Donna Joy Usher - Chanel 01 - Cocoa and Chanel by Donna Joy Usher Read Free Book Online

placed my bag in front of him. ‘Stay,’ I said in a stern voice, desperately hoping he wouldn’t decide to play with his squeaky pig.
    ‘Miss Smith?’
    ‘Yes Sergeant,’ I said, jumping to my feet.
    I saluted and stood to attention trying not to grimace as he ran his finger across my dusty window ledge. A week’s worth of laundry tumbled over his shiny shoes when he opened the wardrobe, and my shirts hung in all their crumpled glory. The men’s underpants I’d purchased to uphold the chaffing story were rumpled from my accessing the women’s ones hidden underneath. My bed was unmade and my desk littered with open study books. All in all it was a pretty poor effort. I would have been worried even if I hadn’t been hiding an illegal immigrant under my bed.
    Sergeant Moores finished his inspection and turned to face me.
    ‘Get it over with and go away,’ I thought, watching the grim expression on his face. I was trying hard not to imagine what would happen if squeaky pig noises suddenly came from under the bed.
    ‘Miss Smith,’ he said, ‘I’ve been doing room inspections for the last fifteen years and I can honestly say I have never seen such a …’ His voice had been increasing in volume as he whipped himself into a frenzy, but I didn’t get the chance to find out what it was he had never seen before because at that moment a smell so foul, so intense that we were both forced to cover our noses, invaded the room.
    I froze in horror. It looked like Cocoa’s salami was the gift that kept on giving. Sergeant Moores’ eyes bulged over the top of his hand and I did the only thing I could think of to waylay his suspicion.
    ‘Excuse me,’ I said.
    His eyebrows rode up his forehead to his impressive head of hair as he took his hand away from his nose and opened his mouth to speak. Another wave of putrid air washed over us even worse than the last.
    I put my hands to my belly and grimaced. ‘Dairy intolerance,’ I said. The smell kept on coming as Sergeant Moores attempted to draw breath. ‘And gluten,’ I added, apologetically.
    He walked out to the hallway, took his hand away from his face and said, ‘You need to get that looked at.’ And then he left.
    I closed the door before I flopped onto the bed and let out a sigh of relief. ‘Come here boy,’ I said softly. I could hear movement under the bed and then Cocoa commando crawled out. He trotted over to the door and whined, looking over his shoulder at me.
    I was about to put him in the backpack when there was a knock at the door.
    ‘Susie?’ I said.
    ‘It’s Rick.’
    I shoved Cocoa into the wardrobe before opening the door.
    ‘Hi,’ I said brightly, desperately hoping the smell had dissipated. I was guessing by the way his face screwed up that it hadn’t.
    ‘It wasn’t me,’ I said. I could feel my face going red.
    He looked past me into the room. ‘Well who was it then?’
    I dragged him in to my room and shut the door. I could hear Cocoa scrabbling, frantically trying to get out of the wardrobe.
    ‘Don’t tell me,’ Rick said, ‘it was the ghost that lives in your wardrobe.’
    I let Cocoa out before opening the window as wide as it would go.
    ‘Is this why you were looking for me?’ Rick asked.
    ‘No. I was going to ask if you would train Susie and me in the evenings.’
    ‘Why not,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Got nothing better to do.’
    I tried to take that as a compliment.
    Cocoa wandered over and sniffed Rick’s boots. His efforts were rewarded with a scratch behind the ears. He groaned and leaned into him.
    ‘He likes you.’
    ‘My mother had a schnauzer,’ Rick said, working his fingers deep into Cocoa’s beard. I pictured him kneading my flesh in the same way and tried unsuccessfully to prevent the shiver that ran over me. Why oh why hadn’t I hitched up my boobs before I’d opened the door?
    ‘What are you going to do with him?’ he asked.
    I sighed and then filled him in on my