What Makes A Detective.

Chapter 1

"Er, Mrs. Llewellyn" he lied, trying to sound apologetic. "I'm afraid we put peanuts in those. You'll have to pick something else."

Mrs. Llewellyn's moustache wrinkled.

"Peanuts in rose cupcakes?" she asked, looking puzzled. "Why on earth would you do that?"

"They're powdered in the butter icing" Toby lied. "Under the sugar flowers. It...accentuates the taste of the rose."

He put a little French flair on the word rose, in order to make it seem like he actually knew what he was talking about. Which, of course, he didn't.

"I see" Mrs. Llewellyn sighed, folding her arms and sucking her teeth thoughtfully. She moved along away from the rose cupcakes, and her beady eyes centered on a coffee creation of Tarquin's.

"What about this?" she inquired, folding her arms and inspecting it keenly though the glass. Toby smirked. That cake was labelled under Tarquin's 'creations' for a reason. Safe to say the coffee flavours weren't the only ingredients in that cake to pack a punch.

"That'll be a coffee cake?" he informed the old lady, questioningly, but still promptly. She wrinkled her nose this time.

"I can read. I'll take it."

"Are you quite sure?" Toby muttered under his breath, as, beaming brightly like a Cheshire cat at gunpoint, he carefully lifted the cake from the display and prepared to wrap it.

"Does this one have peanuts in too?" Mrs. Llewellyn demanded, tapping her foot impatiently as Toby wrapped the cake.

"No, Mrs. Llewellyn" he replied, truthfully this time. "You know I'd always tell you if something had peanuts in. A pound, five shillings and sixpence, please."

"How you remember which is which really beats me" the old lady muttered grumpily, rooting around in her bag for the coins. Toby smirked. The whole display could be riddled with peanuts if he had wanted it, and since everything which actually had peanuts in usually had the word 'peanut' somewhere on the label, Mrs. Llewellyn's peanut allergy really didn't cause much of a problem. On the other hand, the Kingstons who lived up in Oak Courts were all gluten intolerant, so Toby'd had to resort to a very sneaky display system to remember which cakes and loaves weren't going to give the drains a hard time over the following few days.

Mrs. Llewellyn cleared her throat. Toby realized he'd drifted off. Hurriedly, he finished the wrap and handed the coffee cake over to his customer, who snatched it off him with clawlike fingers and scuttled out. Leaning on the desk, Toby watched her go, and as the bakery drifted into silence, a thought came to him.

"Should I have told her about the chillies?" the young boy asked himself.

He then shrugged. Nah. She'd find out on her own.

Leaning inside the display, he picked up the now useless label and checked it. Yep. It still said coffee and chilli cake. So much for reading the label, Mrs. Llewellyn.

"On shop duty again, Toby?"

Toby couldn't ignore the little jump his heart gave when he heard her voice. He looked up, as this someone was now leaning in at the window.

"Quinne's getting extra law tuition, Bridge. Which means more shifts for me."

"Anything a girl can scrounge?" Bridget McKinnon asked, as she came properly into the shop. She was tall for her fifteen years, slightly taller than Toby, who'd always been lean and lanky, and she had striking thick ginger hair, which as of today was loose down her back, the fronts pinned up in little spirals around her face. Her skin was pale, and freckled, and she had a tiny little pixie nose that turned up at the end. Her eyes were lush green, and sparking with little glints of light, and as she perched on the counter-top, these eyes were directed pleadingly at Toby, who couldn't resist.

"Actually" he smiled, despite himself. "There are these rather lovely rose cupcakes I've just saved from the claws of Mrs. Llewellyn..."

"Ooh!" Bridget gasped, her eyes lighting up. "How on earth did you save them?"

"Told her the butter icing had ground peanuts in" Toby replied smugly.

"She's the one with a peanut allergy!" Bridget exclaimed. "That's clever, Toby!"

They both sat on the counter-top, and Toby sneaked two rose cupcakes off the display, and Bridget bit happily into hers while Toby re-wrote the label to say six cupcakes and not eight.

"These sugar flowers are amazing!" she praised. "Did you make them?"

"Maybe" Toby replied bashfully, licking icing off his lips. Bridget hit him playfully on the arm.

"You're too humble, you are" she teased. Toby smiled thinly and took a bite of his cake. They sat for a while, chatting and giggling together, until Smart's mother came out with a new tray of cookies and caught them.

"Were you planning on helping out this afternoon, Miss McKinnon?" she asked Bridget sternly, glaring disapprovingly at the both of them.

"Er, yeah" Bridget stalled, glancing sneakily at Toby, who could barely hold in the giggles.

"Excellent. There's quite the pile of washing up in the back. Come along" Toby's mother ordered, opening the door for Bridget, who looked distraught before clambering down off the counter-top and going through it.

"And I hope you're going to pay for those cakes you ate, Tobias" Mrs. Smart added. Toby nodded meekly and got down off the counter as well. His mother left, and silence fell again. Drumming his fingers on the counter top, bored now Bridget was gone, Toby wondered how long it would take Mrs. Llewellyn to encounter the chillies, and how much she was going to make them pay her back this time.