Outfoxed

CHAPTER 38

The morning after Fontaine was killed, while Sister, Shaker, Doug, and Walter investigated the hog’s-back jump, Crawford Howard nicked himself shaving. Normally, this slip would have brought forth a torrent of vituperation: at the razor, at the shaving cream, at the lighting, and lastly at himself.

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.