Chapter 18

THURSDAY, MAY 14

4:45 P.M.

MASON’S NEIGHBORHOOD, INDIANA

“You did a great job keeping your mouth shut, Fluffball,” I said once Hamid’s house was a safe distance behind us. He was hopping along the sidewalk to stretch his legs after being in Avery’s arms for so long.

“And you did a great job questioning our first two suspects,” replied the bunny.

“Really?” I said, surprised by the compliment. “Thanks!”

“No. I’m just kidding. Your questions stunk like the rest of you,” Fluffball said. “The girl is much better at interrogation than you.”

I felt my face go red as the compliment turned into an insult. “Well, she’s had training,” I justified. “I’m new at this. I’ll do better when we get to Tom Pedherson’s house.”

“It’s a quarter to five,” Avery said, checking her watch. “I think we better give him a little more time to get home from work.”

“So, back to Mason’s house?” suggested Fluffball with excitement.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “At least, not until my mom has had a chance to come to terms with the tulips.”

“Mmmm . . . ,” Fluffball muttered. “The red ones were my favorite. Crisp and juicy, with just a hint of sweetness.”

I resisted the urge to kick the bunny.

“I’ve got something in mind.” Avery had stopped on the sidewalk. Her hat was off, and she’d just pulled out the transportation atlas. “We should go examine the crime scene.”

“What crime scene?” I asked.

She paused thumbing through the map book to give me an incredulous stare. “Umm . . . the crime you were arrested for?”

“Oh, right. Good idea.” I peeked over her shoulder at the book. “Mr. Lawden said that the boon church was at an undisclosed location in the eastern United States.”

“I know right where it is,” she said, tracing her finger over the roads in a Kentucky suburb.

“But he said it was undisclosed . . .”

“I know lots of things I’m not supposed to,” said Avery. “The location of the black site for unstable boons, the undercover aliases of several Magix agents—”

“The director’s master code for the blenders,” I finished. “Yeah. I remember. You’ve bragged about this before.”

“There,” Avery said, pulling a pen from her pocket. “Grab Fluffball.”

I stooped down, and he looked away in disgust. “I will allow you to pick me up, human,” he said disdainfully.

With the cantankerous rabbit in one arm, I touched Avery’s shoulder with the other. She put the tip of the pen against the page and poof, we were standing somewhere new.

Avery’s pinpoint with the atlas had been very accurate this time, and we were standing on the sidewalk directly in front of the Church of the Faith. I immediately recognized the place from the camera footage during my trial. But unlike in that grainy nighttime security video, I could now see the entire church and property.

The grass was green and well trimmed. There was a big tree shading half the building from the left side, and several concrete steps ran onto a covered entryway. Four white pillars held up a triangular gable with a tall steeple and cross at its pinnacle. The rest of the building was bright red brick, with plenty of arched windows along the sides.

Avery headed toward the front door, but I stopped her. “During the trial they told me there were two guards inside. Whoever robbed this place knocked them both out with a boon of some kind. There aren’t any cameras in there, but both guards identified me afterward.”

“I know,” she said. “I reviewed every detail of your case, remember.”

“Then you should know we can’t go inside.”

“Of course not,” she said. “They’ve been restocking the church since the theft. There will definitely be Magix people inside.”

I shuddered. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe we should go.”

“Let’s just have a look around outside,” she said, moving up to the steps.

“Why don’t you set me down for a breath of fresh air,” Fluffball said from the crook of my arm. I lowered him to the ground and caught up to Avery.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I whispered, my eyes on the front door, fully expecting people in gray suits and black top hats to come flooding out and surround us.

“Clues,” she said. “Any evidence of who might have actually been here that night.”

“It was over a month ago!” I said. “Don’t you think the clues will be long gone?”

“The first thing they teach us in detective training is to be thorough,” Avery said. “Let’s try to re-create the security footage as accurately as we can.”

“Good idea,” I said sarcastically. “Let’s try to make myself look as guilty as we can.”

“You’ve already been tried and proven guilty,” said Avery. “And then you committed a bunch more crimes while escaping Magix Headquarters. We can’t really make you look more guilty.”

“That’s not helping,” I said.

“Get up on the top step and pretend like you just came out of the church,” she said, pointing.

“I don’t like this,” I grumbled. But Avery was the professional here, so I did what she said, skipping up to the covered porch as quickly as I could.

“Okay,” said Avery, “what’s different about this from the security footage?”

“Well, for starters, everything,” I said. “I’ve never been here before.”

“Your clothes are different,” she said. “And when you stole the boons, you had on a huge hiking backpack.”

“I didn’t steal the boons,” I reminded her.

“We’re going to talk like you did for a minute,” she said. “Because it certainly looked like you in the video. Another difference—your hair isn’t combed today.”

“Oh, sorry I didn’t do my hair before you unexpectedly broke me out of a high-security building at seven thirty in the morning.”

