Oh, Murderer Mine | Page 5

for the return of her own young hero-husband. Heloise of Hollywood has the glamour that is the rightful and easily obtained heritage of the Woman-Over-Forty. Heloise of Hollywood Beauty Prescriptions, compounded exclusively for the mature woman, are on sale at all the really discriminating shops from coast to coast..."
Melissa tilted her head judicially. "Fifty-four? And she looks like this?"
"Well, pretty near," Doan said.
"And she hired you to watch her husband?"
"Yes," Doan agreed.
"I still want to know why. It doesn't sound reasonable. It isn't the sort of thing a normal person would do."
Doan shrugged. "I'm just a hired hand, myself."
Melissa watched him curiously. "Well, what is Trent doing here? That nauseating junk Heloise of Hollywood peddles is piled neck-deep in every department store in the country, and it's expensive. She must make millions, and I've got a good idea what Trent's salary is. Did she throw him out?"
"No," said Doan.
"Oh-ho!" said Melissa suddenly. "Now I get it? He walked out on her, didn't he?"
"No," said Doan flatly.
"He did, too! That explains everything." Melissa tapped the magazine. "She has run hundreds of these ads in all the big women's magazines in the last couple of years. Every one of them had a picture of and some sort of a sticky message to Handsome Lover Boy. She must have spent millions of dollars promoting that angle."
"I wouldn't know," said Doan.
"Oh, yes you would. The whole point of that campaign was and is that if you're anywhere under ninety years old and use her stuff, you'll make yourself irresistible to men--just like she is! Yes, and you can catch yourself a handsome young husband, just like she did!"
"You're probably wrong," said Doan.
"I am not. And now he's walked out on her in spite of all her mature allure. Oh-ho! And now her pretty pretty advertising campaign is about to backfire right in her face! No wonder she hired you to keep women away from him. If he falls for some twenty-year-old twirp and starts a divorce action in all the headlines, she wouldn't be able to sell that stuff of hers for axle grease."
"Have you ever heard of something called slander?" Doan inquired.
"Hmmph," said Melissa. "That doesn't prevent me from laughing at him and at her, too. And that's just what I'm doing. Ha-ha-ha-ha! I'm just practicing now, waiting for the next time I see that gloomy gigolo upstairs."
"What's the joke?" a voice asked. Its owner was a woman. She had sleek, carefully groomed gray hair, cut short, and she wore a tailored blue suit. Her face slanted from above and from below, culminating in a beak of a nose that made her look like an intelligent and slightly sinister eagle in search of a free meal.
"Oh, hello," said Melissa. "This is Mr. Doan. This is Beulah Porter Cowys, Mr. Doan."
"Hello," said Beulah Porter Cowys to Doan. "What do you do? You look too stupid to be a student, if you'll pardon me for mentioning it."
"Quite all right," said Doan. "You're being deceived by my detecting expression. I put it on to fool desperate criminals. I'm actually very clever, indeed. In fact, many people, including me, think I'm the smartest detective in the world."
"A detective," said Beulah Porter Cowys. "Now I've seen--What on earth is that?"
"A dog," Doan told her.
"Is he dead?"
"No. Just bored."
"His name is Carstairs," Melissa volunteered.
"Gaaah," said Beulah Porter Cowys. "It would be. I hate dogs."
"That's all right," said Doan. "He hates people."
"Was he what you were laughing at?" Beulah Porter Cowys asked Melissa.
"No," said Melissa. "Look, Beulah. See this picture? Handsome Lover Boy? He's upstairs."
"What?"
"It's a fact," Melissa told her. "Really. He actually exists, and he's really married to this Heloise. He's a meteorologist, or so he claims. Isn't it horrible?"
"Isn't what horrible?"
"Why, she must be almost twice his age."
"Just twice," Doan said. "He's twenty-six."
"Ugh!" said Melissa.
"Melissa," Beulah Porter Cowys said, "did you ever try stopping to think before you started talking?"
"What?"
"It just so happens that I admit to being forty-nine, myself. What's so repulsive about that?"
"Oh!" said Melissa. "Well--well--well, you don't keep a gigolo."
"That's because I can't afford one."
"Oh now, Beulah," said Melissa. "You're just saying that. What I meant was that it's sort of ugly to think about old people having--having--well, having ideas."
"There are some aged male movie comedians who don't seem to agree with you."
"Oh, them," said Melissa. "They're just sexual neurotics. It's a transference of the youth-longing. Shirley Parker explained it all to me. It's the same sort of urge that makes nasty old men peep into grade-school girls' playgrounds."
"That Shirley Parker," said Beulah Porter Cowys. "She can always give me the creeps in five seconds flat. She makes life sound like an unsupervised pigsty. She and her Freudian theories of motive analysis are enough to turn anyone's stomach. But what I want to know right