Handlung

Lt. Columbo and his wife win a pleasure cruise to Acapulco, but the lieutenant finds himself investigating a murder aboard the cruise ship when a married car dealer kills an ex-lover who's been blackmailing him over their past fling.

Hayden Danziger is on a cruise with his older but much, much richer wife Sylvia. Rosanna Wells is on the same ship, as its singer. Rosanna and Hayden were recently lovers, after which Rosanna began blackmailing Hayden; so, having decided to kill her, he has planned the perfect crime - or so it seems, since Lt. Columbo is cruising on that very same ship and the captain has asked for his help.—Baldinotto da Pistoia

Lt. Columbo of the Los Angeles police department wins a trip to Acapulco in a raffle, giving him his first journey on a cruise ship. Unfortunately, it will be a busman's holiday. Hayden Danziger is a used car dealer and a frequent passenger on this very cruise ship, which put him in contact with a scheming singer who had an affair with him and then threatened to tell his wife. Mrs. Danziger is a rich older woman who will ruin him if she finds out. Danziger's clever murder scheme involves faking a heart attack and committing the murder while apparently in a hospital bed. He tries to frame the piano player the singer had jilted, but all his scheming comes to naught when the ship's captain asks the mastermind in the rumpled raincoat to investigate the case.—J. Spurlin

Aboard The Sea Palace, murder claims the life of the ship's singer. Knowing it's outside his jurisdiction, the captain nonetheless asks Columbo (aboard with his wife on a free cruise vacation) to look into it as he's the only experienced policeman on hand. Straightaway, Columbo suspects the organizer of the car dealer convention on board, hospitalized for an apparent but mild heart-attack, and not the ship's pianist, a jilted lover everyone else believes guilty and to whom all evidence points. Fighting seasickness, Columbo endeavors to prove his suspicions before they reach port and turn the matter over to the proper but possibly less observant authorities.—statmanjeff

Columbo's holiday cruise to Acapulco is rudely interrupted when a fellow passenger, a used car salesman, kills the lead singer of the ship's band after she blackmails him in exchange for keeping quiet about their extra-marital affair which, if exposed, would leave him in financial ruin.