Cold Poison by Stuart Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

ending, with the spotlight on the poodle in the center ring of the circus, juggling something ten times his size and having a hell of a time. He’s found himself; he’s among friends, see?”
    “I like it fine,” said the schoolteacher judicially. “But speaking of friends, what about Larry Reed? What sort of person would you say he was?”
    Tip looked vaguely puzzled. “Larry? Good artist, full of fun and games. The type who would put itching powder in your bath salts if he had a chance, or slip rubber sausages into the hors d’oeuvre. He used to pick up copies of cheap magazines and then spend hours filling in the advertising coupons with his friends’ names, so that for months afterwards they’d have their mailboxes stuffed with home-tattooing sets and patent remedies for baldness and lost manhood and stuff like that. Oh, Larry’s a card.”
    “And speaking of cards,” she pressed closer, “did he win a lot from you and the boys at poker?”
    “But—” Tip looked bewildered. “He never plays it. He does a lot of card tricks, he’s even a member of the American Society of Magicians, but he says it isn’t fair for him to compete across the table. I’ve never known him to gamble, except maybe a little on a Christmas Eve crap game or on a horse at Santa Anita. I think he spends most of his evenings at the easel painting things; he is hell-bent on being a real artist and having exhibitions in New York and a spread in Life .”
    “And what about the other evenings, when he didn’t paint? Was he interested in women?”
    Tip grinned. “Who isn’t? As the fellow said, ‘It’s me hobby!’ Yes, Larry gets around, but he never sticks to anyone long. I guess that’s why Joyce pulled out and left him.”
    “Was there much bitterness in that divorce?”
    “None, that I know of. He had a sense of humor and she didn’t. He used to carry a little gold bell and ring it at her when there was a gag and she didn’t get it, to show he was only kidding.”
    “Any man who would ring a pocket bell at me …” said Miss Withers. “But do go on.”
    “There’s not much more to it,” Tip Brown said. “They just didn’t fit, and there weren’t any children to complicate things, so he gave her the car and the TV set and he took the house and they parted amicably—they still have dinner every now and then. Very modern and all that.”
    “How charming,” said Miss Withers, without warmth. “Is there anybody else whose toes Larry Reed might have stepped on?”
    Tip Brown stared at her. “Not that I know of. Larry’s not the type to make a play for married women; there are enough luscious unattached young females around this town for anybody. They’re mostly dying to get a studio job, and they cluster around anybody who works for a studio like flies around a garbage can.”
    “I see,” said the schoolteacher. “But didn’t Larry make some enemies with his practical jokes?”
    “Not really. Oh, he carried a sort of torch for Janet Poole, the blond lovely here in the studio, after she turned him down for her musician. But leave it to Larry to get even in his own boyish fun-loving way—he knew this fellow had ambitions to be an actor, so he sent him a fake phone message supposedly coming from Sam Goldwyn’s office asking him to come over for a screen test. The poor guy pawns his watch to buy a new suit and then spent half a day at the Goldwyn studio trying to get past the gatemen.”
    “And so everybody took Larry Reed’s jokes in good humor? You yourself, when he forwarded all your mail to Horsecollar, Arizona?”
    He stiffened. “At the time I could cheerfully have strangled him, sure. But in this business you have to go along with a gag. Finally I saw the joke, and laughed as hard as any of them.”
    Miss Withers had her own ideas about that, but she kept them to her maidenly bosom. “Then Larry Reed must have had great personal charm, to be so readily forgiven for his fun-loving Rover-boy