One More Knight Page 4

  Under her breath she muttered softly, “Damn, I hate this place.”

  “Ma’am. I’m gonna need to see your license and registration.”

  “Oh-yeah, sure.” She pawed at the deflated air bag until she got it out of the way and reached for her purse with shaking hands-at least for the place where it should have been, just across the center console, on the passenger seat. Then she realized that of course, everything would most likely have been thrown onto the floor during the accident. Mumbling “Just a minute,” she leaned over as far as she could and groped for it on the floor.

  A strong odor, one she recognized instantly, filled her nostrils. She registered the thought. But that’s impossible.

  “Ouch!”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Nothing-I cut myself. I think…there’s something…broken down here.” Cautiously now, she got a hand on it and pulled it out Sat holding it, staring at it, winking in the beam of the young patrolman’s flashlight-a squarish bottle minus its neck and its contents, wearing a black label with Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 boldly printed on it in white.

  “But,” said Charly firmly, “that’s impossible.”

  The two patrolmen exchanged another long look; they had to have gotten a whiff of the whiskey by this time. One of them took the bottle gingerly from her hands. The other said politely, “Ma’am, if you can, I’m gonna have to ask you to step out of the car.”

  “I don’t know where that came from,” Charly said. “It isn’t mine.”

  Neither of the patrolmen seemed to feel that required an answer.

  The one not holding the bottle put his hand under her elbow and thoughtfully murmured, “Watch your head,” as he helped her from the car.

  “I’m telling you, that bottle is not mine,” Charly insisted. “Look, if you’ll just let me…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Okay, she thought, I can’t believe I’m about to do this, but… “That judge you mentioned-Charles Phelps?” She let the breath out in a rush. “Okay, you’re not going to believe this, but I’m his daughter. I just left his house. Somebody there will vouch for me. If you’ll just-”

  The two patrolmen were looking at each other again. The one holding on to Charly’s arm was kind of scratching at the back of his head. The other one hitched at his belt and shifted his feet, cleared his throat and said, “Well now, ma‘am, there’s just one problem with that I’ve lived in this town for most of my life, and far as I know, Judge Phelps hasn’t even got a daughter. Kenny, you know anything about Judge Phelps havin’ a daughter?”

  “First I’ve heard of it,” said Kenny.

  Sizing up the two officers, Charly decided she wasn’t all that surprised. She figured they’d both had to have been barely out of diapers when she’d left town. This town. Why, oh, why, had she ever come back? This town had tried once before to eat her alive; maybe that was meant to be her destiny.

  She tried again, but with a growing sense of futility; her story sounded far-fetched even to her. “Look, I’ve been away. For a long time, actually. I live in California now. If you’ll just let me get my purse-”

  “We’ll take care of that, ma’am.” Patrolman Kenny already had his head and shoulders inside the Taurus and was shining his flashlight around, looking in the glove box, in the back, under the seats. He paused to give Charly a look over his shoulder. “Sure don’t see a purse in here anywhere. You sure you had one with you?”

  “Of course I had one with me,” Charly said, pleased that she’d had the presence of mind not to actually add the words you nitwit, even if her tone clearly implied them. “Look, it has to be there. It was right there on the seat. Maybe it-” She stopped.

  But had it been? She’d been pretty upset. Too upset to notice? She was sure she’d had it when she’d left Kelly’s. Could she have taken it into the house with her? She didn’t remember. But she might have-reaching for her purse when getting out of a car was something she usually did automatically.

  Okay, she must have. The purse wasn’t here. Therefore, she must have taken it someplace with her and left it. And after Kelly’s she’d only been to one place.

  “Wait,” she said, breathing through her nose and trying not to panic. “Okay. I know where it must be. I must have left it at the judge’s-I was just there. If you could just…I don’t know, take me back there, or let me call, or something…”

  The two patrolmen were flanking her now, half facing her with arms folded ominously on their chests, grave, official looks on their peach-fuzz faces. Charly’s heart began to pound; she thought she knew how a cornered rabbit feels.

