Jorja & Malcolm (Toffee Kisses Book 1)

by Shelley Siddall

  The right of Shelley Dawn Siddall to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any mean without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Copyright © 2018 Shelley Dawn Siddall

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Design & formatting by SapphireDesigns.co.uk

  This book is dedicated to my Sisters, Jacquie, Connie & Tracy, and to everyone who laughs out loud while reading Jorja & Malcolm.

  Thank you. Also to the dozens of friends and workmates who not only heard me talking about “my book” but subsequently endured math as I excitedly posted the numbers of daily words written.

  I am so sorry there was math.

  Fortunately, Carianne Anderson could handle it.

  Thanks Lady Louise!

  Contents:

  Chapter 1 or the case of the missing ant

  Chapter 2 or the family meeting to end all family meetings

  Chapter 3 or revelations and flirtations

  Chapter 4 or the incident at the Art Gallery and several postponed deliveries

  Chapter 5 or hairy pancakes, twirling twins and a high fiber diet

  Chapter 6 or why Queen Bat Crap Crazy was dethroned and Betty Boothe had her butt fired

  Chapter 7 or what’s in a name?

  Chapter 8 or finally they kissed and the police were called

  Chapter 9 or an undercover operation, the Sears catalogue game and mismatched shoes

  Chapter 10 or Miss Twinkle and the Fierce Food Café

  Chapter 11 or Norma grows a backbone while Jorja buys pie

  Chapter 12 or a late night phone call; early morning whiskey and a final curtain call?

  Chapter 13 or rebounding with Suzy?

  Chapter 14 or finally, their first date!

  About The Author

  Chapter One

  Or the case of the missing ant

  “Is it in Panavision?” Malcolm asked.

  Jorja lifted an eyebrow. “Like Blue Hawaii? You mean old Elvis films?” she asked.

  “Sure, if it’s not in Panavision, I don’t watch it. Too gory, too graphic.” Malcolm handed her the sweet potato chips and plopped into the love seat beside her.

  “I was planning on watching CSI in gory graphic colour, but if it’s going to offend your sensibilities…” Jorja clicked off the TV with the remote and focused her baby blues on Malcolm’s.

  “Now what?” she said.

  Malcolm clapped his hands. “Let’s turn off the TV and watch my neighbors.” He zipped around moving lamps out of their line of vision. “Let’s turn off the lights and SPY!”

  Jorja shifted slightly closer in the love seat. “So…who’s who in the zoo?” she inquired.

  “Wait!” Malcolm ordered as he jumped up and grabbed a lilac coloured gift bag off the freezer in the kitchen and returned to the loveseat.

  “Ooh! A prezzy. I’ve been wondering what was in that bag all through dinner!” Jorja reached in and pulled out a small pair of binoculars.

  “Purrfect,” she purred.

  The apartment building opposite was well lit and it surprised Jorja how clearly she could see into the lives of complete strangers.

  “So, tell me their stories,” Jorja prompted.

  “Welcome to Regency Place where the loves and lives of all are open to those special few with bi-noco-vision. Let’s start at the top, shall we? For those who prefer a penthouse view, the Chatty- Chatterton’s live at the tippy top and are known to, gasp, hang their bathing suits over the main balcony!”

  “So they’re drips is what you’re saying?” Jorja asked.

  “Quite,” Malcolm concurred. He went on, “Mrs. Chatty-Chatterton spends her nights curled up in the lounge,on the telephone. There is a personal assistant that brings nourishment to Mrs. C every so often while Mr. C talks on his telephone most nights while sitting at his desk.”

  “A maid!” Jorja’s eyebrow arched again. “I could do with a maid or two. I’d have them do my taxes and go to the dentist for me.” She caught a quick series of movements in one of the lower apartments to the left. “What on earth is going on over there?”

  “Ah,” said Malcolm knowingly, “That is little Suzy Rebounder. Mad about rebounding she is. Bouncy bounce on her little trampoline, all day long.”

  “Really?”

  “No, but she does faithfully rebound five out of seven nights. I think she has weekends off for good behavior.”

