Michael Shayne TV: "Murder and the Wanton Bride"

A man is found murdered in an alley with Mike's name in a matchbook cover with an appointment time of 9 am - and Mike never takes appointments that early. However, when he gets back to his apartment, a woman (Beverly Garland) is waiting for him. She and her husband worked for the murdered man and his wife. They ran a fancy health club. Garland was the secretary and her husband the trainer. Her husband (Fred Beir) and her boss (Shirley Ballard) are having an affair, and she wants to keep the dead man (whom she does not at this point know is dead) from divorcing his wife so she can get it worked out with her husband.

When Beir comes home that night, Garland confronts him. He notices that she has not take off her stockings, and she has to admit that she was out driving around, trying to think it through. The next morning the check from the murdered man arrives, and Mike is now on a case for a dead man. He goes to the health club and meets Beir. While he is there, Robert Ellenstein, an ex-con kidnapper, comes in to demand some money from Ballard, and then he knocks out Mike. Then Beir comes into her office, and she claims she was in the kitchen and does not know who hit him.

Mike persuades his secretary, Patricia Donahue, to enroll at the health club for undercover information. Garland goes to Ballard's house and tells her that if she wants Beir, she will have to pay. Donahue sneaks into the house to listen. Garland tells her that she hired Mike to protect Ballard's interests, and therefore to protect her own. Ellenstein forces his way into Ballard's apartment, upset because she was involved in doublecrossing him in a crime. When Mike and the police come in, she has time to shoot Ellenstein in order to keep him from talking. Ballard and Beir are arrested and Garland gets off free.



Garland