Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery Read Online Free Page A

of it.
    All he had a chance to say to me today was, “I didn’t kill them.”
    That’s a start.

 
    I’m generally okay with most holidays. My favorite is Thanksgiving, a special combination of excellent food and televised football, which kicks off a weekend of excellent leftover food and more televised football. As far as most of the other holidays, my view of them has always been mostly positive, probably because their arrival usually means a day in which courthouses are closed.
    I’ve never liked New Year’s Eve; there’s always too much pressure to have fun. Trying to have fun in those kinds of situations just isn’t fun. At New Year’s Eve parties, you hang out with the same people you’re with all year, but suddenly you’re supposed to wear paper hats and blow on ridiculous plastic noisemakers. The only factor on the plus side is the knowledge that once you get past the Eve part, New Year’s Day is wall-to-wall college football.
    But the one holiday I absolutely hate is Halloween. I don’t mind the kids part; I’m fine with them getting dressed up and getting candy and stuff. I did that myself, in what seems like another lifetime. If the holiday ended there, I’d be good with it.
    It’s the adult portion of it that I can’t stand, and it never lets up. The morning news shows set the table, since all the announcers are costumed as they sit behind their desks. You’ve got people wearing mouse ears and a bushy tail reporting on a plane crash.
    I just don’t get it. I assume they have research that says that viewers like it, but I would sure hate to get trapped in an elevator with those viewers.
    Everywhere you look, adults are in ridiculous costumes. Tollbooth operators, tellers in the bank, cashiers in the supermarket … they all spend the day looking ridiculous in some misguided attempt to be funny.
    When I, Andy Carpenter, ascend to my rightful position as undisputed ruler of the world, I will decree that no adult can ever wear a mask, unless that adult is robbing a liquor store.
    While I’m at it, pumpkins are hereby banned from the kingdom. I don’t like the way they look. I don’t like their pies. I don’t like their lattes at Starbucks. I don’t like the faces people carve into them. I don’t like their soup. I don’t like their seeds. So they’re out of here; no exceptions.
    As long as I’m issuing holiday edicts, I think I’ll throw in a couple of December ones. Christmas music is to be allowed for one week only, starting on December eighteenth and ending at midnight on the twenty-fifth.
    Also, and this is an ironclad rule, newscasters are prohibited from pretending to be tracking Santa Claus’s flight from the North Pole. I have no idea why they do it; one certainly doesn’t have to check the comScore numbers to know that news show demographics do not include people of Santa-believing age. And who in their right mind would think it’s funny, year after year after year?
    I know some people are going to disagree with some of my decisions, but if they don’t like them, they shouldn’t have elected me ruler.
    Today is unfortunately October thirty-first, so I’m bombarded with Halloween stuff from the moment I wake up. The difference is that with Ricky in the house, I can’t walk around complaining about it. He’s excited by the holiday, and pumped by the Ironman costume that he and Laurie have come up with for his trick-or-treating tonight.
    Since it’s Saturday, Ricky will be home all day and he and Laurie are going to carve a pumpkin. She knows my feelings about the fruit, or vegetable, or whatever the hell it is, so she isn’t going to ask me to participate. I couldn’t do so anyway, because I have my own fun day planned.
    I’m going to the prison.
    When I arrive, I go to the reception area to arrange to see Brian. The woman behind the desk, Carole, is someone I know very well, the result of unfortunately having a number of clients behind bars.
    “He’s in solitary,