The Diva Serves Forbidden Fruit

I’ve heard there’s a way to clean silver without having to polish it. Is that just wishful thinking or is it possible?

You can clean silver with very hot water, aluminum foil, and baking soda. However, you cannot do this in a metal sink or basin, or one with a metal drain because it will discolor the metal. Lay a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom of a plastic basin that is large enough to accommodate your silver item. Pour a generous amount of baking soda on top of the aluminum foil and place the silver piece on top of it. Pour in just boiling water and watch the tarnish disappear. Repeat as necessary to get all the tarnish off.

Sophie

That night, I checked all the doors twice to be sure they were locked. I wasn’t actually afraid, but why take chances?

At four thirty in the morning, I woke to Daisy howling along with an annoyingly shrill siren.

Daisy wasn’t the best guard dog. She barked sometimes and had been known to growl if she didn’t trust someone, but generally she was more of a kisser than a snarler. She happily plodded down the stairs along with Mochie, who was far wiser and more cautious. He jumped up on the bay window in the kitchen, ready to flee if necessary.

The siren grew louder.

I opened the kitchen door and looked outside. Only then did I realize that the wailing siren emanated from Nina. She was running across the street to my house holding up a little personal safety siren. A small white dog followed her, yelping the whole way.

“Sophie! Sophie!” she screamed.

I flicked on the outdoor light.

“Turn that off! He’ll see us and know where I am!”

The noisy siren took care of that. Nevertheless, I switched off the light and Nina raced into my kitchen faster than I had ever seen her move. The little white dog sped in on her heels.

She closed the door and locked it. “Don’t turn on any lights.” She gasped for breath and lurched over to the bay window to gaze out at her house. “I don’t see him.”

I joined her at the window. The street was quite calm. “You might turn off your siren.”

She switched it off. But Nina was clearly terrified. Still wearing sky blue pajamas, she trembled from head to foot. Nina ran to my landline and dialed three digits, which I presumed to be 911. She gave the dispatcher her address and said she had an intruder but was safely inside a neighbor’s home. She hung up the phone.

Oblivious to Nina’s panic, Mochie perched on a chair watching the new dog, ready to flee if necessary, but Daisy wagged her tail and proceeded with the traditional dog welcome ritual of polite sniffing.

I wrapped my arm around Nina and spoke softly. “You’re okay now. Tell me what happened.”

“This is Muppet, my foster dog. I was sound asleep when she barked at me. I tried to shush her, but she just wouldn’t stop barking. I didn’t see anything amiss in the bedroom, so I followed her downstairs, thinking there might be a mouse in the house or something else that would excite a dog, like a cat peering in the back door. That was when I saw a shady figure trying to get in my back door! All I could think of was what had happened to Lark. I ran through the house to the front door and over here.”

Lights flashed out on the street as a police car arrived.

“I’d better get out there,” said Nina.

I suited Daisy up in her halter and nabbed an extra leash for Muppet. Nina and the dogs waited patiently while I turned on all my outdoor lights and locked the kitchen door behind us. We crossed the street to Nina’s house. Bernie and Mars ran toward us wielding baseball bats.

Two uniformed officers stood on Nina’s front porch, no doubt ringing the doorbell.

“Hello!” Nina shouted from the street. “I’m the owner of this house.”

The two officers were in their twenties. A thin man with a sweet young face had a frightened look in his eyes. Fresh out of the police academy I guessed. His name tag identified him as Officer Farber. The woman with him, Officer Seapiza, wore her hair super short and if she hadn’t been in uniform, I would have thought she might be an elementary school teacher from her no-nonsense expression.

Nina told them what had happened.

Officer Seapiza sent Farber around the side of the house to check out the backyard.

I saw him take a deep breath. He was clearly afraid.

Mars must have noticed, too. He volunteered to go with him.

Meanwhile, Nina opened the front door for Seapiza, who told us to wait outside on the porch while she determined that no one was lurking in the house. After what seemed like hours, she reappeared. “I don’t see anyone inside the house. Show me where you saw this person.”

