Pastry Mystery: Cheesecake Mistake

Chapter Eleven

Toby surely looked confused when Libby paid him a visit to the police station but she hadn’t said a word. Five minutes had passed since he saw her but all she did was just glaring at him.

“Your eyes will hurt if you keep doing that,” teased Toby who felt very uncomfortable at the way she looked at him trying to break the ice. Libby yet didn’t budge all. He thought everything went better for them but apparently, she preferred to have another cold war with him. He thought she would come with a good news that would prove his innocent—or at least if she could find a good lawyer like Tim Avery for him. He was slightly hurt thinking that Libby might have believed that he really was the murderer.

“Officer, we’re done here,” said Toby standing up from his seat. He saw there was no point at all to meet her if she didn’t want to tell him her intention to see him. An officer came to the room and was ready to take Toby back to his cell when Libby finally opened her mouth.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Libby. Toby spun around as he was still clueless about what she was talking about.

“Tell you what?” questioned Toby back.

“Everything!” said Libby in a loud voice.

“What everything? Oh my God, Libby! Do you really believe that… that I’m…” stuttered Toby assuming that she really accused him as the serial killer. “Just don’t bother coming anymore.”

“Toby!” cried Libby but he disappeared behind the door with an officer who guided him back to his cell. She didn’t expect to cause another misunderstanding between them. All she wanted was for him to admit everything—to confess that he was the one who proved her innocence and he had been in Pastry Mystery’s storage room for the last two weeks.

*

An old sleeping couch that Jimmy used to put in his living room had become Toby’s bed since he secretly lived in Pastry Mystery’s storage room or even before. Libby was flabbergasted to see Toby’s work modifying the 150 square feet room to be his nesting place. He managed to keep things tidy but that room was the coldest place in the store and house as it was built especially to preserve the baking ingredients and there was only one small window for the air circulation. There was also a small bathroom in the back of the storehouse but as far as Libby knew, it had been out of order since before she moved to New York. It was yet clean and looking brand new when she decided to take a look, to see if Toby and her father had fixed it. She could barely remember the last time she even went to this part of the store where she grew up. Toby surely knew this place better than her. Now that she thought about it, she never really saw him going home or coming to work at all—she yet always woke up later than him in the first place. Apparently, he never left this store at all. Libby got goosebumps thinking how clever the real murderer must be for going in and out of Pastry Mystery while Toby always slept in the storage room. The killer seemed to spare their lives for a reason, but he might have changed his mind and could do them harm at any time.

Suddenly, a guilty feeling enraged in her heart—she felt stupid to forget to wire him his salary. Indeed, she fired him but it wasn’t official at all. She somehow still had to give him the money for the work he had done. Libby realized that Pastry Mystery wouldn’t survive without Toby’s help and she would only fail her late father’s last wish. How could I run a business if I even forget to pay my only worker? asked Libby to herself.

Libby though doubted if Toby really didn’t have any saving at all until he couldn’t afford his apartment anymore if she just missed paying his wage for one month. She knew her father as the most generous man in the world and there was no way in this universe he would be stingy on paying Toby’s salary. Besides, Toby lived all by himself in a small apartment and he didn’t seem to have a glamorous lifestyle too. He must have saved at least half of his salary for an emergency case.

“He earned almost 28,000 bucks last year,” mumbled Libby checking on her father’s accounting files on his computer. It just hit her mind that she hadn’t done any administration work at all but every bill was paid already. Toby must have done this, she assumed.

Libby returned to the storage to find anything that could prove Toby’s innocence but instead, she just figured out one more secret that he had been hiding from her. Libby found a piece of paper with Japanese cotton cheesecake recipe with some baking instruction sketches written on it. When she was taken into custody, Toby worked hard to prove the police wrong. He recreated the same Japanese cotton cheesecake that she made to prove that it didn’t contain any poison at all, instead of handing them the thrown away one that Libby baked before that. He believed that the killer might have corrupted it.

It was two hours past midnight before Libby realized it and she still didn’t find something that would help Toby to get out of jail. He didn’t own many things besides his clothes and books. There was a small safety box that he kept under the sleeping couch but Libby couldn’t get it open. She frustratingly laid herself down on the bunk. She was too exhausted and drowsy to think clearly. She promised herself she would get up and moved to her own bed in a second but fatigue had taken over control her body.

“Ouch!” cried Libby who seemed to have a new habit to fall down from her bed. She woke up to the sound of her smartphone that chimed loudly—it was an incoming message from Sheriff Curtis.

What are you going to do with it? texted Sheriff Curtis along with a picture of the rat poison that they found in Toby’s backpack. Libby asked the cop to send him a photo of it last night before she fell asleep in the storage. She though didn’t think it was necessary to reply his message. She knew exactly what her next move would be, but first, Toby had to explain everything to her.

