Return to Paradise episode 2 sees DI Mackenzie Clarke (Anna Samson) and Detective S.C Colin Cartwright (Lloyd Griffith) investigate the murder of a famous influencer during a fun run.
The episode opens with two fun runners, who are influencers. They're talking to the camera and they're photobombed by Colin and Glenn. They’re at the start line for the annual Dolphin Cove 10k run. The race starts.
Mackenzie is about to have breakfast but she has no milk. She listens to a voice message from a man called Curtis who says he needs her help or more people are going to die. She phones back but there's no reply. Mackenzie goes out to get milk but isn't allowed to cross the path of the fun run by angry Trevor. One of the runners, Daisy, says hi to her and persuades Trevor to let her pass. Mackenzie blasts Trevor. We see Colin and Glenn on the run taking some water at a water station.
Colin looks sweaty while Glenn is ice cool! Jade, one of the two runners we saw at the start, waves to the cameraman as she takes a drink. At the finish line, Colin's gutted because he's missed his PB by 30 seconds. They're closely followed by our two influencers, Jade and Curtis. Just after they cross the line together, Curtis collapses! He's dead!
Mackenzie goes to the scene, where she finds Philomena, Colin, and her ex Glenn. Curtis is the person who phoned Mackenzie asking for help and she plays the voice message to the other cops. In his wallet, Mackenzie finds what looks like a phone number. She says it could be poison, while Glenn thinks it's more likely a heart attack… we're going with poison!
Mackenzie and Colin have an awkward little chat about who's senior. They go to speak to Jade, Curtis's partner. She says she promotes wellness and fitness to her online followers. Mackenzie plays the voice message, but Jade says she has no idea what that could be about. She recalls he did have a drink during the race and Mackenzie heads to the drinks station. It seems it would be easy for anyone to get access to the water.
Mackenzie says they will need to pick up all of the discarded drinking cups. Colin looks thrilled! Glenn starts testing all the cups for poison. They get a hit! How did the killer get the right cup into Curtis's hand? Colin reckons it's "impossible" but Mackenzie disagrees. They go to talk to drinks man Keith, who admits he was a friend of Curtis's once. He's a bit funny about Curtis. Mackenzie notices a cut on his hand, which he explains away.
At the station, they look through the footage of the race, and helpfully the moment Curtis arrives at the drink station is on camera and he drinks his poison (or does he?!). It's revealed Jade had had cancer twice. It's revealed she now has a wellness empire worth 40 million Australian dollars. Colin says Jade's firm is being sold for that price. Jade and Curtis owned the business, so she has an obvious motive as she now gets the lot.
They go to visit Jade, who lives in a mansion. Jade says she's looking forward to not being an influencer anymore and throwing her phone in the sea. Cameraman/Manager Nick seems a little too comforting and Mackenzie seems to pick this up. Is something going on there?
Colin asks if Mackenzie would look like a drink for team bonding reasons and she looks horrified! Poor Colin he keeps trying. Colin goes for his drink and is served by Daisy who teases him that Mackenzie is a better detective than him. She points out that he still hasn't found who nicked her pink bike. Mackenzie shows up just as Colin starts a rant about her! She walks off.
Mackenzie goes to see Glenn who says they've found a partial print on the cup but not enough to help. They then start discussing Mackenzie leaving town. And there’s a very awkward silence… eventually, they return to the case. He thinks it’s a random murder, she doesn't and they have a bet on it like they used to do when they were dating. There's a bit of chemistry between the pair and then Glenn's girlfriend turns up!
And it’s Daisy! Glenn agrees his dog Frankie can stay the night with Mackenzie.
Mackenzie watches a video of Jade claiming she beat cancer without using conventional medicine. One of the accounts keeps popping up on Jade's feed and Mackenzie speculates this person might be obsessed with Jade.
The next morning at the surf bar, Colin tries to build some bridges by offering Mackenzie a drink and then mocks her for liking a children's drink when she goes for chocolate milk. When they're alone, Daisy says Glenn's an idiot and should have told Mackenzie about them.
