The Magic Library Mysteries Collection: The Complete Series, Books 1-3

by Hillary Avis

  He stared out the window, his voice low and harsh. “I thought we were a team. You, me, Zack, Emily, Paul. But I guess not.”

  “No, you’re right. We are a team. Your grandma, too. We all want the same thing. We want the library to be safe.”

  “If you say so.”

  They were both quiet until she turned the car onto Rosemary Street and slowed from highway speed to neighborhood speed. Down the block, a figure stood on the edge of the sidewalk, leaning on a cane to watch the car approach. Michelle.

  “Thank you,” Allison said quickly. “For taking the risk. That was very brave. I wouldn’t normally ask this of you, but—”

  “I won’t tell her,” Taylor interrupted. “If she asks, I’ll tell her you did it.”

  She braked and stopped the car in front of her house, just past where Michelle was waiting. She and Taylor shared a look of understanding before he hopped out. Allison took her time getting out of the car, dreading what Michelle had to say. She’d hoped for some reprieve, some window of time to go through Paul’s box and see what was there. Maybe pull a few of the most important memories to transcribe.

  “How dare you involve him in your schemes?” Michelle spat. “It’s the one thing I asked. The one thing!”

  Allison took a deep breath. “I didn’t involve him. He stayed in the car. I swear.”

  “It’s true,” Taylor piped up beside her. “You can read the memory books if you don’t believe us.”

  It was a brave gamble. Allison held her breath until Michelle seemed to decide that she believed them—or at least that it wasn’t worth checking. “Did you get the stuff?”

  Allison nodded. “All three boxes. We have everything. But unfortunately, Leroy probably knows we took it, so we need to get them inside as soon as possible.” She leaned into the passenger seat to slit the tape and pull open the top box. Inside, the blank paper rested in two neat stacks. She replaced the lid and grunted as she lifted the box. Taylor was right—it was heavy. She was shocked he was able to manage all three boxes on his own. All the tree-climbing must have developed his biceps. She held the box out and Taylor moved to take it from her.

  “The others?” Michelle poked her cane toward the open door of the car, where a slice of the remaining boxes were visible between the front seat and the dashboard.

  “Those are mine,” Allison said flatly.

  “One of them is. The other one has nothing to do with you. Those pages were all torn out before you were born.”

  “You don’t know whose memories are in there,” Allison countered. “Paul’s could be. Yours could be.”

  “We were little children. What did they want with our memories?” Michelle scoffed. “Most of the Claypools’ victims are dead now. There’d be a lot more of those boxes if they were alive. Elaine said there were file cabinets full, didn’t she? I bet ninety percent of those pages were blank by the time she found them. These are just the scraps.”

  Allison’s jaw tensed. “We should still try to put them back.”

  “What good will come from it? None—it’s just pain and heartbreak in those memories.”

  Taylor sucked in his breath. “Listen!” He cocked his ear toward the end of the street and Allison heard it. The not-so-distant sound of a police siren. Allison acted instinctively, grabbing the box from Taylor’s hands.

  “Get in the car,” she told them both. She ripped off the lid of the box and dumped the blank pages into the passenger seat, placing the empty box on the sidewalk next to her. She did the same to the next two boxes as Taylor scrambled into the back seat and Michelle made her halting way to the driver’s side.

  “I haven’t driven since Paul—”

  “I don’t care,” Allison said roughly. She felt reckless in her desperation. They were so close, and she couldn’t stand it if the memories were torn away from her again. Once she was satisfied that Taylor and Michelle were in the car, she patted the roof. “Now go—I’ll distract him for as long as I can. Find someplace safe. Take it all to Kara at the police station if you have to. Like you said, it’s safer in an evidence locker than it is in Leroy’s hands.”

  She slammed the door and Michelle, to her credit, pulled out smoothly from the curb just as Leroy’s SUV turned onto Rosemary Street.

  Chapter 33

  Leroy barreled toward her, siren screaming, and she stepped aside so he could see the boxes stacked next to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and willed him to pull over to the curb instead of following the car around the corner.

