MURDER at CRAWFORD HOUSE (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 3) (3 page)

              "Watch yourself, Jürgen," said Del. "I sleep with a machete."

              Jürgen clapped his hands together. "Wonderful! Then I foresee some adventure."

              "Well," said Allie, "we just made the bargain of a lifetime by switching with Bertie."

              "Oh, him?"Jürgen lowered his voice, which somehow made it more cartoonish than ever. "I don’t trust that man."

              "Why do you say that?"

              "For one thing he don’t drink. He sits there with his club soda and he scowls, like he's judging you. You watch him. He judges you. And you." He pointed to Del.

              "Well you remember him from school," said Allie. "He was always eccentric. And I hear he's holed up all day in an antiques store. He spends his days surrounded by other peoples' memories. You can’t expect him to be a skilled people person."

              Jürgen shook his head vigorously. "I don’t trust him. I don’t trust anyone that clean."

              Rather than try to decipher the meaning behind Jürgen's personal problem with Bertie's entire demeanor, the women excused themselves politely and continued along the upper floor heading toward Bertie's room – which they saw up ahead – and remarking upon the décor of the place. All around the hallway were small tables – some with drawers – against the wall; some with lamps, others decorated with frames, all non-functional; that is, for no other purpose than to fill in the empty spaces in the hallway. These sat beneath oil paintings of no particular prominence, save for the fact that their colors matched perfectly with the burgundy wallpaper and their frames in perfect harmony with the ornate wainscoting that ran along the wall beneath the chair rail. Evenly spaced were sconces with fake candles doing little more than spilling their dull orange glow around the tiny spaces they occupied.

              The whole place smelled of old wood and coldness. There were heating ducts that were obviously of very recent origin along the low ceiling, but they were either inefficient, needed a good cleaning, or the heat hadn't kicked in yet.

              "Ok," Del said with a shiver, "I'm convinced: this house is haunted."

              "Oh stop that," Allie admonished her friend, and pointed out the ducts overhead and their apparent uselessness. "The heat's not on. Isn’t that more likely than a supernatural cold spot?"

              "Maybe in other homes. Not in this one."

              "I think it's neat. It's got a cold, gothic charm about it. Like something you'd see on
Dark Shadows
."

              It was then, upon their approach to the staircase, that they suddenly became aware of a commotion coming from the floor below: voices arguing, quickly rising to a fever pitch.

              When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Monsieur Michaud and Molly Townsend were locked in a heated battle of words.

              "When my job is done, it is done!" cried Michaud.

              "But it's not done, is what I'm trying to explain to you if you would stop screaming like a banshee for one second and listen!"

              With a dismissive wave of the hand, Michaud turned away, saying, "Ah, I don’t work for you anyway. I work for your husband."

              Molly Townsend walked around the chef and got in his face. "You work for both of us, Chef Phillippe!"

              Saying the man's first name seemed to rouse him back into argument mode and he began to scream at the top of his voice in French. Allie, never a French student but knowing a few words and phrases by sheer virtue of having lived amongst Canadian transplants all her life, could pick out the French words for "stupid", "terrible", "sick" or "crazy", "degenerate", and "slob", and those were the clean ones, and non-gender-specific.

              Molly matched the verbal barrage with one of her own delivered in flawless French. The woman's elegant beauty suddenly transformed before Allie's eyes into a raging hellcat, bellowing with a voice that, in less educated and enlightened times, would've been considered ample evidence for demonic possession.

              Allie and Del stood at the foot of the stairs and watched with jaws agape, as the other guests emerged from where they had been to observe the fight as well. Allie looked over to her right and saw Larry Gordon standing against the wall, helplessly out of the fray, ostensibly getting ready for an intense job of damage control once this was all over.

              The argument carried on as Michaud made his way to the back of the house toward the kitchen, so Allie surmised, now speaking in dismissively calm tones, with Molly following close on his heels and screaming at him almost incoherently.

              Larry Gordon watched them leave as a baby mouse might watch its mother be carried off by a vulture. He stepped away from the wall, rubbed his palms on his trousers, and looked around. A look of unbridled horror sunk his face as he realized that the whole affair had attracted an audience.

              He stammered for a moment, then cleared his throat prodigiously and said, "If any of you would like a cocktail before dinner, please feel fre— The bar is in the drawing room, you all know where it is. I apologize. I'll be joining you shortly."

