Brand New Me (22 page)

She wandered up and down a few side streets, checking the used furniture stores. The antique stores were largely off limits, since even with haggling there was no way she could afford their stuff. Most of them seemed to specialize in Victorian Heavy anyway, with tables for twenty that would have taken up all the room in the shop before she even thought about chairs.

Still, there were enough used furniture stores to provide her with a lot of possibilities, most of them bad. Metal patio tables so flimsy the average five-year-old could probably flip them over. Vintage kitchen tables that looked like they needed serious paint stripping. She even found a couple of laminated plastic tables with vinyl-covered chairs that would have been perfect if she’d wanted to open a fifties diner knock-off.

Deirdre sighed. She might have to go with the bentwood chairs and wooden café tables she’d found in a discount catalog, even though she suspected they’d fall apart within a couple of months. Using them would also make it tough to convince people to stick around for a second cup of coffee since their rear ends would be numb after fifteen minutes.

She wandered up another side street, giving the shop windows a desultory glance. Another candle store, one that sold what looked like cast-iron lawn ornaments, another candy shop—Konigsburg seemed to specialize in sugar shock. She stopped, peering into the next window on the block. From the street, the room looked too crowded to move around in. She could see rows of dark, lumpish shapes, a couple of dusty coat racks, what seemed to be a marble washstand. She stepped back so that she could read the sign in the window—The Republic of Texas. She frowned. Somebody had mentioned this store to her, but she couldn’t remember who. It was worth a look anyway. At least the stuff might be in her price range. She pushed the door open and walked in, hearing the tinkle of the shop bell.

The inside didn’t look much better than it had from the street. The space was divided into a series of narrow rows, marked by huge breakfronts and armoires, along with some battered chests of drawers. Deirdre inched down one aisle, peering toward the end. From what she could see, most of the stuff seemed to date from the forties and fifties and featured dark wood laminates, which didn’t exactly bode well for funky café tables and chairs.

A figure appeared at the far end of the row, but the room was so dim she had trouble seeing him clearly. “Hello?” she called.

“What do you want?” the man growled.

Somehow Deirdre managed not to jump. Customer service must not be a big feature here. “I’m looking for café tables and chairs. Metal if you have them, but wood might also work, depending on the style.”

The man moved toward her, his eyes narrowing. He looked a little like the kind of actor who specialized in serial killers—very tall, very thin, sharp cheekbones jutting at the sides of his face, deep-set, burning eyes. She half-expected him to cackle and rub his hands together.

“Over there.” He motioned with his head, his eyes never leaving her face.

Deirdre turned quickly and edged through a small gap between a couple of pine dressers. Behind a particularly ornate walnut armoire, she saw three metal café tables. The legs were bent in graceful curves, gathering to a single circle underneath the beveled glass tops, then flaring out to spread in three-legged stands. The four metal chairs had curling designs on the backs to echo their striped circular seats. They looked like they’d been part of an ice cream parlor set, maybe for something like
Meet Me In St. Louis.
Surely nobody made café tables that looked that perfect, at least not anymore.

Of course, they’d need to be stripped and repainted. And the striped seats would need to be reupholstered, given the tufts of cotton batting she could see drifting through the worn spots. Maybe Tom would let her use the yard behind the Faro so that she could do them all at once. She glanced at the price tag and managed not to gasp. “Any more chairs to go with these?”

Mr. Serial Killer shook his head, his dark eyes still burning. Deirdre swore she could hear the soundtrack for
Deliverance
tinkling in the background.

She drew herself up, squaring her shoulders. “What can you do for me if I take all three, along with the four chairs?”

He shrugged, pursing his lips. “Maybe could come down fifty.”

Right.
“I’ll give you three hundred for the lot.”

“Three hundred?” He smiled derisively, showing widely spaced picket-fence teeth. “I might take eight.”

“I’m sure you would.” She managed a faintly derisive smile of her own. “Four hundred. They need to be refinished and the chairs need to be reupholstered.”

“Six. And you haul them off. That’s my last offer.”

Deirdre managed not to choke. She didn’t even have four hundred dollars, let alone six. Maybe she could borrow the money from Docia, or float a loan at the Konigsburg bank. “Can I leave a deposit while I find out when I can get them hauled away?”