  “Well now, ma’am,” said the one not named Kenny, “we’ve got a little situation here.”

  “What…situation?” asked Charly. She suddenly felt air starved. You in a heap a’ trouble, girl.

  “Have you had anything to drink this evening, ma’am?” Kenny was the speaker again; it was getting to be almost like a comedy routine, Charly thought, the way these two passed the conversational ball back and forth.

  “D-drink?” She shifted uncomfortably, remembering that she needed to go to the bathroom and wondering how he knew. Then the full meaning of the question hit her and she gasped, “Not Of course not!”

  “You sure about that?” Kenny sort of hefted the Jack Daniel’s bottle.

  “No, I swear. Look, I can explain-”

  Not-Kenny leaned over until his face was close to Charly’s and said in his nice, soft, polite Southern voice, “Ma’am, I’m sure you can, and we’re gonna give you a chance to do that. There’s just a couple problems we need to get cleared up first, okay?”

  “P-problems?” Charly resisted an urge to cringe; she’d been in worse situations, she supposed, but none quite so embarrassing. She was a lawyer, for God’s sake-she knew how bad this looked.

  “Yes, ma‘am. Now, first off there’s the little matter of this bottle. I found the neck underneath the seat, and see here, the seal’s broken? Which means it looks to me like you had an open bottle of whiskey in your car, ma’am. And along with the way you were drivin’-”

  “You were tailgating me! Your lights were in my eyes!”

  Kenny held up a warning hand. “Ma‘am, we followed you quite a ways at well under the speed limit, and you were weavin’ back and forth across the road. Then you lose control of your car for no good reason that I could see, and we find an open whiskey bottle in your car-now, you tell me, what are we supposed to think? And then you give us this story about bein’ Judge Phelps’s daughter, when everybody knows the judge don’t even have a daughter, and you got no driver’s license, no identification, no registration on this car you’re drivin’-and that’s another little problem. Well, a big one, actually.” He nodded at his partner, offering him the punch line.

  Which his partner-whom she was unable to identify, since by this time Charly had lost track again of who was Kenny and who wasn‘t-was delighted to deliver. “You see, ma’am, the reason we were following you in the first place is because this-here vehicle was reported stolen-”

  “What?”

  “Yes, ma‘am. Brown Ford Taurus. Georgia plates…” He took a notebook out of his shirt pocket, read the number off, then tucked the notebook away again and jerked his head toward the car now resting lopsidedly with its front end mashed up against a tree. “Look’s to me like that’s this car right here, ma’am.”

  “This is a mistake,” Charly muttered. A terrible mistake.

  “Yes, ma‘am. But right now what I’m gon’ do is, I’m placin’ you under arrest, and then we’re gonna take you on over to the hospital and make sure you’re okay, and while we’re at it, we’ll get this alcohol question settled, okay? And then you’re gonna have all the time you need to get things straightened out. Now, you have the right to remain silent…”

  Charly just closed her eyes.

  Chapter 3

  July 1, 1977

  Dear Diary,

  Guess what! I think Richie Wilcox likes me. He told Bobby Hanratty he did,
and Bobby told Kelly Grace, and Kelly Grace told me. I don’t know if I should tell Kelly Grace to tell Bobby to tell Richie that I like him back or not. I don’t want to be too forward. On the other hand, the Fourth of July picnic is coming up. Maybe Richie will ask me and Bobby will ask Kelly Grace, and then we can double-date! Yowza!

  Thought for the Day: I think Richie does look just a little like J.T.

  Troy was in the nursery putting the last screw in a four-switch plate when he heard the phone ring. Since he was pretty sure he knew who it was, he finished up what he was doing before he went across the hall to the master bedroom to answer it. He got there just before the machine picked up.

  “Hey,” he said, without bothering with formalities, “‘bout time you guys checked in. You must be havin’ fun.”

  All he got in response to that were some breathing sounds, which gave him a hint that it probably wasn’t his brother or Mirabella on the line after all. But before he could apologize and start all over again, a woman’s voice inquired in an ominous tone, “Is this the Starr residence?”

