Vixen Investigations: The Mayoral Affairs

by Ashley Papa

  Why would a man of his caliber and his power risk it all like this? Did he want to get caught?

  While driving us back to the estate, I had Adam upload the pictures to the MacBook. He was fiddling around on my computer right before turning the laptop towards me.

  “Paige, take a look at this.”

  With the face recognition software, Adam was able to match the face of the woman at the Roches’ house to the face of the woman in red. As suspected, it was the same woman. The comptroller was pretending to be with her as a ruse, when in fact, he was really gay.

  How clever.

  “We’re going to find out what is going on. I know it,” I said while stepping on the gas even more. The adrenaline and the discoveries made me feel like I could tackle just about any obstacle. Nothing could come between me and the truth.

  The roads leading back to Walter’s hideaway were dark and eerie this late at night. I pulled up to the edge of the driveway and Adam and I switched seats so I could change into my night spy gear. The pumps became flats once again and I threw my hair into a ponytail. The black face paint I smudged under my eyes and on my cheeks was unnecessary but looked cool. I exchanged my fedora for a Volcom beanie that, for some reason, was in the backseat.

  “You look ridiculous and sexy at the same time. Only you could pull that off,” Adam stated.

  “I can’t have my cover blown,” I replied and adjusted my hat in the visor’s mirror. “Don’t crash into any deer and keep your phone on in case you fall asleep so I can call you. Copy?”

  I took a deep breath and hopped out of the Jeep to make my way back to the wooded hideout.

  I waited. Every five minutes that passed seemed like an hour. I meditated to pass the time, but all efforts failed with every snap of a branch. I thought about Liam and how I still hadn’t texted him back. The minute of sorrow and guilt quickly dissipated as soon as I saw the Escalade turn up the driveway. It was now close to midnight. I pulled out my night-vision binoculars. Mayor Wilcox and the same young girl got out. That was it.

  When the SUV backed away and finally drove off again, that was my cue to move in a little closer. I could see the couple’s motions through the curtains. The lights flicked on in the bathroom, then went off. They flicked on in the office, then back off. They flicked on in the upstairs hallway and then off. The lights went on in the apparent used bedroom and stayed on. I couldn’t make out what was going on now. I’d have to rely on my audio and video recorders for the rest of the evening.

  While keeping the light on my phone as dim as possible, I activated the devices to switch on. I pushed the earbuds into my ears, which silenced any cricket, snapping branch, or potential serial killer that may be rustling around in the woods.

  “That was some party. So glad to get out of this itchy wig,” I heard the female voice say. The video was a bit grainy, but I could see, after she pulled off the wig, her long brown locks fall to the middle of her back. She was beautiful and looked a lot younger than I first thought.

  “I like you with the short hair. It looks a lot like my wife’s,” Walter said and then laughter from the both of them.

  Walter pulled the girl in for a kiss.

  “When’s it going to be my turn?” she whined.

  “Stop it. I am trying to do everything I can to make this work,” Walter answered.

  Next, she released herself from his hold and walked into the bathroom. Walter proceeded to take off his clothes stripping down to his boxers.

  He’s pretty fit for an old guy.

  The young girl reemerged into the picture and this time, she was completely naked. Her breasts and butt were as perky as a 23-year-old’s. Walter was sitting on the bed facing her while she got down on her knees and started giving him a blowjob. As much as I wanted to turn it off, I couldn’t. They were still talking. I could hear Walter moaning and then there was the occasional “slurp.”

  “I should be the first lady of New York,” I heard her say in between having her mouth around his penis. He pulled her up and they kissed before moving fully onto the bed. Walter proceeded to conquer the young damsel.

  I turned off the audio and the grainy video that resembled poorly produced porn from the ’80s. I had all the proof I needed. Now, who is his mistress?

  SATURDAY

  A whirlwind 24 hours. Adam and I ended up driving back home right after the Hamptons’ mission. We didn’t get back to Hoboken until nearly five in the morning. I was near delirious driving home. When I finally got to my place after dropping Adam off, I flung open the door of the apartment and expected to immediately crash on the couch, black face paint and all. However, my OCD kicked in and I started uploading all the photos, video, and audio to all my computers instead. Fatigue finally set in around 9 a.m. That was the last I looked at my clock.

  “Paige…Paige, get up. You have drool going into your keyboard.”

  Adam was violently shaking me awake to the point where he may have thought I was dead if it weren’t for the waterfall coming out of my mouth. I rose slowly off my computer. I could feel the ridges in my face left by the buttons. Focusing my eyes on him was hard with my contacts plastered to my eyeballs.

  Was that all just a crazy dream? Did I really see Mayor Wilcox banging some young girl who wasn’t his wife? I smell coffee…I need that coffee!

  “Coffee? “What day is it?” I mumbled.

  “It’s Saturday, Paige. It’s 3:30. Here…” Adam placed the coffee on my desk. “There is an extra toasted bagel for you in the kitchen.”

  “You’re the best assistant ever.”

  I dragged myself into the kitchen. I needed carbs desperately.

  “What?” I asked with a mouth full of bread and cream cheese.

  Adam was doing a very bad job at hiding his humor in watching me inhale my breakfast.

