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"Hello sir, welcome to Holweet's Bakery, what would you like?" chimed the near-elderly lady at the counter. Her curly auburn hair was tied back behind her head, most of her scalp covered by a lime bonnet.
"I'd like a bagel— no, two, please. Rye," answered Edgeworth. There wasn't anything special about rye bagels today to Edgeworth that necessitated this order. No, in fact, he simply woke up an hour ago and felt this is something he'd like to have. This bagel craving had no real cosmic meaning to it. All he did was walk down the street from his nice apartment to this small business to see what they offered, and sure enough, they had bagels.
"Right, I'm sure we have some of those available right away!" responded the woman cheerfully. She clearly was fishing for recurring customers with such a good attitude, Edgeworth deducted. "Let me just head into the kitchen to see." And so she did, through a door and out of sight. Edgeworth stood and waited... for about ten seconds, until he heard what he assumed was the woman shrieking in horror from the back.
"Is everything okay in there?" Edgeworth asked cursorily, despite knowing it almost certainly wasn't.
"H-he's... DEAD!" screamed the counter lady back. Responding quickly, Edgeworth walked into the kitchen, to discover an old man in a chef's uniform with his head stuffed in an oven!
"I can't believe this!" continued to shout the woman. "Honey! Pumpa! You can't be...!"
Seconds later, another person—another, significantly younger chef—ran in, arriving to the scene through a separate door, apparently from the stockroom. Immediately, the woman pointed him out and declared, "You! Rick Fyre! You did this, didn't you!" The Mr. Fyre stumbled for an answer, eventually coming to, "What? Mr. Holweet's...! I couldn't've...!" Edgeworth determined immediately that this man was innocent.
A familiar voice called out from the front-facing door of the kitchen, announcing "Looks like this is quite the situation, huh, Mr. Edgeworth?" The named prosecutor turned around and saw that none other than Kay Faraday had entered the room.
"Kay...! How did you know I was here?" queried Edgeworth.
"I followed you from your house, duh!" Kay answered, rubbing at her nose, high in the air.
Edgeworth sighed. "Very well. Mrs... Holweet, I presume?" ("Yes, that's me, Nickie Holweet, but my family calls me Nan.") "Please give me permission to inspect the crime scene before the police get here."
Mrs. Holweet affirmed his permission, and Edgeworth immediately got to observing the body of her husband, Kay right behind him. The first thing he noticed, looking at the gruesome murder, was of course the victim's wallet concealed in his pocket. Outside of money and credit cards, it contained a number of photos of similar-looking men standing in front of the very Holweet Bakery. Edgeworth turned towards Nickie and asked, "Would you know who these men were?"
"Ah, yes, that's Pumpa's father right there, and... I guess that's his grandfather," she pointed out. "This restaurant goes back pretty far in his family. It's basically an heirloom of his. ...And I guess now, I'm going to have to give ownership of the business to his own son."
"Would this son be here right now?" Edgeworth asked, and serendipitously, the boy walked into the room at just that second. Edgeworth could tell because he had the Holweet logo on his shirt and he was clutching onto a plush loaf of bread in fear. Edgeworth ignored him and continued investigating the body. Pumpa's right hand was covered in bread crumbs, but not his left hand. His face was melted off, and yet his hat was hardly touched, just covered in a little soot. He had an open cut on his elbow. There were all sorts of suspicious things going on with the circumstances around Mr. Holweet's murder, and Edgeworth noted them all down in his organizer.
In the midst of this, he was interrupted by a certain man shouting "Hey, pal! Who's the suspect?" behind him. Lo and behold, it was Detective Dick Gumshoe.
"We just got the call that a murder happened here, funny how we'd meet up again, eh, Mr. Edgeworth, sir?"
"Sure," he responded.
Edgeworth turned around and checked the counter in the center of the room. There were two bagels there, looking very tantalizing to the now-peckish Edgeworth. But there was also a loaf of bread with a big chunk taken out of it. Edgeworth took a mental note of this and quickly exhausted said note by deducting, based on the bread crumbs in the victim's right hand, he must've stood here. Then, he found an isolated chunk of bread on the floor near the staff room door (notably distinct from the front-facing door and the stockroom door) and made another connection, determining that for whatever reason, but probably to deter the true killer, the victim threw a piece of bread in the direction of the door.
