Рита Браун - Outfoxed

This morning he kept whistling. Fontaine was truly totally dead. He’d called last night to offer his services to Sheriff Sidell and to make certain that swaggering ass, Fontaine Buruss, really was gone, his temperature at least forty degrees below normal. If only that insufferable oaf weren’t in the cooler, Crawford would have the merriment of watching him go into rigor mortis. Let the funeral director deal with that.

He wondered how to handle Martha. Sensitive, attached to Fontaine, she would be weepy for days, perhaps weeks. She’d sobbed when Sister made the announcement. Crawford put his arm around her, offering solace.

How he kept himself from gloating even he didn’t know. He congratulated himself on his discipline.

Washing the white shaving cream off his face, patting his cheeks dry, he scrutinized himself in the mirror. Thanks to a discreet and gifted plastic surgeon in New York City he looked maybe forty-five, not the fifty-four he was. His hairline had receded a bit but other than that, he looked good. He was getting bored with the mustache and beard. Too artsy. He thought he’d make an appointment at the barber’s to get the beard shaved off. He’d softened a bit but he’d put down his money at the gym, arriving four days a week at seven to work with a personal trainer.

He had envied Fontaine, his luxurious mane of hair and his trim waistline. Fontaine kept in splendid condition, burning the calories in bed no doubt.

Ah, but he was dead now. Dead. Dead. Dead. Crawford had never realized what a solid sound that word had. Deadwood. Dead honest. Deadbeat. Dead. He began to enjoy the word. It wasn’t far from “deed.” Was being dead a deed? Was being dead a state of being, which English seemed to suggest, or was dead no being at all, just a linguistic twist?

Dead.

Well, he wouldn’t be dead for many a year. His doctors told him that.

He’d win his ex-wife back. He didn’t think of her as an ex but merely as a woman he possessed who had slipped out of his pocket. He loved Martha but he possessed her. A man had to own many things in order to be important and a good-looking woman was one of those things. Children, of course, were optional.

She’d want to stay on at the office until Sorrel Buruss decided what to do with the business. Martha was uncommonly loyal. Then he’d steer her toward home again. A pair of diamond spray earrings from Tiffany would help.

The best thing about Fontaine’s untimely demise, untimely for Fontaine, was that now Crawford would be joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt. Sister really had no choice.

He’d been reading about hounds. He’d wait but in good time he’d suggest an infusion of July blood and perhaps some Dumfriesshire, also. After all, he could read a pedigree as well as any other person. Top line, tail line. How simple.

Joint-master. About time, too.

CHAPTER 39

Given the jolt of the day, Cody spent that night at her parents’ home. Bobby spent half the night on one phone line while Betty was on the other.

Cody imagined the county intersected with a series of actual lines and they’d glow when in use. Finally the entire country would be pulsating with talk.

She and Jen sat in the kitchen eating fruit while overhearing Mom and Dad.

“Any ideas?” Cody asked.

“No. He didn’t look bad, did he? Asleep except for the hole in his coat. I’ve never seen a dead person before.” Jennifer took the clinical approach. “I was with the field but I could see he didn’t look slimy.”

“Fresh is better than nonfresh.”

Jennifer sang. “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and I’ll play pinochle on your snout.”

“That’s compassionate.” Her older sister peeled back an orange, tossing the rind at Jennifer.

“He was old.”

“Not as old as Mom and Dad. Early forties, I think.”

“Forty is old.” Jennifer bit into an apple. “I’ll never live to be forty.”

“Bullshit. We’ll live way beyond that. Don’t give me this dying young crap. James Dean. Kurt Cobain. Elvis.”

“Elvis was old.”

“Forty-two. I don’t exactly get Elvis.”

“See. You have to be old to get him. Like Nine Inch Nails. Old.”

“They’re not old.”

“Yeah they are. Another decade. What matters is what’s happening right this minute. The eternal present.”

“Have you been reading self-help books? That doesn’t sound like something you’d say, Jennifer.”

“The therapy sessions are warping my mind.”

“Not enough.” She sighed. “So you have no compassion for Fontaine Buruss?”

“All he wanted was for someone to slob his knob. Yuck.”

Cody laughed and Jennifer laughed, too. Fontaine, driven by sex, gravitated toward a female as she lurched out of puberty. Maybe he didn’t sleep with underage girls and maybe he did—who knew? Or if they did, they weren’t talking—but any sign of sexual maturity captivated him. He was handsome. Women are fools for handsome men.

Betty called from the next room, her small office off the kitchen also called the recipe room, since she kept file after file of recipes. “Keep it down. How will it sound in the background if you two are whooping it up?”

“Yes, Mother,” they both said.

“Who are you calling now?” Cody asked.

“Aunt Olivia.”

“Mom, she lives in Chicago.” Jennifer giggled.

“She grew up with Fontaine. She’ll want to know.”

“Is there anyone you haven’t called? What about the bag boy down at Kroger’s?” Cody teased her.

“You two are taking this shock rather well.” Betty strode out of her office.

“Shit happens.” Jennifer burst out laughing again.

Betty’s hand flew to the space between her breasts. “Jennifer.”

“Mom, it’s not like he was my best friend. And he didn’t look so bad dead.”

She walked across the kitchen floor, her slippers barely making a sound, opened the refrigerator, taking out a soda.

“Better take two. You’ll be thirsty from all that talking,” Cody advised.

“And what do you think of all this?”

“I don’t know.” Cody grew somber. “I got along with him.” This was an understatement but since her family had no idea of her affair, they couldn’t appreciate her approach. “Once you knew what he was, he was easy. That’s how I see it.”

“And that’s how most women saw it.” Betty popped open the can. “But murder?”

“Yeah, well.” Jennifer suddenly darkened.

“Guess he pissed the wrong person off.” Cody tidied up her pile of orange parts.

“What if it wasn’t personal? You’re assuming it is. What if this is some nutcase who is opposed to hunting?”

“In Virginia. Mom.” Jennifer rolled her eyes.

“Pretty farfetched.” Cody supported her sister.

“Well, serial killers are around us. This could be some person’s sick idea of power. Random killings in the country. It happens. No place is ever safe from that kind of sickness now. People kill to kill.”

“Bet he owed somebody money.” Jennifer had a pedestrian worldview so at odds with her heavenly beauty.

“He did owe money.” Betty sat down with her girls. “Cody, you used to see him at the barn. Weren’t you trying out that horse—uh . . .”

“Keepsake.”

“That’s the one. Ever notice anything off the mark?”

“He didn’t talk business with me. If anyone had good reason to kill Fontaine, apart from someone he owed money to, it would be his wife, don’t you think?”

“She’d never!” Betty’s voice grew loud.

“I didn’t say she did, only that she had more reason than anyone. That is, if your soon-to-strike-again serial killer idea is wrong,” Cody replied.

“I wouldn’t laugh about that. There are serial killers in Virginia. There are too many unsolved murders.” Betty raised her voice. “And that’s the thing, Cody, that’s just the thing. How in the hell did Fontaine get separated from the field to follow a splinter group of the pack? It doesn’t make any sense.”