Forged Steele 

This was one of the top 10 Remington Steele episodes ever made in my view. You had Remington Steele ensnared by a con game played by another person. He goes out for a seemingly routine client interview with a rich client claiming to be BJ Sinclair...only to wake up 36 hours later later in a hotel bed. He appears to have lost track of time and looks dishevelled. Its funny how the fictitious BJ Sinclair character pours out a glass of presumably drugged champagne for Steele and says: "Here's to the start of something special" only to learn what a bunch of nonsense this is as Steele is propelled into a nightmare.

When Steele returns to the Remington Steele agency, he finds out that someone named Harry Cranston has taken control of the office. Cranston claims that Steele lost the agency to Cranston in a high stakes poker bet with Cranston at the Colony Park club. Steele has no memory of the previous 36 hours and cannot account for his whereabouts. Laura and Steele are aghast and check out Cranston's story and the person claiming to be BJ Sinclair states that Steele was drunk in their midnight meeting and she left him at the Colony Pack club where they were after he made his bet with Cranston. When Laura and Steele visit the club, the workers appear to be familiar with Steele--and the situation looks bad on him since it appears that Steele did indeed make a bet with Cranston about the agency's future here after he was drunk.

Steele then breaks into Cranston's home and finds 3 different passports all with this person's name on it (Cranston is a conman all right) but when Steele then visits his company office at night and finds a hole in the floor of office and descends down to investigate, he is promptly arrested by the police and the insurance investigator, Norman Keyes who tells him that the diamond merchant exchange vault directly below the Remington Steele office was broken into and $6 million worth of diamonds were stolen. They think that Steele is the main suspect. But Keyes finds "a measly two hundred thousand" dollars worth of the stolen diamonds in Steele's condo and becomes disheartened instead of the total six million dollars and suspects that Steele has the other $5.8 million dollar diamonds hidden elsewhere. Obviously, here, someone is trying to frame Steele for the robbery. Meanwhile, Steele's company lawyer, Reuben, seems to be incompetent and constantly loses track of important papers and claims that an important legal note with Steele's signature was stolen. Mildred warns him to buck up to "earn his retainer."

Keyes decides to anonymously bail Steele out of jail (hoping that Steele would retrieve the rest of the missing diamonds) and Laura, Steele and Mildred proceed to race around LA trying to find clues about the real thieves only to discover 1. that the person claiming to be BJ Sinclair was actually Christy McCall, a cunning real estate agent who was a partner in Cranston's scheme and 2. both Cranston and McCall were murdered in two separate locations. Keyes is one step behind following them in tow. Keyes attempts to arrest Steele in the two murders but Steele gets away; in the case of Cranston's death, Mildred knocks Keyes out with a blow to the head. In the end, Steele, Laura and Mildred capture the killers at LA airport as they plan to fly to the Cayman Islands: Debbie Rebello, another colleague of Cranston and X who shall remain anonymous here. Steele shakes X down and the rest of the diamonds fall onto the airport floor. Keyes also catches up with Steele there and wants to arrest Steele but X confesses since he knows that he cannot fund his escape now. X represented the diamond exchange and owed some money to Cranston. So, he told Cranston about the timing of the diamond deliveries to the exchange vault.

Cranston executed a con game to seize control of Steele's office directly above it while Steele was away. Ultimately, X double crossed and killed Cranston and took the diamonds instead...and tried to frame Steele as the robber. This was a thrilling show with Keyes chasing Steele around LA in the end.