The episode begins when the CBI team finds horse rider Bill Sutton who has just been killed. As the team investigates, they find a ring next to Sutton with a note that says “forgive me.” The team tracks down the first clue and discovers that it leads to Bill’s most recent girlfriend, Dalinda, who had left him due to his short temper. Dalinda mentioned that Bills’ temper got him in trouble when he struck a man after a car accident that left him out of horse racing for a few years.
Bill had just returned to the racing world and was graciously accepted as a rider from Cobb Holwell’s stable. Holwell’s stable had been racing horses for many years and was recently in heavy competition with Lockhart’s stable. Being a relentless competitor, Frank Lockhart said that any rider who rode for Holwell would never do so. Frank even went so far that Ellis Barnes threatened Bill Sutton to try to scare him from running.
As Patrick Jane (Simon Baker) continued to investigate all the suspects, he soon discovered that not everything was what it seemed. Jane meets a new rider, Sam Starks (Olesya Rulin), who was offered the position of rider for the big race after Sutton’s death. As Jane befriends Starks, she learns more about the horses in Holwell’s stable. It turns out that the horse that is supposed to run in the next race had a twin horse that Holwell said was the faster of the two, but not yet ready to run in a race. Following a hunch, Jane enlists the help of Agent Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti), who is a skilled horseman, and asks her to ride the wild horse.
As always, Jane’s hunch was correct and when it was time for the big race, Jane tells Howell, just before the start of the race, that she switched both horses and bet $ 10,000 on that horse to win. Confused and upset, Howell gets mad at Jane because that was his strategy from the beginning and he had already switched both horses. Holwell’s strategy was to get the first horse to have a bad chance and change the twin horses without anyone knowing and make a lot of money. It was then that Jane discovered that Holwell was responsible for Sutton’s murder because Sutton was unwilling to follow this plan.
The beauty of the whole plan is that Jane never changed the horses and ended up winning her bet as well as catching another criminal. Another great episode of The Mentalist is in the books and definitely one to see if you haven’t already.