- Della persuades Perry to take a case where a girl in a car accident is framed for stealing the car and killing the driver of a truck. She claims another man was driving the car. Two murders later Perry is still trying to clear her.
- Claire Olger is picked up hitchhiking by ladies' man Michael Greeley after her purse and ticket were stolen. He makes a pass and they struggle, causing the car to crash into an oncoming truck. The truck driver is killed, and when she regains consciousness, Claire is charged with auto theft and manslaughter as the only occupant of the wrecked car. The friend Claire was coming to live with Doris Stephanak asks Perry to take the unorthodox case which he does at the urging of Della. The owner of the car denies any knowledge but later, Greeley turns up dead in Claire's room forcing the police to drop the original charges but instead charge her with the murder of Greeley. Perry takes Doris up on her offer to help by having her meet the secretary of Jerry Heywood but he too ends up dead. Perry Mason must stay one step ahead of the police to solve the mystery as he one ups Tragg.—richardann
- Claire Ogler (Patricia Hardy), who was never learned the delicate way to fend off unwanted advances at the workplace, has lost her job in San Francisco. On the way to stay with her friend Doris Stephanak (Karen Steele) in Los Angeles, her purse is stolen in Fresno and she's reduced to hitchhiking. She's picked up in a Lincoln driven by Michael Greeley (John Hubbard) (but Carol doesn't know his name). He drunkenly grabs at her, and in their struggle, he sideswipes a truck. In his office, D.A. Burger receives a report from his subordinate Hanley (Harlan Warde). The truck driver was killed, but Claire was just knocked out and awoke with cuts and bruises. Greeley has apparently vanished, as the prosecutors assume she was the drunk driver, and plan to charge her with theft and manslaughter.
Doris goes to Perry's office to get help for her friend, who has been arrested. Perry, going by the newspaper report, doesn't think this is his kind of case, but at Della's urging, he listens to Doris, who explains what really happened to Claire. Later, Paul has learned that the car the unknown man was driving is owned by Jerry Heywood (Grant Richards), the wunderkind of Magnum Studios, where he makes the magnificent (in 1958) salary of $3,000 per week. He denies being the driver or having loaned his car to anyone, but this is suspect because he recently had argued with his insurance company over a claim and as a result is currently uninsured.
Perry goes to see Heywood, but just gets a repetition of what Heywood told the police and is shown out by Heywood's butler and general factotum, Ernie Tanner (Fredd Wayne). Heywood calls the Greeley home and is told by Marcia Greeley (Helen Westcott) that her husband is out. They agree that he could cause trouble for them. Tanner tells Heywood he wants a raise, and alludes to Heywood having lied about being home the entire day of the crash. Angry, Heywood pushes him out of the room.
In jail, Claire recounts her encounter in the Lincoln, adding a detail she'd forgotten before - in the struggle, she got lipstick on the driver's shirt. Perry says he'll arrange bail and pays for Claire and Doris to stay at the Gateview Hotel under the name "Joan Lewis". They do so, but we see Greeley bribing a desk clerk at the Gateview to show him "Joan's" registration card. It occurs to Perry that the drunk driver might be desperate enough to go after Carol. Della calls her room at the hotel, but there's no answer. At the hotel, Perry peeks through the transom window and sees a body on the floor. Paul calls Lt. Tragg, and they enter the room together. The body is identified as Michael Greeley, a public relations worker at Magnum Studios. Tragg immediately suspects Claire.
Perry interviews Marcia without mentioned her husband's death. She says that Michael was at a premiere that night, and that her husband might give a ride to a woman but isn't the sort who'd leave her in the lurch. The discussion ends when Tragg calls Marcia with the grim news. Doris tells Perry that Carol had left the room because her arm was bothering her and she went to a drug store for aspirin. When she returned and saw the dead Greeley, she panicked and went to Doris' apartment, where the police found her. They've pieced together what happened and have dropped the theft and manslaughter charges against Carol, but Burger is going to try her for 1st degree murder.
Tanner calls to leave a tip - Heywood has a lodge near Fresno. Perry wants more information out of Tanner, who has an eye for the ladies. Paul's usual operative for this sort of thing isn't available, so Doris volunteers. Meeting Tanner at his regular bar and getting friendly with him, she learns that Heywood's car was apparently driven nearly 700 miles between the day before the crash, when it was serviced, and the crash.Tanner adds that he got fed up with Heywood, socked him, and quit. He's not afraid because he has something on Heywood - something that relates to Greeley.
Meanwhile, Perry gets a call from Marcia, saying she's coming to the office to give him something that belonged to her husband, but won't say what. Perry guesses that it's the lipstick-stained shirt, which would have helped confirm Carol's story when she was charged with theft and manslaughter, but now will just help Burger. He hopes he can figure out a way not to accept it from Marcia. Before she arrives, Perry gets a call from Doris. She had left Tanner's hotel room to get him some coffee and returned to find him collapsing in the bathtub. Perry goes there, finds Tanner shot dead, with a pillow having been used as a makeshift silencer. After he takes Doris home, he returns to the office to deal with Marcia, but his quandary is solved when Tragg barges in and takes possession of the shirt. It's a rainy night, and Tragg notices that Perry's shoes are wet. The lieutenant also spots a pillow feather on the office floor. Later in the police lab, Tragg tells Burger that the shirt isn't Greely's size and doesn't share the laundry mark of his actual shirts. Burger thinks Perry planted it to trip up the prosecution. He'll reverse the situation by simply doing nothing about the shirt.
In court, Perry is surprised when Burger doesn't introduce it as evidence. He cross-examines Heywood, who claims the car sat unused between when it was service and when it was stolen. Using the odometer data, Perry points out that this meant it was driven over 600 miles during a 9-hour period, in traffic. The drive is consistent with a round trip to the Fresno lodge (assuming he left earlier, not when he said the car was stolen). Heywood denies it. Perry gets the shirt from Burger and shows that it's laundry mark matches the one the Heywood is wearing. He claims that Greeley hired Tanner to spy on Heywood. When Heywood left for his lodge with Marcia, Tanner told Greeley, who went to the lodge and stole the car to strand them there, intending to blackmail Heywood to avoid a scandal. Marcia panicked when they found the car gone, which is why she accidentally packed Heywood's shirt in her own bag. Perry then accuses Heywood of the murder, but Marcia rises to his defense and confesses that she killed both men. She even apologizes to Heywood for causing him so much trouble.
Later, Tragg tells Perry that he was very lucky that Marcia confessed, because there was no way he could have linked her to the killings. Perry asks if, in their long acquaintance, Tragg had ever thought him stupid. Tragg says he thought Perry was unscrupulous, conniving, and unprincipled - but never stupid. Perry then asks what the lieutenant would call someone who was at a murder scene in wet shoes with feathers spread around but didn't check his shoes for them. "Stupid", answers Tragg, and he immediately concludes that the feather in Perry's office got there on someone else. Eliminating Perry and himself, he realizes it had to be Marcia. "Oy gevalt!" he says as he leaves, somewhat abashed.
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