Karen Lewis is fired by her boss Max Pompey at Caresse Cosmetics for selling company secrets to a rival cosmetics firm headed by Gabe Rawson. Pompey found copies of several of the company's formulas in her desk along with a bank book showing two recent and very large deposits to her bank account. After Karen rejects his advances, she leaves and disappears. Her boyfriend who also works at Caresse, contacts Perry Mason to help find her letting Mason know that she seems to be hiding something from her childhood. When Caresse president Silas Vance hears of the firing, he overrules Pompey and tells Karen to return to her position in the lab. When she does, she finds the night watchman, Charles Knudsen, unconscious and Vance shot dead in his office. More ominously, they also find a partial note written by Vance that seems to point to Karen as the killer. Many of those involved have secrets they would prefer not to reveal and Perry Mason agrees to defend Karen against a charge of murder.
—garykmcd / edited by Rob