Nice, I liked it enough. The time is more or less equally divided between Columbo and Greenleaf, this episode’s murderer, and it’s ok because it’s intriguing enough to keep your attention.
Greenleaf is played by Jack Cassidy, the one who once played a writer and the other time he was magician Santini, all three times he was the murderer. Quite good too. This time he own a publishing company.
Riley Greenleaf has writer Mallory on a contract that will expire in three weeks, and it’s already arranged that Mallory will leave him as soon as he can to join another publisher, who will let him write whatever he wants without Greenleaf’s restrictions. Already he is writing another book, telling RG nothing about it, only talking with his agent about the plot.
RG plans to kill him in what he thinks is a foolproof way, not knowing he’ll have to face Colombo. RG pays a Vietnam veteran to do the work, promising him that he’ll publish his book and make him rich. This Eddie Kane loves everything that explodes, and has a written a big book on how to make the stuff yourself. So: RG gives him precise instructions: at 22:30 he has to be at Mallory’s place, open the door with the key RG gave him, shoot Mallory once in the chest with the gun RG gave him without disturbing all the fingerprints already on it, leave the key and the gun and go away. This is part 1 of his big plan.
That night, RG makes a big drunken scene, threatening Mallory in front of other people, then drinking at a bar until he has to be escorted out, and even bumping his car into another. While he sets his alibi this way, Kane went to Mallory’s place to find the door open. It was a really hot night, so Mallory left both the window and the door open while he worked. Kane entered without noise, got near him and shot him once, left the key and went out, leaving the gun where it would be found.
Colombo follows all the clues. The gun had RG’s fingerprints on it, and the key found at the scene was the one he had, and RG says he doesn’t remember anything of the night before because he got terribly drunk. He plays it like he’s getting scared of having done it when his insurance calls him because of that accident, so he plays it like he’s oh so relieved to learn he didn’t do it…
Not everything went according to his plan, though, because that key did not open that door, Mallory had the lock changed. It might still work as a way to blame it on RG, anyway, and so Colombo tells him that the real key is important, that if he finds who has the key that opens that door he’ll have the murderer.
RG has a copy of that key made, then he goes to Kane’s house for the second part of his plan. He kills Kane with a drugged bottle of champagne that he only pretends to drink, then he writes an outline of Mallory’s new book with Kane’s typewriter, and also add the new key to Kane’s keys.
His plan is simple: he wants them to believe that Kane wrote the original idea for that book, and not knowing what to write Mallory decided to use that idea, showed to him by RG, and Kane got revenge on them both for it. He thinks he covered every angle, and the key was the last touch, but it wasn’t.
It was a trap, Colombo of course tricked him by telling him : find the key=found the murderer. Just a trap, because without telling him Colombo had a blacksmith change the lock again, so the key they found amongst Kane’s keys actually opens a lock that was not there when the murder happened.
Also, in the outline he wrote he included the idea for the ending, something he could not know. Supposedly Kane wrote that weeks ago, and RG kept reading the transcripts as Mallory wrote them (well, he speaks into a recorder then someone types it all down) because he paid a guy to give him a copy, so he knew the whole idea, but Kane could not possibly know about the agreed ending because that was Mallory’s agent idea, he wanted the main character to die, but she said that no studio will pay a big actor to have him die, so she suggested a different ending.
Greenleaf is busted. Good job, Colombo.
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