  “Say, a lot of people seem to be talking on the phone or sitting at a computer,” Jorja noted.

  “Alas, our lives are no longer measured out by teaspoons, but by fiber optics and bits and bytes.”

  “Let’s return to the Chatty-Chatterton’s for a moment. Do you suppose that is Mr.C hanging off the balcony?” Jorja asked. She re-focused her binoculars. “Nope, Mr.C just walked out of his office into the hallway.”

  “Good gravy Woman!” Malcom shouted and reached for the phone. He dialed 911.

  “Wait a minute; is the cat burglar falling off the balcony or climbing up? I’m on hold,” he added as an afterthought.

  Jorja leaned forward. “He’s …climbing…up. Is he supposed to be doing that?”

  “Let’s see,” Malcolm said, “If he was just pushed off the balcony then from the view point of the pusher I would have to say no, he was not supposed to climb back up. I’m still on hold.”

  “He’s paused by the screen door; is he breaking in?” Jorja asked.

  “Actually, it looks like he’s just sliding the doors open. No breakage involved.”

  “He’s inside,” Jorja reported. “Malcolm look, Mrs.C is holding the phone to her chest. She hears something. No, I guess it was nothing she’s thinking, I’ll go back to my conversation.”

  “You can hear her thinking from here?”

  “Where’s the maid? Perhaps she`s getting murdered as we speak?” Jorja whispered.

  Malcolm shook his head slowly. “Perhaps it’s best then if we not speak.” Suddenly his voice became louder. “Yes hello. I`d like to report a…a…” He stopped and looked at Jorja.

  She shook her head.

  “A man looked like he was falling off a balcony but he climbed back up and went inside,” Malcolm finished lamely. He listened and put down the phone. “They said thank you for my riveting report.”

  Jorja shrugged her shoulders. “Wednesdays must be sarcastic night down at emergency services. Who knows, maybe they order in pizza.”

  “Do you realize, Jorja, that we just made a decision to be illegal by omission? We are actually sharing in the perpetration of this crime as we did not report it fully. Whatever the cat burglar is doing, he is taking his own sweet time about it.”

  “Mrs.C doesn’t seem disturbed; she’s just chatting away on the phone.” Jorja tapped her nose with her finger. “I wonder what is happening over there?” she said.

  “Okay, that’s it, I’m going over.” Jorja jumped to her feet and slipped on her bright orange clogs. She stared intently at Malcolm. She stopped to think of something fitting to say in this time of potential danger. “If my Mom calls, tell her I’m not here,” she said.

  “Done!” said Malcolm as he lifted the binoculars off her neck. He walked her to the elevator, squinted his eyes and fro
wned. “Any plan whatsoever, dearie?”

  “Um. I’ll cross the road; well…first I’ll look both ways of course, then cross the road. Go to the directory and see who lives on the top floor. Then I’ll scoot back here and phone them.”

  “May the force be with you,” Malcolm said solemnly as the elevator doors shut.

  As Jorja was to later tell Malcolm, things didn’t go exactly as planned. This was rather what he concluded when he saw her stop and talk to a man leaving the building. Nor was it planned that she should walk right in the open door. Imagine meeting the cat burglar as he walked out of Regency Place!

  Jorja felt a stab of disloyalty as she thought, ‘he’s almost as well built as Malcom, but much better looking.’

  “Well hello sexy short stuff!” the cat burglar said as he leered at Jorja. “Who are you here to visit?” he asked.

  “Suzy Rebounder,” she had said breathlessly. He wished her a good evening and held the door open for her. She had to walk in.

  The word ‘sexy’ had unnerved Jorja. Now that she could breathe again, she thought she just might sit on one of the red plushy things near the fake greenery. So there she sat, slowly sinking into a red plushy thing. Jorja clicked her clogs together, but unfortunately nothing happened. She got up and checked the directory for the name of the occupants of the penthouse.

  Apparently, Mrs.C, make that Mrs. Basset, was still on the phone as the maid answered the door.

