'Ridley' Recap: Episode 5

Ridley airs Sundays at 7:00 pm on WTTW and is available to stream. Recap the previous and following episodes. Keep up with your favorite dramas and mysteries by signing up for our newsletter, Dramalogue. 

There’s a new singer at Marling’s jazz club, and she immediately entrances Ridley. Eve Marbury grew up in the area but now lives in Chicago. She’s back for the first time she moved away—there’s not much here for her, given that her mother was an alcoholic and her brother Luke left home and disappeared at age 15. Eve herself made it out by winning money for college in a competition sponsored by the local magnate Julian Varnham, whose funeral is the reason she has returned: Varnham’s daughter Liza asked her to sing at it. Although she never met Varnham, she owes him her career.

In the meantime, she’s singing at Marling’s, having been invited at the last minute by one of the regular musicians. After her set, she has a drink with Ridley, who offers to help her find her brother, who sent her regular letters until just last year. Eve says she’ll think about it.

The next day, Eve gets Ridley’s address and drives up to his house to ask him to go through with an investigation. She gives him two photos of Luke when he was a teenager, and explains that she reported him missing all those years ago but the police didn’t take it too seriously, since he had often disappeared for a few days. Ridley agrees to look for Luke, but warns Eve that her brother might not want to see her even if he is located.

Ridley visits Farman at home to ask her for access to Luke’s missing person file. Farman wasn’t picking up the phone, as she and Geri are interviewing prospective sperm donors. Once she’s done with that onerous task, she orders the files for Ridley—but a missing persons report isn’t located. Luke’s record of petty theft as a teen does show up, but perhaps the other report simply hasn’t been digitized. Farman sends Darren to search through the old paper files.

Ridley visits a record store visible in the background of one of the photos of Luke with a gaggle of other teens. The proprietor, Ray, remembers Luke—nice kid, even if he had a propensity for stealing. He has less fond memories of the only other person he recognizes in the photo, Julie Conway. He’s doing a tribute to Julian Varnham on the local community radio station that night, and a lot of people should be listening, so Ridley asks him to put out an appeal for information on Luke.

Annie advises Ridley to tread carefully with the whole investigation—she has a bad feeling about it.

Nevertheless, Ridley invites Eve over for dinner at his house to update her on his search. She explains that she started thinking about looking for Luke after her divorce, since she was lonely and he was the only family she had left. Ridley makes the small gesture of placing his hand on hers. But then she says that she should leave and return to her hotel, to Ridley’s disappointment.

Ridley’s search for Luke turns much more serious overnight when a woman is found dead in a park—and identified as Julie Conway, the girl in the old photo with Luke. She fell back on her bag, shattering a vodka bottle inside that then cut an artery. It could be an accident, but the postmortem shows that she was deliberately pushed. People nearby heard raised voices around midnight and saw someone hurry away afterwards.

Ridley had gotten into contact with Julie and was meant to meet with her that very day.

Julie’s sister Donna Wellingfield runs a café in town. She says that Julie was an alcoholic, and had called her yesterday, drunk, to say that she had inherited a home called Ravenstoop from Julian Varnham. Donna was surprised: Julie had dated Varnham’s son Jed off and on for years while they were both addicts, but he eventually got clean and Julie made his life a nightmare.

Liza Varnham was irked by Julie’s surprise inclusion in her father’s will. Liza had moved in with her father after his second stroke, after which he became vulnerable. She believes Julie manipulated him, just like she did Liza’s brother Jed. Jed is estranged from the family and only showed up for the reading of the will. Liza says that Julie poisoned Jed against the family after he began using drugs and drinking.

But Jed’s relationship with Julie wasn’t good either. Julie’s phone shows a series of threatening, abusive texts that she sent to him. She also told him after the will reading that she was ill and had little time left but was going to take the Varnhams down with her.

Jed has been avoiding the police because he had a feeling something bad had happened to Julie, but they eventually track him down at his houseboat on the river. He explains that he wanted to help Julie after he got clean, but she was a difficult person to help. He eventually decided to end things, and she told him she was pregnant—a lie, he eventually found out. He still remained in touch, but then cut off Julie completely when Liza told him that she had found Julie with their father. Julie denied it, and began sending him the abusive texts and then letters.

Liza didn’t tell the police anything about finding her father with Julie. She also shows up on camera footage visiting Julie at home and then leaving alone the day Julie died.

Ridley continues looking for Luke, believing that Eve’s resumption of her search for him and the death of Julie are related. He visits Duncan Darwin, the last person reported to have seen Luke all those years ago. Darwin explains that he was older than Luke and often got into trouble; Luke always wanted to join him in it. Luke came to him after arguing with his mother and said he was leaving home, so Duncan took him to a train station to go to a nearby scrapyard that was known for taking in kids, no questions asked.

Ridley decides to go visit the scrapyard after the record store owner gets a response to his radio appeal for information on Luke from an anonymous caller who says they saw Luke at a pub in the area a couple of months ago. But when Ridley arrives at the pub with Eve, whom he reluctantly let join him in the search, they find it boarded up.

The scrapyard also doesn’t offer any leads. Eve is familiar with it, having picked up Luke there several times. The owner says that he would let kids in trouble eat and stay there overnight, including Luke, but that Luke never showed up there after he disappeared, even if he said that was his destination.

Disappointed, Eve goes to Ridley’s house with him. She tells him that she regrets not having children—her husband didn’t want to, but then eventually told her that he had a lover who was six months pregnant and divorced Eve. Ridley sympathizes with Eve’s feeling of loneliness, and opens up about the loss of his wife and daughter in a fire set to hurt him. She suggests therapy, but he dismisses it. He’s lost his whole family; what could therapy do?