Nina led her to the back door. They flicked on outdoor lights, which surely startled Farber but probably gave him courage as well.

With the two leashed dogs, Bernie and I trailed into the house behind Nina and Seapiza.

We followed them into Nina’s kitchen. The door in question was glass and stood open about three inches.

“Your dog probably scared him away,” opined Officer Seapiza. “I can get someone over here to dust for prints, but thanks to TV, everyone knows about wearing gloves, so it’s highly unlikely that we’ll get any.” She nudged the door open and walked outside for a look. “Farber! You back here?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was eerie because we couldn’t see him. In spite of the spotlights, he and Mars somehow managed to be in the shadows.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. No footprints or anything that appears out of place.”

“I’d appreciate it if you would check for fingerprints,” said Nina. “Doesn’t this point to a professional thief? He picked the lock and the deadbolt.”

“Not really. Anyone can Google it.” Seapiza walked away and spoke into her radio.

We could hear voices outside.

Two hours later, half the neighbors had gathered in Nina’s beautiful professionally decorated living room. I had darted home for tea and frozen chocolate chip cookies and returned to Nina’s kitchen to brew coffee and Irish breakfast tea while the cookies thawed. Bernie and Mars had dressed in jeans and T-shirts hastily pulled on without regard for the night air and were probably chilled. Francie, my elderly next-door neighbor, had ambled across the street with her golden retriever, Duke, to make sure Nina was okay. A handful of other neighbors had come outside in an assortment of bathrobes that ran from shabby and embarrassingly well-worn to elegant. They clustered in the living room munching on cookies and drinking tea, while expressing concern that a ruthless burglar had targeted the neighborhood.

Officer Seapiza had gone off to take another call, leaving Officer Farber in charge. He stood in the doorway, drinking tea and eating cookies. Every minute or so, he glanced nervously at the back door, which was in the process of being fingerprinted.

Naturally, more than one person suggested there could be a connection between Lark’s killer and Nina’s intruder.

“It has to be more than a coincidence that you’re both just back from Europe,” said Bernie.

“Could the burglar have gotten the dates wrong?” asked Mars. “Maybe he thought you hadn’t returned yet and your homes were empty.”

I scanned the collected neighbors. How many people knew that both Lark and Nina were away? Nina had talked nonstop about her trip before she left. Lark probably had, too.

Nina must have been thinking along the same lines because she whined loudly, “Is this what we have evolved to? A society where you can’t even let anyone know that you’re going on a trip?”

Several neighbors assured her they thought it must have been a coincidence.

Mars, Bernie, and I exchanged glances. We weren’t so sure.

But at that moment, Officer Farber announced that the fingerprinting had been concluded and everyone was free to go home. “I’ll be patrolling periodically through the night and we’ll make a point of having a squad car cruise through occasionally after dark.”

There was a good bit of grumbling as the neighbors departed. Bernie, Mars, and I cleaned up Nina’s kitchen.

“Would you like me to stay over tonight?” asked Mars. “I can stretch out on a sofa down here. All I need are a pillow and a blanket.”

Nina glanced at me. “I thought I might sleep over at Sophie’s house. If I stayed here, I would be awake all night, afraid that he might return.”

“Great,” said Mars. “I’ll bunk in the den.”

It was already past six in the morning, but I nodded my head, thinking Mars and Nina might manage to sleep in but I had to be up and at the Do-It-Yourself Festival.

When we returned to my house, Mars went straight to bed.

Nina sat down in a chair by the fireplace and I filled the kettle for tea.

I poured tea for both of us, and gave Muppet, Mochie, and Daisy treats. “And Muppet gets extra love for being such a super watchdog!”

Her little tail wagged happily, and she helped herself to the water in the bowl on the floor.

“Do you think there’s a connection to Lark’s intruder?” Nina asked in a high-pitched and slightly hysterical voice.

