 Psychiatrist Ray Fleming is having a passionate affair with actress Joan Hudson, and uses her to help him murder his wife Carol, and to make it appear the work of a vandal. Fleming and Hudson pull off the murder and deception, but when Fleming returns from a vacation (which served as the prerequisite for the deception), he encounters a rumpled LAPD Lieutenant, Columbo, whose seeming bouts of attention-deficit disorder and meandering questioning mask a devilishly skilled investigator who soon recognizes the murder of Carol Fleming to be the work of her husband, but who must work diligently to find the proof needed.