"In the photograph posted on her Internet site, she sits on a large black motorcycle, nude except for a black handkerchief wrapped around her blond head.

The motorcycle's headlight is blinking, and Angelika E. Potter, a.k.a. 'Steffie,' is smiling mysteriously. As if she has a secret.

And she does. She knows something that city elders in Frederick may not want you to know.

Since November, shortly after Potter pleaded guilty in Frederick County District Court to running a call-girl operation, her business records have been at the center of a seamy potboiler in this farming-town-turned-Washington-exurb.

Rumor has it that the documents, which the Frederick News-Post has dubbed 'the black book,' contain the names of prominent city figures who used Potter's services. It is an allegation that has roiled and riveted residents of Frederick, which has been grappling with a growing share of urban-type problems and, most recently, media sensations.

'It looks like sex, of course, is involved. That's always big,' said Frederick County State's Attorney Scott Rolle. 'It looks maybe like public corruption, public coverup.... It's like a spy novel or something.'

Rolle has taken something of a cameo role in the Steffie saga; his office handed over the Potter case to Montgomery County prosecutors because a relative of one of Rolle's investigators was a witness.

One of the main players in the drama - Mayor James S. Grimes - has remained largely silent on the issue. This, in turn, has further inflamed members of an already irritated press corps, who have sued the city for contempt of court and are digging in for a long legal battle to secure Potter's documents.

A Frederick County Circuit Court judge will soon decide whether the city acted legally when it released the documents to Potter earlier this month without first notifying the Associated Press and the News-Post. Both organizations had pending requests to view the documents under public information laws.

In yet another twist, after Grimes ordered the police department to return the documents, Potter commanded her attorney, Richard Bricken, to shred every last page. Bricken had turned about seven-eighths into confetti before the media prompted Ciruit Court Judge G. Edward Dwyer to halt the shredding.

In response to a request for comment on the scandal, the mayor said in a brief statement issued by city spokesman Jeanette Eleff that 'I feel we do cooperate with the media and that we have complied with the law.'

Rumors are flying around town, and around the county, meanwhile, from the quaint downtown antique stores in Frederick's historic district to the mammoth new developments springing up on the fringes of town.

Why did the city resist releasing the documents? Is someone using the list to blackmail someone else?

And, most important, whose names show up in those papers?

'There are lots of names floating around out there,' said Dan Benson, a Frederick masonry worker, longtime county resident and self-described local news junkie. 'There's something [in those documents] that is just way too much for [the city] to handle.'

It's a widespread assumption among those who have watched since the scandal began in November with Potter's plea agreement. It stipulated that all her property seized by police would be returned to her, and most of it was. But several large three-ring binders were not.

Rumors leaked that the city was holding on to those documents because of the names they contained. Potter sued to get them back. The media moved to get copies. And so the story unfolded.

But of all the information in the public record, including a rapidly growing court file, not a single name of a Potter clients - well-known or otherwise - has been revealed. Indeed, there has been little firm evidence that there actually are any such names among Potter's files.

Potter, meanwhile, has remained silent and aloof, with only her Internet site as evidence that she's still in business - somewhere, in some capacity.

She has not commented to the media in months, and she declined to comment for this article, saying in a brief telephone interview last week that she was 'not going to say anything. ...You need to talk to my lawyer.'

Nobody at City Hall is answering any questions, either, except for a Baltimore lawyer the city hired to represent it because its legal staff was named in the lawsuit brought by the News-Post and AP.

Howard Schulman, the lawyer, said the city maintains that it had no responsibility to notify the media and that once the documents were turned over to Potter, it considered the case closed.

'The dispute is between Ms. Potter and the [news]papers,' he said at a recent court hearing. 'If Ms. Potter wishes to return her property to the papers, she may do so.'

In a two-sentence statement released March 7, Grimes and Police Chief Ray Raffensberger declared that they 'wish to acknowledge that they cannot confirm or deny that any public officials, or any specific individuals, were or were not named in the documents.'

That statement was the latest to come from an administration that in recent months has had a number of public-relations problems.

In October, Raffensberger was accused of spying on Charlene Edmonds, the local NAACP president. He was cleared of criminal wrongdoing after an investigation by a retired Washington County Circuit Court judge, and Grimes reinstated him after a two-week suspension.

More recently, allegations surfaced in the newspapers that the mayor unethically gave three city attorneys who had recently announced their resignations a potentially lucrative consulting contract to handle all of the city's pending legal business. The city's ethics commission said the deal was not a violation of ethics codes.

But among the accusations the city administration has faced of late, the 'black book' seems to have the strongest grip on the public imagination.

Letters to the editor at the News-Post have been plentiful and opinionated.

One particularly sardonic letter the paper published, written by Middletown resident Geoff Brown, read: 'I'd like to thank your newspaper, Frederick's mayor, police chief, city attorney, city aldermen and the city's NAACP chief for the most entertaining soap opera I've witnessed in years. . . . In particular, I'd like to thank Mayor Jim Grimes for his wonderful portrayal of a stonewalling, press-hating, law-flaunting good ol' boy.'

In the statement forwarded by Eleff, Grimes called Brown's opinion 'unfortunate.'

The News-Post has printed a dozen news articles on the scandal, including one editorial, and the Associated Press and The Washington Post have written several articles.

News-Post managing editor Michael Powell said readers have been split on the issue, with half taking the paper to task for following what may well be a nonstory, and half cheering its efforts.

But one thing is clear, he said: People are riled up.

'I'll bump into people over at the Y, and they'll say, I can't believe you guys are following this thing, and then five minutes later, I'll bump into somebody else and they'll say, I hope you guys get 'em,' Powell said.

So for now, the shredded remnants of the 'black book' sit in nine plastic garbage bags in a rental storage unit somewhere in Frederick, awaiting Dwyer's decision. Only the court has the key to the storage room.

Dwyer last week scheduled a March 26 hearing to review the matter.

Henry Abrams, the lawyer representing the News-Post and the AP, said that if the shredded documents are released, his clients are willing to pay to have them reassembled - something he asserts forensic crime experts can do.

'There have been allegations that high government officials and important citizens affecting public opinion in Frederick were engaged in elicit and/or illegal conduct,' Abrams said. 'Those are pretty serious allegations about the government, and that's what newspapers are there to report to the public' " (David Snyder, The Washington Post, March 20, 2001).