Dorothy had just finished her shift in the bakery and was closing up when she heard a noise coming from the basement. Unlike most of her colleagues she wasn't the least bit superstitious and certainly didn't believe in things that went bump in the night. So, grabbing a flashlight she opened the door to the stairs and made her way downwards.

"Hello, is anyone there?" she called out.

It was pitch-black in the basement, so Dorothy turned on the torch and started shinning it around. She thought she spotted movement in the distance and then suddenly something white came flying out towards her. Moments later she was stuck in the face with a cream pie. Shocked at this unexpected turn of events, Dorothy screamed and retreated upstairs to safety.

* * *

It had been a quiet month for Harriet, and she was considering shutting up the office early when the phone rang started ringing. She was tempted to ignore it and go for an early drink with her busty assistant Jackie, but they desperately needed whatever work they could get. So, she picked it up and put on her best telephone voice.

"Dunnit Investigations, Harriet speaking" she said.

The caller explained that they ran a successful bakery until recently when it had apparently become haunted by some unknown entity. There had been a series of odd occurrences: things being moved when no one was around or even going missing completely and strange noises coming from the basement which had built up until one of their staff had been assaulted by a cream pie.

The latter gave Harriet pause for thought. Her cases had a tendency to get messy at times and she had no wish to end up with pie on her face. For instance, her last investigation had involved a couple of gameshow assistants swindling the company and she'd ended up falling into a vat of gunge whilst tackling them. But then again, she needed the work.

"We'll take the job" she declared.

The caller explained that they had temporarily closed the bakery so Harriet would have complete access to the building to discover what was going on. And as they wanted the situation handled discreetly, they even offer a cash bonus if she could resolve the situation without any fuss and especially no media attention.

* * *

Jackie had been begging to get involved in one of their cases for a while and so Harriet had finally given in. It also helped with the cover that Harriet had decided on, as with the bakery closed people would be suspicious of anyone entering without a good reason for being there. So, they'd pretend to be decorators which would explain both the closure and their presence.

"Here we are" Harriet announced, as they arrived in a hire van.

Both Harriet and Jackie were dressed in boiler suits, Harriet's was blue and Jackie's pink. They got out of the van and opening the rear doors carried a ladder, trestle table, brush, rolls of wallpaper and a large carton of paste into the bakery. They'd attracted some attention from passers-by so kept in character.

They placed the ladder against the wall and set up the table in the middle of the bakery. Jackie unwrapped a roll of wallpaper whilst Harriet opened up the carton of paste. Then as Jackie held the wallpaper down on the table, Harriet dipped a brush into some of the paste and began to haphazardly slap in across the paper.

"Careful" Jackie warned.

But Harriet has more concerned about looking busy for the onlookers than heeding her assistant's warning, so it wasn't long before she'd pasted over Jackie's hands. But worse was to follow as Harriet's inattention meant she painted paste all over Jackie's ample chest before wiping the brush across her assistant's face. Jackie was annoyed and determined to get some payback.

The first Harriet knew of her recklessness was when Jackie grabbed the brush from out of her hands. She turned in surprise to see her paste covered assistant and immediately tried to apologise but Jackie was having none of it. Instead, she dipped the brush she had taken from Harriet into the carton of paste before looking ominous at her boss.

"You wouldn't dare!" Harriet stated.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" Jackie responded.

And with that Jackie took the paste laden brush and wiped it up and down over her boss' face. Harriet was less than impressed by her assistant's behaviour, particularly as they had drawn a small crowd of watchers who were laughing at the pair. So, when Jackie put down the brush, Harriet picked it up again and scooped up a heaped quantity of paste.

Harriet proceeded to "paint" her assistant from top to bottom, unconsciously paying special attention to Jackie's chest. Incensed at this latest affront to her dignity, Jackie attempted to snatch the brush from her boss but Harriet being somewhat taller than her assistant held the brush out of her reach. So, instead Jackie simply picked up the carton of paste.

"Now wait a damn minute" Harriet pleaded.

But Jackie didn't wait, not even for a second, and threw the contents of the carton all over Harriet before taking the almost empty carton and pushed it down over her boss' head. Then whilst Harriet struggled to remove the carton, Jackie strode out of the bakery, past the amused onlookers and drove off in the van.

* * *

Thankfully for Harriet here was a washroom in the back of the bakery for staff use. So, after managing to finally remove the carton of paste from her head she stepped into the back room and got herself cleaned up. She dunked her whole head into a basin of soapy water and washed both her face and hair. She was just drying herself off when the room began to shake violently.

"What the f..." she exclaimed aloud.

