- Greg Frazer is the son of a successful investment manager who is disappointed Greg has led a wasted life and married the entertainer Sue Ellen. When Greg is found murdered with her standing over the body holding a knife, she is charged.
- Family patriarch Walter Frazer is a difficult and demanding father. A self-made man, he eagerly controls the lives of those around him. His stepdaughter, Amanda, and her husband, Peter Thorpe, who works for him, are under his thumb but he has little control over his son Greg, who drinks and gambles and has generally wasted his life so far. Greg also married against his father's wishes and his wife, Sue Ellen, has never even been invited to Walter's home. With all of this, everyone is puzzled when Walter invites everyone to his house. They are flabbergasted, however, when, in front of everyone, he offers Greg a full partnership in the family business and to give Sue Ellen $50,000 on one condition; they divorce and Sue Ellen leaves forever. Greg and Sue Ellen have a major argument as a result and, when Greg is found dead with Sue Ellen standing over the body holding the knife, she is charged with murder and Perry Mason agrees to defend her.—garykmcd
- Peter Thorpe (DeForest Kelley, Star Trek's Dr. McCoy) and his wife Amanda (Melora Conway) are arguing while driving to the mansion of Amanda's stepfather (Torin Thatcher) Walter Frazer. They're upset because they know Walter plans a reorganization of his investment company, for which Peter works. They stop when they see a patrolman (Emile Meyer), who says he's examining tracks made by whoever has been committing a string of burglaries in the neighborhood. Walter's son Greg (Bryan Grant) and Greg's wife Sue Ellen (Diana Millay) are also having words as they arrive at the mansion. She says Walter hates her, while Greg's hoping that whatever Walter plans to announced will leave Greg better off than he is at present, with a job parking cars. At the dinner, Walter offers Sue Ellen $25,000 (just half the cash he has on hand) to divorce Greg. Insulted, she leaves, and Walter gives Greg two hours to get her to take the offer. Walter then tells the Thorpes that he plans to make Greg a full partner in the company. Amanda is shocked, regarding her stepbrother as a spineless no-good drifter.
Sue Ellen visits Joe Medici (Gerald Mohr) at the Club Baroque, a nightclub he owns and where Sue Ellen works as a singer. Joe echoes Amanda's opinion of Greg, but Sue Ellen says it's Walter's fault for being overly controlling. Greg enters and demands that Sue Ellen return and apologize. He intends to stay on the path that leads to his father's fortune. Joe tells him to go to the bar, have a drink, and then leave. Greg calls Walter and tells him his marriage is over. Walter puts the $50,000 in his wall safe, along with reports he needs for his upcoming business trip to Texas. He then calls Perry, who has drawn up the partnership papers as Walter requested, despite thinking that Greg is an overage juvenile delinquent. Walter and Perry agree to meet at the club (not Club Baroque). After Walter leaves, Greg returns and tries out his father's chair. Someone is lurking outside.
Later, Sue Ellen wakes up and as starts to leave the club, she bumps into a stranger, who we later learn is named Lon Snyder (Alan Hale Jr., Gilligan's Island's Skipper). She returns to the mansion, finds Greg lying dead in the study, and like a typical Mason client picks up the bloody knife, to be encountered by Walter and Perry, who have just entered. Walter immediately accuses Sue Ellen of the murder, but Perry tells him to look around. Noticing that the wall safe is open, Walter cries "the plans!" and checks, only to find that the plans and the $50,000 are still there. Perry calls Lt. Tragg.
The next day, the papers are reporting that this looks like the work of the local burglar. There were tennis shoe tracks with a tear in the right shoe outside the mansion, just like tracks found at the other break-ins. A smashed clock suggested that the struggle leading to Greg's death occurred at 10:45. Perry passes Sue Ellen's description of Lon to Paul and asks him to find a needle in a haystack. Paul says he has a pretty good magnet. Walter arrives and shows Perry photos of Sue Ellen with Joe. He says they were taken at Joe's apartment at 5 AM. Sue Ellen tells Perry that Greg was a drunk and a gambler when she met him, but fell in love with him anyway. She had to use her life savings to pay back money Greg had embezzled from his employer to pay gambling debts. After that, the only job he could get was parking cars at Club Baroque.
