''Los Angeles Times'' undercover reporter Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher (who writes as "Jane Doe") is writing an article exposing drug trafficking on the beaches of Los Angeles. While posing as an addict, he is approached by Boyd Aviation executive vice president Alan Stanwyk, who assumes Fletch is a real Substance dependence. Stanwyk claims to have cancer, with only months left to live, and wishes to avoid the suffering. Stanwyk offers $50,000 ($ today) for Fletch to kill him at his mansion in a few days time, stage the scene as a burglary, then flee to Rio de Janeiro.
Fletch, a reporter in Los Angeles for the ''Los Angeles Times'', is contacted by the executor of his late aunt's will, attorney Amanda Ray Ross. Ross informs Fletch he has inherited his aunt's 80-acre plantation, Belle Isle, in Thibodaux, Louisiana. Upon arriving, Fletch is disappointed to find the mansion terribly dilapidated, but he agrees to keep on its caretaker, Calculus Entropy. Fletch has dinner with Ross at her home, and she tells him of an anonymous $225,000 bid for Belle Isle.