Pastry Mystery: Cheesecake Mistake

Chapter Thirteen

“Welcome to Pastry Mystery. How can I help you?” greeted Libby cheerfully in when a visitor opened the door of her bakery shop early in the morning. Unfortunately, the young teenage boy didn’t come to purchase anything from her. Instead, he handed her a piece of leaflets of a new store in town and left to continue his work to earn some extra pocket money. He politely refused when Libby offered him two warm Danish pastry. It certainly made her sad since the situation had changed completely. Back when she was younger, kids and teens would act as sweet as possible to get free Danish pastry from Jimmy. Libby yet tried to stay positive. She believed it would soon pass and Pastry Mystery would gain its name again.

In fact, Libby began to love her new life running the bakery business that she inherited from her loving father. In half of a month, Libby had mastered almost all pastry recipes that her father passed down to Toby and her. She never thought that baking could be this fun—mostly with Toby helping her. Since the police let him go a couple weeks ago, Toby had become Libby’s new roommate. He was embarrassed at first when Libby figured out his temporarily nesting place in the storage room. She offered him to live together with her until he could afford a new place for himself. Besides, it was also a redemption of her carelessness for not paying his salary.

Toby yet never blamed Libby for it. After two glasses of bourbon, he was finally ready to tell her the truth—the cotton cheesecake that got tested at the police’s lab was made by him.

“You have no idea how difficult it was to make a cotton cheesecake as failed as you,” teased Toby. It was true—the one that he made was still somehow appetizing, but Sheriff Curtis didn’t know the difference.

Toby also confessed that he didn’t have any saving at all. He had to pay a debt to a loan shark that his parents left for him before they died. Jimmy knew his apprentice’s circumstance very well. He never spoke about it but he always let Toby eat in Pastry Mystery every day. Jimmy’s excuse would be that he was too lonely to eat alone or that he had cooked way too much. Before he passed away, Jimmy offered him to live with him since Libby was far away on the East Coast. Toby didn’t extend his apartment contract but Jimmy suddenly left them. He couldn’t think of any other place but Pastry Mystery’s storage room. He thought Libby would never let him reside in her house. Now, however, everything changed and Libby even allowed him to use her father’s bedroom.

Libby picked up the flyer that fell down from the display case. There was a new bakery in town so-called Cake at Break. They offered free Danish pastry for the first one hundred customers that came on the opening day, which was today. On the other side of the leaflet, there was sort of a menu list of what they sold. They had almost everything that Pastry Mystery offered, and even more. They even put a picture of their Japanese cotton cheesecake.

“They stole my idea!” cried Libby indignantly. She was the very first person who introduced Japanese cotton cheesecake in Amaranth City—well, the failure version, to be precise. Still, she believed someone was taking an opportunity to take over her father’s deli success.

“What did you say?” asked Toby from the kitchen. He knew Libby was screaming something but the sound of the mixer was louder in his ears.

“Look at this,” said Libby showing the flyer of Cake At Break. “They’re imitating us and even my cotton cheesecake!”

Toby turned off the mixer to study the leaflet that was worn out as Libby had squeezed it out of anger. It was true—most of the cakes and bread that they offered were exactly the same as the one that Pastry Mystery had.

“There’s only one way to know who’s the owner of Cake At Break. Let’s see who’s our copycat,” proposed Toby taking off his apron.

Cake At Break was situated in the middle of the town—a bigger, better and more strategic location that Pastry Mystery. It wasn’t only a takeaway confectionery but they also provided a small café for people to enjoy the delicacies on the spot. Cake At Break also provided a free Wi-Fi for their visitors—a standard must-have service for every store nowadays that Pastry Mystery still didn’t have. They also had iced coffee and bubble tea that were now popular among the youngsters.

There was no more spot in Cake At Break’s parking lot for Pastry Mystery’s pick-up truck to line up. Libby and Toby had to drive further at the town hall to park their car there. It was just five minutes past the opening hours of Cake At Break’s and people were lined up until outside the building. Libby and Toby didn’t plan to purchase anything but they had no choice to get in line if they wanted to make it inside.

Five minutes of standing in the cold breeze, they finally got inside even though there were still more than twenty people standing in front of them. Libby and Toby finally decided to try some of their Danish pastry and a slice of cotton cheesecake to see if they really were better than the ones from Pastry Mystery.

“I hope they’re better than Pastry Mystery,” said a woman to her husband who was standing two meters in front of Libby and Toby.

“I bet they will. Jimmy’s pastry wasn’t that great actually,” replied her husband. Libby recognized them as the Bronson family who used to get free bread and leftover pastries from her father when they didn’t have enough money to feed their five children.

“Just let them talk,” said Toby stopping Libby from yelling at the Bronson couple. Creating a ruckus in their new rival’s place was surely the last thing that Libby and Toby wanted to do. They had lost almost all of their loyal customers—in a good day, they would have seven customers in total.