  To her relief, the siren stopped right in front of her. She cracked open her eyes just as Leroy’s voice blasted from the speaker. “Step back from the vehicle and put your hands up!”

  She obliged, raising her hands above her shoulders as she stepped back between him and the boxes. She knew he’d look inside them eventually, but she’d keep him thinking that they were full of memories as long as she could. Hopefully long enough that Michelle and Taylor could hide the real contents.

  When Leroy got out, he unsnapped the holster for the pepper spray on his belt. She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to attack you.”

  “I told you to step back from the vehicle,” he repeated.

  “I did!” She took another step back, her calves bumping against the boxes behind her. “You know, you could have parked a little farther away if you didn’t want me near your car.”

  He motioned to the boxes. “I recognize those. Seems they match some I’m missing from my shed.”

  “Your mom’s shed,” Allison corrected. “I bet she’s not missing them. She probably didn’t even know they were there.”

  “She’s elderly. Her memory’s not always sharp,” Leroy drawled.

  “I guess yours isn’t either.” His eyes popped wide, probably surprised she wasn’t being more deferential given the circumstances. She bulldozed on. Anything to keep him distracted. “If it was, you’d remember that this stuff isn’t yours, anyway.”

  “Belongs to a friend of mine, though.”

  “Is she? Your friend, I mean?” Allison’s shoulders were getting tired from holding up her hands and she winced as she circled one, trying to find a more comfortable position. “She doesn’t seem like she likes you much.”

  Leroy frowned. “How do you figure?”

  She had him. “Can I put my hands down? I won’t try anything. I just want to have a conversation, and it’s a little awkward like this.”

  “Fine. But don’t move from that spot.” He eyed her warily and took a step backward so he had one foot on the curb and one in the street. Maybe he thought that extra twelve inches would buy him enough time to pepper-spray her if she went full crazy. “What’s that you were saying about Elaine?”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  Leroy nodded. “She’s a friend.”

  “A good friend? More than friends?”

  “Just friends,” he said gruffly, looking down at his cowboy boots.

  “But you want more, don’t you? That’s why you were willing to nab these for her?”

  “Those are hers.” His voice was tense, his words terse. “I recognized the pattern because I helped her move those boxes to Portland a couple years back. I don’t know what your deal is, but she told me you had some kind of vendetta. I was just watching out for her.”

  “She’s using you,” Allison said softly. “She’s using you to do her dirty work. You probably don’t remember, but you’ve killed for her.”

  He gaped at her. Then he shook his head. “She was right. You’re just blooming nuts.”

  “Think back to two years ago. The day you helped her move these boxes. Do you remember that day?”

  He jerked his head once in a nod.

  “What about the night before. What were you doing then?”

  He paused, working his lips as he struggled to remember. “Mother and I went to the movies,” he finally said. “The drive-in in Salem was playing Casablanca. We got milkshakes after. I remember because I had to stop the car a few time
s on the way back because Mother forgot to take her Lact-Aid.”

  “You’re sure it was that night and not another night?”

  Leroy scuffed his boot in the gutter next to the sidewalk. “Yup. I got the tickets for me and Elaine, actually. Kind of a last gasp at taking her out, since she was moving out of town. But she said she was busy packing, so”—he shrugged—“no point in wasting the evening.”

  Allison shook her head. She wouldn’t believe it until she looked it up in the memory books. But what if Leroy was telling the truth and he really had gone to the drive-in? That would mean someone else’s memories had been torn out of Homicides. But whose?

  “Ask Mother if you don’t believe me. She’s a big scrapbooker. Saves all her ticket stubs.”

  “I will.”

  “Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong about Elaine. She may not be head over heels for me, but she’s not a user.” Leroy flicked his toothpick to the ground and sucked his front teeth as he stared somewhere in the vicinity of her knees. “Now what are we going to do about those?” he asked.

  “The boxes?” Allison stepped to the side, and Leroy tensed like she was about to make a break for it. “You can have them.”