              With that, Larry Gordon left.             

              The others disappeared into the drawing room, save for Allie and Jürgen, who stood shaking his head in apparent disappointment.

              "
Tsk, tsk, tsk
, awful man. I don’t like him."

              "Who? Michaud?"

              "Larry. Did you ever see a man so, what's the word? I can say it in Dutch. Henpecked? Is that it?"

              "That's it. But I kind of feel sorry for him. He looks so lost."

              "He's not a real man. A real man does not let his wife get that way. No disrespect, Allison. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like Michaud either. He's terrible. Reminds me of a dictator screaming from the balcony. I don’t like his type. Larry too. I don’t like their types."

              "Anything you need to get off your chest, Jürgen?"

              The man thought for a moment, not getting the irony. "Nope, I'm done." And he walked off into the drawing room to join the others.

              A moment later, Larry emerged from the kitchen.

              "I'm sorry," he said. "I have a few things to take care of. I'll join you all in a few minutes. Dinner should be soon."

              Allie wasn't about to let her host go without an explanation, though she pressed him gently about it.

              The argument had begun when Molly entered the kitchen and exclaimed how wonderful it all smelled. She then, according to her own words, walked to the pot containing the lobster bisque, grabbed a tasting spoon, and sampled the dish.

              According to Molly, she asked Michaud calmly if he could adjust the bisque so that it wasn't so salty. According to Michaud, he'd turned around to see her attempting to fix the soup herself. She claimed she was only tasting. He said a stupid woman had no right to be in his kitchen and that his bisque was perfect without her input. It escalated from there and turned into an argument about how he wanted to leave because it was beginning to snow outside and he was done for the evening. That now it was up to the sous chef and the servers, and once they were done they had no more business there, and for their safety they should be dismissed immediately. Molly countered that the snow wasn't bad enough to warrant such concern. That's when it got ugly, as Allie and the rest of them had seen.

#

              The guests gathered in the drawing room. It was the best place to go to establish common ground, this communal meeting room the size of an airplane hangar. It was a safe spot, as it was the first room they'd all gotten acquainted with. They milled about, pacing, sitting and thinking, drinking.

              "He's very arrogant, the chef," said Jürgen to no one in particular. "Terrible man. I seen these people like him all the time. They think they know everything.
Psshh
! They know nothing. So arrogant. So lofty."

              "And what makes you such an authority?"

              The interruption came from Bertie, who sat calmly in a comfy chair, nursing a glass of seltzer.

              "Excuse me?" said Jürgen.

              "No, excuse me. I'm sitting here listening to you blather on about these people. You mean French people, right? That's what you mean?"

              "Don’t you start with me, Bertie. You just like him, you know."

              "Yes, I have a bit of French blood in me. Being French doesn't make someone arrogant. A person is arrogant when they speak with authority on a subject and won't tolerate anyone correcting them. Let's see, who does that remind me of. Oh yes, like you, Appelhof!"

              Jürgen raised his voice, which became shrill and harsh, like an air horn through a kazoo. "That does it! You haven't changed, Bertie! You always a miserable man!"

              "Gee, I'm sorry if I offended you."

              "No! No! Don’t you start that stuff with me!"

              It was here that Rachel Forrester stood up and put her hands on Jürgen's shoulders. The gesture seemed more to disorient him than to pacify him, but did provide a moment of respite from the screaming.

              "People, people," said Allie. "Come on. We're here to have some fun, aren’t we, Bertrand?"

              Bertie stared at her intensely.

              "Bertrand," said Allie, "anyone ever tell you you look like an ostrich?"

              "Ha ha," Bertie said joylessly.

              Allie turned to the rest of the guests. "Listen, we're here because we all bonded twenty years ago. My god, I can't even believe it's been that long. We were the best editorial staff that school ever had. Am I right?"

              No one answered.

              "Fine. You can all be that way. And you know what? As long as you're going to be that way, then I can finally tell you something I've been holding back: I was not looking forward to this. Nope. Not at all. You wanna know why? Because each and every one of you has managed to see the world or hold interesting jobs. Rachel, Del and I, all we've seen is the town of Verdenier – population thirty-five hundred not including the cows – from just about every angle, and that's about it. But Rachel's married and she and her husband are happy and run a landscaping business that does pretty well. And Del is an actress and lives the life of a performer and an artist. Me? I'm a widow with way too much time on her hands.