  “It’s the face paint, right?” He started giggling. “I’ll take care of it. I’m not embarrassed. Go ahead and laugh,” I said as I continued to masticate the toasted goodness.

  Now I know why he thought it was so funny. I look like I just escaped a police chase after robbing a bank.

  I finally caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  I fiercely scrubbed my face thinking that perhaps the dark marks had become embedded in my pores. It took five tries to finally get my skin looking Norwegian again. The lack of sleep from the past several days was starting to show. I sent Adam home for the rest of the day, turned off every computer, monitor, and device with an “On” button, packed up some spring clothes and headed for my dad’s. Some time and peace in the country was exactly what I needed to recover and recharge.

  MAY

  Deciding to give myself some time away from the throes of adultery was a much-welcomed mental break. Dad had gotten a new German Shepherd, Zelda. She was fun to run around with. We didn’t talk work, but instead, sat outside on the deck, drank vintage wines, and reminisced about the summer of 1996, when forty hot-air balloons landed on our property. We laughed about how Mom would get drunk and overcook the chicken and then complain about it being overcooked. Whenever I visited, I’d stay in my old room. My dad had left most of the house untouched. As much as I loved staying there, it was hard at times, as the memories would get too heavy. I’d think too much about my mom and get upset.

  Things had gotten tense between Liam and me after going MIA on him a few weekends ago. But with much explaining, apologizing, and convincing that I wasn’t cheating on him, Liam and I ended up back in our routine of spending most of our nights together; at his place of course. Each lovemaking session was as sensual as a romance novel scene. But, I continued to wear that scarlet letter inside. He still didn’t know the truth about Vixen Investigations.

  Adam and his band had lined up some new gigs and they were getting rave reviews. The Asbury Park Press even defined the group as “The Black Keys meets Soundgarden.” It was quite t
he accolade.

  Walter was back to his daily press conferences. I had found attending them to be a waste of time. There was a lot more under the surface that I was getting close to. I could feel it. Now that I had also agreed to The Gotham Post’s request to tape the interview, I felt that I needed to precisely strategize my method of taking Walter down.

  The week before Memorial Day weekend I had a few things lined up: a tour of City Hall and a sit-down meeting with some of the communication officials about the upcoming interview. But sitting in my office that Sunday night, I couldn’t seem to concentrate. While studying facts and trying to piece together information, I’d occasionally look up at my collection of worn Nancy Drew books. Despite there being no pictures, I was always captivated by Nancy’s inquisitive mind and ability to sniff out clues.

  She didn’t even have the internet…

  Suddenly, my phone going off in the other room snapped me out of my daydream. I hurried to my purse but missed the call. There was a voicemail that made my heart thump harder.

  “How do you find a missing kid?” was all the mystery caller had said in the voicemail.

  Another riddle…

  “A missing kid?” I questioned allowed. “What the heck does that mean?”

  I stormed back to my computer without a thought of what I wanted to Google. Surely, all that would come up would be a missing children’s database. I typed in the exact question, hoping to trigger a quick response that made sense, but instead up popped a list of articles and foundations that’ll search for missing and exploited children.

  Nothing seemed to make sense. I clicked to page two and halfway down the search revealed a link to the website for Amber Alerts.

  Amber? A name?

  I jotted down “Amber” on the legal pad next to me, and as many other acronyms for the name.

  Ambr, Mber, Amb, I wrote. Then I went onto Facebook and searched for the name Amber. A trove of names came up.

  This won’t help.

  On my phone, I searched the name on Instagram. In separate browser windows, I searched for the name under the acronyms I came up with. I had likely thousands of names and faces in front of me and one by one, I went through all of them.

  My eyes strained scoping out the hordes of unfamiliar faces. Narrowing the search to New York City wasn’t helping either. I was starting to feel my eyes dry out until a familiar face caught my attention on Instagram. It was under the name “@Ambralrt” with the handle’s owner being “Amber Wright.” I clicked on the name. LOCKED.

  “Damnit!”

  I was convinced it was the same face I saw in the Hamptons with Mayor Wilcox. She needed to accept my request. I logged out of my Paige Turner account and back in as my alias, Kim Sharp, who, according to the fake account, is a bartender at Martell’s Tiki Bar down the shore.

  I waited and hoped that it wouldn’t take days for her to accept me. While tooling around on my computer and phone, I had unknowingly and uncontrollably been tapping my pen so much, it had left a sizable ink blob that resembled the shape of a kiss on the pad of paper.

  Wait…kiss? Lipstick!

  I had forgotten about the MAC lipstick I snatched from the Hamptons house.

  Might it hold a clue?

  I scrambled around the apartment looking in every bag and coat pocket. No luck. I called Adam even though I promised to give him the day off without interruption.

  “I need you to check your pockets…anything that you may have brought with you when we were in the Hamptons,” I ordered.

  He was rehearsing with his bandmates, but took five to search for me.

  After turning the apartment upside down, the lipstick remained lost. I plopped down on the couch and put my head in my hands. Frustrated, and tired. I felt like I had hit a brick wall. My phone vibrated in front of me.

  “Hey, Adam, any luck?”