  His eyebrows shot up as the radio on his belt crackled and blared a code that Allison didn’t catch. He held up a finger, indicating she shouldn’t move, and spoke into the radio handset. “Alpha unit one, I’m at a code four pedestrian stop, over.”

  The same staticky voice answered. “Small fire in the square, sir. Code six, Engine 332 en route from Elkhorn.”

  “Copy that.” He turned to her. “I’ll deal with you later. Stand aside.”

  She obediently moved a few more feet so he could pick up the boxes. He bent and grasped the bottom edge of the stack, bracing himself for the weight before standing up so quickly that the top box tumbled out of his arms, cracking open as it hit the ground.

  “What in tarnation?” he mumbled to himself as he stared at the obviously empty box where it lay, lid askew, on the sidewalk. He hefted the remaining boxes in his arms before turning to look at her. “These are empty!”

  She nodded at him. “The boxes might be Elaine’s, but what was in them wasn’t.”

  “Not up to you to decide. Where’d you dump the stuff?” he growled, moving toward her. The radio crackled again, interrupting him.

  “Unit one, please be advised, we have a six-fifty-seven. The fire is now threatening a structure. Suspect is disorderly, but still on the scene. Local PD requesting backup.” Leroy didn’t immediately answer, and the dispatcher on the radio repeated the message.

  He stared fiercely at her. “Get in the car.”

  She froze. “What?”

  “Get in the car.” He dropped the two empty boxes on the sidewalk so he could answer his radio. “Copy that, alpha unit one responding from Rosemary and Timber.” He turned to her, pulling her roughly over to the SUV. He yanked open the door to the back seat and motioned inside. “Get in.”

  Beyond him, Allison saw a dark, billowing cloud emanating from somewhere on the other side of the highway. Slowly, the pieces fell into place. The call was about a fire in the square. There were no structures there except— she gasped. “The gazebo?”

  “I won’t ask you again,” he said, his face grim as he held the door wide. “I’ll just put you in myself.”

  Allison ducked into the back seat. A moment later, her body was slung into the door panel as Leroy make a hard U-turn and then peeled out toward Founders Square.

  “Am I under arrest?” Allison asked when he braked momentarily, waiting for a gap in the traffic.

  Leroy glanced at her in the rearview before he sped across the two-lane highway. “No. Yes. I’m detaining you as a material witness until we can sort out the business with Elaine’s stuff.”

  As they neared the square, the smoke intensified until the gazebo came into view. Long tongues of orange flame licked the support posts on one side of the structure as smoke drifted in a plume from the roof, casting a haze over the whole park. Leroy slammed on the brakes at the corner of First and Rosemary, as close as he could get to the gazebo.

  He jumped out and raced around the car parked in front of them toward the gazebo. With a jolt, Allison recognized it as her own car. She could see Taylor in the passenger seat, leaning forward onto the dashboard to get a better view of what was going on in the gazebo. Beyond the car—smoke. Flames. Kara’s cruiser was parked on the opposite site of the square.

  And a stooped figure with a cane stood at the foot of the gazebo’s stairs, throwing something into the fire from a pile at her feet.

  Michelle. Instead of hiding the blank paper and memories somewhere safe, she was destroying them—and the gazebo, too.

  Allison had to stop her. She grabbed the door handle tried to get out, but both sides were locked. She was a prisoner. She let out a small scream of despair, one she knew no one could hear, as her ears rang and her vision narrowed to a dark tunnel.

  Time seemed to bend. She didn’t know whether seconds or minutes passed until Leroy returned and opened the back of the SUV to grab a small fire extinguisher.

  “Let me out,” Allison begged over the back seat. He glanced at her and then moved to shut the rear door. “Please. I can help. There’s another extinguisher in the trunk of my car.” She pointed at her Honda parked in front of them.

  Leroy only hesitated a second before abruptly slamming down the hatch. Her heart sank. But a second later, the door next to her flew open.

  “Hurry,” he said grimly.

  She nodded and ran, stumbling as she wrenched open the driver’s door of her car to pull the trunk release. Taylor turned to her, tears streaming down his face.

