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

  The Magic Library Mysteries Collection

  The Complete Series

  Includes Books 1 – 3

  Tomes & Terriers (Book 1)

  Pages & Pyrenees (Book 2)

  Libraries and Labradors (Book 3)

  Hillary Avis

  Published by Hilyard Press, Eugene, OR

  ©2021 Hillary Avis www.hillaryavis.com

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, places, events, or organizations is purely coincidental, and all are the creation of the author.

  Cover design by Mariah Sinclair www.mariahsinclair.com

  For permissions contact: [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Tomes & Terriers

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Pages & Pyrenees

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Libraries & Labradors

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Introduction

  A magic library like none you’ve ever read before!

  A forgotten life. A mysterious murder. A secret library with all the answers...

  Allison Rye guards a library of memories in the tiny town of Remembrance, Oregon. Her only job? Keep the library hidden. Because the magic books could be dangerous in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands are definitely interested.

  But when a resident at her husband’s care facility is murdered—and a sweet old lady is blamed—Allison finds herself drawn into the investigation. She knows something that police don’t, something she can’t reveal without becoming a murder suspect herself.

  With her intrepid foster Yorkie to keep her from barking up the wrong tree, Allison sets out to find the killer on her own. But as she combs the enchanted library for the killer’s identity, she uncovers more questions than answers...and secrets deeper than she ever imagined.

  The Magic Library Mysteries will change the way you think about memory, magic, marriage, and murder... If you like small town secrets, love that lasts, and adorable foster dogs, you’ll adore this trilogy!

  Tomes & Terriers

  A Magic Library Mystery Book 1

  Hillary Avis

  Chapter 1

  Sunday

  Everyone knows the magic of Oregon is in the trees. It was no coincidence that Remembrance, the town where Allison had lived her whole life, was founded around a tree nearly a hundred and seventy years ago. The pioneers who settled here had built the town with a grand oak at its center, the shade of its spreading branches treasured as a place to gather and remember the hardships of the migration westward.

  Of course, the Founders Tree was long gone—and so was the timber industry that had helped the town thrive for generations—but Allison still looked to the trees for company and guidance on a daily basis. Today, the row of willows along Claypool Creek seemed to be rooting her on, tossing their pompoms of new spring leaves with the enthusiasm of cheerleaders on the sidelines of a high school football game.

  They seemed to say that this time, she was on the right track.

  Pogo, her foster Yorkie, was less inclined to consider the opinion of trees. He paused in front of Golden Gardens Memory Care and lifted his stubby leg to water the bottom three inches of a Doug fir. When he was finished, Allison led him around the building to the service entrance. This was her usual habit, sneaking in the back.

  “You’re here so much, you might as well be staff,” Myra had joked when she handed her the key, after months of buzzing her in the front door at least once and often twice daily. Myra was the head nurse at Golden Gardens, but over the last two years, she’d become one of Allison’s dearest friends. “Save me the trouble and let yourself in.”

  So this was just a day like any other day. Don’t make too much of it. Allison paused in the narrow back hallway to take a deep breath and soothe her knotted stomach. Then she breezed past the empty mailboxes, through the yellow industrial kitchen, where the scent of oatmeal cookies baking in the oven was so pervasive that she could almost taste them, and out the other side into the central activity area. Right away, she spotted Paul seated at one of the long oak tables, staring blankly down at the surface and tracing the woodgrain with his finger.

  Allison pulled out the chair beside him. “May I?”

  He jerked his head once without looking at her, a polite acquiescence, so she sat down and patted her lap. Pogo bounded up onto her knees and circled a few times before settling into a little loaf shape. He gave a contented sigh and nestled his chin bet
ween his paws.

  “I had a dog like that once,” Paul said, his words slow and measured.

  Allison swallowed the lump that rose in her throat and turned toward him, her pulse pounding. “Did you, now?”

  He nodded. “He liked to walk with me by the creek. He didn’t fetch, though—he wasn’t that kind of dog. His name was—” he broke off, his forehead creasing with the effort of recall. His face reddened. “Oh, something.”

  “Tiny,” Allison prompted.

  “Yes!” Wonder spread across his face as he smiled at her. “How did you know?”

  Her heart squeezed and she tried to keep her voice calm as she answered. “Lucky guess.”

