Quite nice, I liked it. Colombo was his usual nice self :) and the ending was nice, although a bit open to interpretation…
So, the story is that Freddie is about to divorce his redheaded wife Nancy. Watching the tv he sees that he won the lottery, 30 millions (apparently only 24 after taxes… not too bad after all, if he was here he’d get much less…) and he doesn’t want to split it with her, so he asks for his uncle’s help.
Leon suggests taking the ticket and getting the money himself, and then giving it all back to him. Freddie insists on a 10% for him as a thank you, which would already be a lot of money totally legal and without doing anything, but he’s a greedy man indeed.
Nancy is his lover, and he wants all the money to himself.
He tells nothing about the ticket being Freddie’s to anyone, obviously, his own wife is happy of the news and blissfully ignorant of all his schemes.
Leon throws a big costume party on Halloween, then he drives fully dresses as George IV to Freddie’s house where he hits him on the head and then drowns him in the bathtub, obviously going for the ‘accident’ scenario.
Colombo notices many things, though. Freddie had a fake watch on his wrist, for example. Uncle Leon once gifted him a 3000$ watch, and Freddie probably sold it and got himself a 100$ watch -Leon touched it and watched it and never noticed… 2900$ well spent indeed… :-/
Colombo says that the fake watch (to Leon it’s cheap at 100$! It’s only cheap if you swim in money, ask Colombo if he’s ever had a 100$ watch!!!) is not waterproof and Freddie knewit so it’s weird that he kept it in the bathtub.
Freddie had called Leon many times this last month, and if he was asking for money because he couldn’t pay rent, how come he had ordered an expensive car and had actually bought a box of champagne bottles? When Colombo sees the winning numbers on Freddie’s camera (he was a photographer) he understands who really won the money.
How Colombo busts the murderer: the George IV costume that Leon admits to wearing for the whole night of the party goes along with a pendant, all shiny, and the monkey (a chimp, not sure about the spelling) temporarily living in Freddie’s apartment loved to touch shiny, golden things, and that night she touched the pendant, so her fingerprints prove that Leon wore that costume in Freddie’s home, that night.
Colombo suspects Nancy too, of course, because that night someone pretended to be Freddie and called Leon’s home (she did).
When she arrives, called by the police, Colombo tells her that the money’s hers now, because it was Freddie’s and they never signedthe divorce papers. She’s all happy so petty Leon tells Colombo of her role as his accomplice. She doesn’t deny it, too busy being mad at him, a redheaded fury…
Well, here I guesss Colombo lied like he often does when it suits him, because there’s no way, that I can see, the money would go to Nancy. The lottery was officially won by Leon, he presented the ticket, so the money should now go to his wife.
Leon - Rip Torn
Nancy - Jamie Rose … with that hair, that unfogettable head of red curls
Freddie - Gary Kroeger
Leon’s wife - Betsy Palmer
And Joey the chimp (I wrote it correctly, good :D )
ITA misteriose impronte digitali
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