For the next fifteen minutes or so, we stood back and waited as News Man Tucker completed the broadcast. Those were, to put it mildly, a very awkward fifteen minutes.
At long last, the broadcast ended, and the news people dispersed - all except for Tucker, of course, who stood up from his desk and walked in a straight line towards us. Without saying a word, he turned towards the door leading to the outside hallway and motioned for us to follow. If I didn't think we were in over our heads before, I definitely felt so as he silently walked us down the hallway towards the archive room. If the nervous glances I exchanged with the boys were any indication, I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
He creaked open the door and a thin cloud of dust escaped, along with an odor that reminded me of my grandmother's attic. Inside we saw a treasure trove of overstuffed filing cabinets, papers strewn all over the floor, and shelves stocked with VHS tapes. VHS tapes! I didn't even think that those still existed.
Tucker walked over to one of the shelves and started browsing through it. I would have appreciated it if he had offered us a place to sit down - I had been on my feet for the past two hours and my legs were killing me - but he was doing us a pretty huge favor already, so I held my tongue. I wouldn't have to wait that long, anyway, since he found the video he was looking for after just a couple minutes of searching. On his way, he wheeled out this old-looking TV with an accompanying VHS player.
"This is the story he was working on," he said, in a voice that sounded a bit hoarser than usual. He popped the cassette into the VHS player, switched it on, and immediately the TV screen flashed to life. After a brief musical stinger, we were greeted with the sight of Thomas "Tommy" Cutler himself, seated at his desk. He had sparkling blue eyes, and black hair with just a liiiiiittle bit of graying - just enough to give him that "silver fox" look.
"Good afternoon, Royal Woods!" he announced. "My name is Tommy Cutler. Mayor Davis showed supreme confidence at last night's debate, and she still holds a decisive lead over the challenger Mr. Byron Harning in the polls. But there was one remark from that debate that piqued my curiosity. We're gonna take a closer look at it in a segment I like to call "Follow the Money".
What followed was a title card, featuring a brief animation of a Sherlock Holmes-style detective following a dollar bill blowing in the wind while peering at it through his magnifying glass. After the detective left the screen, we went back to Tommy.
"Now, then, Mayor Davis. For the past few weeks, her opponent has implied or outright stated that Davis is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. Here's how she responded."
The video cut to footage of Mayor Davis on the debate stage. "My opponent has called me a 'shill' for big pharma," she said. "Let the record show that I have not received any money from the pharmaceutical industry."
Cut back to Tommy. "Bold claim, Mayor Davis. But I wasn't about to let that claim go untested. I took a dive into her campaign finance records, and to her credit, I didn't find any donations from Piefell, or Jackson & Jackson, or Bristol-Carvey. What I did find, however, was a $7,000 donation from Incognito Labs."
I gasped.
"It was the largest single donation she received this election cycle, by far. So was she lying? I can't say for sure, because I don't know what Incognito Labs does. In fact, I don't think anyone does. Are they a pharmaceutical company? A medical equipment manufacturer? A space exploration company? Who knows?
"What I do know is that my investigation won't end here. Expect a deep dive into Incognito Labs in the coming weeks. I'm Tommy Cutler, and this was… Follow the Money."
Newsman Tucker turned off the TV, snuffing out its luminescent glow and leaving us bathed in darkness once again. Well, if nothing else, now we knew exactly where our next stop was going to be - which was pretty fortunate, given that News Man Tucker wasn't going to let us stick around here for much longer.
"Seven thousand dollars," Liam rasped, as if he was choking on the numbers. "I ain't never spent seven thousand dollars in my life. What would she need that much money for?"
"I don't think that's the right question to ask," said Lincoln. "I mean, money is money. She probably needed it for her campaign or whatever. The real question is why Incognito Labs was willing to give her that much."
"Pre-cisely," I said to Lincoln, as I gave him a little boop on the nose. I figured we could use a bit of levity after what we just went through, and I love the way Lincoln giggles when I do that. "Clearly they had some sort of motivation for keeping Mayor Davis in office."
"Could've been a bribe, too," Zach added. "Maybe the Mayor knows something about them that we don't, and they were trying to buy her silence."
Ginny smirked and twirled her magnifying glass in her hand. "You kids are a sharp bunch," she remarked. "But I should warn you that it won't be easy to get answers out of Mayor Davis. Politicians can be pretty dodgy when it comes to answering tough questions, especially in front of the press."
"Ain't that the truth," muttered News Man Tucker.
"So you'll need to plan a careful line of questioning to get through to her," Ginny continued. "If you just barge in and demand to know why she accepted money from Incognito Labs, she'll slam your door in your face. Figuratively, I mean."
"So we just gotta get our foot in the door!" said Clyde. "...also figuratively."
The six of us exchanged glances, and the steely confidence I saw in those five boys' eyes inflated my own.
"Thank you for your time, News Man Tucker," I said. "We won't be needing anything more."
With that, the Action News Team (and Ginny) left the room and started down the hallway, ready to start the next leg of our investigation. Well, almost ready. Before we did that, we'd have to refuel our batteries, and I'm not talking about the ones in our phones. As we stepped out of the building and back out into the street, I noticed that my stomach was grumbling and my legs were throbbing with pain. I suspected that my friends felt the same way, but I didn't count on any of them speaking up. Boys never speak up when they need to rest. It's so frustrating.
"I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty bushed," I said. "Kinda hungry, too. Wanna stop by the Burpin' Burger?"
"Capital idea!" said Zach. "We're going to have to think before we make our next move, and I can't think on an empty stomach."
"Plus, a big girl's gotta eat, right?" Rusty quipped, nudging me in the ribs. I'll admit, that got a chuckle out of me. I used to be self-conscious about being the tallest one in the group, but lately I've grown to be sort of proud of it.
"How about you, Ginny?" Lincoln asked. "Care to join us?"
Ginny snuck a glance at her watch. "Eh, sure. I've got a bit of time to burn before I have to split."
Anyway, we bussed it over to the restaurant, made our orders and claimed a booth, and I cannot tell you how relieved I was to finally get to rest my legs. I was also profoundly grateful that the Burpin' Burger had just recently introduced table service, meaning that our delicious, greasy meals were delivered right to us; we each got combo meals, which included a burger, a side and a soft drink. Now, some of you might argue that a cheeseburger and fries isn't the healthiest way to refuel, but you know what? Burgers have protein and fries have carbohydrates, and we were going to need plenty of both if we wanted to keep our momentum going.
"You know, there's just one thing I'm wondering," Clyde said after polishing off a couple of onion rings. "Tommy said that Mayor Davis's campaign finance records are open to the public, right? So why would she accept that donation knowing how suspicious it would look?"
Sheesh. Good question, Clyde. My only thought is that maybe she didn't know who Incognito Labs were, but that seemed pretty unlikely.
"And according to the polling data I found, she was leading by fifteen percent at the time of the debate," Zach added, scrolling through his phone. "So it probably wasn't out of desperation."
Our train of thought was interrupted when Lincoln's phone started ringing, and he excused himself from the booth so he could answer it.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Mindy, what's up? Of course I know. It's all over the news. In fact, right now we're—"
And in that moment, I could see all the color drain from his face. His grip on his phone loosened, to the point that it looked like it could slip out at any moment. Uh oh.
"Oh," he uttered. "You don't say. I… uh… we'll see what we can do. Bye."
He hung up and slunk back to the table. "W-what was that about?" stuttered Clyde, bracing himself for the answer.
"Guys, I can't believe I'm saying this, but we have another missing person on our hands."