  “I’d like to see Mr. Bassett,” Jorja explained and held her business card just out of reach of the maid. What Mr. Bassett would want with a cartoonist-portrait artist at ten thirty at night Jorja had no idea.

  Mr. Bassett, when he finally arrived, was thin on top, wide in the middle and tapered to thin again at the bottom. “He would be fun to draw,” thought Jorja. Evidently Jorja mumbled some of this aloud as Mr. Bassett asked her to repeat herself.

  “Are you missing anything from your home?” she asked. Then she leaned in and added ominously, “We have reason to believe you home was burgled tonight.”

  “Oh! You’re the new security guard!” he said as he stared pointedly at her orange clogs. “Undercover?” he asked hopefully.

  Jorja bobbed her head. “Uniforms would be a bit too obvious. Mind if I look around?”

  Mr. Bassett gave her a guided tour which included the maids’ room, the guest room, the other guest room, and the den, where a large TV screen showed a very young Elvis kissing a stewardess.

  Jorja burst out, “Oh, wouldn’t Malcolm love to see this!” She quickly added, “My co-worker, Malcolm, would love to see that your giant, well, humongous, electronics are intact. Any other rooms where valuables are kept?”

  The Master bedroom, kitchen and lounge were apparently burglar free zones as they were not included in the tour. The study, however, had a familiar balcony attached to it. Jorja stepped outside and waved in the general direction of Malcolm’s apartment building. For good measure, she threw in the Vulcan sign for ‘live long and prosper’.

  Meantime, Mr. Bassett had been lifting up books and sheets of paper from a desk. “It’s missing,” he said, “It’s definitely missing.”

  “What’s that?” Jorja asked.

  “My ant,” he said.

  “Are you a fruitcake Mr. Bassett?” Jorja asked while slowly edging toward the door.

  “My original sketch by Escher is missing. The subject matter was an ant.”

  “Oh!” Jorja said relieved. “Escher! Relativity! People climbing upstairs and downstairs. A giant ant. Sure, Escher.” As an afterthought she added “Why did you not hide it in this oh so handsome safe on the floor?”

  “The purloined letter theory. Safest when hidden in plain view.”

  “How much was this sketch worth, in or out of sight, Mr. Bassett?”

  “About $150,000.00, give or take.”

  Later, after Jorja returned to reclaim her binoculars, she honestly reported to Malcolm, “It was at that point I had a small brain toot and couldn’t think of anything to say. Fortunately, Mr. Bassett said he didn’t want the police involved and asked me to handle things on the QT. Oh look…” Jorja produced a handsome gilt edged business cared. “He gave me his card. He’s in foreign currency. I, however, am in deep do-do as I don’t know where his ant is.”

  Malcolm sighed. “You know what the cat burglar looks like. Draw his portrait and I’ll copy it at work. We’ll put up signs around the neighborhood.”

  “Saying what? Have you seen this Man? People will be phoning us all day long saying either “Yes” or “No”. Then what?”

  “Well perhaps we could say have you seen this man with an ant? Of course we could still get lots of yes or no answers.”

  Jorja had grabbed her sketch pad from her knapsack in the hall and was working with a fine point sharpie on a portrait. She drew the cat burglar but added long flowing hair that ended in a cute flip. In bold printing she wrote at the bottom Have You Seen My Aunt? She showed it to Malcolm as she started to chuckle.

  He groaned dramatically. “Please tell me how much longer I have to stay awake.”

  “She’s off the phone,” Jorja said. “Must be time for bed.”

  Malcolm plugged his ears and started singing, “La la la, I can’t hear you.”

  Jorja laughed again. “Sorry Malcolm. I shouldn’t have used that nasty word b-e-d. I said I would help you stay awake well into the wee hours of the morn, to help you reset your body clock for your night shift rotation. Okay. We’ll stay awake coming up with the name for our Detective agency. Then tomorrow you can sleep all day and be ready for you nightshift at 7:00 pm …oops I should say 1900.”

  “You realize if I was comfortable with a computer in my home, we could just research names on the ‘net?” Malcolm sighed.

