MURDER at CRAWFORD HOUSE (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 3) (8 page)

              "No," Del said in disbelief.

              "Larry doesn’t even know where they keep the linens, so do you really think he's the one who assigned the rooms? Whoever assigned these rooms to us wanted to make sure Bertie would have no reason to want to switch it with anyone else."

              "But he did switch it," said Del.

              "Precisely. Because I think he saw it coming."

              "Very interesting," said Del, "but flawed."

              "Pardon me?"

              "You have two things here that don’t add up. I agree that Molly could have assigned the rooms. But you have no way of linking the small footsteps with her."

              Allie sunk down in the chair by the bay of windows. "You're right again. Why can’t I get these things straight?" She sat for a moment, allowing herself the luxury of a self-indulgent sulk, then she straightened herself up. "Alright then, it's process of elimination time."

              "Alright. Who will you start with?"

              Allie stood up resolutely. "With the toughest one, of course. This can only get easier after interviewing Rachel Forrester."

              She decided that caution was the watchword when dealing with Rachel Forrester. Extreme caution. The woman was livid over Allie's insinuation that she was a suspect in Victoria Cardinal's murder earlier that year. She didn’t understand that they were all suspects, Allie herself included. Still, the watchword was caution.

              She found the woman lounging in the library with one of Larry Gordon's classics in her hand.

              "Franklin Library edition," Allie said, catching the woman off-guard.

              "Hmm?"

              "That book is a Franklin Library edition. I know them anywhere. They have a very distinct look to them." She got closer to Rachel, and then bent over to read the spine. "
Moby Dick
?"

              "I never read it before," Rachel Forrester said with a shrug.

              "How do you like it so far?"

              "It's ok. I don’t really understand it. But the writing's nice."

              "You're a woman after my own heart. Ray Bradbury said the best way to read
Moby Dick
is to flip pages at random and read a paragraph here, a sentence there, a few pages here, a few pages there, then once you feel as though you're falling in love with the writing, flip to the beginning and start reading from there."

              "I don’t know if I'm ready for that kind of plunge."

              Allie walked over to the bookshelves. "There are some great volumes in here. I've been meaning to come and take a look. You know how I love books."

              "Oh, I know."

              "I just haven’t been able to get here, you know, with...all this stuff..."

              "Yeah." Rachel folded the book in her lap. "It's been weird. I don’t know what to make of it all."

              "I felt so strange up there last night," said Allie. "I kept thinking about the events of the night. Let me ask you something. Did you hear any sounds coming from the bathroom at all while Bertie was in there last night? I guess you didn’t or you would have said something. That was stupid of me to ask."

              "It's not stupid."

              Allie sighed. "I don’t know. I just wonder if there's anything any of us could have done. It's this guilt-ridden hindsight I have. I had it with the Tori Cardinal thing, you know. You were there. Didn’t you feel it then?"

              "I guess. I didn’t know Tori that well."

              "Strange when you see someone die right in front of you. And now coming across Bertie, all that strangeness came back. I felt...helpless."

              Rachel Forrester nodded her head.

              "Hasn't the vibe been really horrible in this house this whole weekend?" Allie asked.

              "I guess."

              "When we first pulled up, Del said, 'This place is definitely haunted.'"

              The woman responded with a smile.

              "Now I know what she meant. Haunted is in the eye of the beholder, but a haunted atmosphere can be created by people."

              "You think too much, Allie."             

              "Everyone tells me that. I was talking to Jürgen and he said he arrived after you and Bertie. He said he and Bertie never got along. He said they never liked each other, and managed to hide it from the rest of us."

              "Well, that's not entirely true."

              "What do you mean?"

              "Well..." Rachel shifted uneasily in her chair. "I'm guessing Jürgen didn't tell you about the real estate swindle?"

              "Real estate swindle?"

              "Ok, he obviously didn’t tell you. Jürgen and Bertie were actually friendly acquaintances at one point. They connected after Jürgen had returned from Switzerland with his master’s degree. He was looking to establish a dual residency because he'd been on the short list for some international neurological conference thingy. Anyway there was this piece of land for sale that was a pretty sweet deal. Bertie had gotten the tip from someone he knew and he passed it on to Jürgen. Jürgen went to visit it, found it was a beautiful piece of acreage, secured it, and a month later it was his. Well, a big surprise was in store for him when he arrived at the GPS coordinates the broker had listed on his paperwork: The property he
actually
bought was this unusable piece of rocky hill that would take years to convert into anything livable. Well, he went back to Bertie and was livid. Bertie claimed he gave him the right directions but Jürgen misread the lot number. Jürgen claimed it was a scam to unload a piece of garbage property and accused Bertie of fee-splitting. From what I gather, the only reason either of them came to this little gathering was because each one thought the other wasn't going to be here. Bertie thought Jürgen was in Switzerland and Jürgen assumed Larry wouldn’t invite him if he also invited Bertie."

              "So that's why he said he doesn’t trust Larry."

              "He said that?"

              "He did, to me. In confidence, I think, so please don’t repeat that."

              "Don’t worry. But yeah, that's most likely the reason why he doesn’t trust Larry."

              They watched the snow fall for a moment.

              "So peaceful," said Allie. "And yet... Rachel, what was it like here when you arrived? Did
you
feel like it was haunted?"

              Rachel thought for a moment. "I wouldn’t say that, but it was a little uncomfortable. Bertie was sitting in that big comfy chair in the drawing room, not drinking anything, just sitting there looking like a stick-in-the-mud. He didn’t even get up when I greeted him. Maybe his heart was troubling him then. Who knows?"

