Brand New Me (28 page)

He gazed around the room again, charting the rubble. His bar. His place. His wreck. At least he still had a pool table and a kitchen. Now he had to figure out how to put the rest of it back together again.

Deirdre slid into the chair opposite, her face pale in the dim light. She licked her lips, and amazingly enough, he felt a slight jolt of heat. Maybe he wasn’t as dead as he thought he was. Or as dead as he felt.

She took a deep breath. “Tom, I’m so sorry.”

He shrugged. “For what? You didn’t do this.”

“No, but you think my father did, don’t you?” Her eyes were fathomless, dark pools of pain. “That he ordered it.”

A muscle spasmed in his jaw. “I don’t know who did it.”

“Did Craig threaten you when he was here before? Something you didn’t mention at the time?”

Tom sighed. The hell with it. She was too smart to be lied to. “He said if I didn’t take his offer, I’d regret it. This is probably what he was talking about.”

“Which means my father was responsible for this.” She gazed around the room again, then closed her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault. You didn’t do it. I’m a big boy, Deirdre. I can take care of myself. And I make my own decisions. You didn’t talk me into this.”

She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. “Can we go home now?”

“Sure. I’ll walk you.”

“And stay?”

“I don’t…” He blew out a breath. Too many things to think about. Too many things to take care of. “I should probably stay here. Make sure nobody comes back.”

“Right.” Deirdre’s lips firmed. “They missed the kitchen, didn’t they? Maybe they’ll swing by again and take another shot.”

“Deirdre…”

She waved a hand at him. “It’s okay. We both need to get some sleep. We’ve got lots of work to do tomorrow.”

Tom looked around the wreckage of the Faro, feeling the numbness gather in his chest again.
Not we. Me. My place, my problem.
“Lots of work.”

Deirdre considered calling her father as soon as she got home. Let him see how he liked being awakened at two in the morning by an outraged daughter. But she wanted this to stop, and further pissing off her father was probably not the best way to go about it.

She managed to drag herself out of bed at seven to call his cell, but he didn’t answer. “Dad,” she said when she heard the beep of his voice mail, “it’s me. We have to talk about this situation. Please call me as soon as you get this message.”

After breakfast, she dialed his office line. He usually got in early, assuming he was there and not sitting somewhere in the vicinity of Konigsburg, gloating.

Her father’s assistant, Alanis, answered the phone. If she was surprised to hear from Deirdre after a several-week absence, she didn’t show it. “Your father’s not here, Miss Brandenburg. He’s in Europe—Slovenia this week.”

Slovenia. Well, as an alibi it was unique. “What day will he be back?”

“On Friday, assuming he doesn’t change his plans. He’d originally planned to be back last week, but apparently the negotiations have been more difficult than he anticipated.”

And then perhaps he’d also decided it was best to be out of the country when his plans finally clicked into place. For a moment, she wondered if he’d even considered that she might be in the Faro when his goons showed up to break the place to splinters.

“Shall I ask him to call you when he returns?”

Deirdre squared her shoulders. “Yes, Alanis, thank you.”

Plan B was to find Craig, who had to be hiding out somewhere in Konigsburg. Although getting her father to call everything off would be easier. Putting Craig on notice before she approached Nando or Erik Toleffson might be enough to keep the goons from coming back for another shot at the Faro. But when she looked at her watch, she decided to put that step off, at least for the moment. She had more important concerns, namely Tom. She ate a quick breakfast, then headed back to the bar.

As she’d anticipated, he was there, hammering some of the tables back into shape, the ones that weren’t smashed or missing legs. As she hadn’t anticipated, Clem and Marilyn and Bobby Sue were there too, sweeping up glass. Harry was behind the bar, doing inventory. The door to the beer garden swung open and Leon entered, carrying a full trash bag.

“Where do you want the bags?” he asked.

“Put it out back with the others.” Tom shrugged. “Pick-up’s tomorrow.”

“Lot of broken stuff out there.”

Tom’s shoulders stiffened. “Just clean it up, Leon.”

Deirdre leaned into the kitchen and grabbed another broom. Lucky they had so many. She closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself together, then walked back in. “What do you need done?”

Tom glanced at her, then shrugged again. “Clean-up mostly. Then I can start figuring out what comes next. Insurance adjuster should be here sometime this afternoon. I want to have a preliminary run-down by then.”

