A Case of Murder is from the Hallmark mystery "Garage Sale" series starring lovely Lori Laughlin as Jenn, the co-owner of an antique store and amateur sleuth.
After buying an old reel-to-reel recorder at a garage sale, Jenn discovers a tape on which a man is pleading for his life.
Actually this was a tad confusing. The pleading man is a psychiatrist who has just retired. Jenn picks up the recorder at a garage sale where the psychiatrist's wife - apparently at this point he's not dead - has taken off for a few days so she's selling his stuff. When Jenn tries to track down the source of the recording, she finds the doctor's body.
When she goes back to talk to the wife about her antiques (allegedly) she mentions the man's death and the wife gets all huffy and says it hasn't been published that he's dead and basically throws her out of the house. Yeah, it's a little out there.
Slow, with the subplot of Jenn's partner (Sarah Strange) trying to figure out what to do with her life. An ex-beau of hers returns to town as she's doing her imaging board. This woman is 42 - they dress and make her up like she's fifty so that the old high school beau looked about ten years younger. Not sure if that was the case, but Hallmark does seem to dress the women in these mystery series very middle-of-the-road and somewhat unstylishly.
These films were all made to appeal to a certain demographic, a demographic where people all have long hair and don't seem to know how to dress. I think they need to spiff things up because a lot of people in urban areas are loving Hallmark now - it's light, it's happy, it has familiar faces, no graphic sex, and no bad language. It's a nice alternative to news channels and dark shows.
