Nipped in the Bud (35 page)

Janet laughed out loud. “Heavens, no! Do I look like a
femme fatale
?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Miss Withers. “Never having for obvious reasons been accused of it myself.” But all the same, the schoolteacher was wondering a little; there was something about this long tall blond girl which could perhaps have been very disturbing to the right man—or the wrong one. “Your fiancé works here at the studio?” she pressed.

“Guy? Why, yes, when he works. He’s a song writer, and going to be one of the best. He wrote
Lullaby for a Pink Elephant
, a wonderful novelty number that’s just been published in New York! This music arrangement thing he’s doing here is fairly new to him, but he’s always fooled around with the piano. He played at the boardinghouse when he didn’t know anybody was listening, and I grabbed hold of him and introduced him to Mr. Karas, who gave him a job. Believe you me—” She smiled, her eyes clear and confident. “Somebody just had to take over that boy and straighten him out; he has so much talent and ability. This music arrangement thing is just for now. Guy’s finished two new songs,
Flitterbug Jump
and
Lady Bewitched
, and when they come out—” her face was lighted up like a neon sign—“Guy is really going places. His publishers say he’s going to be another Cole Porter!”

“‘I know where I’m going, and I know who’s going with me …’” Miss Withers softly hummed the old Scottish ballad. “How nice for you, my dear. Tell me, Miss Poole, just between us girls, what was in your poison-pen valentine to make you tear it up?”

Janet set her firm chin. “I—I couldn’t!”

“You
must
. And I promise it won’t go any further.”

“It—it was just something dirty and unfair! It brought up my one dark secret. You see, years ago when I was an art student at Otis here in Los Angeles I had to work most of my way. My father is a steam fitter down in Long Beach and he couldn’t always pay the rent on time at home and buy the groceries, much less help me in what I laughingly called my career. If you must know, I—I did some posing for the life classes at art school, that’s all. In the nude.” She swallowed. “I thought I’d lived it down, but—”

“It has never seemed to me,” interposed the schoolteacher, “that there is anything evil about the human body—especially a body like yours—unless thinking makes it so. It shouldn’t make any difference to your young man—”

“It didn’t!” Janet flashed. “I told Guy, of course, and he never batted an eye. But if it ever got back to his snooty family in Hartford, don’t you see? There’d never be a chance in the world of their accepting him and his bride.” She shuddered. “Not that it especially matters to me, but it matters so much to him. He wants me to walk into the family mansion like a fairy princess….”

“Most men do. But let us get down to cases. Who else could know about this deep dark secret of yours?”

“But
nobody
!” Janet insisted. “It all happened years ago, when I was a green kid from the wrong side of the tracks and before I changed my name; it was Janiska Pszky then, believe it or not.”

“I can believe it easily,” said the schoolteacher. “Poole is easier to spell than Pszky. What else is the melting pot for? We are all descended from parents who got tired of their homelands and came here to do it differently, and many of them simplified their names. My great-great-grandfather was named Witherspoon, by the way; somewhere along the line the
poon
got lost. So I wouldn’t take it too seriously. And I wouldn’t worry too much about your young man’s family finding out about your having posed for an art class of fellow students; there’s nothing dishonorable in that. But speaking of posing—just when did you pose for Larry Reed, or sit for him?”

Janet looked blankly innocent. “Never, of course!”

The schoolteacher nodded noncommittally, remembering the unfinished water color on the dead man’s easel. Now she remembered why Jan’s face had looked so familiar on their first meeting in Mr. Cushak’s office. But, as she also knew, the innocent could he as well as the guilty. “I still suggest, young lady, that you lock your door and windows tonight, and that if you get a gift box of candy or anything else in the mail, you don’t eat any of it.”

“But nobody ever sends me anything,” Janet confessed. “The Hollywood swains never give out with anything but their time. And besides, everybody knows I’m bespoke. As us Polacks say—I been
friending around wit’
Guy for over a year.” She smiled a dreamish smile. “And he’s not one for presents, either. He’s saving his money for a very important purpose. Oh, maybe a rose on my birthday….”

“‘Always one perfect rose—never one perfect Cadillac,’” quoted Miss Withers. “I know. All the same, my dear, I think that extra precautions are indicated for you. Those valentines aren’t in the pure spirit of fun, you know.”

Janet nodded slowly. “I
do
know. But I still can’t really believe it, somehow. Nobody in the studio would do a thing like that, nobody at all. If they get mad at somebody they think it over and then pull a gag, a practical joke, and let it go at that. This—this sort of thing is evil and mean!”

“It is, indeed. But—”

“Oh, heavens!” Janet had looked at her watch. “My man’s waiting at the gate.”

“Never keep them waiting,” advised the schoolteacher. “At least not very long. I lost one that way.”

But the girl had already sailed out of the door. Something impelled Miss Withers to shadow her and see this shining young man of hers, but the phone suddenly came alive. It was Mr. Cushak.

“Miss Withers? Put your mind at rest,” said the studio executive. “I have good news. It’s all just a false alarm!”

“What?” she gasped indignantly.

“Reed’s death was natural, or at least accidental, according to the Los Angeles county coroner’s office. They just reported that he died from the effects of poison ivy.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Miss Withers, but she said it under her breath.

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