              "What happened when Jürgen arrived? That must have been awkward."

              Rachel laughed. "Awkward doesn’t even do it justice. There was this silence that you could cut with a knife. Then this cold greeting between the two of them. No handshake or anything. Then Larry tried to diffuse the situation by saying that the past was the past and all that, and that we all bonded in college and this weekend was about revisiting those happier times."

              "Ugh."

              "Yeah, no kidding. I was very happy when you and Del finally showed up to lighten up the place a little bit."

              "I had no idea. Larry seemed so jovial."

              "He's good at hiding his emotions. Not so with Molly."

              "What about Molly?"

              "She got very angry with the two of them after Larry's little happy speech. Accused them of spoiling the weekend before it even began. I think she'd already been drinking a bit by that point."

              "Whom do you suppose she was more angry with?"

              "I don’t follow."

              "Well, here are two guys creating all this tension, meanwhile her husband was the one who invited the two of them to begin with."             

              "I didn’t think of that. If she was mad at Larry, she certainly didn’t show it. She seemed like she was directing her anger at Bertie."

              "Really? Why do you suppose that?"

              "Well, you've known Bertie. You know how he was. And you saw how he was. He's very unemotional. Kinda cold. Any hot-tempered individual confronting that sort of personality finds it frustrating. And both Jürgen and Molly are hot-tempered individuals, wouldn't you say so?"

              "I would say so, yes. And what about you?"

              She shrugged. "Me? I just wanted either to get drunk or go home."

              Allie chuckled at the little joke that had a pathetic ring of truth to it. "I know what you mean."

              "Yes, but I didn’t have a problem with either one of them. It's Molly I don’t like."

              "Really? Why's that?"

              "I don’t know. I guess she just rubs me the wrong way. That temper of hers, and that phony attitude when it's obvious she doesn’t like you. Anyone can see right through it and she knows it. It's as if she knows it cuts deeper if it’s hidden beneath this paper-thin veneer of niceness."

              "I know exactly what you mean."

              "First, let me just say that I've known Bertie for as long as all of you have and I always liked him. He was a good person. We kept in touch and I saw him regularly at the antiques store. After a while, we became closer. He wound up coming to our wedding. Gave us a wonderful gift. Sure, he's a little eccentric, but I consider people like that a breath of fresh air. I just wish my wife liked him."

              "Explain."

              He took a hesitant breath. "I don't know if she'd appreciate my telling you this. So I'm going to ask you to keep it under your hat."

              "Done."

              "Well then. I guess I don’t have to tell you that there are some folks who just happen to be incompatible with one another."

              "I guess so."

              "I gather everyone knows someone like this, I think. A person who just rubs you the wrong way. For Molly, that person was Bertie. At first, it wasn't anything specific. She would just roll her eyes or huff quietly in his presence. Maybe it was his demeanor. You know, he could be a bit condescending at times. He was so damned calm about it. A minor disagreement would bring out the Bertie no one liked. This very calm, irritatingly calm, debater who would cut you down cleanly and ruthlessly."

              "I don’t understand. Was he abusive to Molly?"

              "I don’t know if you could characterize it that way. She certainly saw it as abuse. But that's just the way Bertie was. He was the typical man that kept everything bottled up in a tiny place inside him. That kind of suppression eats away at you, you know. It can generate the kind of inner hostility that gets a person so wound up internally that he winds up having a heart attack; and, as we can plainly see, wound up being poor Bertie's very fate. Any way, Molly hated him. And the more we saw him, the more she would express her dislike for him openly. A disdainful tone here, a dismissive gesture there. Never a pleasantry from her toward him. So one day we were talking in his store – idle chit-chat, nothing serious – and Molly says something about snails."

              "Snails?"

              "That's right. Some silly little fact she’d read about mud snails. How they bury themselves when in the vicinity of a dead member of their species."

              "Interesting."

              "Yes, it sounds like one of those silly facts you read under the caps of soft drinks. Still, I have to hand it to Molly. She was really making an effort to be genial to Bertie. On reflection, it seems like she was only doing it for my sake. Dear woman. But Bertie laughed it off and called it a preposterous tale, and said something to the effect of, 'Only a fool would believe such a thing.' That it was a thing for audiences of the Oprah Winfrey Show, the credulous. He was downright insulting about it. Now, you know Molly. She doesn’t hold her tongue for long. She lost it. The two of them went at it tooth and nail. But you see, Bertie was as calm as ever. That's his way. And the calmer he was—and the calmer he remained—the angrier my wife got. She's been very open about her hatred of Bertie. I don’t know if you noticed, but the two of them didn’t speak at all. Did you notice?"

              "As a matter of fact, I did."

              "Yes, well you probably thought it was awkward. I certainly would. I was angry with Molly for behaving that way. We argued about it. We've been arguing about it. It started the moment I mentioned my wanting to invite Bertie to this little get-together. Please don’t tell anyone this, but she threatened to leave me."

              "No."

              He nodded his head. "I'm not proud of this fact."

              "How did you get her to come around?"

              "I called her bluff. I told her she could leave. She'd signed a pre-nup. She gets nothing of mine if she were to leave. Silly girl was banking on the notion that my longing for her would weigh more than gold. Well, it doesn’t and— I'm sorry, I've gotten off on an ugly tangent. I told her to go ahead and leave. I was tired of giving in to her demands."

              "Well, Larry, I have to say this has been an enlightening discussion."

              He chuckled. "I'm sorry to lay this on you like this. But I trust you, Allie. You're a good soul."