  “No. I remember you throwing a few items into the glove box right after you covered your face in that black paint.” Adam’s words rejiggered my memory.

  “You’re right, I did. I probably thought it was my ChapStick!”

  Eager to find out, I hustled down to the Jeep. When I unlocked the glove box and the door flung open, out rolled the MAC lipstick and that random photo I had forgotten about that was left on my windshield.

  “YES!” I yelled so loud it set off the neighboring Acura’s alarm.

  Perhaps it could tell me something. Back in my bathroom, I pulled the cap off the lipstick, revealing the half-worn-down stick of the “Femme Fatal” color. I wiped off the top layer and applied it to my plump and dry lips. It was a good-looking color. Something I’d wear myself. After perfectly applying the shade, I snapped a few selfies.

  Back to the computer I pulled up pictures I had taken of the mystery woman with Walter, enlarging the woman’s lips. I didn’t need elaborate technology to match a lip shade. Comparing my lips with hers, I knew that it was the same reddish color. To my right, my phone flashed an Instagram alert: “@Ambralrt has accepted your request.”

  Finally, a lead!

  I opened up the account, owned by a girl named Amber Wright. There was no doubt that it was the girl I had been looking for. I now had a name. The lipstick color matched other pictures. There were photos of her with two women resembling the Roche brothers’ wives, except this picture was years old.

  I Googled “Amber Wright” to see if anything else came up.

  Nothing.

  I heard my front door open and a familiar voice. But, my face was too focused on the screen to care who it was.

  “Everything okay?” Adam asked while standing in my office doorway.

  I turned sharply at him with a smile on my face.

  “I have a name. Amber Wright,” I announced.

  He pulled up a chair and together we scanned the web.

  “It looks like there are a few Amber Wrights from Long Island on People Finder,” I said. “Let’s see if we can pinpoint who this girl is.”

  We scanned all sorts of websites and databases for almost an hour. I failed to notice the bag of Chinese takeout Adam had brought over. The salty smell grew more intense, with a stain of soy sauce and grease slowly seeping through the bag.

  “Look,” I pointed out to Adam.

  An Amber Luciana Wright from Long Island seemed to be a likely match. Her father was Peter Wright and according to the information, this girl was 28 years old.

  “That girl we’ve been seeing with Walter looks to be about that age,” Adam observed.

  I was too much in thought to even hear him because I was too focused on the name.

  “Wait a minute. Those girls in Texas kept talking about their friend Lucy. You think Lucy is short for Luciana?” I turned and looked up to Adam.

  We looked sharply at each other. I needed a full background check on this girl stat. I shot Chin Chin a text asking for him to run a detailed check on the name and within minutes, he responded with a “10-4.”

  “Look,” Adam said, summoning me over to his phone.

  When he typed “Lucy Wright” into Google, almost every social media channel revealed a page for the name. Then, Adam proceeded to show me her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.

  This girl secretly went by her middle name as a diversion for some reason.

  “That’s definitely her. She must use various names to mislead anyone who might suspect her of anything,” I announced confidently.

  Lucy Wright’s pages seemed a lot more sophisticated than the Amber Wright ones. @Ambralrt was an obvious old account. Lucy seemed like an elitist with her fancy photos of sailing in Sag Harbor and skiing in Aspen. There was one, more current, photo of her sipping a mimosa outside on the beach.

  I know that spot. That’s Shutters in Santa Monica! But who was she with? Who was taking all the pictures?

  “Is that…the Roches’ wives?�
�� Adam observantly asked.

  “It has to be. It looks just like them,” I agreed.

  “They must be longtime friends. I mean, look at this picture from the Amber account. It looks just like a younger version of all three of them,” I analyzed. “This has to be the girl they mentioned.”

  Despite feeling invincible, I was no match for the increased security around City Hall the next morning. Armed guards lined the perimeter, while blacked out SUVs stood along the street. I was dressed in my typical “I mean business” getup as I handed the guard my license. His intimidating stare was no match for my cleavage-bearing blouse. He smiled at me as I passed through the metal detector.

  I sat down on the stiff chair in the sterile lobby.

  I wonder how long Jimmy will keep me waiting this time.

  Two hot men, who looked like detectives, were seated nearby. Their scent of Old Spice subtly stimulated my nostrils. The scent immediately made me think of Liam. It distracted me enough to where I was visualizing Liam’s face while reading a copy of The Gotham Post I had purchased at the neighboring bodega. The headline of the paper read, STONED VAGRANT: “COX LOVES US.”

  No wonder he hates this paper.

  “Homeless population voice love affair with Mayor Wilcox, while taxpayers complain about increase in vile hobo activity,” the subtitle read.

  “Miss Turner?” I heard.

  A short portly woman was standing in the entranceway to the hall. I raised my hand like a schoolgirl during roll call.

  “Follow me.”

  I followed behind her as she led the way down to the office where Jimmy was on the phone. He motioned for me to sit down with his free hand and then held up his pointer finger to say, “one more minute.” I patiently waited in the old, hard, wooden chair as he finished with his “uh huhs,” “yeahs,” and then finally a “your ass is toast” and a slam of the phone.