Chapter 1
"Did you hear about Tiffany?" Debbie asked me as we huddled over our last cafeteria lunch. It had been a long year, our first year of college and this was our final lunch together. Sloppy Joes, the fitting end to a year of crud that I'd been forced to eat. I was so lost in my own contemplation that I hadn't caught what Debbie had asked.
"What?" I asked as I started in on my last piece of cafeteria sludge.
"Tiffany Wilson. I just heard she started working at the Cat's Paw." Debbie whispered in that special way that everyone within 50 feet could hear. There were more than a couple sudden bursts of coughing from behind me, and Debbie giggled as I sprayed half eaten hamburger all over my tray.
"You're kidding!" I snorted as I looked at my friend. There was no way that Tiffany Wilson would be within a mile of the Cat's Paw. It was a sleazy little strip club down on the edge of town. There were some pretty strange rumors about it, but there was no way that our school's top student would have gone anywhere near it, much less start working there.
"I'm not! My brother sent me this." Debbie pulled out her cell and showed me the photo of our school's prim and proper dean's list student dressed in a Cat's Paw uniform. The tiger print bra and panties were unmistakable, infamous as they were. Plenty of boys at school peddled in the risque contraband from that sleaze pit.
"There's no way that's true!" I gasped. It wasn't easy to deny the picture in front of me. I just couldn't believe that Tiffany would do something like that.
"Well, I asked a couple of her friends and they said it was true. That she'd gone there to do some kind of expose journalism project and came back saying she was going to work there." Debbie continued spinning the juicy tale. She loved being able to break this kind of sweet gossip. No doubt it would be around the school before long.
"I think I'm going to have to check it out myself." I gritted my teeth. There was just no way this was true, and the quickest way to prove it was to storm down there myself and check things out. I was 19 so they would let me in, even if it was strange for a girl to go into a place like that.
"Really?" Debbie's eyes bulged a little at my sudden determination.
"Yeah, there is just no way that Tiffany would do something like that and I want to find out why." I stated clearly. There was simply something wrong about this. I was on the college paper too, and I wasn't about to let a fellow reporter go down like that. This just wasn't something I could turn my back on.
"That's so cool! So what if you don't come back?" Debbie asked. I could see she was only half joking. I could see she was just as surprised by the news as I was. She just wasn't as quick to take action.
"Well, I guess you'll just have to come after me." I shrugged. She giggled and we went back to our sandwiches. There were a lot of things to do today, and now I had one more item on my list.
Chapter 2
It wasn't hard to find the Cat's Paw. It was located only a mile out of town and sported a sign with a cat girl waving like an eager bimbo. I'd never actually driven down this way before. It was off the beaten path for a reason. It cut down on the local complaints by being out of the way. Sure, there had been a flurry of complaints anyway, but the owner had fought them all back. He had a lot of money and some pretty good lawyers.
Getting in was even easier. It was before the night's entertainment really started and I used my paper credentials to get an interview with the owner. I didn't even need to go onto the main floor, they took me in through a side door that led straight to his office.
"I hear I have a little visitor who wants to give me an interview." Ralph Silver smiled as he sat back behind his well-crafted oak desk. For a man in such a sleazy business, he immediately defied the stereotype of a man involved in such a business. He was well-dressed, clean cut, and wearing a respectable blazer and slacks. The rest of the room was equally professional, not even so much as a pinup calendar to remind you that you were in the command center of a strip club.
"That's right, I'm Julie Vandemere, from the Washington Bugle Monthly. I wanted to ask you a few questions about your business." I asked, trying to keep myself as calm and straightforward as possible. I might have chosen to be here, but this was still well out of my range of places I would normally choose to go.
"Of course, I'm always fond of answer questions from lovely young women. In fact, I spoke to another reporter from your paper just last week." He smiled. His eyes twinkled in a way that sent shivers right up my spine. It was the look of a cat that had a mouse cornered. If I wasn't nervous before, there wasn't any doubt about it now.
"Exactly, I thought I'd start by asking about why Tiffany Wilson decided to work here." I pushed back. I didn't want to respond with anything less than strength. No matter how nervous I was I didn't want him to catch on to that, and driving to my goal would be the fastest way to get out of here.
"I see, so you want answers?" He smiled again, his confidence just flaring around him.
"Yes, I want to know how you got all of the college's smartest girls to start working at your little strip club. Are you blackmailing them?" I demanded again. I folded my arms across my chest to emphasize just how serious I was. There was certainly something strange about this place, and now that I'd gotten this far, I wasn't about to back down until I got the answers I had come for.