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

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.

4.
     
                  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