“Time of day is different, too,” mused Avery, glancing up at the sky. “It was dark at the time of the theft.”

“Does any of that matter?” I asked.

“It might,” she said. “Now come down the stairs looking nervous.”

That wouldn’t be too hard. I started down, but Avery stopped me with a wave of her hands.

“No, no. You have to come down the left side of the handrail,” she said like a movie director. “And pretend to grip the backpack straps.” She demonstrated, her arms bending like she had chicken wings. “That’s how it was in the video.”

Okay. Avery was getting overly picky about this. I pretended to grab the backpack straps and moved down the stairs on the correct side of the handrail.

“Now pause at the bottom of the stairs,” she said. I did. “At this point, you looked left and right. So, do it.” I did. “Then, for some reason you moved off to the right, going around the corner of the church and disappearing from the camera angle. Let’s check it out.”

I followed Avery around the corner, discovering that Fluffball was already there, sniffing around the bushes that grew along the church’s side.

“Are you detecting anything?” Avery asked the rabbit.

“Hard to tell,” he said. “There’s so much residual magic from all the boons that were stored inside the building. It’s throwing off my sniffer. I think I see something in this bush, though.” He pointed with his ears.

Avery parted the branches and reached down. When she stood up again, she was holding a can of spray paint.

“It’s empty,” she said, giving it a shake and hearing the ball rattle inside. “And the lid is missing.” She turned it over, giving it a close inspection. “The color is brick red. And it hasn’t been here very long.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

She pointed to a few little specks of rust around the spray nozzle. “And it would be in a lot worse shape if it had spent the winter in this bush. The label is barely even wrinkled.”

“It’s not a boon,” said Fluffball.

“I thought your sniffer was broken,” I said.

“I can see it clearly now that it’s not in a bush,” said the rabbit. “Trust me. It’s just a regular can of spray paint.”

“But the color matches the church’s bricks,” she said.

“Maybe someone was just touching up the walls,” I said. “Or covering graffiti.”

Avery took off her hat. “We’ll keep this as possible evidence.” She dropped the empty can into the top hat. “Let’s head back around to the front of the church.”

“What?” I cried. “Why? Weren’t we lucky enough not to get noticed the first time?”

“We’re re-creating the security video,” said Avery. “You came out of the church and went around the right side of the building. Then a moment later you came back into the camera view.”

I followed her back to the front of the church, muttering, “I didn’t do any of those things.”

“From here, you walked down the sidewalk,” said Avery, leading the way. “You were clearly holding the music box. You paused in the middle of the street and glanced up at the security camera before heading off into the storage units over there.” She pointed across the street.

“Where is the camera?” I asked.

“The Magix agents took it down after the theft and logged it into evidence,” Avery explained. “They checked to see if it had been magically tampered with in any way.”

“Had it?” Fluffball asked.

“No,” answered Avery. “And, honestly, I’m surprised they haven’t hung it back up yet. The camera didn’t actually belong to Magix. It was the property of Total Storage across the street.”

She turned and looked back at the church, holding up her hands with her thumbs touching. She squinted one eye as though sighting through a camera lens.

“Based on the angle,” Avery continued, “the security camera would have been hanging there.” She turned back around, pointing at the light post that stood over the driveway entrance to the storage units.

“So, whoever stole the boons from the church fled under the light post and into the storage units?” I said. “Magix didn’t recover all the stolen boons, did they?”

“No,” said Avery. “Only the handful that turned up in your bedroom.”

“Maybe the thief stashed the rest in one of those storage units!” I cried.

But Avery shook her head. “That was the first place the Magix agents searched. They didn’t find anything magical.”

“Then why did the thief come back to the front of the church just to run off in this direction?” I asked. “Why risk getting picked up by the camera again?”

“Maybe that was the whole point,” said Avery. “Whoever did this wanted it to look like you. By running right under the security camera, it gave everyone a clear view of your face.”

“That stupid camera!” I said. “Why did it have to be pointing at the boon church?”

“It wasn’t, really,” said Avery. “The church happened to be in the background, but the camera was actually pointing at the road so Total Storage could see who was coming and going.”

“And to catch the occasional car crash,” said Fluffball, hopping over some debris in the gutter and landing next to the base of the light post.

I stepped over to him, the soles of my shoes crunching over bits of broken glass. As the afternoon light reflected on them, I realized that they were actually pieces of shattered mirror. Probably a car passing too close to the light post and clipping off the side mirror. My mom had done that once, backing out of the garage.

I watched Fluffball circle the post. “Nothing unusual here,” he said. “Just a little bit of dog urine.” It seemed like we had come up empty on clues.

I looked over to see that Avery already had the atlas open to my city. The sticky note with Tom’s address was stuck to the opposite page, and the point of her pen was hovering above the road map.

“Grab my arm,” she instructed.

Fluffball hopped onto my foot, and I reached out and touched her. Avery’s pen came down, and we were instantly back in Indiana.