A famous artist, Max Barsini, lives with his wife Vanessa and a beautiful live-in model named Julie at his beach house/studio. Max's ex-wife Louise lives in the beach house next door. Together, these women comprise Max's own little harem. He loves them all in different ways, but, more importantly, likes to control them. In fact, Max derives a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that they all fight for his attention and are reliant upon him financially and emotionally. The competitive jealousy between the women reaches a head at the dinner table one night when Max asks each of them what they think of the other. Their answers prove the intense rivalry between the women.

Columbo is asked to investigate the disappearance of Diane Hunter, director of a men's magazine. Naturally, the prime suspect is her lover and co-editor Sean Brantley, who spends lots of time with the young girls he works with.

Columbo matches wits with a brilliant attorney responsible for the murder of the one man who could stifle his meteoric political career.

Columbo unwittingly becomes part of a deranged woman's diabolical plot to destroy the two men she believes responsible for her husband's death in prison. After murdering one, she moves in on the other, Columbo, to kill the person closest to him, his wife.

While investigating the death of a popular actor, Columbo must outwit a cunning dentist, who has set up his wife for a murder in order to keep up his image and expensive lifestyle.

An ambitious womanizer, rejected by the romance novelist he planned to marry, ends the story she was writing with a gun and makes the murder look like robbery gone awry.