Page 128 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

The penny dropped.

“You and Nick Tremayne were married?” Irene asked.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“No,” Irene said. “No, it’s all starting to make a lot more sense.”

“The studio said they would pay for me to spend six weeks in Reno at a divorce ranch. For a pitiful amount of money, I was supposed to disappear.”

“They paid you to get the divorce?”

“Not nearly enough to make up for what I would lose in the long run. Not enough to compensate me for the sacrifices I had made. I knew that, unless Nick made some huge mistake, in a few years he would be worth millions. As his wife, I would have gotten a share of the money.”

“But as his ex, you’d wind up with nothing.”

“It wasn’t fair,” Claudia said. “Nick pleaded with me to get the divorce. They were threatening to cancel his contract if I didn’t. I finally told him that I would get the divorce but in exchange he had to find a way to let me stay close to him. I reminded him that I was his best friend. I told him that now that he was becoming famous, the only person he could ever really trust was someone who had been his friend and his lover from the old days.”

“He loved you?”

Claudia snorted. “Archie has never loved anyone but himself. But he knew that he owed me so he convinced the studio to hire me as his personal assistant. They agreed. All they cared about was that Nick Tremayne was single.”

“So you went to Reno, got the divorce, changed your name, and became Nick Tremayne’s personal assistant.”

“Just another Hollywood story,” Claudia said. “But then the blackmail started.”

“How did you figure out that Betty Scott was the extortionist?”

“That wasn’t hard. By then the director and Ralph were both dead. There was no one else who would have had access to those two films. It was obvious that Betty was the one who had possession ofIsland NightsandPirate’sCaptive.”

“So you decided to get rid of Betty Scott.”

“I told her that I would bring the money to her. I took the train to Seattle. We arranged to meet at the boardinghouse on a night when everyone else was out partying. I went upstairs to her room. She came out into the hall. When she realized I hadn’t brought the cash with me, she was furious. I tried to reason with her. I told her that we could both make a lot of money if we just waited until Nick was a bigger star. She laughed in my face. She said that she’d rather have a bird in the hand.”

“That’s when you killed her?”

“The bitch called me a failed actress.” Claudia’s voice rose in fury. “When she turned around to go into her room, I grabbed the big flower vase off a table and I hit her.”

“Betty Scott was found in the bathtub.”

“It wasn’t easy getting her into the tub, believe me.”

“What about the films?”

“Afterward I searched her room and found the two cans of film.” Claudia got herself back under control. “I now possess the negatives of each of Nick Tremayne’s pornographic films. They’re dynamite because they both feature Nick Tremayne having sex with Ralph.”

“That would be guaranteed to kill Tremayne’s career.”

“Definitely,” Claudia said. “But timing is everything. A year from now when Nick is the next Clark Gable those old films will be worth a fortune. The studio will pay whatever it takes to get ahold of the negatives.”

Irene managed to get her handbag open behind the chair. She reached inside. Her fingers closed around the small gun.

“Blackmailing a major film studio will be a very dangerous proposition,” she said.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Claudia said. “I plan to disappear before I go into business.”

“Does Archie—Nick Tremayne—believe that Betty’s death was an accident?”

“He did at the time. He wanted to believe it, you see. But now I think he’s starting to wonder. Sometimes he looks at me as if he’s no longer sure he can trust me. That other reporter fromWhispersis the one who put the doubts in his mind.”

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