“We need this room cleared by lunchtime,” Clem called from the side.

Tom turned toward her, and Deirdre caught her breath. His face was gaunt, dark shadows beneath his eyes. She wondered if he’d slept at all last night. “We’re not opening for lunch, Clem, accept it. It’ll probably take a couple of days.”

Clem’s chin rose imperiously. “You get some tables set up, and I can cook. We can open.”

Tom gestured toward the boarded-up front window. “There’s no light. It would be like eating in a cave. I’d rather not open than open and have people see the place like this and not want to come back here again.”

Clem folded her arms across her chest. “We could serve in the beer garden.”

“The beer garden’s in worse shape than the main room. I don’t think any of the tables are in one piece out there.”

Deirdre took a breath. “I’ve got those three tables for the shop. And some chairs. They could go in the garden.”

Tom glanced at her, his lips becoming a taut line. “I’ll think about it.”

Clem snorted and went back to sweeping.

Light was a problem, Deirdre realized. One of the hanging fixtures over the pool table had been smashed, while the other was missing half its shade. The boarded-up window cut off all the sunlight from the street. The dim overheads made it hard to see the floor, but she swept as much as she could. Wood splinters, broken glasses and bottles, overturned ashtrays. Hard to believe a twenty-minute fight could produce this much chaos.

“How’s Chico?” she asked Tom the next time she emptied her dustpan into the plastic garbage bin in the middle of the room.

He shrugged. “Concussion mostly. Some scrapes and bruises, just like the rest of us. The doctor said they might let him go this evening if he doesn’t have any other symptoms.” He turned back to the table he was working on.

Deirdre thought about apologizing again, but decided not to. All the apologies in the world wouldn’t make up for this.

The front door swung open, sending a shard of sunlight flashing through the darkness. A large shape was silhouetted against the light. “My, my, my,” a deep voice said. “What a freakin’ mess.”

Tom sighed again. “Morning, Chief.”

Erik Toleffson picked up a barstool, placing it upright beside the bar as he stared around the room. “Somebody really did a number on you, Ames.”

“That they did.” Tom wiped his hands against his jeans, then walked toward the chief.

“Any idea who?”

Tom shook his head. “Nando grabbed one of them. He said you’d question him.”

“We did.” Erik gave him a dry smile. “Or that is, Nando did. I was at that resort outside Marble Falls with my wife. Delayed honeymoon. Nando called me up there, and we came back a couple of days early.”

Deirdre felt like wincing. She knew Erik and Morgan hadn’t been married long, and she had a sneaking suspicion he wouldn’t have enjoyed getting a call about a fight at the Faro when he was supposed to be relaxing with his new wife.

“Sorry to interrupt your time off, Chief.” Tom’s smile twisted slightly. “I didn’t exactly enjoy it myself, to tell you the truth.”

“Yeah, I can see how you wouldn’t. Any place we can talk?”

“Sure.” Tom nodded toward the beer garden. “Maybe we can find a couple of chairs out there that aren’t in pieces.”

Deirdre watched the two men walk through the door to the beer garden, her chest suddenly hollow. She swallowed hard. Craig Dempsey was going to be one sorry SOB when she finally found him, but her father was going to be a lot sorrier if she had anything to say about it.

Tom did a quick survey of the beer garden. Leon was sweeping up trash on the far side. The heavy umbrella tables were still standing, but a lot of the smaller, wood-topped café tables were splintered. And, of course, they’d wrecked the bar. Thank god the bandstand was metal and concrete—not much they could do to bring it down, although it looked like they’d tried.

Toleffson narrowed his eyes as he checked out the damage. “Looks like somebody has a real hard-on for you, Ames. You need to tell me who.”

He pulled out one of the few chairs that was still in one piece and sat, studying Tom from beneath the rim of his Stetson.

Tom pulled out another chair. At least he had two that were still in one piece. “I’ll take care of it myself.”

Toleffson’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like the sound of that. I’m the one who’s supposed to take care of things around here, not you. And I sure as hell don’t want you causing more trouble than you’ve already got.”

Tom gave Toleffson his most impassive look. He didn’t figure the chief would be an easy man to stare down, but maybe he’d give it a try. “I thought you had a couple of the guys from last night down at the station. Can’t they tell you who was behind it?”

