Copyright © 2023 by Bryan Cassiday
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Phoebe felt her marriage was going to pot.
Supposedly it was a dream come true when she married the popular mayor of her small town of Costaguana in Southern California, Jason Albright. He was considered incorruptible by the citizens who elected him—a man who couldn’t be bought because he had inherited a fortune from his father Jackson, a real estate tycoon.
Phoebe couldn’t believe it when he asked her to marry him. In her early thirties, she came from a solid middle-class background. Her father Sam was a journalist, her mother Lila a high-school teacher. A cynical journalist, Sam was suspicious of politicians, but even he liked Jason and thought the man could do no wrong.
Which made it all the more shocking that she now suspected Jason of cheating on her. He kept going out at night claiming he had business matters to attend to. She couldn’t understand why he was working so late almost every night. She knew politicians lived busy lives, but this was going too far.
She started to suspect it wasn’t business matters that were monopolizing his time. It had to be something else. Another woman. What else could it be? she wondered. He had to be seeing someone on the sly.
She had to find out the truth.
She was following his new black Mercedes G-Wagen in her turquoise Mini Cooper as he drove through the nightclub-strewn part of town known as the Strip. She tried to hang back far enough that he couldn’t see her tailing him. But she didn’t want to hang back too far, or she would lose him in the darkness.
He was slowing down.
What kind of business matter could he possibly be pursuing here? she wondered, figuring she knew the answer. A business matter in a skirt.
She saw three streetwalkers in their twenties strolling down the sidewalk. Two of them wore miniskirts. The blue-eyed blonde with bee-stung lips wore a tight black leather one with an even tighter black tube top. The brunette wore a shiny white polyester one with a shocking pink halter holding up her ample breasts. The third streetwalker, a black with peroxide blonde hair with a half inch of black roots, wore a pair of café au lait stretch pants and a see-through white fishnet blouse. Her sapphire eye shadow glittered under the streetlights.
Phoebe’s face reddened with fury as Jason’s G-Wagen slowed down, pulled over to the curb, and parked next to the blonde in the tight black leather outfit.
Business matters, indeed, she decided. Was she supposed to believe he was citing them for soliciting? Or maybe for loitering? Fat chance.
Craning her neck toward his car, she slammed on her brakes as she all but crashed into the red Jeep Cherokee in front of her. She swore. She had to keep her eyes on the road.
She decided to pull over to the curb before she got too close to Jason’s car. He might spot her if she got any closer. Or was he so focused on the blonde streetwalker’s boobs that he had tunnel vision?
She tried to calm down. Her father once told her she had a bad habit of jumping to conclusions, thinking the worst of people. Maybe she had inherited it from him, since it was a journalist’s job to dig for dirt, expecting to find it everywhere they looked.
Sitting behind the steering wheel tapping her fingers on it, she took a deep breath and tried to bridle her anger.
She watched the blonde approach the Mercedes passenger’s-side door, pulling her tube top down an inch, letting Jason see a little more flesh, swinging her hips with carefree abandon, her transparent stiletto heels clopping on the cement sidewalk. Jason powered down the window.
The hooker leaned forward and placed her hands on the windowsill, jutting out her ass under the wash of the overhead streetlight, smiling and leering at the driver.
If he was warning the blonde against soliciting, why was she smiling and leering at him? wondered Phoebe.
The hooker shook her head and strutted away from the G-Wagen, shaking her butt for Jason to ogle, looking over her shoulder at him making sure he was watching the action.
Phoebe relaxed a bit. Maybe Jason had warned her off, after all. He was doing his job as the incorruptible civic-minded mayor trying to keep the streets clear of prostitutes. Phoebe’s fingers stopped tapping the Mini’s steering wheel. Until . . .
Until she heard Jason whistle two notes—one high, one low—and saw his hand stick out his passenger’s-side window clutching a handful of hundred-dollar bills shaking them at the blonde.
Seeing the cash the streetwalker slewed around and returned to the Mercedes, clopping on her stilettos, practically falling out of them in her haste.
“Bastard,” said Phoebe, slamming her fist down on the Mini’s steering wheel in white heat.
The blonde flung the G-Wagen door open.
Thinking fast, Phoebe whipped her cell phone out of her purse that sat on her Mini passenger seat and snapped a picture of her.
The blonde slid onto the G-Wagen passenger seat and shut the door behind her.
Phoebe couldn’t stand watching the whole sorry incident any longer. Gritting her teeth she peeled away from the curb and sped past Jason, averting her head so he wouldn’t recognize her, though she doubted he was noticing traffic, his undivided attention trained on the voluptuous blonde sitting beside him.
The son of a bitch. Incorruptible, my ass.
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Bryan Cassiday 