Mystery Street on AllMovie

Blonde good-time girl Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling), who lives in a cheap rooming house in a working-class section of Boston, run by the inquisitive Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), goes out one night proclaiming that she's got big plans and might even move to a nicer place. After putting in her shift as a waitress at a cheap dive, she latches onto Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), an innocently drunk patron, who's trying to wash away his sadness over his wife's stillborn child. She uses Henry's car with him in tow, then strands him on foot and meets her boyfriend -- and that's the last anyone sees of her. Six months later, part of a skeleton is found -- enter Lt. Peter Morales (Ricardo Montalban) and his partner, Det. Sharkey (Wally Maher). With help from Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) of Harvard University's forensic medical laboratory, eventually identify the skeleton and tie it up to Shanway's car. The poor slob, who is merely trying to cover up a drunken lapse from his wife (Sally Forrest), acts guilty enough and lies about just enough so that Morales is certain that he's the murderer. But that's just the tip of the iceberg in this case, which gets a lot more complicated, and risky to the careers of the two investigators.