Toleffson shrugged. “They gave me somebody, guy named Pat Hardesty. You know him?”

Tom shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

“That’s what I figured. As it happens, I know Hardesty—he’s a small-time crook who’d like to be big but doesn’t have that kind of brains. So he didn’t come up with this on his own. No way for him to profit from it.”

Tom managed to look uninterested in Pat Hardesty and his plans for moving up.

Toleffson peered back at the bandstand again. “Anyway, I’m betting Hardesty didn’t set this up, but I’ve passed his name on to Sheriff Friesenhahn so we can try to find him. Now I need to know who’s actually bankrolling Hardesty and his buddies so I can figure out how much trouble we’ve got on our hands. I’m asking you again, Ames, who’s behind this?”

Tom stared down at his feet, trying to figure a way to give Toleffson nothing without ending up in the slammer himself.

He heard the door from the bar swoosh closed and glanced up. Deirdre was staring at them both with eyes the color of slate. All of a sudden, Tom had the feeling she’d be harder to stare down than either of them.

“The man who most probably hired these thugs is named Craig Dempsey, Chief Toleffson. But the man who hired Craig Dempsey is my father, John Brandenburg. He’s out of the country right now, but I’m trying to reach him. I’m also trying to find Craig. Either of them could put a stop to this, and once I locate them, I’ll make sure that they do.”

Toleffson blinked at her. Tom had a feeling he wasn’t accustomed to being caught totally flat-footed. “Why would your father want to put Ames out of business, Ms. Brandenburg?”

“He doesn’t. He’s just trying to bully Tom into cancelling my lease on the shop next door and firing me from my waitress job. He figures that will make me come home.” Her lips curved up in a remarkably cold smile. “It won’t do that, but he doesn’t understand that it won’t. Tom here is caught in the middle, and he shouldn’t be.”

“You have proof of this?”

“No, but Tom does.” Deirdre turned those slate-cold eyes on him again. “Craig threatened him when he wouldn’t promise to fire me. And he told Tom my father would pay him off if he cancelled my lease.”

Toleffson went on staring at her for a few moments, then sighed. “Well, it’s good to know nobody else in town is going to be hit by this wrecking crew. Your father doesn’t have his sights on anybody else, does he?”

She shook her head. “Not unless I go to work for them.”

“Any idea where I can find this Craig Dempsey?” He narrowed his eyes. “I need to have a talk with him. The sooner the better.”

She shook her head again. “I’m looking for him too, Chief. I don’t think he’s staying here in town anymore.”

“Where was he staying before this?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess the Woodrose Inn.” Deirdre’s lips spread in a humorless smile. “He’d want to stay in the most expensive place in Konigsburg.”

Toleffson pushed himself to his feet. “If you hear from him…”

“I’ll let you know,” she finished.

“And don’t try to do anything with him yourself, okay?”

She frowned. “I want to talk to him, Chief, so I can’t promise that I won’t do that. But I won’t do anything else, although I can think of a few things I’d like to do to him.”

Toleffson didn’t look like he was too happy with that idea, but he let it go. “Okay, Ames, anything else happens around here, you call me.”

“Yes sir, I’ll do that.” They both knew he probably wouldn’t, but Tom figured there was no harm in a congenial lie now and then.

He watched Toleffson step back through the door. Deirdre stayed where she was, staring at him, her gaze defiant.

He managed to keep his voice level, a considerable feat given how pissed he felt at the moment. “You shouldn’t have told him all that, Deirdre.”

“Why? So you and he could go on playing John Wayne with each other? That code of the west crap? Why keep it a secret? I figure the more help we have in finding Craig, the sooner he’ll stop.”

And the less chance I have to wring his friggin’ neck before anybody else does.
Tom took another in a series of deep breaths. “It won’t do any good. Even if Toleffson finds Dempsey, he’ll just deny it. It’ll be my word against his. Nobody else heard him.”

“Maybe Hardesty will say it was Craig.”

“My guess is Hardesty is long gone. And even if he isn’t, he’s been paid to keep his mouth shut. I wouldn’t put much money on him as a witness against Craig.”

“I still don’t see why you think it’s a bad idea to tell the chief about what’s really going on.”