Grunkle Stan strolled in through the "Employees Only" door with a huge grin on his face, dollar signs flashing in his eyes as he flicked through a heavy leather wallet. He hadn't been incapacitated for long, the thought of even more money rolling off in the packed tour buses giving him all the motivation he needed to pull himself away from death's door. Once Wendy and Soos had been given tasks that wouldn't interrupt him in his master swindling plans ("Yes, Soos, I really do need to know the exact amount of splinters you can get out of a rotten piece of wood. I'm thinking of entering the toothpick market. It's a booming business, and I want to get in on it before anyone else does."), he had entered the role he had been playing for as long as he could remember.
At first, it seemed that Dipper and Mabel's severe neglect of the gift shop had set the tone for the rest of the day. Kids laughed at him while in the middle of very convincing speeches, parents looked unconvinced by the same speeches, and at the very end of the day a bus-ful of what looked suspiciously like lawyers and other troublesome men of the State parked in front of the Mystery (S)Hack, one of the only places in the United States at that time where they could have made a fortune just by looking at the state of the floorboards. Fortunately, none of them even bothered ungluing their gazes from their phones as Stan delivered his normal spiel, sweat soaking through the back of his jacket.
It was as he was tiredly waving goodbye to this one last group that he spotted the little brown square lying on the floor. Instantly, recognition of what it was kicked in, then the consequences of what picking it up would entail. Above all, he did not want one of those lawyer-people to come back to recuperate what they had lost. It would be the end of him, unless he started running now.
His greed won over his fear though, when he saw that the wallet was a battered old thing anyway. No high-flying company lawyer would carry around such a horrible piece of fabric in their pockets. He picked it up, turning it over carefully, and undid the Velcro tab.
Inside were quite a few dollar bills, all with the face of Benjamin Franklin on them. Stan gasped, flipped through again to make sure the fever he was suffering from earlier on wasn't acting up on him. He double-checked everything, and even brought out his magnifying glass that he usually used for what he liked to call his "ultra-realistic approach on the representation of worth in the modern society" (now on display in you sucker's wallets!), but he found nothing amiss with the bills. Either the guy who lost this was a master forger, or else he had mistaken his normal wallet for his mugger's wallet [1] in his rush to get the green paper out of sight.
This was confirmed when Stan found an expired driver's licence and a card saying "Nice try!" in the lining of the beaten-up piece of leather.
Oh yes, nice try indeed, matey.
Seeing as the object contained no documents which were actually valid pieces of identity, it should be safe to assume that they would not come looking for it. It didn't really matter, after all, this was a mugger's wallet, they would have expected to lose it sooner or later. Stan was extremely grateful though, that it was at his hands rather than at any others. His crimes were victimless, at least.
He practically ripped the sweaty dress jacket off his shoulders and collapsed in front of the unlit TV. He glanced at the axolotl, and then went back to gloating over the small object he had been so happy to find. This entertained him for some time before he got bored and put it down on the dinosaur's skull which served as an end table, kicked back, and flicked on the old movies channel. He only did this when he was certain that there was no one else around to overhear him. "The Duchess Approves" had left a lasting impression on him, which of course he would never admit to anybody, and which he tried to find in similar films on one of Gravity Falls' notoriously bad channels.
The black and white images flickered to life on the old cathode screen, and the image of the beautiful Sturly Stembleburgiss jumped out at him, in one of those drama-filled moments that were oh so beautiful to watch. Tears sprung to Stan's eyes. The doily on the skull end table was the closest things at hand which vaguely resembled a handkerchief, and would unfortunately from then onwards never regain its previous name again. About a quarter of an hour passed as he drowned in the beautiful story of Colette and her star-crossed secret lover Henri, before movement was detected by the sharp-eared man.
He heard the sound of the lift door to the lab sliding open, a couple of shuffling footsteps, then the hum of the machine going back down to get its next load. Quickly, he shut off the idiot's lantern [2] before anybody could suspect what he did when he was alone in the house. With Colette's weeping gone, he could distinguish the sounds coming from the gift shop more clearly. Muffled sobbing was the thing that first struck him, maybe a small child, and the soothing voice of someone a little older trying to reassure him. With a sigh, Stan rubbed the palms of his hands over his face, glancing at the wallet sitting next to him to try and cheer himself up. It didn't work.
He slumped even deeper into the chair. He mumbled nearly inaudibly, slightly desperately to the stale living-room air:
"Really Sixer, what have you done now?"
