ok. I think I have this figured out for real now. I kept running into issues with file locations and had to do so many tests to see what was actually needed for this to work for me. Currently, I have only tested with a fire and smoke scene, so other things may not be working yet.
To get the cache to work for my setup, I had to change the location of the crowdrender output folder. At first I thought this folder would also house the files needed for cr to load. Nope. the cr folder will always generate in the user folder on windows. But this is not an issue, just threw me off for a few minutes. as long as the folder pointed to for output is the same location on all the machines, then the next part will work.
The nodes need to have the cache moved to the server folder from the output settings. As long as all of the relative paths are set correctly on each device, then when it goes to render, it will look to the correct location. in my blender, I set the path for cache to \./Library/Rend/Cache. So I put the output cache from the master to the the library\rend\ folder and renamed it cache.
Now the node is ready to render.
On the master machine, the cache must be in the cache folder, but also in the base of the project file. When you open your project file and blender generates a random name for the temp blend file, you must copy the name of the temp blender file and rename the cache folder to this. Then the master machine is also able to render along with the nodes.
Once blender starts again, then you open your file and a new random temp name will generate and you need to remember to rename the folder again to use it in the farm.
Now that I have it working, I just need to practice the workflow. It is tedious and I wish blender had a way to transfer cache around without having multiple copies that get out of date and need to have their own way of keeping track of what is what. Otherwise, I have cut my render time down some. Now I need to dig in and tweak settings for best render times.