*

Libby regretted the seven minutes and thirty-three seconds meeting with Toby that didn’t give her the answer she was looking for. Now he was back behind the bars that had kept him away from the outside world for the last twelve hours. Toby was not a mind-reader—nor any man in this universe. Libby was at fault for not explaining him her purpose of visit in the first place. Even if he could interpret her thoughts, the possibility of Toby admitting everything would also be very small. Now, Libby didn’t want to waste her time by deploring what she had done earlier. She had a tight schedule to make it up to Toby.

Amaranth Creek was surely a small town but Libby was wrong if she thought she would find the store that sold the same rat poison that the cops found in Toby’s backpack instantly. She drove all the way from Amaranth Mart at the city center to Brick Junction in almost outside the town but she didn’t spot the X-Rat brand in any of those seven shops. She tried to look it up on the internet and she was directed to X-Rat official store that was located all the way in Italy. All the information was in Italian and she didn’t know anything more than Buongiorno and arrivederci.

“Who would bother importing a poisoned rat all the way from Europe?” whimpered Libby in her pick-up truck outside Brick Junction, the last store she checked in Amaranth City. She left the police station at nine in the morning and it was almost half past four in the afternoon now.

She scrolled down in the internet and found one store in Honeydew Bay, The ProFarm, that sold that certain rat poison brand. The killer or whoever it was who framed Toby up might be someone who lived in the town thirty-one miles away from Amaranth Creek. She couldn’t think of anyone she knew who resided in Honeydew Bay. Most of her father’s family lived in So-Cal cities and she didn’t know much about her mother’s side. She just learned from her quick investigation yesterday that Toby was born and had a brother in Honeydew Bay. Could it be his brother? Libby suspected but she wiped out that ridiculous idea. How could someone do this to his own brother?

A not-so-recent flashback suddenly flooded her mind—she went to have a sushi dinner with Russell in Honeydew Bay and apparently, he even had a friend in that town even though he just moved to Amaranth Creek.

“I watch too many movies for sure,” she scoffed at her own thought. Russell was her new best friend and he somehow had helped her a lot. It was very preposterous of her to assume that way. Libby didn’t want to consume her energy arguing with herself that way as she took off right away.

It took twenty minutes longer than the estimated time for Libby get to The ProFarm—she blamed it on Honeydew Bay municipality’s administration for renovating almost the most of the main roads at the same time. The sun had set by the time she got to her destination. The ProFarm held a special seventy percent sale today, thus the shop was jammed by visitors from all over Honeydew Bay and the town nearby.

After hustling with the other customers, Libby finally found X-Rat poison that was displayed among the other rodenticides. It was exactly the same as the one they found in Toby’s backpack.

“Hi, may I ask you something?” asked Libby with a box of X-Rat in her hand to one of the shop assistants.

She seemed exhausted dealing with the other visitors and she nodded quickly in annoyance so that Libby could tell her exactly what she wanted to know, “Yes.”

“Is The ProFarm really the only shop that sells X-Rat in Honeydew Bay and around?” questioned Libby further.

“Yes, exactly,” replied the shop assistant in her late twenties coldly. Libby yet just stood there as she didn’t know how to ask further—she wanted to know every single customer who had bought the rat poison. She knew, however, that she was asking for the impossible.

“Is- is it a popular product? I mean, many people buy it?” asked Libby haltingly.

“It’s a new product that we have, not many people have bought it. But we never heard a complaint from any of them, so I assume it must be a good one,” informed the shop assistant.

“Do you think many people from Amaranth Creek buy this?” Libby was embarrassed to realize how ridiculous her question was. As expected, the shop assistant was dumbfounded to hear that.

“How do I suppose to know?” answered the shop assistant spontaneously. Out of hundreds of question that she got today, Libby’s was surely one of the strangest ones.

“I- I know it sounds ludicrous but right now I’m looking for someone who bought this from Amaranth Creek. He or she had framed up my friend and now he became the prime suspect in a serial murder case there,” explained Libby desperately. She was yet not surprised when the shop assistant thought she was just joking around.

“Is this a prank? Are you playing detective with your friend?” asked the shop assistant frustratingly. She walked away right away since another customer needed her help too. If The ProFarm wasn’t as fully packed like today, Libby would surely file a complaint out of one of their workers’ rude attitude. She, however, let it go today since the shop assistant might be exhausted from dealing with so many visitors.

“Hey, Libby. What are you doing here?” asked someone with a familiar voice tapping Libby’s shoulders.

“Barth!” cried Libby. Barth was one of her father’s best friends that she knew since she could remember. She noticed that Barth also had two boxes of X-Rat in his hands. “Are they yours?”

Barth nodded, “Yeah. My boss asked me to buy this. He didn’t trust American rat poison. He said this one works the best.”

“Really? Who’s your boss?” asked Libby curiously. She might be able to link him to the murderer.

“Russell. Russell Fontana. Do you know him? He just moved to Amaranth Creek a while ago. I work as his gardener now,” revealed Barth.

“Ru- Russell?” repeated Libby.

“Yeah. You know him?”

“I do. Barth, is- is this the first time you buy this poison?” asked Libby carefully.

“No, it’s my second time. But he’s right though. This poison works wonder,” announced Barth almost giving Libby a heart attack.