One thing that has always bothered me in this episode is how much Wade Anders hated cigarettes. Yet when he was putting together his Alibi of Bud Clark smoking himself to death, he burns a whole bunch of cigarettes in his own production office. Now I'm sure the next couple of days the place is going to reek of smoke. Yet Columbo is in the office to get the surveillance tape. And his secretary was in there too. Certainly the smell of cigarette smoke would not have dissipated that quickly since he burned so many cigarettes.

Anders was setting up the bogus justification as to why Clarke came to the TV studio: to pitch a new story (instead of the real reason: to blackmail Anders).