Kiss and Tell 2 by Faith Winslow

message again, just to make sure I’d read everything correctly, then I dropped the paper back down onto the desk.
    “You think I sent this?” I asked, looking at Anthony intently.
    “Of course I do,” Anthony replied. “Who else could have?”
    Instead of answering Anthony’s question, I immediately defended myself. “Well, I didn’t send it,” I said loudly. There was more I wanted to say—such as how blackmail wasn’t my thing and how, if it were, I would have been much smarter in my approach and would have asked for much more money—but Anthony cut me off before I could get the words out.
    “Who did then?” he asked, speaking even louder. “Surely you weren’t foolish enough to tell anyone about everything that happened, were you?”
    I wanted to skip over Anthony’s question again, but knew that I couldn’t.

Chapter 11
     
    “I told my neighbor,” I admitted. The truth had to come out, lest Anthony go on thinking I was the one behind the blackmail attempt. “But I’m not worried about him. He’s a good guy, and we’re friends. There was another guy there when I told him—Willard—and I guess he took my secret and ran with it.”
    Anthony locked eyes on me and looked at me as if I were under a microscope. He was clearly trying to decide whether or not to believe me.
    “Trust me, Anthony,” I said, trying to offer something that’d help sway his opinion. “I did not send you this note. I’m not trying to blackmail you. I came here today to talk about us. I had no idea about any of this.”
    Anthony continued to look me over. I felt like I’d been accused, arrested, and tried, and I was now awaiting the verdict.
    “What’s this Willard’s last name?” Anthony asked, picking up his pen.
    I had to think for a moment. Willard was Mom’s friend Janice’s son…and Janice’s last name was…
    “Preston,” I said aloud the moment it hit me. “Willard Preston.”
    Anthony scribbled down the name on a sticky note, picked up his phone, and held out his finger to silence me, then dialed a number.
    “It’s Anthony Swift,” he said into the receiver a moment later. “I need you to look into something for me…I received an unsigned note this morning, delivered by bike messenger, and I need to find out who sent it. I don’t know the name of the messenger service, but have reason to believe the note came from a young man named Willard Preston. Find out if he sent it—and if not, who did.”
    Anthony listened to the person on the other end of the line speak for a moment, then responded and closed the conversation. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll talk to you then.”
    As soon as Anthony hung up the phone, he bowed his head and shook it.
    “I didn’t want to think it was you, Kirby,” he said. “I didn’t want to believe it…and I’m so sorry that I accused you. I didn’t know who else could have sent that note.”
    “I’m sorry, too, Anthony,” I said. “It was stupid of me to blab about our situation in front of a stranger. I had no idea he would do something like this. I mean, I couldn’t have even imagined it.”
    Anthony stood up and walked to the nearby wall. He pressed a button and a panel slid open, revealing a bar setup, like the kind you’d see in some Wall Street movie. He poured two sniffers of brown liquid, slid the panel shut again, and walked back toward me. He handed me a glass and took a sip from his as he leaned back against his desk, just a few inches away from me.
    “The man I was just on the phone with is a private investigator,” Anthony explained. “And if anyone can get to the bottom of this, he can. I wasn’t going to call him in on this when I thought you were the one behind it. I was going to try and resolve it myself. Now that there’s a third party in the mix, we need a pro to handle it.
    “People are unpredictable, Kirby—especially when it comes to money. You might have never thought this Willard Preston guy could do something like this,