Read Shadows Gray for Free Online Page B

Prue’s food cart.  Prue parks in that area most times as it’s close to a schoolyard and a business complex both, although the thought of her feeding small children alligator stew makes me roll my eyes.  Not to mention with her people skills, she’d probably stew the children along with the gators.  The business men and women in their expensive tailored suits and spiked heels will pay twice as much for her strange cooking as other customers, but their tips are terrible. They think she’s avant-garde and ahead of her time, and call her “a risk taker in the kitchen,” and “the city’s best kept secret!”  Actually, she’s far behind their time but she definitely has the best kept secret.
    It doesn’t take me long to reach Poplar and Monterey.  Luke’s section of the complex is the only rundown little square of the shiny business complex.  Even the yoga studio is sparkling and clean, and the tiny perfect office spaces that surround Dawes Photography are symmetrically square shaped with gleaming windows and perfectly hung signs.  Luke’s space looks like the room that time forgot.  The windows haven’t been washed in what looks like a very long time, the sign is crooked and it’s so dim inside it’s impossible to tell if he is even open for business.  The windows, besides being filthy, are covered with fliers for musicals, concerts, dog sitting services, apartments for rent, and estate sale notices; on quick glance, they all seemed to have expired several months ago.  The whole building complex reminds me of a beautiful smiling head with one brown, crooked tooth in its gaping mouth.  I reach out my hand, turn the handle of the door and enter the brown decaying tooth, leaving the rest of the shiny head outside sparkling in the sun.
    A set of bells right above my head jingles as I step inside and as I close the door behind me.  Even the bells sound a bit tired and worn out.  When no one greets me, I reach up and shake the bells more vigorously. 
    “Hello?”  Luke’s head pokes out from behind a door in the back.  His voice sounds extremely surprised at the realization that something resembling a customer has actually arrived.  When he sees it’s me, he looks even more surprised.  “Gray?  Come in.  I was just eating breakfast in the back here.  Do you want to join me or is there something I can do for you?  How are you?”  He seems to have a lot of questions and his sentences run together as though he is speaking exactly what is going through his mind.  He looks as disheveled as ever; he needs a haircut and a shave both.  He has a plate of food balanced in one hand as he holds open the door with the other.
    “Um, sure, I can stay for a bit,” I answer. Well, of course I can, isn’t that what I’m here for? “And I’m alright, thanks.  You?”
    He takes a bite as the door swings shut behind us and waits a moment to finish chewing before answering me.  “Good.  Hungry?”
    I think of my breakfast feast, sitting in my stomach like a brick and shake my head.  I do peer at his plate of food though.  “Wait, that smells familiar.  Is that Prue leftovers?”
    He nods happily.  “She said it’s an old family recipe - shepherd’s pie.”
    I snort.  “It’s an old recipe, alright; all of Prue’s recipes are old.  And it isn’t shepherd’s pie, it’s squirrel pie.”  I watch his bushy eyebrows for a reaction.  They shoot up and take residence in the sandy-colored hair that falls over his forehead and stay there for a minute, before settling back down over hazel eyes.  He takes another bite.  “I can support squirrel control.  Little buggers got into my film last year.”
    “I can’t imagine why,” I say dryly, “You keep such a clean, organized storeroom.”  I look around at my surroundings and gingerly sit down at a small bistro style table.  Other than the table, there is a tiny refrigerator, one chair – which I am perched on - a cot with a rumpled