I wanted to be honest with her. “It’s hard to tell. For all we know, it could have been someone who was casing your house while you were away and didn’t realize you had come home.”

She nodded her head.

“Are you going to ask your husband to return?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m going to tell him what happened but I’m not sure I want to drag him home. Do you mind me staying with you for a few days?”

“Of course not! I love having you here.” I looked down at Muppet. “And you, too!”

Nina went upstairs to the guest room for a nap.

I showered fast and pulled on a bright pink sweater set with khaki pants that instantly made me regret the cookies I had eaten only hours ago. There was no time for changing, but I did anyway. A pair of dark gray elastic-in-everyway jeans fit far better. I slid on sneakers, added simple gold hoops, a little makeup, and ran a brush through my hair. I hurried down the stairs and straight to the back door to let out Daisy and her new friend, Muppet. I fed Mochie in the kitchen and rounded the corner to peek in at Mars. He was fast asleep.

I dashed to the back door to let the dogs in on the assumption that they would probably prefer to lounge at home than hang around the DIY Festival with me. I would have loved to go back to bed if I could. Instead I let myself out the kitchen door, taking care to lock it behind me.

In daylight, Nina’s house looked perfectly normal and it was almost hard to believe that someone had broken in the night before. The entire street slumbered peacefully. Only birds and the distant rumble of traffic were evident.

I was dying for a mug of strong coffee but went straight to the street of DIY tents. No one there had overslept. Not even Paisley, who had more right than anyone to stay home.

To my surprise, she was in her tent with a fresh supply of refurbished furniture, including a collection of whimsical rocking chairs for children’s rooms in the MacKenzie-Childs style. They had black-and-white checkered seats, blue and purple arms, polka-dotted legs, and pink, blue, or yellow backs that she could personalize with a child’s name. The colors, dots, stripes, and diamonds were riotous and absolutely darling. They could have come from the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

I walked over to her. “These are incredible. Have you considered making them for wider distribution?”

“They’re my best sellers.” She pointed at a child’s dresser painted in the same adorable patterns and bright colors. “I even make matching dressers and changing tables. But I can only do so many. Painting details takes time. And Frank is completely incapable when it comes to manual labor. He can’t stay inside the lines,” she said with a sad smile.

“There has to be a way,” I said. “Maybe you could hire some people to paint them.”

Paisley laughed aloud. “With what?”

“I know, it’s hard to get a new business off the ground. Still, I think you have something very special here.”

The gate to Lark’s house creaked open and Frank staggered out, carrying a box which tinkled when he plopped it down on a painted sideboard. “Morning, Sophie.”

Yellow police tape lay in a heap on the ground next to the gate. Was he allowed to go inside?

“What have you got there, Frank?” asked Paisley. She walked over and peered in the boxes. Her face went white and I could hear her gasping for breath. She looked at him with horror.

Feeling an argument was coming on, I waved, though I doubted that they noticed, and walked away, stopping to say hello to each of the merchants and ask how things were going.

Most of them had a theme. One fellow painted everything in red, white, and blue with stars and stripes, while the one next to him only made garden items, like signs and birdhouses. There were wreath specialists and polka-dot painters. Lantern decorators, lamp and chandelier creators, Christmas ornament makers, and tiling experts. So many niches and talented people!

They had me thinking about changing up some things in my own house. Why not paint that dreary side table I had bought on a whim because the price was so low?

I swung by Market Square, where a woman demonstrated how to clean silver without silver cleaner.

But I needed my coffee. Desperately! I popped in at a café and ordered coffee and an everything bagel to go.

“Heard someone broke in at Nina’s last night.”

I recognized Wolf’s voice and turned. “He picked two locks on her back door.”

“Is she okay?”

“She wasn’t physically hurt, but she spent the rest of the night at my house. She’s very upset. If she hadn’t been fostering a barky little dog, she could have awakened to find someone in her bedroom!”

“I can’t blame her. That’s a very scary thing, especially on the heels of Lark’s murder,” said Wolf.