"And is that the sort of level of deduction that Chief Prosecutors here usually make?" asked a woman's voice from behind Edgeworth which he instantly recognized.
"Franziska von Karma," Edgeworth simply stated. "What brings you here?
"Interpol, naturally," replied Franziska, waving her finger at her co-pupil. "We recently received a tip that something vital to the historic culture and prestige of the Republic of Borginia was hidden many years ago in this property."
"What is it?" Edgeworth reasonably wished to know.
"Who wants to know?" Franziska taunted.
"A murder happened minutes before you arrived here, Franziska," Edgeworth reasoned, "I'm fairly certain this is related."
"Well, let's see," Franziska noncommittally responded. Edgeworth groaned, and promptly returned to investigating and interrogating.
"So, as we can see," Edgeworth began in order to conclude his findings, "Eva L'fiene had plenty of reason to want to possess this property under any means necessary, because it was the only way she'd uncover the Royal Borginian Scepter from underneath the staff room floor tiles, as it was placed there by Pumpa's grandfather. She must've contacted Nickie and told her that she would give her a priceless sum for the acquisition of the bakery. Of course, Pumpa, having such an attachment to this bakery, wouldn't have sold it for all the money in the world—contractually obligated by the founding member of his family, as we've seen—and Nickie knew this. So, the only way for her to be able to get the rights to sell the bakery off would be..."
At this point he pointed dramatically at Nickie.
"Murdering him and posing it in such a way that it would appear to be an accident!"
Nickie screamed, "BUT YOU HAVE NO PROOF! NO PROOF OF THIS SUPPOSED MOTIVE!" and resumed biting into her bonnet out of stress as she has been for the past hour.
Edgeworth tapped at his temple. "Ah, but that's where you're wrong. Nickie, in your locker, we found this document"—he held it up—"hidden within your cook books. This is an official notice that you are passing the ownership of the property, fully signed, even with both Eva's and your signature on it!"
In response to this true turnabout of the facts, Nickie shrieked something along the lines of, "AIIIIEIIIEEEEEIIIEEEEIEEEEEIIEEIEIEIEEEEIEIEIEEEEEIEIEIIIIEEIIIIE!!!!!" entire loaves of bread flying out of her uniform, followed by a pan, which subsequently falls and smacks her on the head.
"How did... how did you do it?" gasped Eva.
"Another murderer down!" shouted Kay.
"Nice one, sir!" merited Gumshoe.
"Huh, you actually did it. I'm impressed," awarded Franziska.
"I can't believe mother..." trailed off Nickie's son.
"I owe you own, Mr. Edgeworth," thanked Rick.
"You really did show me," conceded Lang.
"I now pronounce defendant Rick Fyre... not guilty," declared Justine.
"It's like I was watching Gregory in the flesh again," reminisced Raymond.
"Investigative science does it again!" concluded Ema.
"Does that mean I'm not getting her number?" puzzled Larry.
"Aw, y'all really put a plug on that one," resented Lotta.
"Well done," stated Shelly and Sirhan at once.
"I'm going home," announced Edgeworth.
Well, first he took those two bagels.
Edgeworth stared at the surface of the two rye bread bagels he was holding as he walked back to the apartment building, tan circles on the backdrop of bluish gray concrete. He curiously took a bite out of one. Cold. Possibly already stale. A frown covered his face.
Well, at least he could finally be home, he realized, pulling open the door to the building. Edgeworth stepped over to the elevator and hit the button and—hold on, isn't the receptionist supposed to be at the desk at this time? It's 1:00 pm. He looked over with a discriminating gaze: yep, she's not there.
A leap of logic was instantly made in Edgeworth's brain as he stepped back over to the desk, and a sigh was put to the forefront of his tongue. (Please don't be what I think it is,) he thought.
Edgeworth leaned over the desk and looked down.
The receptionist gazed back at him coldly and unmoving, a gaping bloody wound oozing blood square in the center of her chest.
Sigh.