Page 58 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Thrown for a Loss

“Lucas O’Dermal.”
“Address.”
“You mean where I live?”
“Yes.”
“86 Scullery Row. That’s where my mom stays. Dad is in an RV,
so when I have to visit him we’re in a trailer park somewhere. Not
the same one twice.”
“Where were you when the coins fell on the floor over there?”
“Over there?” He gawked at the escalator landing. “I don’t know.
Over here somewhere, I guess.”
“Who was with you at that moment?”
“You mean when—yeah, when we started running over there. I
don’t know. Maybe I was talking to someone. Could have been
Newt—or was it Cal?”
Great. He had just contradicted Curt. Lieutenant Gramercy was
going to have a fine time sorting out all this nonsense.
“When you arrived on the scene where the coins had fallen, did
you see anyone near the escalators?”
His head swiveled again, as if seeing the place would magically
provide a rerun of the past. I suspected he was already on the way to
having short-term memory problems, thanks to drugs, poor eating
habits and a brain that never got any exercise.
“I wasn’t looking over there. The coins were rolling the other way,
down the hall.”
“Did you pick up any of them?”
“No. That alarm thing pretty much ended the fun just as I got
there.”
Labelle was keeping her voice calm and even, and getting nothing
for her efforts. I wondered what she could do to squeeze anything a
bit more informative out of a kid who wasn’t being uncooperative—
just dense.
“Do you know Autumn Pratt or Bertha Marks?”
Luke grinned, but his eyes remained dull. “Funny you mentioning
that name. We were just talking about one of those girls. She was
mashed up pretty bad in that accident just now, right?” We both
nodded to keep him talking. “Cal knew her, I think. Name didn’t
mean anything to me, not the Bertha one, I mean. Autumn. But her
face was real beaten up. So maybe that was why I couldn’t say if I

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