When Covetousness is Conceived, Sin is Born

When Covetousness is Conceived, Sin is Born (Hapai ke kuko, hanau ka hewa) is the 16th episode of Season 9 in the remake version of Hawaii Five-0.

Synopsis
When the top salesperson for a beauty company/pyramid scheme is murdered, Five-0 sifts through a long list of possible suspects who would want her dead. Also, Adam befriends a homeless man estranged from his family.

Plot
The team investigated the murder of Gwendoline Baker. She had been enjoying herself with an excursion trip called Sirens of the Seven Seas and that was more or less mermaid camp for rich people. The women that went through with it had to shell out ten thousand dollars for expertly done mermaid fins and so it wasn’t something the average Jane or Joe would consider, but Gwendoline had no trouble affording it. She worked at a company called Plum & Rose beauty and it was a lifestyle company. It teaches women about beauty and health. And what it doesn’t mention if that it’s a pyramid scheme.

The company was all about living the best life with pseudo-feminism involved, but women would buy packages worth thousands of dollars and they weren’t able to offload it or even get their money back. They all thought that if they joined the company that they would be living the rich lifestyle that saleswomen like Gwendoline promised them and unfortunately all they ended up was debt. She had helped conned them and that left a lot of people angry. There was one person that vandalized her Benz by writing the word “DIE” all over it and so, of course, someone murdered her. They even robbed her of dignity in death.

Gwendoline was killed with rat poison that caused her to bleed from all of her orifices. It was a horrible way to die and it gave Kalani a rather large window to work with. The Medical Examiner believed that Gwendoline could have been poisoned anywhere between forty-eight years and so the team chose to not focus on the husband. Josh Baker was on a golfing trip and he’s been gone for two days. But the team still felt they had people that the company ripped off. They tracked down the women that vandalized the victim’s car and they found out Makani Pule couldn’t have done it. She was detoxing it after having lost her life savings and so she was ruled out.

The company still ripped off hundreds more and that meant there were still people to check, but the team felt searching the victim’s home would give them a better picture of her timeline. Gwendoline shared a large mansion with her husband and there had been a bunch of healthy food in her refrigerator. She had all the makings of a smoothie and Jerry went on to find a Plum and Beauty Collage smoothie mix. The mix calls for kale and sadly kale bares resemblance to foxglove. It was the foxglove and the taste of it could easily be disguised in a smoothie that would automatically taste sweet.

Jerry checked the smoothie mix and the bag had been tampered with. Someone had slit it open and then stitched back together once the deadly foxglove had been added. Therefore, Gwendoline’s husband was back as a suspect seeing as spouses do tend to use poison. Josh wasn’t rich as his wife and they had a prenup that said he would get nothing if they divorced. Something of which Gwendoline was considering. She had divorce papers on her laptop and so he husband was asked about those. He said that his wife had a temper and would act before thinking. And despite that, he still claimed to have loved her.

Josh said he would never have killed her over something like money and that he had been trying to work on their marriage because lately, she had been acting strangely. She had been more short-tempered than usual and she wouldn’t tell him why. The team wasn’t sure if they believed Josh when he said he didn’t kill his wife, but they were sure that was more going on with her. Gwendoline had accessed her work files and there was a discrepancy. Her files showed one thing and the files that her boss provided showed another. This women, Jocelyn, claimed that Gwendoline had sold starter kits to seventy-nine more people that didn’t exist.

There was only one reason why she would do something like that. The boss was using her company to launder money and the money was traced back to organized crime from Detroit. Who knows if Gwendoline ever found out about it, but the team thought it best to ask Jocelyn and so they went to her hotel to find her though they came across the body of her dead husband. It seems he and his wife were trying to flee when someone stopped them. Probably the crime bosses from Detroit. The husband tried to put up a fight and was killed for it while his wife, as well as their two children, were taken. And so the team tried to piece together what happened by going over everyone’s reasoning.

They reasoned that the crime lords learned that the police were sniffing around and that came to get their money, but saw Jocelyn trying to flee and that’s why she was taken. She knew where the money was and she had started the whole mess because her laptop she was the one that poisoned Gwendoline. Gwendoline perhaps started asking one too many questions and that she why she had been murdered. Only her boss didn’t know that she had been taken medication and that the medication in combination with the foxglove would cause her to bleed out the way she did. It would just have looked like she had a heart attack if everything had gone as planned.

But either way, Jocelyn messed up. She created a problem and her bosses moved in to clean house, but luckily the team found her before she handed over the money and so they were able to offer their assistance with her getting her kids back. They were being ransomed and odds they would have still been murdered despite promises that were made. And so it was good thing Five-0 was there when they were so desperately needed.

Adam dealt with a personal matter during the latest case and so he missed on teasing Tani for her love of mermaids, but with Five-0, there always another case around the corner

Trivia

 * As of this episode, all three Lawrence brothers have now appeared on this show. That includes Joey Lawrence, Matthew Lawrence, and Andrew Lawrence.

Cast

 * Gwendoline Baker
 * Chelsea Gilson
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * Hal
 * Bob Hiltermann
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Josh Baker
 * Matthew Lawrence
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Jocelyn Greene
 * Ginifer King
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * Trent Greene
 * Todd James Jackson
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Makani
 * Kristina Emerson
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * Bill
 * Mark Dillen Stitham
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Wade
 * Robert L. Barney Jr.
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Hunter
 * Kelsen Snyder
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Chloe
 * Kaliana Snyder
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * Dom
 * Joseph Anthony
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Gus
 * Brett Hicks
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Kelly
 * Jason Harmer
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Granddaughter
 * Evangeline Mollison
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * News Anchor
 * Ashley Nagaoka
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * Gus
 * Brett Hicks
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Kelly
 * Jason Harmer
 * A man who appears in this episode.
 * Granddaughter
 * Evangeline Mollison
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * News Anchor
 * Ashley Nagaoka
 * A woman who appears in this episode.
 * News Anchor
 * Ashley Nagaoka
 * A woman who appears in this episode.