It felt much like an earthquake. Everything that wasn't secured down began to dance around due to the vibrations. Harriet wasn't sure if this predicament was natural or supernatural in origin, but it was certainly unsettling. She was just considering dropping to the ground and coverer her head when, to her great relief, the tremors suddenly stopped.

Harriet returned to the front of house area to inspect the damage and was somewhat confused to see the bakery pretty much as she'd left it. There was just a single mug which had fallen from a shelf and shattered on the floor. Not understanding how an earthquake could be so localised as to affect one room and bare touch another, Harriet went outside to question some passers-by.

"Did you feel the quake?" Harriet asked one.

"What are you taking about?" the stranger replied.

They looked at her as if she were mad and quickly walked away. She asked another and then a third and it was clear that outside of the bakery no one had felt the tremors that Harriet had faced whilst in the bakery's back room. Maybe it was something supernatural she conjectured but wanted to rule out anything mundane first.

Harriet spent the next hour or so walking up and down the street looking for anything suspicious. None of the other businesses seemed to be experiencing issues although she did notice that a couple of the local CCTV cameras had been vandalised. Then she decided to walk around the block to see what was behind the bakery.

"Now that's interesting" Harriet said to herself.

Sitting directly behind the bakery was a bank. And that's where things started to come together for Harriet: the supposed haunting, mysterious vibrations and of course the damaged cameras. Now all she needed to do was mend her fences with her assistant and hopefully they would shortly be able to wrap this case up.

* * *

Later than evening Harriet and Jackie were parked in their van down the street down when they observed a furtive couple approaching the bakery. One of them unlocked the door whilst the other lugged a large bag into the building. Harriet and her assistant waited a few moments before exiting the van and following on the heels of the mystery couple.

"This is so exciting" Jackie proclaimed.

"Shush" Harriet warned her assistant.

Inside the bakery everything looked pretty normal. Harriet led her assistant over to the basement door, and after opening it the pair descended into the darkened chamber. They made their way pass trolley after trolley all laden with cream pies until they saw a light at the far end. Standing at the rear wall were a man and women both dressed in black.

The woman was examining the wall which led to the adjacent bank's vault whilst her male colleague was assembling a huge electric drill. Harriet realised she'd found the source of the mysterious vibrations and it wasn't a poltergeist as the bakery staff had suspected. She stepped closer to get a better look at the pair of thieves.

"Did you hear something?" the man asked his companion.

Harriet remained still hopefully to avoid detection, but Jackie panicked and grabbing the first thing at hand, which happened to be a cream pie, and hurled it at the man. He ducked and the pie sailed over him and struck his female companion in the face. He glanced at his unfortunate colleagues and couldn't help but smirk at her undignified appearance.

As he turned back to confront Harriet and her assistant, he was hit with a second pie that Jackie had hurled. However, as Jackie celebrated her successes the women, she'd previous pied took up a cream pastry herself and threw it. The pie impacted Harriet's assistant directly in the face and even worse was to come as the man armed himself with a couple of pies.

"Not again" Harriet sighed.

Moments later Harriet received a pie in the face. She immediately retaliated by throwing some pies of her own and scoring direct hits on both the man and his female colleague. Meanwhile Jackie was having less luck with most of her throws going wide of the target and one even impacting against the back of Harriet's head. But the fight continued until all four were coated in cream.

When the pies ran out the four began to wrestle one another. Harriet struggled to restrain the man however her assistant proved herself something of a wolverine as Jackie successfully tackled and secured the woman before helping Harriet with her opponent. It wasn't long before the man and woman were both subdued and bound.

"Time to call the cops" Harriet stated.

It took quite a while for the police arrive as the phone operator had taken some convincing that the call wasn't a hoax. When they did arrive, they'd laughed at the state of Harriet and her assistant although the laughter had stopped when Harriet showed them the hole leading to the bank vault and the pair of thieves responsible for it.

* * *

The owners of the bakery weren't initially very happy with all the media attention after the arrest of the thieves. But Harriet had solved the mystery and the staff were no longer convinced the building was haunted. And with the publicity did come an increase in customer, most wanting to visit the scene of the crime, so they rewarded Harriet with the promised bonus and a fresh cream pie.

"You want some pie!" Harriet yelled.

Assuming Jackie hadn't heard her, Harriet picked up the pie and went to find her assistant. Unfortunately, Jackie had heard and came rushing into the office, stumbling into Harriet and causing her boss to smash the pie she was holding into her own face. Jackie started to apologise whilst Harriet just stood there, resigned to her messy fate.

The end.