- Contractor George Andrews meets with political strongman Wilfred Borden about resolving the arbitrary inspection problems on the job. As he leaves, Andrews sideswipes a car, throwing a young woman into the driveway and Borden is murdered.
- Contractor George Andrews is having trouble with building inspectors on his construction site who tell him to ask Wilfred Borden for his help. Borden styles himself as being in public relations but is in fact a political fixer who won't hesitate to bribe officials who are giving clients a hard time. He is also an amateur photographer who works with models. They agree to a deal but as Andrews leave Borden's home, he's nearly run off the road by another car. He rushes to help and finds an attractive young woman lying on the grass. He gives her a ride home and then goes to Perry Mason's office for legal advice. Concerned that someone else might have been in the car, they head to Borden's house to try to find her but are locked out by dogs. Perry quickly determines the woman Andrews picked up was not who she said she was and the next day they learn that Borden is dead. Andrews is charged with murder when the police find the murder weapon in his car and Perry defends him.—garykmcd
- George Andrews (John Anderson) drives onto the estate of Wilfred Borden (George N. Neise), passing a sign that warns "At 11 PM gate closes automatically. Dangerous dogs are released. To contact house, use phone." Fortunately, it's only 8:30 PM. In the house, George and Wilfred are talking when Wilfred asks to be excused for a moment. He's an amateur photographer (specializing in cheesecake) and he wants to wash some photos he took earlier. Getting back to business, George confirms that he's the contractor on a new school, but he's getting nowhere because of obstruction by building inspectors. Wilfred says he can fix this, but maintaining political influence is expensive, so he wants $5000 - for starters. George agrees, but says he'll only deal with Wilfred as long as it takes to find a way to get rid of him.
As George drives out the gate, his car is sideswiped by one speeding toward him. He's fine, but the other car crashes into a hedge. George rushes to that car and sees a woman in dark clothes on the ground but not much else, so he runs back to his own car to get a flashlight. On his way back to the crashed car, he hears a cry of "Help! Help" and finds a woman (Kasey Rogers) lying there, in light clothes. She introduces herself as Beatrice Cornell, says she's all right, and asks to be driven home to the Dorman Apartments. George complies, but once he drops her off and drives away, she goes to the cabstand in front of the apartments and calls for a cab to pick her up. When she arrives at another apartment, she wakens Frank Fettridge (Dean Harens), who admits to having had one too many. He works for Wilfred, and is late to pick up one of the guard dogs at the vet's and return it to the estate. He rushes off to handle the errand.
George loses no time in contacting Perry and recounting the accident. He has the other car's license plate number, but forgot to check the driver's license. Apparently, he didn't notice the change in the color of the woman's clothes, but he thinks perhaps her shoes changed. He can't go to the police because knowledge of a sudden vanishing of his building inspector problems coming immediately after he met with Wilfred could ruin him. Perry calls Beatrice (Evelyn Scott) - it's not the woman who gave that name to George. She tells Perry she knows nothing of an accident, and doesn't even own a car. Perry thinks there could be another woman wandering around the Borden estate in need of help, so he heads there with Della and George. At the estate, Perry checks the wrecked car and sees it's registered to a John Carson. It's 11 PM, an alarm goes off, and the gate begins to close. They barely manage to get through the gate before the dogs get to them. Della uses the gate phone to call the house and speaks to a woman who will see if Wilfred can be disturbed. One she gets a man who says he's Wilfred, Perry takes the phone and talks him into calling off the dogs to conduct a search for the possibly dazed woman.
The next day, Perry tasks Paul to find the fake Beatrice, and gives him what little he knows to go on. As soon as Perry mentions Wilfred, Paul says that he heard a radio report that he was murdered that night. Perry visits the real Beatrice, who runs a small agency arranging jobs for photographic models. Wilfred used to obtain models from her, but stopped a few months ago. She thinks he made a long-term deal with one model for a series of calendar pin-ups. Perry looks through some photos of models, but expresses particular interest if there are any models who are unable to pose in a bikini. He promises that he has a legitimate business deal in mind.
At Perry's home, one of the models sent by Beatrice, Dawn Manning (Dolores Donlon), arrives. She's suspicious at first, but Perry assures her that she's on the clock at the standard rate. She says that her legs are very bruised and skinned from an accident the night before. She was leaving a studio party and a woman she didn't know offered her a lift, despite it being odd that the woman knew her name and that she was in the process of divorcing Frank - a process that seems to have stalled. The driver suddenly turned into Wilfred's driveway and Dawn, sensing a trap, grabbed the steering wheel, hitting George's car. She passed out, but assumed that she sailed out of the car and skidded along the dirt, resulting in the bruises. When she woke up, the other woman was gone, so she walked to the highway and caught a bus. Della calls to say that Paul has learned the identity of the fake Beatrice by tracking who took a cab from the Dorman Apartments that night - Loretta Harper. The car she (or Dawn) drove was stolen. Perry asks Dawn about Loretta, but she denies ever having heard of her. Perry has her change to pose for photos, bruises and all.
