WICKED WOMAN

An attractive blonde drifter, Billie Nash (Beverly Michaels), arrives in town on a bus and gets a job as a waitress at a local bar. She sets her sights on the bar's handsome owner, Matt Bannister (Richard Egan), who is married to Dora (Evelyn Scott), who inherited the bar from her alcoholic father and is an alcoholic herself. Nash seduces Bannister and they scheme to sell the bar without Dora's knowledge and skip to Mexico together.

They succeed in executing the paperwork with Nash impersonating Dora, but there is an escrow period before the sale is final. Charlie (Percy Helton), a boarder at the rooming house where Nash is staying, has overheard the plot and attempts to blackmail Nash into being his girlfriend. Bannister discovers them together and calls Nash a "tramp" and a fight ensues. The fraud and forgery is laid bare but Dora arranges for the sale of the bar to be canceled. Nash leaves town on a bus.

Billie Nash's forged scheme is exposed, the sale of the bar is canceled, and Nash leaves town on a bus.

The ending brings the doomed plot full circle as Billie Nash is forced to abandon her schemes and flee, her plans for escape and easy money foiled. The exposure of the fraud and the intervention of Dora restore order, but no one emerges unscathed—least of all Billie, whose status as an outsider is reaffirmed by her departure. In true noir fashion, the consequences of desire and deception prove inescapable.