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Runaway for the Grumpy Daddy

Page 88

by Lucky Moon

He nodded against my palm.

Then he stepped back and something harder returned to his face.

"Also, I found Ollie."

Hutchins looked up from the printouts.

Cash turned just enough to include him. "His sister's place past the school. Truck tucked behind the garage like he'd developed shame overnight."

"Mr. Prewitt is in the front office," Hutchins said.

"Yeah. He is." Cash's mouth made an ugly line. "Found him sober. That helped. He started with the same story he gave you. Saw Boone's truck leaving the alley at one-ten. Told him to show me where he was standing."

Hutchins leaned back in his chair.

Cash continued.

"He said outside the side door. I asked which side door, because the Spur bolts the alley door at eleven and has for three years. Then he changed it. Said he saw through the window."

"There's no alley window," I said.

"Exactly. Then he said he went around back to piss."

Hutchins's face stayed still. "What did you do?"

"Asked whether he wanted to tell the lie in front of the woman whose bathroom he used at twelve-forty."

Cash had local memory the way Wyatt had land law. Every party, every couch, every bad decision made in three counties lived somewhere behind the grin people mistook for emptiness.

"He never left her place till one," Cash said. "She was awake. So were three other people. They'd all come over after the Spur closed. Ollie was inside the bar until close, left out the front, walked past the school. Never went near the back lot. Never saw Boone's truck."

"And the money?" Hutchins asked.

"Two hundred in twenties."

Cash looked toward the front office wall as if he could see through it.

"He says he doesn't know where it came from. Which is interesting, because Ollie knows where every dollar comes from. Man still talks about the five he found in a snowbank in 2019."

"How'd you get him to recant?" I asked.

Cash met my eyes.

"Four minutes."

"That wasn't the question."

"I told him if he kept lying, the sheriff would pull his phone records and find out who called him. Then I told him Wyatt would request his bank records, tax returns, bar tabs, and every debt he's hidden from his sister."

"Can Wyatt do that?"

Cash gave me the shadow of an old expression. Not a grin. The memory of one.

"Ollie didn't ask."

From the front office came the faint scrape of a chair.

Hutchins gathered Josie's printouts and stood. "Mr. Prewitt will prepare an amended statement."