              "You really think I wanted to see any of you and listen to how much life you've all lived in the past two decades? If so, you’re delusional. But you know something? You've actually endeavored to make me, for once, not feel guilty about feeling the way I was feeling. You know why? Because it's been nothing but misery and bickering and unspoken angst for the past three hours. And now it's starting to snow – and by the way, thank you, Channel Six weatherman, for somehow failing to warn any of us about the blizzard that managed to come up out of nowhere in the last five minutes, because now I can finally feel extra miserable for coming in the first place because it looks like I'm going to be stuck here with all you wretched ninnies for the next two days and I won't even be able to take a walk to escape you without becoming a cryogenic experiment for some budding young post-doc archeologist a hundred years from now! So congratulations, each and every one of you! I hereby present to you all: the coveted Weekend-Killer of the Year Award! You've earned it, friends. You've earned it."

              To say there was a silence after Allie finished was like saying that there is a silence in a sound-proof room after one has had one's ears next to the engine of a Lear jet at full throttle.

              Allie went to the bar, poured herself a half a tumbler of straight scotch, took a long, healthy swig, and nearly asphyxiated as it went down. She composed herself, took a deep breath, and went back to the guests, who all sat uncomfortably looking every which-way but at each other or at her. She felt like a million bucks, as if she'd just been purged of a poison in her system. She felt detoxified. A knot that had been in her gut suddenly wasn't there anymore.

              "Alrighty," she said. "Who's up for backgammon?"

              No one answered.

              Larry Gordon came into the room just as the guests were beginning to marinate in that horribly awkward silence. He was apparently unaware of what had just occurred.

              "Folks," he said softly, "I cannot express how sorry I am that you had to be witness to that altercation between Molly and Monsieur Michaud. I'm ashamed and...embarrassed by the whole thing. I'm hoping this does not put a damper on the weekend for any of you. I assure you, they’ve managed to iron it out. And dinner is still on." He smiled and rubbed his hands together and shifted about. "Well, uh, I think it's almost ready. Uh, we can probably start heading into the dining room. It's right next door."

#

              Held in the spectacularly ornate dining room, dinner was a sumptuous affair, beginning with a soup course featuring the contentious lobster bisque that almost resulted in World War III. Allie's habit of people watching seemed to be in hyper drive tonight, as the day's drama only heightened the tension between the guests, especially Bertie and Jürgen.

              With Larry at the head of the table and Molly at the other end, the soup bowls were filled liberally and distributed, and a delectable steam rose up. Allie breathed it in, closing her eyes and enjoying the Zen-like moment.

              Larry held up his glass."To old times. And to the best college literary magazine on the planet."

              They all clinked glasses and sipped. Yet through it all, that horrible tension buzzed in the room.

              As they began to eat, Allie's eyes just happened to fall on Jürgen. She watched the Dutch man take a slurp of his soup, smirk, and then shake his head as he put down his spoon.

              "Excuse me," he said, rising with his bowl in his hands.

              "Is there a problem?" said Larry.

              "Nope," said Jürgen. "I take care of it." He walked to the threshold of the dining room, then turned and asked, "Your chef, he go home?"

              Larry answered in the affirmative and Jürgen turned and walked out.

              A couple of minutes later, he returned, a triumphant smile on his face. "All better now," he said. "I fix."

              With a cautious giggle, Larry asked, "What was wrong?"

              "Too salty," said Jürgen. "But it's ok, Larry. I fix." He took a loud slurp from his spoon. "Ah, perfect."

              "The staff didn’t give you any problem?"

              "No, I explain to them. It's ok, Larry."

              "I know it's ok," said Larry. "It's jus—, they're very particular in there is all."

              "Yes, they are particular about salt. And I fix. You want me to fix yours too?"

              "No, thank you."

              The main course was a grilled filet mignon with black truffle sauce with white asparagus on the side. Everything was cooked to perfection, the soup excepted, Allie thought – Jürgen and Molly were right about that. And the salad dressing had too much garlic. That was one thing that stood out even more so than the salty soup. It was a simple red wine vinaigrette, and Michaud had managed to render it almost completely inedible with the addition of enough garlic to keep Dracula's entire family away for a year.

              Dessert was a pistachio crème brûlée that Allie quickly pinpointed as the exact thing she'd order for her last meal were she ever to find herself on death row.