After her father's illness drains the family's finances, Connie pursues a receptionist career at the Reid and Renshaw advertising agency while once again sharing an apartment with Aunt Bet.
 While the current receptionist, Ellen Randolph trains Connie, she learns that Ellen was fired for using cosmetics from, Angela Murray, a rival of the agency’s important account, Cosmetics by Cleo. Connie Blair is determined to dislike Cleo Marville, the CEO of Cosmetics by Cleo, but Connie quickly changes her opinion when Cleo visits the agency.Through Ellen, Connie meets Ken Cooper and Dick Travis, the lettering and idea men of the agency, to whom she confides her desire to attend art school.

Mr. George Renshaw sends Connie on an errand to Cleo's factory where Connie witnesses an ugly scene between Cleo and her chief chemist, Mr. Paul. Hearing of Cleo’s plan to release a new nail polish, Connie suggests that a batch of samples be made up and distributed to women to test out. The agency asks Connie to distribute the test samples. While calling on one of Miss Marville's neighbors, Connie meets a bearded man that she later learns is the chemist Baron von Gletkin, who sold Cleo the new polish formula. Connie then does some research on Cleo Marville and uncovers a surprising secret about Cleo and her rival Angela Murray.

After a Thanksgiving visit with her family in Meadowbrook, Connie returns to discover that Cleo is missing. While opening the agency's mail one morning, Connie finds an Angela Murray nail polish ad, that’s been mistakenly mailed to the agency. The product in the Angela Murray ad is suspiciously similar to Cleo's soon-to-be-released nail polish. With Ken's help, Connie solves the mystery of Cleo's disappearance and receives, as a reward, tuition for art school.