Page 100 of Statler

“What did you uncover?”

“That all six men were shot, point-blank, in the head,” she growled. “The coroner didn’t even try to hide his notes, because…who would be looking? My father is in charge of everything around here, which meant those deaths had to be sanctioned by him. Hunting accidents, my ass.”

“You didn’t confront the coroner, did you?” Statler questioned.

“No. I made copies of his files, instead,” Eliza told him proudly. “I gave them to Granny for safekeeping along with everything else I’ve uncovered about what really goes on at the factory. She has all those thumb drive hidden away somewhere she says no one will ever find them.”

Eliza went on, even though Statler hadn’t asked her to.

“I figured those deaths were connected to the nefarious activities at the factory, since all the men who died had been in his inner circle.” She bit her lip. “But I’m not exactly sure, even with all the financial anomalies I found in the factory’s accounts, what exactly is going on there, but I’ve known for a very long time that we were bringing in way too much money for our cost of goods.”

“And Granny has all those records?” Statler confirmed.

“She does, but it won’t prove anything unless we can follow the money trail, and it seems like that’s been completely obscured.” Eliza blinked up at him. “Still, murder should be enough for you and your…team to shut my father down and lock him up. Right?”

Now it was Statler’s turn to come clean.

Eliza had been very open with him, and he owed it to her to reciprocate.

“You heard me call Tonka,” he began.

“Yeah. What was that about, anyway? Why were he and Pipes looking for me?”

Statler picked up her hand and stroked the back of it gently with his thumb. “Because your father knows you’re suspicious of him,” he told her.

She reared back.

“Seriously? I thought I’d done so well, covering my tracks.” Her brows drew together. “Actually, I didn’t leave any tracks. So how…?”

“We found out that your father has had Jeremy watching your house for the past few weeks,” Statler grunted. “He suspected that we might be thinking of starting something, and wanted to know about it so he could nip it in the bud.”

“But…you never came to my house,” Eliza pondered, a line forming between her brows.

“Exactly. And since Jeremy was thwarted on that front, he decided to dig a little deeper to see if he could uncover any signs that you and I were…involved. He’d already noticed you weren’t home on Saturdays, so he felt confident enough to break into your house this morning.”

“He what?” Eliza cried, her whole body going on high alert and then deflating as a cloud passed overhead, sucking the light from her eyes.

Statler gentled his voice. “Jeremy broke into your house, and saw all your stuff being packed.”

“Dammit,” Eliza hissed. “Nobody but Granny knows that I plan to leave.”

“You weren’t going to tell me?” Statler probed with a wry chuckle. “I thought we were building a little something here. Maybe I was wrong. What were your plans?”

Eliza’s eyes lit with a new kind of fire as she faced him directly. “I was going to bring my evidence to your friend Mason, in Bangor,” she apprised him succinctly. “You assured me he was a good, honest man, so I knew he could be trusted. Unlike any officers around here who might have been…compromised.”

Statler had been proud of Eliza before, but now his chest swelled to even greater proportions as he understood what she was saying.

“You were…leaving to head into my home territory.”

A dimple appeared on her cheek. “You don’t think you could get rid of me that easily, did you? You kept promising me that after you’d ‘remedied’ a few things, we could explore what’s going on between us. I figured the best way to do that was to hunker down in your neck of the woods.” Her face fell. “But now…”

“Now, we get you out of town as quickly as possible,” he told her, not yet giving her the exact reason why. First, he had to clear Holden’s name.

“I want you to understand something.” Statler held her gaze. “Your husband, urging you to keep your head down? He was just trying to protect you,” Statler began.

“You can’t actually know that,” she sniffed.

“I do. It’s true,” Statler assured her. “He’d gotten himself in deeply with the rottenness at the factory, but he wanted to spare you any fallout. Once he found out what was actually going on in Liminal, Eliza, he began distancing himself from you, then he contacted the FBI.”