I winced. “Isn’t Oakland full of crime? I just saw something on the news where businesses were telling their employees not to eat lunch outside of their offices in the city.”
He nodded. “I like the pace here, but her family is there. We were having problems before I took this job. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry.” Bud was a great guy. “You deserve to be happy.”
He glanced at me. “Everybody deserves to be happy. Aiden seems solid.”
I hid my surprise. That was as personal a statement as Bud had ever made to me. “He is. I like him a lot.”
“The man must be a saint.” Bud looked back at the snowy road.
Had Bud Orlov just made a joke? I decided not to push my luck and stopped questioning him. Plus, we’d pulled up to the once-again-empty parking lot in front of the Rustic Relic.
Bud looked around. “Cute place. Didn’t know it was here.”
I nodded. “That’s the general consensus. They need to start advertising because they have some pretty cool stuff. At least they did before they were robbed.”
“Huh,” Bud said.
We both stepped into the snowy day and stomped up the wide wooden steps to push open the door, which made the little bell jingle merrily. I kicked the snow off my boots as Bud did the same, both of us looking around. Lisa had cleaned up the mess, but many of the shelves remained empty.
She came around the corner, dusting her hands off. “Hello? May I—?” She scowled. “What are you doing here?”
Bud instantly stepped in front of me, blocking my view.
I angled to the side to see around his square body. “Hey, Lisa. I just wanted to talk. This is Bud Orlov.”
“You brought a cop with you,” she said with a sneer.
“I’m under police protection. One of the robbers ended up being dumped at my office with an arrow through his heart.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Like dead?”
I nodded. “Definitely dead.”
“The hot, sexy one?” she asked.
I shook my head. “No. One of the other guys. In fact, both of the other two are dead. Only the tall, sexy guy is still around.”
Bud cut me a frown over his shoulder.
I shrugged. “Compared to the other two, the guy is fit.”
Lisa sighed, her shoulders going down. “Fine. What do you want?”
“A couple of things.” I edged carefully to Bud’s side and ignored how he bristled. “First, Wayne and Spencer Wilson came into my office. They want to sue you for assault and battery.”
She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “What a couple of morons. Honestly, if that Wayne had kept his wife satisfied, I’d probably be happily married to Richard Basanelli right now. We’d be sailing off around the world and having fun.”
What was it with Richard Basanelli and sailing off? I shook my head. “Maybe. Or maybe you’d be dead in the basement of a mansion, your bones having just been discovered.”
She snorted. “That’s a good point. Are you their attorney now, too? The Wilson twats?”
I guess I was their attorney. “How about you pay for a new suit for Spencer, and they’ll drop the case?”
She eyed me. “Spencer was the redhead, right?”
“Yeah. The guy with the suit you ruined by throwing paint.”