  “Sure is,” said Troy cheerfully. “Sorry about that-thought you were somebody else. What can I do for you?”

  “May I speak to Mirabella, please?”

  “Ah, shoot-I’m sorry, she’s not here right now. Can I-?”

  “Is this…Jimmy Joe?”

  “Naw, this is his brother Troy. Neither one of ‘em’s here, ma’am. Gone to Atlanta for the weekend.” The silence on the other end of the line had a hollow sound to it, Troy thought, as if the person there had just run out of options. “Hey,” he said, trying to be helpful, “I’d be glad to give ’em a message for you, if you want.”

  He heard more breath sounds, a quick in and out, the kind of breath people take to bolster their courage when they’re looking at the end of their rope. “Do you have a number where they can be reached?”

  “Uh, sure don’t. I’m expectin’ to hear from ’em any minute, though. Thought that was who it was when you called, matter of fact. Tell you what, why don’t you give me a number where you can be reached, and I’ll have Mirabella give you a call? How’s that sound, ma’am?”

  This time he got a high, muffled sound, about halfway between a snort of irony and a squeak of frustration, which made him more than ever suspicious that the person on the other end of the line might be just a little too tightly wound. His “Beg pardon?” was cautious.

  A chuckle reassured him somewhat, and so did the dry humor in the voice when it replied, “Nothing-I’ve just about been ma’amed to death lately, is all.”

  At least, he thought, whatever her problem was, the lady appeared to have some fight left in her. He ventured, “Well, ma’am, if you want to give me a name, I’d be glad to call you that instead.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, as if it was classified information he’d asked her for. Then she replied with an almost inaudible sigh, “It’s Charly. Charly Phelps. Mirabella’s friend-from California?”

  The light dawned. “Oh, yeah-the maid of honor, right? You’re comin’ in next week?” Then another light dawned, and he thought maybe he had the whole thing figured out “Oh, Lord, it is next week, isn’t it? Don’t tell me. We haven’t got that wrong, have we? Where in the hell are you?” If she was sitting in Atlanta at the airport waiting for somebody to pick her up, it would explain a lot.

  There was a pause before the answer came, in a curiously hollow tone. “I’m in Mourning Spring, Alabama.”

  “Alabama! Well, what in the hell are you doin’ in Alabama?” And why did she say it like some sort of doomsday curse? “You lost?”

  This time there wasn’t anything equivocal about the sound she made. It was definitely a snort. “You could say that. Listen, when you hear from Mirabella, just give her a message for me, okay? Tell her-”

  “Wait, let me get something to write this down on.”

  “Never mind. I don’t even know the number. Look, will you just tell her I’m in jail?”

  “Jail? Wait, did you say jail? What-hold on, don’t… hang…up…” But he was talking to himself.

  He thumbed the phone’s disconnect button and put it down, then ran a hand over his hair, which was still trying to grow out of its military cut. “Oh, man,” he muttered. “Oh, Lord.”

  Mirabella was going to love this. Just when she and Jimmy Joe had finally managed to get away for some R an’ R, too. Troy hadn’t been around long enough to get to know his about-to-be sister-in-law all that well, but it seemed to him she might’ve had about all the stress and strain she could handle lately, even for somebody as capable and efficient as she liked to think she was. First having the baby the way she had, then quitting her job in L.A. and moving all the way to Georgia, lock, stock and barrel. And now planning this wedding and trying to remodel the house to make a nursery for Amy Jo on top of it. Suffice to say, he was not looking forward to breaking the news to her that her maid of honor had gotten herself thrown in the pokey somewhere in Alabama.

  However, if there was one thing Troy did know well, it was how to take control of a situation in crisis. And it didn’t take much for him to conclude that this was probably one he was better equipped to handle right now than either Mirabella or his brother.

  Far better, he reasoned as he shaved and showered and packed his overnight bag with the efficiency born of long years of practice, if he just hopped on over to Alabama and took care of matters himself. That way he wouldn’t have to bother the happy couple with it, mess up their weekend in Atlanta and all. Shoot, the way he saw it, as his brother’s best man, it was no more than his duty.