  “For that matter,” Jorja said, “I could use my phone; however some people, well one person in particular, doesn’t have Wi-Fi and I don’t have data left. I could have found out that the Chatty-Chatterton’s were actually the Bassett’s, but then I wouldn’t have met the cat burglar or Mr. Bassett, or even his maid for that matter.”

  “What was the maid like?”

  “Reminded me a little bit of a dandelion that had gone to seed.”

  Malcolm handed Jorja the last of the sweet potato chips. “Are we talking form or function?”

  “Well, her hair was grayish and kind of frizzy, but she seemed to have a sort of “I’m done look” in her eyes. Like she was finished, end of the season.”

  “You think she was dying?”

  “No; just that she was firmly resolved that she would do no more of something…she was done.”

  “Interesting.” Malcolm looked at Jorja and tried hard to stifle a yawn.

  “Now what?” he said, slightly panicked at his sleepiness.

  “The Newsome-Clark Detective Agency,” Jorja said.

  “No, your name should go first,” Malcolm insisted, “otherwise the first thing customers hear is the New Detective Agency. So the Clark-Newsome Detective Agency?”

  Jorja got up and checked the fridge for leftovers. “Well, how about Clark-Newsome Consulting Agents?” she said after finding a piece of pie.

  “Or, just Clark Newsome, Consulting Agent.”

  Jorja gasped. “We could be like Remington Steele and people will come up and ask for Mr. Newsome and you could say, “He’s away but I’m his brother.”

  “But I am in fact, Mr. Newsome. What about the Find an Ant Detective Agency?”

  Jorja waved her fork and shook her head. “My dear Malcolm that will never do as I truly do not want to find ants.”

  “Giant Detective Agency?” Malcolm said and then added, “Because there has been a dearth of giants of late.”

  “How about this…I have to get in my jammies. I’m staying awake, Malcolm of the Giant Detective Agency, but I need to be in my jammies after a certain point at night. Otherwise I self-destruct.”

  Malcolm called out to her as she headed towards the bathroom, knapsack in hand, “Are
we going to charge for our detective services?”

  Jorja padded out in fluffy slippers and a tartan menagerie of octopi and squid. She displayed her nightie proudly, saying, “My Mom made me this. I just asked her for anything with squid or octopus and I got both. Now that was a Wednesday that went down in history, let me tell you! Oh, about charging? Let’s not. What the heck do we need more money for? You’re a Nurse; I’m an artist. We’re good.”

  “Okay, founding member of the Giant Squid free for all Detective Agency.”

  “I almost like it, Malcolm. Say don’t any of those people go to bed? It’s almost one. Malcolm? Mr. Newsome! Are you sleeping?”

  “No, just resting my eyes. We need a new game as it would appear that not everyone present is blessed with energizer bunny batteries.”

  “The food game,” Jorja suggested. “Come up with the most unusual combinations of food to eat, but the kicker is…you have to actually have eaten it, or will eat it.”

  “Great Jorgie. As a kid I loved toast with mustard, relish and ketchup. No hot dog, no bun, just toast, etcetera, etcetera etcetera.”

  “Sounds faintly boring. What about radishes, dipped in sour cream? I love those little hot radishes!”

  Malcolm yawned. “I’ll have to try them. I know how about this…I haven’t tried it but will at the earliest opportunity; McIntosh apple slices with sweet chili sauce?”

  “Loverly! I’ve got one I want to try too. How about a butter toffee with pepper sprinkled on it?”

  “Oh, I so dare you to try that!” cried Malcolm.

  “You’re on! It will be the official treat of the Giant Squid free for all Detective Agency. Each customer will receive a bag of toffees and a pepper mill.”

  “I think we’re tired,” Malcolm said.

  “I think we are. Let’s say one final goodnight to the kids, close the drapes and pull out the sofa bed for me.”

  Jorja and Malcolm raised their binoculars to their eyes at the same moment. At the same time they said “He’s climbing back up!”

  This time, it was frustrating to watch the cat burglar’s progress. He seemed to stand for long periods.