Libby’s heart nearly jumped up when she saw Russell coming out of Cake At Break’s kitchen. He also spotted Libby and Toby right away as he waved at them. He then signaled Libby to see him in his office that was located next to the bakery shop.

“So, it’s your new shop, Russell. Nice one,” said Libby in a cold tone. The last time they met each other was more than two weeks ago when Libby found out about the X-Rat that Barth Smithson bought in The ProFarm. They parted ways in a not so nice way and now Libby learned that Russell just opened a new deli.

“You didn’t want to sell your Pastry Mystery to me, Libby. I don’t have a choice but to move forward,” reasoned Russell who understood very well how upset Libby was right now.

“But at least be a little bit creative instead of selling the same thing as Pastry Mystery,” accused Libby.

Russell scoffed, “It’s up to you to assume like that, but I just sell common stuff that most bakery shops have. I understand that you’re upset but this wasn’t the reason I called you here. I still want to do business with you. If things go well with Cake At Break, I’m planning to open another shop and I was thinking of working with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want Pastry Mystery to be the first franchised branch of Cake At Break,” proposed Russell.

“No,” replied Libby firmly. Russell was surprised that Libby didn’t give any thought to her answer.

“No?”

“No, Russell. I want to keep Pastry Mystery as the way it is.”

“Okay. I understand. I just- I just want to help you get back on track. Just let me know anytime you change your mind,” said Russell.

“Thanks. Look, I got to go now,” excused Libby.

She didn’t look happy when she went out of Cake At Break. Toby was having his first bite of Russell’s Danish pastry when Libby grabbed it from his hands and threw it away in the nearby trash can.

“Hey, I’m eating that,” scolded Toby but Libby didn’t care. “What’s wrong?”

“Is it good? Is it better than ours?” asked Libby furiously?

“It’s good, but I like ours better. They don’t use fresh ground like we always do,” replied Toby honestly. “Hey, look what I found on Scrapalbum.”

Toby handed his smartphone to Libby. While he was bored standing in the long queue, he surfed on his social media and found a good opportunity to get their customers back. Next week Sunday was the Amaranth Creek Food Market held by Amaranth Creek municipality. Jimmy never really joined the annual food festival since he and Toby didn’t have time and enough employees. This year, Toby wanted to join as didn’t want to miss the chance to gain their clients’ trust again. According to Amaranth Creek Townhall official page on Scrapalbum, today was the last registration day.

“Let’s sign up for this,” agreed Libby.

*

“What time do we have to leave tomorrow?” asked Libby before she went to bed. She wasn’t actually sure if she could sleep tonight. She was nervous thinking of the Amaranth Creek Food Market tomorrow. She expected people would line up in front of her food stall to buy the classic Jimmy Vanderbilt’s Danish pastries. She imagined how happily exhausted Toby and she would be since they had to keep baking more and more pastries for everybody.

“Half past seven. The market starts at ten o’clock,” answered Toby who was still brushing his teeth in the bathroom.

“Okay,” said Libby opening the bathroom door. Toby was startled by her but luckily he had put on pajamas already. “Good night!”

“Good night, Libby.”

Libby set her alarm on her smartphone before she turned off the lamp. She was actually tired from preparing everything for tomorrow’s food festival—from the baking utilities to kneading and mixing the dough and mixture that they would need. Her mind, however, refused to rest and it was still as bright as a daylight. She imagined how proud her father would be if she could restore Pastry Mystery’s name again. She couldn’t wait to see people standing in line and crowding her bakery again. Now, all that she needed was to sleep. Tomorrow would be a long day—she just didn’t know that it would be tougher than she expected.

At four o’clock in the morning, Libby woke up to the clanking sound that she heard from the kitchen. She grabbed her smartphone to see what time it was. She got up to see if Toby didn’t sleep and he worked in the kitchen instead.

“What was that?” said Toby who was also surprised by the noises. Libby’s heart dropped from fear when she saw it wasn’t Toby who created the hullaballoo at dawn like this. Toby told her to calm down and to be as quiet as possible. They silently sneaked downstairs but suddenly Pastry Mystery’s alarm went off. They hurriedly ran down as the culprit might have escaped.

Libby’s knees gave up when she saw her shop was destroyed by a burglar who had taken away money and a lot of baking machines in the kitchen. She wailed as loud as the deafening alarm sound that Toby tried to turn off. Toby made a quick call to the police and they would come as soon as possible. He tried to stay calm to figure out what just happened in Pastry Mystery. He guessed it right that the thief ran away through the back door which was now wide open.

“How did he get it?” asked Toby to himself since there was no alarm ringing at all when the burglar got into the shop.

He hugged Libby who was still crying devastatingly between the shattered glass of the broken display case.

“It’s okay, Libby. Calm down. I’m glad that we didn’t get hurt by the thief,” said Toby.

“I know who it was,” announced Libby shockingly. “It’s someone who doesn’t want us to join the food market. It’s someone who wants to destroy us in the first place.

“Who?” asked Toby couldn’t think of a name.

“Russell Fontana.”