SPOILER ALERT: This recap contains key plot points from the fourth episode of “Lady in the Lake.” Read the recaps for Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 4.

We begin with a flashback to young Maddie (Natalie Portman), who is having an affair with her boyfriend Allan’s creepy dad, Hal (Mark Feuerstein). Hal introduces her to an employee who catches them as a high school reporter doing research for a story. Is that what they’re calling it these days?

Creepy Dad assures Maddie that the employee won’t say anything. They’re going to be together for real. No more sneaking around. He’s going to make her a bohemian writer princess. She informs him that “we may have company.” We know she’s talking about the baby she’s carrying.

In 1966, Maddie meets her disgruntled soon-to-be ex Milton (Brett Gelman) at the coffee shop downstairs from her apartment. He tells her that their son, Seth (Noah Jupe) — who isn’t actually Milton’s biological child — doesn’t feel safe at her new place, and presents divorce papers. She asks for alimony and he gets salty about it. She deduces that he’s trying to end this because he’s met someone else. OK, he has. She’ll be 25 soon! (Ugh.) Milton agrees to help Maddie financially if she’ll stop pressuring Seth into staying with her.

Ghost Cleo (Moses Ingram) says in a voiceover that she, Tessie and Maddie have something in common: their downfalls will come about because they searched for something more. Tessie wanted a seahorse. Maddie wants a new life. Cleo wanted to support her family. As she talks, workmen in a boat make an unpleasant discovery in a park fountain.

In the Baltimore Star newsroom, Maddie has become a real staff member, though one that the men feel comfortable slapping in the butt as she walks by. A female colleague glares at her for not saying anything. Bob (Pruitt Taylor Vince) tells Maddie he heard she’s been sniffing around about a complaint concerning lights in Druid Hill Park for her column. When the issue was looked into, a Black woman’s body was found in the fountain. Her name was Cleo Johnson.

Maddie instantly recognizes the name of the woman who went missing the night that the guy imprisoned for killing Tessie, Stephan (Dylan Arnold), was captured. She wants to investigate, but Bob tells her “to let the Afro deal with this.” As a Black woman and a reporter, I want to go slap Bob on behalf of myself and the ancestors.

Maddie goes to the bathroom and finds Edna (Lisa Hodsoll), the unimpressed newsroom lady colleague. Maddie asks her for advice, but Edna tells her to read the room — she’s escaped to a stall to get the only peace she’ll find in that den of immoral reporters. Maddie leaves without any pearls of wisdom, but she does call Stephan, assuming that he’s killed Cleo. He reminds Maddie he was with her that same night, and that a letter she got about Cleo’s murder wasn’t from him, like she thought.

“Every time someone winds up dead in that lake, it does seem to lead to you,” he tells her. When a psychotic killer has that close of a read on you, it’s not good. For you.

Maddie goes to the medical examiner to see Cleo’s body. He tells her that the body was too decomposed to tell how she died. She then heads to the Baltimore Afro-American newsroom, and asks a reporter about Cleo. The reporter flatly tells Maddie that Cleo’s disappearance didn’t rate a story before it was connected to the murder of a white girl. She’s not about to hand over all her research to Maddie, and says that she, as a Black woman, has to keep abreast of what’s happening in the white world. If Maddie wants to know what’s happening in the Black world, she can do the work, the reporter says, dropping several copies of the paper on the desk in front of her.

Here is where Maddie’s privilege and arrogance gets her in trouble. She lives in the Bottoms, she insists. “I prefer to think of it as our world.” Oh, girl.

Maddie thinks living in a Black neighborhood and sleeping with a Black man gives her some sort of street cred and that this Black professional woman is going to give her the secret handshake and show her the world. Instead, she shows her the door. It’s super satisfying. (Not for Maddie. But for me, for sure.)

Because she can’t help herself, Maddie goes to Cleo’s funeral. I hated going to those as a news reporter. Unless you were invited by the family, it felt intrusive. It gives credence to the perception of reporters as vultures. Maddie’s doing her vulture observations, noticing Cleo’s mom and kids crying, a weeping Slappy (Byron Bowers), a guilty Reggie (Josiah Cross) and Shell (Wood Harris), who, unbeknownst to Maddie, ordered the hit.

The hypocrisy is too much for Slappy, who Cleo’s mom blames for the death and who isn’t allowed to sit up front with the family. He calls everyone out, including Ferdie(Y’lan Noel), who he accuses of hitting on Cleo all the time. This is news to Maddie, Ferdie’s new kinda girlfriend or whatever.

Ever the plucky reporter, she chases Slappy to his car and tells him she doesn’t believe either he or Stephan killed Cleo. Slappy tells her he thinks the murder has something to do with Shell and the lottery numbers and that Cleo knew which ones were coming in, but she never bet herself because gambling led to her own father leaving. Maybe Lucille (Lynda Suarez), the beautician who hit the numbers, would know more.

Maddie heads over to Lucille’s soon-to-open salon, which, she notes, must have cost a pretty penny. Wonder where she got the money? Lucille tells Maddie she knows she must be writing about Cleo but demurs on how they know each other. Back in the Star newsroom, Maddie shares her suspicions about the connection to the lottery with Bob. Bob says some very racist and dismissive things, and tells her to back off.

Because she doesn’t know how to stop, Maddie, with her friend Judith (Mikey Madison) in tow, marches to the club and demands to see Shell, telling the man at the door that she’s going to run Slappy’s accusations against Shell if he doesn’t let her in. That man at the door is Reggie, and she has, as usual, no clue who she’s messing with.

Maddie presses Shell on his connection to Cleo and the numbers game. Girl, that’s not smart. Shell tells her that he’s investing in Black Baltimore and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Judith, who is smarter, tries to get Maddie to shut up and leave but she’s not listening. When Maddie starts quizzing Reggie about his relationship with Dora (Jennifer Mogbock), who has also left town, Shell tells Maddie he respects the Jewish community and wonders if she’s pushing the Jewish people that run the department store where Cleo worked for information, too.

She hadn’t thought of that, so Maddie heads to the store. Yes, so sad about Cleo, the manager says. And so pretty! Maddie should know, because she literally bought the dress off her back! Those reporter skills failed you, girl.

She runs home and finds the dress that, as Ghost Cleo notes, has been hanging in her closet as she investigates the murder of the woman who wore it. We also see flashbacks of Allan’s creepy dad trying to convince her not to have their baby, which she does anyway. She was a mere child bride and mother. Her delusions are making more sense.

As Maddie’s piecing together newspaper clippings, Ferdie comes into her window, but the would-be sexy time turns hostile as she accuses him of hiding things from her about the case, including liking Cleo. In turn, Ferdie accuses Maddie of making everything about herself. They are both right. No sexy time will be ensuing.

Still in reporter mode, Maddie goes to see Stephan’s mother (Masha Mashkova), who we know is crazy but Maddie does not. A pleasant conversation about their shared Polish heritage turns to Maddie’s insistence that the mother give Maddie more info that would exonerate Stephan.

When Maddie’s rebuffed, she can’t help but drop the info that Stephan came to see her the night he was captured, because she’s petty that way. She implies he told her something incriminating, and his mother responds by stabbing Maddie in the gut.

A nasty fight ensues, and Maddie locks herself in the bathroom until it’s silent outside. When she drags herself out, she finds Stephen’s mother dead in the kitchen, having slit her own throat. Maddie calls the police and collapses. Bet this wasn’t a twist she was expecting!