Page 59 of Statler

Statler sank into one of the free Adirondacks, ran his hand back through his hair and gave a huge sigh.

“There’s something rotten in Liminal,” he intoned.

“Yeah. Gun manufacturing,” Blue supplied, not missing a beat.

“No. Something even more sinister.”

If he hadn’t had everyone’s attention before, he had it now.

“I just came from dropping Eliza off at her car where it sat in the factory lot, and there were people there. Maybe a dozen by the number of cars. I also got an earful from a big dude named Jeremy who is clearly a major player of some kind.”

“What kind of an earful?” Tonka asked, cracking his knuckles.

“Apparently, he suggested I shouldn’t even be thinking about seeing Mrs. Belle again,” he quoted. “Because her father won’t like it.”

“Shit,” Sherbert interjected. “None of that sounds good. Mrs. Belle? And who’s her father?”

“Damned if I know,” Statler grumbled. “I still haven’t stopped processing the Mrs. part yet.”

“She’s not married, boss,” Blue stated succinctly.

He scoffed. “And you know this, how?”

“Just by spending a handful of minutes with her,” Blue assured him. “She’s completely guileless. She hasn’t got it in her to lie, let alone cheat.”

“Yes, but I never asked her if she was married,” Stat grumbled.

“Listen to me,” she insisted. “I’m telling you, if she was married, she would have offered up that information,” Blue said with certainty.

“I’m with Blue on this one,” Pipes stepped up. “In the past, I’ve, uh, had passes made at me by a number of married women. Ones who weren’t sporting rings, by the way. And do you know what they all had in common.”

“What?” Statler bit.

“They can’t keep their mouths shut about their husbands,” Pipes snorted. “They come on to you, they act like a cat in heat, then just when you decide to turn off your big brain and let your little brain take over, they start babbling about how their husbands don’t understand them, and that they deserve a little something-something on the side.”

Pipes groaned and wiped a hand down his face. “Total buzz kill.”

Statler still wasn’t certain what Eliza’s status was, or why she would have withheld that information from him, but it certainly hadn’t been to jump his bones. Theirs had been a night of friendship and comradery, which…

Crap.

That’s right.

It hadn’t been a date. He hadn’t called it that. So why, exactly, should he assume Eliza would have regaled him with her marital status?

Dammit.

“Maybe I was looking at the evening in a completely different light than she was,” Stat speculated. “Maybe Eliza was just being a good citizen, welcoming me to town.”

“Nope.”

All six of the people who knew Stat so well, spoke in unison, immediately putting an end to that conjecture.

“Fine,” Statler allowed. “The jury’s out, then. But if Eliza follows through and actually comes for supper tomorrow night as we discussed, I’m going to have a lot of questions for her.”

He tipped his head back, closed his eyes and rested his aching cranium on the slats of his chair.

Not knowing shit always took it out of him.