Southern Discomfort

Immediately, Ambrose Daughtridge, the county's most courtly silver-haired attorney, entered through the double doors at the rear of the courtroom, his hand on Mrs. Englert's elbow, as if she might trip on her way down the aisle to the bar of justice. Ambrose couldn't have been more lofty and dignified than if he were escorting her to a concert, but I thought I detected a slightly self-conscious expression on Mrs. Englert's patrician face, the sort of look she might wear if she'd arrived at the concert after the conductor had begun the first movement, so that she now had to inconvenience those already seated and wrapped in music. Ambrose shepherded her to a chair at the defense table as Doug began reading the charge.

I kept my face serene and interested, but inside I was seething. Those bastards. Reid and Dwight. Wait'll I get my hands on you, I promised them silently.

The other attorneys might think it funny that Kezzie Knott's daughter was going to have to pass judgment on one of Dobbs's most prominent women for possession of untaxed liquor; but of those present, only Reid and Dwight knew that Mrs. Englert had personally squashed the matrimonial designs her son had on me a few years back. A bootlegger's daughter had been deemed an unsuitable vessel by which to convey Hamilton-Englert genes into the twenty-first century.

Not that I would have had Randolph Englert as a present on a Christmas tree, but it should have been my decision, not his mother's. Unfortunately, Reid and Dwight were both there in the lounge of the Holiday Inn the night Randolph suggested that we cool it for a while till his mother came around. I told him our relationship was already cold enough to keep his reptilian relatives in hibernation till the next glacier hit town; then, just in case he still had any hots for me, I dumped an ice bucket in his lap and walked out.

Next day Reid left a package of Frosty Morn frozen sausages on my desk. Said it was Dwight's idea.

Sophomoric enough to be something Dwight'd think up—especially when you look at how teeny those sausages are.

Doug finished reading the charge: unlawful possession of untaxed liquor.

'How does the defendant plead?' I asked.

Ambrose came majestically to his feet. 'Not guilty, Your Honor.'

'Call Major Dwight Bryant to the stand,' said Doug.

Theoretically, I could have disqualified myself since I'd already heard Dwight describe the circumstances under which he'd found two half-gallon Mason jars of white whiskey in Elizabeth Hamilton Englert's basement. On the other hand, Ambrose would be hard put to find a judge in the district who hadn't heard. Any time the mighty get humbled, the story goes around faster than blue mold through a tobacco field, particularly when circumstances were this ridiculous.

From time out of mind, Hamiltons had led the fight for an alcohol-free county. Every generation threw up at least one preacher or congressman or state senator who'd ride that hobbyhorse far as he could to the exclusion of all others.

Englerts tended to be less vocal but generally more adamant about the evils of drunkenness. Every Englert generation threw up at least one backslider.

Elizabeth Hamilton had unwittingly married her generation's backslider.

Not that Lawrence Englert was intemperate by normal standards; just that by Hamilton-Englert principles, anybody who looked upon the wine when it was red (or whiskey when it was white, for that matter) was a potential degenerate perched atop the slippery slopes of hell.

So Mr. Englert in his day, like his son Randolph in this generation, had done his drinking on the sly. He had cultivated a connoisseur's taste for smooth apple brandy. I don't know that my daddy supplied him—Daddy tells me he hasn't touched a brass worm in years—but they had been known to go hunting together a time or two, and Mr. Englert always tipped his hat to him when Daddy came to town.

Anyhow, Mr. Englert died a couple of years ago and Mrs. Englert's rattled around in that big house all by herself ever since.

On the night in question, she thought she heard someone downstairs and she'd called the sheriff's department rather than the town police, whom she considered incompetent.

Dwight happened to be around and at loose ends that night, so he went along for the ride. 'Never hurts to have an Englert appreciate special services the law can provide' is what he told me back when it happened. Not what he was testifying now, of course, when Doug asked him to describe what he'd found upon arriving at the Englert home.

'Mrs. Englert called to us from the upstairs window and then came down and let us in.'

'Us?' asked Doug.

'Myself and Deputy Raeford McLamb, who was on duty that night.'

'What did you do then?'

'First we searched the ground floor thoroughly and examined all the doors and windows for signs of forced entry.'

'And did you find any?'

'No, sir.'

'What did you do next?'

'Mrs. Englert stated that she thought the noises she heard might have come from the basement, so we went downstairs and again conducted a thorough search.'

'What did you find?'

'No indication of an intruder, but shortly after we entered the basement, the central air conditioner switched on and we heard a rustling noise in one of the ducts. We later ascertained that a piece of trash had fallen into the vent and was causing the noise that Mrs. Englert mistook for an intruder.'

'What else did you find around that air conditioner unit, Major Bryant?'