Serial killer narrowed his eyes again. “Twenty percent. And if you don’t pick them up, you forfeit.”

“Right.” She dug into her purse, pulling out the crisp twenties she’d gotten from the bank this morning. The hundred and twenty would take care of her spending for the week, but she could always get her meals at the Faro. If she were being practical, she should probably be saving her money for the roaster, but who knew when she’d find tables and chairs like this again?

She handed Mr. Serial Killer the money. He jerked his head, motioning for her to follow him.

Amazingly enough, the far end of the room seemed to be an actual antique store. Glass cases surrounded a battered desk against the back wall. Deirdre glanced at the contents—lots of guns, something that looked like a cannon ball, some ancient bottles with corroded tops.

Above the desk on the back wall, she saw a bumper sticker that looked like the Texas flag with the word
Secede
emblazoned across it.

Oh well, it wouldn’t be Texas without a few nuts hanging from the trees.

Mr. Serial Killer pulled open the desk drawer and rummaged through the contents until he found a battered notebook.

“What’s your name?” he snapped.

“Brandenburg. Deirdre Brandenburg.”

Suddenly, his eyes were burning again. Deirdre tried not to look self-conscious. Maybe he knew Aunt Reba or Docia.

“Address?”

“You can reach me at the Faro. I work there.”
And I have a couple of very capable bodyguards at my back.

He studied her for a moment, then scrawled something in his notebook. “I’ll hold ’em for a week. No longer.” He handed her a piece of paper with a couple of scrawled sentences—apparently her receipt.

“I’ll get them from you before then, Mr.…” Deirdre licked her lips. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Broadus.” His lips stretched to show the picket fence once again. “Milam Broadus. This is my store.”

Deirdre blinked at him. Suddenly she remembered exactly where she’d heard about the shop before. Tom. And he’d told her Milam Broadus was crazy. Well, judging from the whole serial killer thing, not to mention the bumper sticker, she could see his point.

Tom had been in a bad mood since he’d woke up that morning. Hell, truth be told he’d been in a bad mood before he woke up—since he’d watched Deirdre scamper up the stairs to her apartment. He should have stayed with her, only she hadn’t exactly asked for his company. He should have asked her to stay with him, only she hadn’t looked like she was interested. Mainly she’d looked shaken up, like maybe she was reconsidering her association with the Faro—and him. Maybe she’d finally realized just how far apart their worlds really were.

For the twentieth time that day Tom cursed the good ol’ boys who had tried to break up his bar. Not only had they driven out his customers, they were affecting his sex life.

And that he would not tolerate.

He checked the bill from his liquor supplier against the case of bottles one more time, trying to find the bottle of Triple Sec that was supposed to be there.

Three years. Three fucking years. And not a fight.
It had taken him around a month after he’d won the Faro from Berenger to convince Berenger’s customers that beating each other up would not be part of the evening’s entertainment. Hiring Chico had helped since only a maniac would start a fight when Chico was involved.

Or at least that had always been true before. Last night’s combatants hadn’t seemed as impressed with Chico as they should have been.

He’d barred some of Berenger’s old customers permanently and warned others like the Steinbruner brothers to clean up their act. Thanks to Chico, with some minor help from Leon and Harry, he’d managed to kick the bar into shape. Even the frat boys knew better now than to start a fight in Tom’s place.

So who the hell were the idiots who didn’t know better? And how the hell had they managed to get away clean last night?

Tom heard the door open as he bent over to stow the new bottles of bourbon and tequila on the shelves beneath the bar. He straightened, ready to tell a potential customer that they weren’t open until eleven, until he recognized the figure in the doorway.

Erik Toleffson. Chief of the Konigsburg Police Department. Tom blew out a breath and leaned his elbows on the bar. “Morning, Chief. What’s new?”

Toleffson strolled across the room without a lot of hurry. All the Toleffson brothers were built like redwoods, including the one who was Tom’s accountant. But sometimes the chief looked more like a stone support pillar. Tom was by no means a small man, but next to the Toleffsons, even tall men sometimes looked like elves.

“Morning, Ames. Heard you had some excitement last night.” Toleffson eased onto a barstool, removing his Stetson and placing it on the bar.