Afterward, Perry calls on Loretta, who admits having dragged Dawn from the car, taken her place, and called out "Help!" She claims that Dawn forced her into the car at gunpoint, and that she seemed hysterical - going on about how her divorce of Frank wasn't getting done. However, Loretta says that the divorce is final, and she is about to marry Frank. Perry says he wants to talk to Frank and Loretta starts to talk about arranging that when Perry shakes his head. He points out that a half-smoked cigarette didn't have a lipstick stain on it until she picked it up. Loretta calls to Frank, who enters from the next room. He claims that he can corroborate all of Loretta's story. She says that she lied to George to avoid becoming involved. Later, Perry, Paul, and George are meeting in the office when Lt. Tragg arrives and shows George a gun. George says he never saw it before, but Tragg says they found it in the glove compartment of his car and takes George in.
At the preliminary hearing, Tragg testifies to finding the gun, which ballistics experts have identified as the murder weapon. He also says a search of George's apartment revealed a suit with what proved to be bloodstains of the rare type AB, Wilfred's type. George tells Perry that the suit got that way from his own nosebleed. He doesn't know his blood type. Harvey Dennison (Ralph Moody) testifies that the gun was stolen from his hardware store, and the fact only discovered during a later inventory, so any of a large number of people could have taken it. Jasper Horn (Charles Tannen), George's foreman, testifies that he had recommended paying off Wilfred, but George had replied that he'd rather shoot Wilfred than pay him tribute. On cross-examination, Jasper adds the George finally said that he had an appointment with Wilfred, and the next day the inspectors said they expected no more problems. Frank testifies that he got a call from George, arranged the appointment for that evening, and left early to go to a party, leaving Wilfred alone in the house. D. A. Burger rests his case. The judge (Richard Gaines) says he has presented more than enough evidence to have George bound over for trial, but Perry says he can present a case that will cast doubt on the prosecution's evidence. The judge calls a recess.
Paul enters to report he has men serving subpoenas to Loretta and Dawn. Perry says one of them is lying - probably Dawn, since her story requires that you believe she was unconscious for half an hour. When court resumes, Perry calls Della, who testifies to speaking on the phone with a man who called himself Wilfred Borden. Also, George was in her presence from well before that until 11:30 PM, after the latest possible time of the murder. The judge, surprised the Burger doesn't want to cross-examine, points out that while the fact that the man on the phone called himself Wilfred, when combined with previous testimony that Wilfred was alone in the house that evening, it creates a strong presumption that he was still alive at that time. Burger replies that he'll use rebuttal evidence rather than cross-examination to support his case. He calls Frank who testifies that by the time Della called, he had returned to the house with the vet and the dog. The two of them were waiting for Wilfred to come out of his photography studio (barging in on him during a shoot would get one fired) when the phone rang. The vet picked it up, then Frank took it, and followed a common practice of identifying himself as Wilfred.
On cross, Frank admits to being late to get to the vet's because he'd been drinking at his fiancée Loretta's party. As of the day before the hearing, his divorce from Dawn is final. When arriving at Wilfred's house, he called out and heard Dawn say "Go away, Frank." From the back of the courtroom, Dawn shouts "It's a lie!" earning herself an arrest threat from the judge. The vet can't testify about this, as she was taking the dog back to the estate kennel at the time. Perry calls Harvey, who testifies that Dawn was working at his hardware store at the time the gun was stolen. However, there's no evidence that she took it. Loretta testifies that at the time of the accident, Dawn was driving one-handed, as she had a gun in the other hand. She admits that after the crash she dragged Dawn out of the way and took her place, so George would think she was alone in the car. Just before leaving with George, she went back to the wrecked car to get her things, and saw that Dawn was gone. She doesn't know what happened to the gun Dawn had been holding.
Perry asks if the police had found photos when they searched Wilfred's darkroom. Burger says they did, and produces prints, which are of Dawn. Perry recalls Frank and gets him to admit that he often picked up his then-wife when she was working at the hardware store, so the employees were accustomed to seeing him around. Frank denies having stolen the gun. Perry shows him the photos that Burger produced. They reveal Dawn's legs, entirely bruise-free, unlike the photo Perry took of her later. So these pictures were obviously taken earlier. Perry presses him to admit that he lied about hearing Dawn that night, and is about to suggest more when Frank insists he's not the killer. He was sleeping off his drinking at Loretta's apartment. Perry counters that he was near an open window with a fire escape on the other side, and had time to kill and get back before anyone knew. Frank is stunned. He was sure he had it all figured out. He asks, "What did I do that wasn't right?" "You committed a murder," replies Perry.
Later, Paul explains to George the motive for the killing: Wilfred had discovered that Frank had been stealing from all that under-the-table cash. Della adds that Loretta was in on it, and Burger is indicting both of them. Perry says that the original plan was to frame Dawn. They took advantage of George's appearance by switching the frame to him. It wasn't hard to find his car and plant the gun in it. Della remarks that "Dawn got by by (sic) the skin of her teeth." Paul, looking at the photos, says "There's more skin than teeth."
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