Love, Lies and Scandal by Earl Sewell

various news stories and writing down copy for the midday news.

    Angela peeked inside the control booth and said hello to Royce, a camerawoman. She continued down a narrow corridor and made her way past the office of her boss, Steve Stone.

    "Angela, can I speak with you for a moment?"

    Angela turned and saw that Steve had gotten up from his desk in order to catch her. Steve was a short, mousy-looking guy with a receding hairline who was fond of wearing suits that were too big for his small frame. Angela turned and walked back into Steve's office.

    "Have a seat." His outstretched hand indicated a chair in front of his desk. "I saw the piece you did last night on fraud and home-based businesses."

    "Did you really?" Angela asked. "What did you think?"

    "It was very good. I was impressed. I wanted you to know that the station has received an unbelievable amount of phone calls asking that you do an investigation on several more companies."

    "Really?" Angela smiled inwardly. She knew that Steve was more than just pleased with her investigative work.

    "Yes. It appears is if this problem is more widespread than we thought in the Bay area."

    "Well, I could've told you that." Angela chuckled.

    "Have you ever gotten one of those e-mails from some foreign country asking for your bank account information in exchange for a ridiculous sum of money?"

    "I get them all the time."

    "There's a very large-scale effort to defraud people here in the Bay area. This time the crooks are not asking for bank-account information. They want cash. I'm going to forward you several e-mails that I've gotten. I want you to play along and send the monopoly money to whatever address they give. When they pick up the package, I want you to be there to expose them. Are you game?"

    "You know that I am. This sounds like an assignment I'm going to enjoy."

    "I thought you would." Steve and Angela both laughed. After a little more small talk, Angela headed back to her desk to work on her story for the five o'clock news broadcast.

    After the broadcast of the evening news, Angela unhooked her microphone and walked toward her office. She sat down and began going through her mail. As she was reading a letter, her cell phone rang.

    "Hello, this is Angela," she greeted the caller.

    "Why are some men so damn retarded?" It was Regina. Angela chuckled.

    "What are you talking about?" Angela stopped reading her mail, reclined in her seat and gave her full attention to Regina.

    "I'm talking about a hell date that I went on."

    "Hell date? Oh Lord. This is going to be good. Where are you?" Angela asked. "I hear a lot of noise in the background."

    "I'm walking down the street to my car. I'm just leaving my belly-dancing class."

    Angela chuckled. "When did you decide to take up belly dancing?"

    "When I saw that they offered the class at my gym. Tonight was my first night and the sister who teaches it knows how to work her hips. She had the class try a few basic moves and I swear, I think one of my kidneys got dislocated."

    "You can't dislocate a kidney." Angela laughed out loud.

    "Well, I'm telling you that it feels as if I've shifted my damn kidney. But anyway, that's not why I called."

    "Well, come on, spill the beans and stop playing."

    "Okay. I met this brother named Craig at First Friday's last month."

    "How come you didn't tell me you'd met someone? Why have you been holding out on me?"

    "Because I wasn't ready to talk about my traumatic experience yet."

    "Traumatic?"

    "Yes, traumatic. Now are you going to let me finish?" Regina asked.

    "Go on, I'm listening."

    "Craig is drop-dead fine. Tall, well-groomed, pretty smile, athletic build and a product of an historically black college. But little did I know his name was Mr. Diva."

    "Mr. Diva? What's that supposed to mean?"

    "Will you let me finish?"

    "Sorry, you know it's just my nature to ask questions."

    "So, like I said, we met at First Friday's. I learned that he was a vice president of sales