  She didn’t tell him that she was the one who bought Tiny as a puppy and brought him home to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. That only two days later, she’d gone to the doctor and found out she was pregnant. That she almost took Tiny back to the pet shop—that was where you got a dog in those days—because the thought of raising a puppy and a baby at the same time overwhelmed her, but he was the one who convinced her that they should keep the dog.

  “It won’t be a puppy in nine months,” he had pleaded. “I’ll do all the walking. You won’t have to lift a finger.” And he’d kept his promise. He walked Tiny by the river every day, in every weather, for the next fourteen years.

  “Can I hold him?” Paul asked.

  Allison nodded and picked up the end of Pogo’s leash from the floor, stretching to hand the end of it to Paul. His fingers brushed hers as he took it, and her heart skipped a beat. The dog lifted his pert head to see what was going on.

  “Here, boy!” Paul reached down and snapped his fingers. The familiar gesture made Allison’s breath catch—it was the same that he’d used when he’d called Tiny. Pogo hopped down from her lap and bounded over, bumping his head against Paul’s hand. Paul laughed, the sound as full and rich as it had been every day for all twenty-four years of their marriage.

  Twenty-five, next week.

  Instead of scooping the dog onto his lap, Paul stood. “Do you mind if I take him for a walk?” he asked. “Just around the room.”

  She nodded wordlessly and then watched, her breath still tight in her chest, as he walked Pogo around the perimeter of the room. Please, let him remember.

  She hadn’t planned on taking on another foster dog right now, not in the middle of selling bakery and moving, not with everything else going on. But when Rachael, the woman who ran Oregon Tails Dog Rescue, told her Pogo was a purebred Yorkie, Allison couldn’t resist. She’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, the dog would jar something loose in Paul’s memory.

  God knows, she’d tried everything else in the last two years. Family photos, guided meditation, acupuncture. Medication, supplements—hypnotherapy, for goodness sake! So far, nothing had worked. The memories Paul had lost overnight remained just that—lost. He could remember his childhood, his parents and school friends, the streets and geography of Remembrance. But his life with Allison? Vanished, as though it had been surgically removed. He couldn’t remember their wedding; their snug apartment above the bakery where they’d lived for their entire marriage; their beautiful daughter, Emily; or even Allison’s name.

  But Pogo had jogged his memory, somehow. He remembered Tiny! He remembered taking the dog for walks along the creek. Maybe he’d also remember how, at the end of every walk, he and Tiny always came home to her.

  Let him remember that. Let him remember me.

  She clutched the arms of her chair, hardly daring to breathe as she watched Paul and Pogo mosey around the perimeter of the large, open room.

  “Hey hon.” Myra’s voice came from behind her. Allison jumped and then felt a warm hand squeeze her shoulder. “Can I ask you a favor, or are you too busy checking out your good-looking man?”

  Allison grinned up at her, but her smile faded when she caught sight of Myra’s expression. Usually, Myra beamed sunshine. But today, her forehead was furrowed above her wide-set eyes, and her jaw was tense. Right away, Allison knew something was troubling her. “What’s wrong?”

  Myra sighed and crossed her arms over her magenta scrubs. “I hate to bother you when you’re visiting Mr. Paul, but I could really use some help with the morning snack. Lizbet quit yesterday and Julio is sick, so we’re shorthanded. Do you mind hoofing some snack trays?”

  Allison pushed her chair back and stood up. “Of course not.”

  Relief spread across Myra’s face. “You’re an angel. I’ve got everything lined up in the kitchen. You know how we do it; you’ve seen it enough times.”

  Allison nodded, and with a quick, regretful glance at Paul and Pogo, followed Myra into the kitchen. She grabbed the first tray of fresh oatmeal cookies and milk off the counter, then headed for the closest bedroom. She pasted on a smile before she stepped through the door.

  “Good morning!” she said in a brisk, sing-song voice more suitable for toddlers than for the elderly women in the room.

  Lilian, one of the longtime residents at Golden Gardens, snorted from where she sat knitting in her bed, propped up with pillows. She jammed one metal needle against the other, the ruffles on her white bed jacket quivering with each furious stitch. “What’s so good about it?”

  “Well, the sun is out, for one.” Allison set the tray on the nightstand between the two beds and nodded to the window that looked out on the sparkling front lawn and even afforded a peek of the creek through the willows across the street.

  “It stinks in here,” Lilian muttered without looking up from her yarn. “That man came, and he stinks like death. I hate him. I hate her.” She glared at the other bed, where her new roommate, Gertrude, was snoring softly with the covers pulled up to her neck so only her steel-gray bob showed.

