up. Given the position that Hepson Capital took on cobalt the day before Bill’s death, Elsbeth suggests that Peter did so knowing his brother would die shortly after, but can’t believe anyone would be so greedy. Ava can, pointing to the fact that he left $5 for his portion of a $300 meal, but if Elsbeth’s face is any indication, that’s not just any $5 bill.

At Hepson Capital, Peter tells the team that they’ve acquired Telnon Technology, and their stock price is skyrocketing as a result. But the higher they fly, the harder they fall, and the stock price takes a dip almost immediately for reasons Peter can’t explain. The fall, Jessica suggests, is due to Ava reporting a heavy law enforcement presence outside their offices. It’s not the FBI, as Peter fears, but rather just Elsbeth, Blanke and Smullen, here to arrest him for Bill’s murder. They tell him they confirmed with Bill’s bank that he had gone to his safe deposit that morning to take out some of the bills from his collection to auction off. He didn’t just collect old bills, like those on display in the office, but also modern ones with unique misprints or serial numbers, much like the one Peter gave Ava at lunch. As the bank had a record of Bill owning that specific $5 bill, there was no way for it to have gotten into Peter’s possession unless he’d seen his brother that day. His motive, however, wasn’t strictly tied to the price of cobalt, but rather his frustration that Bill’s turn to charity and selflessness made him look like a greedy monster in comparison, in a way that no one else on Wall Street does, added to the fact that their mother always showed preference for Bill in a way that stayed with Peter all their lives. Smullen leads him away, though he doesn’t actually confess to anything.

Elsbeth Confronts Van Ness in Season 2 Episode 10

With Peter in custody, there’s one more bigwig they need to deal with. Outside, Elsbeth finds Van Ness (Michael Park) with his team, Carter included, and approaches him. Carter tries to warn her off, but Van Ness tells him to leave them alone to speak. Elsbeth confronts him about the press release, and assures him that while his secrets are safe with her, his soon-to-be ex-wife TruRose (Ciara Renée) has approached her for help in the divorce. He tells her that if she says a word, he’ll make her life hell. She asks for more details, and he obliges: calls to his friends in the police to break into her house, doxxing from the fans of the sports team he owns. Blanke approaches as he wraps up his threats, and arrests him for threatening Elsbeth. It’s a misdemeanor, and they all know the charge won’t stick, but with an official record of Van Ness threatening her in front of a witness, Elsbeth is no longer bound by attorney-client privilege and free to defend herself. It’s a reminder of how damn good Elsbeth is at her job, and even Carter looks impressed — as he should be. As she’s now free to speak, Elsbeth provides the press with details from the suppressed report. This small hurdle might be cleared for now, but there is still the matter of one Judge Milton Crawford (Michael Emerson).

The first ten episodes of Elsbeth Season 2 are out now. New episodes premiere on CBS on Thursdays, and stream next day on Paramount+.

Elsbeth

Elsbeth Season 2 Episode 10 mixes a conventional case with huge strides forward for the characters and their season-long arcs.

Release Date

February 29, 2024

Network

CBS

Directors

Robert King, Ron Underwood

Writers

Michelle King, Robert King

Pros & Cons

• Elsbeth and Kaya’s friendship continues to be the bedrock on which this whole show stands.
• Not that there was ever any doubt, but Episode 10 is such a wonderful reminder of how good Elsbeth is at her job.