  “I told her not to do it,” he wailed, his shoulders shaking. “She never listens to me.”

  “Everything is going to be OK,” Allison said, maybe the biggest lie she’d ever told him. Judging by the expression on his face, he knew it. She looked him straight in the eye. “Stay here. If you can do that, you can keep one of the puppies. I promise. Not a grownup promise, a real promise.”

  She left him and dashed to the open trunk to grab the fire extinguisher. She pulled the pin as she ran as fast as she could toward the gazebo. Michelle was standing close to the blaze—too close. The stairs were on fire now, dangerously near the hem of her house dress and to the piles of paper beside her.

  Leroy sprayed the steps with his extinguisher, then grabbed Michelle’s arm and tried to pull her away from the gazebo. She clawed his fingers off her, forcing him to drop his extinguisher so he could lunge after her with both hands. Kara ran up to help and Allison darted around the small group to the stack of memories.

  The heat of the fire beat against her cheeks and stole her breath as she kneeled to assess the damage. A gust of wind whisked the top sheet off the pile and sent it scudding down the concrete path, away from Allison. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at the next sheet in the pile. She didn’t want to know what Michelle had destroyed or what she’d left. Paul’s pages, blank pages. Any answer would be overwhelming. She picked up the stack of paper, her heart swelling as her biceps strained under the weight,

  She took two steps, heading back toward where the cars were parked, but stopped short when she saw Michelle still fighting, her hair loose and wild around her shoulders as she swung her cane like a weapon at the two law enforcement officers. Kara and Leroy circled her like a pair of tigers hunting their prey, and Michelle backed up until her ankles hit the bottom step. Thankfully, due to Leroy’s quick thinking, it was no longer ablaze, but inside the gazebo, the flames rose higher, crackling as the old wooden benches caught fire. A popping sound emanated from somewhere up in the rafters, and Allison’s breath caught. Weakened by the fire, the whole roof could come down at any minute.

  Kara crouched down just out of reach, coughing, her hands up to show she meant no harm. “Put it down, Michelle. Take it easy. We can talk this through.”

  Michelle ignored her, a
ll her attention focused on Leroy. Blood trickled from a cut on his forehead and he wiped it away. His eyes flicked to Allison and Michelle followed his gaze, her face twisting when she saw the papers in Allison’s hands. She lunged toward Allison with surprising speed, her cane outstretched.

  Leroy dove, tackling Michelle’s ankles. As she fell to the grass, her cane knocked the stack from Allison’s hands. The pages scattered around them and Allison dropped to her knees, scraping them together. Her name jumped out at her from the page. Emily’s name. Tiny, their Yorkie. The bakery. Paul’s memories, flying in the air. She scooped an armful back together and dove back for more.

  Faintly, she heard Kara call to her. She ignored it, too focused on collecting all of the memory pages that were now swirling onto the sidewalk, caught in the draft from the fire only yards away. She didn’t have much time before the whole thing came down, judging by the furnacelike heat beating against her back.

  But a dull thud made her look up. She saw Leroy roll to the side, his face slack and gray, as Michelle scrambled to her feet, a rock in her hand. Her head swiveled toward Allison. Kara shouted again, but it was directed to someone else.

  “Leroy, watch out!”

  A loud cracking, and the post near the steps failed. A huge section of roof collapsed, sending one blazing rafter down right on top of Leroy’s legs. Kara was at his side in an instant, using her foot to try and push the heavy beam off his unconscious form.

  “Help me!” she cried to Allison, as the burning post didn’t budge. Michelle stumped toward her and for a split-second, Allison was torn between the memory pages on the ground around her and Leroy. She only had time to save one of them. A tiny plume of smoke rose from where the smoldering wood touched the leg of Leroy’s uniform trousers and Allison knew what she had to do.

  “I’m sorry, Paul,” she murmured as a fresh draft made the pages scatter even further. She rushed to Kara’s side, feeling the heat against her face so intensely that she feared her hair might catch on fire.

  “Here!” Kara kicked the porch railing until she could wrench loose a board and handed it to her. “Use this!”