  And it would be a whole lot easier facing Mirabella with the news after the fact, when everything had already been straightened out.

  So where in the hell was Mourning Spring?

  He decided what he needed was a road atlas, which he was sure his brother would have in his truck, the big blue Kenworth tractor-trailer rig that was parked on its gravel turnaround out beside the house. Jimmy Joe kept it locked up tight when he wasn’t driving, mainly to keep young J.J. from playing in it, but that was no problem, either. Living where they did, in a small community where everybody knew everybody else, and Jimmy Joe being a trusting soul by nature, Troy figured he’d keep the keys in the handiest and most obvious place. And that’s where he found them-in the top drawer of the oak rolltop desk in his brother’s tiny, cluttered office, just off the kitchen.

  He got the atlas out of the truck and took it into the kitchen where the light was good, where, with the help of a magnifying glass, he located Mourning Spring way up in the northeast comer of Alabama, near Tennessee. After that, all he had to do was put in a call to his mama’s house to let her know he was going to be gone for a while and to leave a message for Mirabella and Jimmy Joe, and then one last check of the house and his wallet and he was out the door.

  Except that he’d forgotten about Bubba, who naturally had gotten wind that something was up, dogs having a natural sixth sense about things like that. All the way down the steps and across the front lawn, the pup did his best to get on all four sides of Troy at once, weaving himself around and between his legs and whumping him with his tail and slobbering all over him in his eagerness to be included in whatever that something might be. So when Troy opened up the back door of his brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee and said, “Let’s go,” he almost got his legs knocked out from under him. Bubba shoved right through him and clambered up on the back seat, big tongue lolling and dripping, happy as a pig in petunias.

  Troy was grinning himself as he backed the Jeep around and drove down the driveway and turned onto the main road. It felt good to be heading out on a warm summer night. It had been a long time since he’d had a mission-a place to go and somebody needing him. Okay, as missions went it wasn’t much, fetching a maid of honor out of a small-town Alabama jail, but it did beat the hell out of installing light fixtures and intercoms. If there was anything the past few weeks had taught him, it was that he wasn’t cut out to be a handyman
.

  Not that he had a clue what he was cut out for. To tell the truth, he’d never thought much about it. His life had been focused on training and conditioning, keeping himself in a constant state of readiness as a member of the most elite and effective strike force in the world. On missions the focus became the job, and survival-his own and that of the other members of the team-in that order. He’d learned not to think too far beyond that, nor to form emotional ties or acquire too many responsibilities.

  Now he was learning that he was highly trained for a lot of things, most of which had very little application in a peaceful world. And that having few responsibilities and emotional ties was a sure-fire recipe for loneliness.

  To drown out that thought, he tuned the radio to a golden-oldies station out of Atlanta and opened the windows and let the car fill with the soft June night and the sweet smell of honeysuckle. He rolled down the back windows, too, so Bubba could stick his nose out and feel the wind tearing past his ears, which he thought might be a dog’s idea of heaven. Troy understood that. He felt a little bit the same way himself.

  He picked up an hour at the Alabama state line, so it was only about eleven o’clock local time-2300 hours by the way he was used to reckoning-when he rolled past the Mourning Spring city-limits sign. Though by the time he’d driven another two miles without coming to anything resembling a city, he thought the sign was maybe a little bit optimistic.

  Then, just when he was beginning to wonder if he’d missed it somehow, he drove past a sign that said Mourning Springs Motel. It was attached to one of those places that always seemed to him to belong to the same era as convertibles and drive-in movies, a row of dismal little one-story units painted a sickly green with doors that opened directly onto an asphalt parking lot. He was glad to see, though, that the Vacancy sign was lit up.

  Even more encouraging, B.B.’s Barn, which occupied a cinder-block building across the street, appeared to be doing a booming business on this Friday night, and one of the two gas stations on the next corner was still open. He didn’t stop to ask directions to the jail; like most men, Troy liked to do his own reconnaissance.