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Synopsis

Hugh Creighton, a famed and brilliant defense attorney, who has never
lost a murder case, has attained the very pinnacle of success
profes-sionally. His personal life, however, begins to fall apart
when he discovers that his longtime mistress, fading rock star Marcy
Edwards, has resumed her relationship with her former lover, musician
Neddy Hammond, and is meeting him regularly at Creighton's
Malibu beach house. When Creighton confronts her, Marcy in turn
threatens to reveal some of Creighton's shadier legal dealings
unless she is allowed to continue enjoying the material benefits
derived from their relationship. A stalemate has developed until
Creighton comes up with a seemingly foolproof murder plot, which
will not only dispose of Marcy, but place the blame squarely on
Neddy's shoulders. Steal-ing a gardener's truck, Creighton goes
to his Malibu retreat and puts his scheme in deadly motion --
placing a sleep-inducing drug into a bottle of champagne and then
strangling Marcy. When Neddy awakens, he does just what Creighton
would hope an apparently guilty man would do -- he promptly flees
in terror. After the murder, Creighton returns to the street where
he had "borrowed" the truck, but he finds the gardener and several
residents hanging around, so he drops off the truck on a nearby
street, as it happens, lined with a rare type of berry-growing tree.

Predictably astute, Lt. Columbo begins his systematic unraveling of
the case, despite the "grieving" creighton's claims to the contrary -
- that Neddy was not the culprit. Meanwhile, Trish Fairbanks, an
associate at Creighton's law firm, comes to realize who the real
murderer is, especially since she had lent him her car the afternoon
of the murder. Seizing the opportunity, she thus offers her boss a
simple choice: Either he makes her a partner, or she goes to the
police. Once again, creighton finds himself cornered, but this time
he has no option but to comply. During his investigation, Columbo
orders a close examination of two champagne bottles found in Malibu,
as well as a fingerprint search of the gardener's truck. Along the
way, his hunt for the elusive Neddy Hammond leads him to a nightclub
meeting with Little Richard and then to the terrified, but plainly
innocent, Neddy Hammond himself. Lt. Columbo's instinct repeatedly
points him toward Creighton, particularly after discovering that one
of the champagne bottles in Malibu was of a level of quality
consis-tent with Creighton's reputation as a wine connoisseur.
Suddenly, though, the Lieutenant's case is completely undone by
Creighton's surprise evidence in the form of a high-tech speeding
ticket from Pasadena, complete with a photograph of Creighton in his
car on the freeway at the time of the murder. Nevertheless, the
determined Columbo is not fooled for long, and in his final showdown
with Creighton and Trish, he proves that it had actually been
Trish in disguise, who had been photographed getting the ticket, but
that glove prints on Marcy's neck matched those found in the
gardener's truck. What's more, berry stains had been found in the
windshield wipers of Trish's car, stains which only could have
originated on one particular street in Los Angeles, the very same
street where Creighton had left Trish's car while commiting the
murder. And the nation's greatest murder defense lawyer is about to
lose his first case -- his own!