Moments later Colin says sorry for bad-mouthing Mackenzie. Felix phones and he says he's found evidence of an argument between Curtis and manager Nick. Nick's speaking Mandarin on the phone and of course, Mackenzie knows the language although she’s a "bit rusty". Mackenzie says Curtis messaged he was unhappy with the deal and asks Nick how much money he'd have lost if it had fallen through. Felix and unhappy Reggie are busy trying to track down the origin of the phone number found in Curtis's wallet. Reggie complains about how dull the work is.
Glenn says he found evidence of a bruise under Curtis's eye. Mackenzie remembers Keith's cut on his hand. Excited she runs off. Colin says to Glenn he's glad it's not just him she walks out on, before realizing how tactless saying that is to a man dumped at the altar!
Back at the station, Felix finally gets through on the phone number. It's a dry cleaners, that can't be right!. Mackenzie writes up on the murder board “Just in time”, the user name of the person obsessed with Jade. It's Justine, who the team says is Keith’s daughter! Mackenzie wants to talk to her, but Reggie says she died six months ago.
They go to see Keith who admits hitting Curtis. A very upset Keith says his daughter was so obsessed with Jade's alternative methods she didn’t go and see a doctor and by the time he found out she was sick it was too late to help. He believes Jade killed his daughter and was horrified by the business being sold thinking more people would get sucked in and die. We see a flashback of Keith whacking Curtis. Mackenzie makes sense of Curtis's words when he said more people were going to die. Keith, though, denies killing anyone.
At Jade's, Mackenzie asks why she lied. She said no one had a grudge against Curtis when clearly Keith did and punched him. Jade claims Curtis said it was an accident. Jade says she's flying out for the launch in Singapore tomorrow. Mackenzie shows Jade the phone number, but she suggests perhaps it could be a bank account. At the station much later, Glenn arrives with the toxicology report. Curtis was poisoned with nicotine in liquid form. There’s another flicker of chemistry between Glenn and Mackenzie as he gently mocks her forgetting to eat for over a day. Glenn finds Colin's health drink, one of Jade's creations, in the fridge and gives it to Mackenzie, who takes one swig and spits it out. “What’s in this?” she complains. And suddenly everything seems to fit into place.
Mackenzie gathers the suspects and plays Curtis's voice message. She points out that Curtis was killed by liquid nicotine and vaping enthusiast Nick had access to it. Mackenzie explains the killer wanted them to look at the cups and spend their time trying to figure out how the killer could make sure Curtis drank out of the right cup. But, she declares, the cup wasn't the murder weapon! After eventually getting his glove on, Colin shows the murder weapon, the water bottle Curtis drank from at the start.
Mackenzie says Jade handed it to Curtis but Jade points out she drank from it. "And who would suspect someone who drank the exact same thing as the victim?!" says Mackenzie. “Surely if the nicotine was in the bottle you’d have been poisoned as well. And you were!" But Jade was downing effectively an antidote to the poison contained in the new wellness drink she'd developed. Mackenzie notes they saw her constantly drinking this drink and Colin says the new drink was loaded with activated charcoal which absorbs toxins including nicotine. And she planted the decoy cup before the race while she was looking for a place for Nick to film from.
Mackenzie says Jade killed Curtis because he was about to reveal that chemotherapy and surgery cured her cancer, not supplements. When news of the deal leaked, Keith contacted Curtis desperate for no more people to die. And Curtis then started doing his own research including the mysterious phone number. It turns out it wasn't a phone number but a patient ID. Jade's patient ID. Jade says how could she hide the fact she was in the hospital from her followers. Mackenzie says simply it was during her "digital detox" when she had a break from online. Jade starts defending her actions and we see Jade dropping nicotine into Curtis's drink. Jade is arrested for murder.
Back at the station, Mackenzie praises Felix and Reggie for their solid police work. Philomena takes Mackenzie for a chat and tells her she's a great detective but needs to make sure she's not a "pain" to everyone. She says she has a lot of making up to do for walking out on her son and her police job. Mackenzie buys Colin a smoothie. And she points out that the store holder has a pink bike with a missing front wheel just like the one Daisy had stolen! Poor Colin he's just getting outsmarted all the time! Mackenzie later tells Glenn he's better off with Daisy and that they work better as just friends. Not sure Glenn’s convinced…
