Kathleen Creighton: One More Knight

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…”