***SPOILERS*** Investigation newspaper tycoon Arthur Kennicut, Ray Milland, wife's Lenore, Pat Crowley, extramarital activities private investigator Brimmer, Robert Culp,gives her a clean bill of health in not fooling around behind her husbands back. The fact is that Lenore had indeed been having an affair with her hunky and handsome golf instructor Ken Archer, Brett Halsey, but Brimmer had that lifted and expunged from the report.
Trying to get an inside line to Arthur's wheelings and dealings, mostly in the appointment of federal judges, Brimmer shrewdly saves his wife Lenore from being exposed as an adulteress. That would have her divorced by Arthur and put an end to her life of luxury and around the clock fun games and partying. It's later that Lenore has a change of heart and confronts Brimmer at his beach-front home telling him she's going to expose him to her husband, as a sleazy blackmailing creep. The sparks really start to fly with Lenore getting smacked across the face by Brimmer and cracking her skull as she fell backwards on the coffee table killing herself.
Brimmer trying to make the best of a bad situation put's Lenore's body in the trunk of his car and after driving to a deserted construction site dumps it there making it look like she was brutally murdered in a random assault and robbery. Lt. Columbo. Peter Falk, is put on the case and the first thing that he notices when he goes to see Authur at his mansion is a photo of his late wife, Lenore, wearing glasses! Lenore being very vain about her looks never let anybody on to that fact! Brimmer tying to cover his tracks get's involved in the Lenore Kennicut murder investigation since he handled Authur's investigation of her cheating on him just days before. The obvious reason for Brimmer taking such a personal interest in Lenore's murder is that he killed her. With him being right of top of the investigation Brimmer can lead it, and Lt. Columbo, away from himself as a suspect.
Lt. Columbo slowly starts to see the inconsistencies in the case with the way Lenore was killed by a violent slap across the face, that left a deep ring impression on her chin. It's also very obvious to Lt. Columbo that she was moved by her killer to another place to throw off the police. Lt. Columbo also finds out that Lenore in fact was having an affair with Archer which made Lt. Columbo very suspicious of why Brimmer hid that fact from her husband Arthur.
Brimmer sees that Lt. Columbo is making headway on who murdered Lenore and slyly offers the L.A detective a job at his agency, that pays triple what he makes as an LAPD detective, as an underhanded bribe to get Lt. Columbo off the case with him not falling for or taking the bate. Knowing that Brimmer, and his investigators, are watching every move that he makes Lt. Columbo later takes a chance to let out the fact about Lenore's contact-lenses. It turns out that Lonore may have lost one or both of them when she was actually murdered at her beach house, that Columbo didn't know at the time, not where she was found at a construction site.
Getting an exhumation order from the courts Lenore's body is unearthed and, with Brimmer listening in, Lt. Columbo tells the person in charge of the exhumation that one of the contacts is missing being that it's still at the murder site. It also turned out that the car that Brimmer used to drive Lenore's body away and dump her had been sent to a local garage. This after Lt. Columbo secretly disabled it, for servicing.
Concerned and scared Brimmer rushed to his beach-house and not finding the contact there broke into the garage and after a while he does find the missing contact lens. Brimmer is completely unaware that it was all a trap set for him to incriminate himself by Lt. Columbo! There was no contact lens! But Brimmer incriminated himself by falling into Lt. Columbo's trap by thinking that there was one, or maybe even two!
It looked like Brimmer was really and truly sorry for what he did in killing Lenore. After all it was really an accident and not premeditated murder, and may have wanted to be caught to clear his conscience. Brimmer also seemed to have lost his sense of self-protection by having his investigators constantly following and reporting back to him Lt. Columbo's whereabouts which they, these guys were pretty sharp, would realize that he was covering up and trying to impede the murder investigation making them accessories to his crime!
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