Might as well cut to the chase.
“We had a fight. Not much to it. Some broken glass and a few bruises. Didn’t last more than a few minutes.”

Toleffson nodded slowly. “That’s what Nando said. Any idea what started it?”

Tom shrugged. “Somebody pissed somebody off. Lot of yelling, but nothing specific.”

“Tourists or locals?”

“Not locals. Chico didn’t recognize them, and neither did I.”

“Tourists then.”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. He’d love to lay the whole thing off on a bunch of idiot tourists, but he didn’t think he could. “Not exactly. Too old to be frat boys, and they didn’t look like the type who’d visit Konigsburg for the scenery.”

Toleffson watched him steadily. “Interesting. That’s also what Nando said. Which leads to the question of what they were doing here at the Faro.”

“Drinking?” Tom said hopefully.

“That too.” Toleffson’s half-smile faded. “You pissed off anybody around here lately, Ames?”

Tom felt the same prickling at the back of his neck he’d felt the night before. “A few, I guess. The usual.”

“Anybody specific?”

For a moment, Tom considered telling him about Craig Dempsey and the threat from Deirdre’s father. But Toleffson was Docia’s brother-in-law, which made him kin to Deirdre in that roundabout way people were related in Konigsburg. It wasn’t that he thought Toleffson would be on Brandenburg’s side, but he wasn’t exactly sure what the family would think. Maybe they’d decide he wasn’t good enough for her, which was possibly true. Or maybe they’d think he was a dangerous man for her to be around, which was possibly even more true.

Plus the thought that Craig Dempsey might be engineering his downfall felt too paranoid to be taken seriously.

He shrugged. “Nobody offhand. I might have stepped on some toes I wasn’t aware of, I guess.”

Toleffson sighed. “Here’s the thing, Ames. I know nobody much gave a damn about the Faro in the old days—about the kind of fights that went on here. When Brody was chief, he was too busy stealing the city blind, and Olema wasn’t around long enough to take much interest in anything except deer hunting. But I figure I’m in for the long haul, and I’m not happy having a bar in town where there’s trouble.”

Tom stiffened. He and Toleffson had never had any disagreements before. In fact, he’d once considered hiring him as a bouncer back when Toleffson had been a part-time officer. Being on Toleffson’s shit list would not be pleasant, and he wasn’t going to end up there if he could help it. “I’m not planning on the Faro being a bar that has trouble. This is the first fight we’ve had in a couple of years. As far as I’m concerned, it’ll be the last.”

“I figured as much. Just wanted to touch base.” Toleffson pushed himself to his feet, picking up his hat from the bar. “You got somebody playing in your beer garden tonight?”

“Yeah, it’s usually Saturdays, but I managed to book Frankie Belasco. The guy who does the Wine and Food Festival every year.”

Toleffson grinned, settling his Stetson on his head. “Frankie, huh? Morgan and I might stop by. Got a soft spot in my heart for old Belasco.”

Tom nodded a little warily. “Glad to have you, Chief.” Having the chief of police in the beer garden might put a bit of a damper on things. On the other hand, pulling in the Toleffsons could do a lot toward making the Faro look respectable to the local population, and maybe offset last night.

Toleffson strolled toward the door as Chico entered. The two of them together were sort of like a giant sunspot, blocking all the light from the window for a moment. Chico nodded in Toleffson’s direction, then stood back to let him pass. For a moment, Tom thought he saw Toleffson smile, but then he was gone.

Frankie Belasco’s band was the biggest act Tom had booked yet, which meant he was the also the most expensive. Which meant a cover charge.

Tom stationed Leon at the front door, with Chico at the beer garden entrance where trouble was most likely to break out, assuming trouble decided to come by that evening. He watched the crowd carefully, looking for faces from the previous night, but none of the fighters showed up so far as he could tell.

He should have been counting the house, seeing if they’d made back Frankie’s upfront money. Instead, he ended up counting Toleffsons.

They all seemed to be in the beer garden, although there were so many Toleffsons in town by now, it wasn’t always easy to keep them straight. Deirdre’s cousin Docia was there with her husband, Cal, the vet. Janie Dupree and her husband, Pete, were there again, along with Lars, Tom’s accountant, and his wife, Jess.