The Perfect House

Chapter 30: blackmail

It was the afternoon of the first day of the second semester, and Flori and Bobba happened to arrive back at the house at the same time. When they walked in they found Harold and Preston standing by the dining table waiting for them. Harold had a serious expression on his face and Preston looked very angry.

Pointing to a letter lying on the table, Harold spoke, "Read that, you two, but don't touch it."

Wondering what was going on, they read the letter.

"What the fuck? This is blackmail," yelled Bobba.

Flori simply made an odd sort of snort.

"We're not paying the fucker," Preston shouted.

"No way. We're going to track the prick down and break some bones," Bobba added in a roar.

"Take it easy, you two, we've got to think . . ." Harold tried to settle things down.

Flori started reading the letter aloud.

"It says: 'I know that you got into your house under false pretences. One of you is posing as a girl to meet the owners' requirements, but I know that you are all boys and I know which one of you is posing as a girl.

Unless you send $500 in cash every week to me at the address below, I will reveal your deception to the property managers'.

Then there's the address of a post box with an odd company name, and finally, 'I will expect the first payment within seven days'."

"How did he find out? Someone must have said something."

"That doesn't seem very likely," Harold responded thoughtfully. "When you think about who knows - ourselves and the two girls, Flori's parents and my sister."

"And my father," put in Bobba.

"Okay, that's it, and I'm with you, Harold, I can't see that there's been a leak," Flori contributed and then continued, "Look, I've gotten pretty lax with my changes near the gate, and Macy and I have picked up that plenty of people at the uni don't know whether I'm a boy, a girl or some sort of femboy, so I'd say that it wouldn't be too hard for someone to twig to the fact that I'm a boy dressing up like a girl for some reason."

"But that's only half the story, Flori . . ." interjected Harold.

"Exactly, Harold. The key is knowing about the owners' requirements regarding the type of tenants they were prepared to accept for this house."

The four of them looked at each other, so what did that mean?

Harold began to muse aloud, "That letter was placed in our letterbox sometime today while we were all out - it didn't come by regular post. Flori, your Mrs Stein doesn't miss much when it comes to what's happening in the street. Why don't you go over there and ask her if she saw anything?"

"That's good thinking, Harold," Preston called out, "and I'm going over to see old Garibaldi; he's often out on his front porch on nice sunny days like today, so there's a chance he might have seen who dropped that letter off. I'd really like to hunt this blackmailing bastard down."

"Damn right," Bobba endorsed energetically.

The tension was suddenly broken by Flori smiling weakly and saying, "Look, I don't think that it's going to matter too much anyway."