Perry goes to the Thorpe house, and in the back discovers Tragg and his men examining Greg's car, which Sue Ellen had been driving. He has Sue Ellen in custody. As nearly as Peter and Amanda can figure, Sue Ellen arrived by cab to retrieve Greg's car, which Peter had driven home from the mansion. (Peter has a complicated story about family members using each other's cars at various times. Amanda finds it all pointless, so I'll respect her wishes and leave out most of it.) Unfortunately for Sue Ellen, the police were interviewing the Thorpes at the time and stopped her before she could take the car. Lt. Anderson (Wesley Lau) enters with tennis shoes found in the car. The right shoe has the tear observed in the tracks left at the burglaries and the murder. At his office, Perry tells Walter that the police think Sue Ellen was involved with Greg in the burglaries. He also mentions Greg's previous criminal behavior as an embezzler. Walter asks Perry to represent Sue Ellen, but Perry says he's already agreed to do so. Paul calls, saying he found Lon, who remembers seeing Sue Ellen at 10 PM.
In court, Amanda testifies that after she left the house she turned about because she wanted to talk to Greg (presumably about how great it would be for Peter to have a secure job with the company under Greg's management). However, when she got there she saw Greg's car, which she knew Sue Ellen was driving, so she left. This would have been around 10:30 PM, and Della reveals this on a large "Timetable" display that Perry assures the judge (Willis Bouchey) is just a visual aid, not evidence. Burger says he has no objection to Perry using such a device to show how strong the prosecution's case is, and the judge tells him to skip the editorial. Other items on the timetable are Sue Ellen's departure for Club Baroque around 9 PM, Greg following soon after, his call to his father around 10, his return to the mansion at 10:25, and Amanda's first departure from the mansion at 10:30. Joe testifies that his 5 AM meeting with Sue Ellen was to discuss Greg's apparent involvement in the burglaries. She'd found cufflinks among his things that matched a newspaper photo of ones reported stolen. Joe says that he introduced the second floor show a little after 11 and Sue Ellen left a bit after that, so Perry's timetable shows Sue Ellen leaving the club at 11:08 and arriving at the mansion, a twenty minute drive, at 11:28.
During a recess, Perry and visit the empty apartment next to Joe's, which Lon had rented to take the photos Walter had. Lon's a private detective. Perry finds that a hole has been bored from this apartment into Joe's. He sends Paul to Houston. Back in court, Lon testifies that he saw Sue Ellen around 10 PM, but on cross examination, he agrees that he saw her again later, when the second show had just started. Joe testifies that he had given Sue Ellen sleeping pills to make sure she rested, so she couldn't have wakened and left significantly earlier than 11:07, when Lon saw her. Perry points that means only Lon would have known it was safe to borrow Greg's car, since Sue Ellen wouldn't be awake to find it missing. Joe admits he took the car and was at the mansion at 10:38 as part of his involvement in Greg's burglaries. They were going to take the $50,000, but Greg told him about the partnership agreement, which would give then access to far greater sums, so they left the money where it was and Joe left. With Lou back on the stand, Perry says that Paul has found out about the purchase of oil lands that were mentioned in Walter's reports. Lou knew about the scheme to steal from Walter's safe because that hole be bored was to bug Joe's apartment. Lou went there, but didn't even look for the $50,000 because he knew Joe had already left and assumed he took the cash. Instead, he photographed the reports, for which he had buyers willing to pay him $10,000. Unfortunately, Greg, in an uncharacteristic moment of family solidarity, jumped Lou, who killed him.
Later, Perry explains that what put him on to the real motive had been Walter's words at the murder scene. Walter, whose relationship with Sue Ellen has warmed considerably, thinks he's referring to accusing her of murder and doesn't want to be reminded of it. However, Perry says he means when Walter cried "the reports!". They, not the $50,000, turned out to be the key. Della mentions Greg's action to suggest he was trying to make up for his past, but Sue Ellen says some things don't need any more explaining. She turns to Walter as she says this, and he thanks her.
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