Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)(40)

Kate laughed and opened the door.

They entered, and whatever Kate had expected, it wasn’t this. The floor was black and white tiles, but the rest of the place was an explosion of neon colors. The walls were plastered with movie posters and record album covers from the 1980s. On the far back wall was a bank of old-school video games. PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, Frogger.

She and Devin took a seat at the counter. It was a busy place, obviously a local hangout. When a waitress in blue jeans and a Handyman Pizza T-shirt approached them, Kate quickly scanned the chalkboard wall with the menu written on it. She ordered a slice of cheese pizza for Devin and two iced teas.

“Haven’t seen you here before,” the waitress said as she poured the iced tea into two plastic cups. “Are you visiting the water park?”

“No, Lost Lake.”

The waitress’s eyes widened. “You’re Eby Pim’s niece! I heard you were out there for a visit.”

Kate was surprised. “You did?”

The waitress laughed. “Small town. I’m coming to the party. Be right back with your slice.”

In minutes, Devin’s pizza was in front of her, and she dug in.

Kate sipped her tea, aware that people were watching them curiously. There was some commotion in the kitchen, and suddenly the door swung open and Wes stood there, his eyes finding them immediately.

“I told you she was out there,” a male voice from inside the kitchen said.

“Hi, Wes!” Devin said, strings of cheese stretching between her mouth and the pizza slice.

“Nice place you have here,” Kate said. He was dressed in soft, worn jeans and a long-sleeved T. His hair was a lighter red than it had been, wet with sweat the day before yesterday. It made him seem more real, here in a place that wasn’t the lake. It was the first time she’d ever seen him outside that context, and it was strange to realize that her fond feelings for him were the same here as they were there. It wasn’t just situational. It was him.

He walked over to them, looking a little embarrassed by his entrance. “Thanks.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

He leaned against the counter. “Sure.”

“Why do you call it Handyman Pizza when it’s totally eighties in here?”

He smiled. She could see the boy inside best when he did that, guard down. “That confuses a lot of people the first time they come in here. When this building went on the market, I wanted it because it has a large alley garage entrance downstairs, which was perfect for me because I’d finally saved enough to make my handyman business a brick-and-mortar company instead of one I ran out of my foster mother’s house. There are three stories. The third floor is my apartment.” He pointed his thumb at the ceiling. “The man who owned the place before me ran this restaurant here on the street entrance. He called it Flashback Pizza. I didn’t have any interest in running a restaurant, so I thought I would lease the space out. But the restaurant was popular with the locals, and they campaigned to keep it open. The previous owner had died suddenly, and people kept putting his vintage green high-top sneakers on the steps outside my apartment at night. Sometimes I’d find them in the garage downstairs. A couple of times they were even in here in the restaurant when I came down from my apartment in the mornings, on the floor at that table”—he indicated a neon orange table in the corner—“like he’d just been sitting there, then got up and left.”

A man whose whole face seemed to be made of whiskers appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “I keep telling you, we didn’t do it,” he said. “It was his ghost. He wanted the place to stay open. He was buried in those shoes! Hi there, Kate, I’m Grady. Tell Eby I’m bringing chicken wings to her party, okay?”

Kate smiled and nodded, but Wes ignored him. “Thus Handyman Pizza was formed. Two businesses in one. I have an employee and a dispatcher for my handyman business downstairs. And I kept the employees of the restaurant here, which Grady oversees.” He nodded to where the cook had disappeared back into the kitchen. “But there are weird crossovers, like when people call for a handyman and ask that a pizza be delivered, too. Or when customers in the restaurant bring in broken lamps, and eat here while the lamps are rewired downstairs.”

“That’s very clever,” Kate said.

“I just fell into it,” Wes said.

“You always were pretty easygoing.”

Wes snorted. “Meaning I let you boss me around.”

Devin finished her pizza slice and said, “Hey, Wes, look what the alligator gave me.” She lifted the knobby piece of wood she’d set on the counter earlier. She carried it around with her like a flashlight everywhere she went. “I think it’s a clue.”

Wes took the piece of wood and gave it due consideration. “A clue to what?”

Devin shrugged. “Something the alligator wants me to find.”

“It looks like part of a cypress knee,” he said, handing it back to her.

“You know … it does,” Kate agreed.

Devin looked excited. “What’s a cypress knee?”

“It’s the part of a cypress tree root that sticks out above the ground or water. Your mom and I used to go diving around the cypress knees at the far end of the lake, looking for treasure.”

“Not that you can do that,” Kate added quickly. “It’s too dangerous. My mother would have had a fit if she’d known what I was doing. I remember how tangled those roots were underwater. It’s amazing we didn’t get trapped.”