MURDER at CRAWFORD HOUSE (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

are we here for again?"
                  By her friend's laugh, Allie sensed that she knew where this was headed.
                  "Two days, dearie."
                  "And can you tell me why I packed two weeks' worth of clothes?"
                  "I did the same thing."
                  She was holding two shirts in her hand, and now she dropped them on the bed in defeat. "I'm tired of this. Let's go say hi to our neighbors."
                  Navigating the hallway wasn't nearly as futile as Del had made it out to be. It wrapped around the upper floor of the house –the walls encompassing the giant drawing room below – so that anyone traversing it would eventually wind up at the same spot. Leaving their new bedroom, Allie and Del took a left and wound up in the back corner of the house, which was occupied by Rachel Forrester's room. Her door was closed so they went on, passing the upper floor's main bathroom. It was also occupied. The next door on the left was Jürgen's room. His door was open.
                  The man dropped an armload of clothes onto the bed and received them with open arms. "Come in, come in, my beautiful ladies! Look at this room, huh?"
                  Jürgen's room was almost as nice as the room on the opposite corner that Allie and Del had inherited through Bertie's good graces. There were the same high ceilings and the same luxurious furnishings they'd now come to expect.
                  "Fabulous," said Del. "Ours is nicer."
                  The Dutch man smiled lasciviously. "Oh is that so?"
                  "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