  Allison was a little glad that Gertrude was asleep, if she was being honest. Some people became as sweet and crumbly as shortbread when they aged, but not Gertrude Winter. She’d hardened like a stale baguette and was more likely to spit at you than smile. Plus, now that Lilian mentioned it, there was something in the air that wasn’t the scent of cookies in the oven, though of all the smells that could be floating around Golden Gardens, this one wasn’t bad. It was woodsy and familiar—a man’s cologne, maybe.

  “Let’s open a window,” Allison suggested. She knew better than to try and muscle Lilian out into the main room when she was like this. Wiser to placate her with small kindnesses and cajole her out of her funk.

  Gertrude’s eyes flew open and she sat up in her bed. Apparently, her deep sleep had all been an act. “Don’t be stupid! It’s freezing in here!”

  “We’ll never get the stink out otherwise.” Lilian set her jaw stubbornly as she glared at her at the woman across from her. “Anyway, you’re napping. What do you care?”

  “I’m awake now,” Gertrude said. “Your noisy friend made sure of that, coming in here and banging the dishes like she’s a one-man band.”

  Lilian puffed out her cheeks, her face reddening. Before she could erupt, Allison stepped between her and Gertrude. “Maybe you’d like to have a snack?” Gertrude looked skeptical, so Allison added, “Milk and oatmeal cookies.”

  Gertrude scowled. “I don’t like hot cereal!”

  “It’s a cookie, not—” Allison began, but Gertrude interrupted by dramatically flopping back on her pillow and yanking the covers over her head.

  Her muffled voice came from under the quilt. “You know, sleep deprivation is used as a torture method by the CIA.”

  “Isn’t she a gem?” Lilian asked sourly. She jerked her knitting, sending the ball of lavender wool rolling out of her lap, onto the floor, and under the bed. Allison immediately dove after it, but just as her hand closed on the ball, she tripped over her own feet, yanking so hard on the yarn that the whole knitting project flew out of Lilian’s hands and landed on the floor next to her. Lilian leaned to peer over the edge of the bed. “What in heaven’s name are you doing down there?”

  Allison scrambled to her feed and picked up
the scarf. She winced when she noticed two or three inches of knitting had unraveled. Hopefully Lilian wouldn’t remember knitting the missing rows by the time she got back to it. She hurriedly poked the needle back through the remaining stitches, wound the ball of yarn as neatly as she could, and set it all in the basket near the tray of cookies.

  Hoping to distract Lilian from her ruined project, Allison walked around the end of the bed and cranked the window open, smiling brightly. “There you go—a little fresh air for you. Why don’t you have a cookie while the room airs out?”

  Lilian stared at the knitting basket and crossed her arms. “I don’t like sweets.”

  “Now you sound like someone else.” Allison nodded her head meaningfully toward the patchwork lump on the other bed.

  “I do not!” Lilian swung her legs off the bed and jammed her feet into a pair of fuzzy house slippers. “I just don’t want a snack. I want to chat with you. It’s the least you can do after ruining my scarf.”

  Allison grinned. Of course, Lilian didn’t miss a trick. She might not remember what she ate for breakfast today, but she was still sharp enough to notice that her scarf was a few inches shorter. “Well come on, then. Let’s go visit on the sofa. Just for a minute, though—I still have more snack trays to deliver.”

  She held out her arm and Lilian took it. She matched her pace to Lilian’s careful shuffle, and roughly ten years later, they made it out to the sofa. They sat together, Allison only half paying attention to what Lilian was saying as she watched Paul and Pogo take another lap around the activity room. Paul’s expression was deeply satisfied, almost proud. He looked like his old self. Her stomach churned with equal parts hope and dread as the two of them neared the sofa where she sat.

  This was it. This was it.

  “Who do we have here?” Lilian beamed at Pogo as Paul handed the leash back to Allison.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” He barely looked at her. His eyes went instead to the window with a view of the neat brick patio in the care facility’s back yard.

  “His name is Pogo,” Allison answered absentmindedly, still searching Paul’s face for a flicker of recognition.

  Lilian patted her knees. Pogo leaped eagerly into her lap and then jumped up to lick her chin. Lilian screeched with girlish laughter as she covered her face with her hands to avoid the dog’s tongue. She patted him until he settled and then planted a kiss between his ears. “What a delight,” she said, beaming up at Allison.