Two oddities

In the Johnny Cash ep --he plays a singer named Tommy. The early part of the ep has some exposition on Tommy dating a former minor. Including something even about The Mann Act. I thought especially since the minor becomes one of the two ladies Tommy kills, that Columbo would later dig up the dirt about the singer's illegal dating activities. But surprisingly the rumpled coat never does. He digs up facts about Tommy's days in the Air Force. Why did they have that exposition and make you so confident that Columbo would later discover it? Strange.

The other oddity comes in the Robert Conrad ep. That ep concerns a health fitness/ health club owner named Milo Janus. Janus's false self-proclaimed innocence in the ep hinges on a fake phone call that was supposed to be made from one of his health clubs to his house the night of the murder. Why did Columbo in this ep (fans pointed out and wanted to know) not simply go to the phone company and see if a call had been made that night from the health club to Janus's house? The super-sleuth had done phone-company checking in previous eps.

PS About the second oddity. One series fan decided that Columbo did in fact go to the phone company and checked it out and found no such phone call that evening between the two points. That it happened in a moment we just weren't shown!