Erik winked at Jeff. “She’s already given it her best shot. She didn’t leave happy.”

“Oh, man, you turned that down? Hell, I’d tap that!” Jeff cast a nervous look at the ceiling. “I mean, I would if I wasn’t married.”

“Uh-huh.” Erik tucked the jug under one arm. “Also, not what I said.” He grinned when Jeff’s eyebrows flew up. “Come see my dig… Liam, right? I’m up the Bay twenty miles, on the Bay side of the road. It’s a steep climb down but I promise it will be worth your time. Thanks, Jeff. Later.” He was out the door with a backwards wave.

“Oh, shit,” Jeff said.

“What?” Liam turned to see Erik pause briefly before another figure, also a man. “What’s wrong?”

Jeff came out from behind the bar fast and hit the door before it had closed fully behind Berglund, Liam right behind him. By the time he caught up with Jeff, a third person had pulled up in what looked like Lincoln’s ne plus ultra version of a Navigator, black in color. The woman that slid down from the driver’s seat was a looker, medium/medium, but with her weight distributed in a manner that would have made Rubens weep. Her waist-length hair was nearly the same color as her vehicle and she wore jeans and T-shirt to match her vehicle and so tight that you could eyeball her pulse through the cloth. As much-married as Liam was he was also a man and it was difficult to drag his eyes up to her face. When he did manage it his gaze was caught and held by a pair of large, dark, widely spaced eyes whose initial Disney-princess look was belied by an intelligence so sharp it might draw blood. How much was up to her, and if you got in her way.

“Dom,” Jeff said in a resigned voice. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Just starting the day off right, Jeff.” She made even that innocuous statement sound seductive. She strolled over to stand next to the man confronting Berglund. A more unlikely couple would have been impossible to find. She was perhaps in her early forties and he looked at least twice her age and a quarter her weight. She stood erect, shoulders back, those amazing breasts thrust out in front of her like bazookas taking aim, skin glowing with health and vigor. He was thin to the point of emaciation, stooped over a chest caved in by age, all exposed skin freckled with liver spots, only wisps of colorless hair remaining in the barest fringe above his ears. His eyes were red and watery with swollen lids and his right hand was curled arthritically over the head of a massive diamond willow cane with a braced handle that looked as if it weighed as much as he did. His remaining energy was directed in what could only be described as a homicidal glare at Erik Berglund. His voice was high and raspy and vicious. “You ignorant lout, you puppy, you—you—” Spittle flew as the old man spluttered to a halt.