Notoriously Neat (8 page)

Besides, my night wasn’t a total shipwreck. Its redeeming moments were bare and fleeting, but we can’t ask for everything, and there were a couple. One of them was noticing that my best friend had put one of my new ecofriendly cleaning hints into practice. It gave me the idea for this entry and that’s something to hang my apron on.

I’m calling these tips Mixed Greens because I’m combining new environmentally sound cleaning methods with more traditional ones. The bottom line is that my hints
work
, and that means being careful not to ignore practicality and efficiency when substituting the old with the new—a commonsensical approach as we make a conversion to alternative products and techniques.

Incidentally, you can give Bry the Wonder Guy credit for the name and raising my environmental consciousness. He’s made me realize that small changes in the ways we clean—and use our cleaning equipment—can make a big difference. Whether it’s saving energy (and cutting down on high home fuel and electric bills), helping to ease the impact of toxic chemicals that infiltrate our soil and food, or reducing the amount of waste containers dumped into landfills, I think these will be helpful to you—and everyone around you.

So . . . here are a few greens to toss in with your old tried-and-trues.

1. Using a dishwasher is nearly always more economical than washing by hand. This is for the simple reason that most of us rinse dishes under a running tap, wasting a whole lot of water. A water and energy-efficient machine will pay for itself over time, since conserving water means lower water and sewer bills.

2. There isn’t an alternative cleaning concoction I like more than this homemade nonabrasive cleaner: Add a small amount of baking soda to some dish-washing liquid (just enough so that when you mix it in with a fork, the liquid takes on the consistency of a rich hair conditioner). Dab it on the inside of the oven door and then rub with a small, circular motion. You’ll quickly see all the old baked-on splatter lift right off. Next, rinse with cold water and towel dry. Your oven door will sparkle and you won’t be breathing in the strong toxins associated with most commercial oven cleaners.

3. Before you put away the baking soda, toss a half cup down the sink and tub drains. Follow that with one cup white vinegar and flush thoroughly with hot water. Repeat about every two weeks and you’ll never have a clogged drain again (well, unless you dump rags and hair down it).

4. To freshen up your sink’s food-waste disposal unit, quarter a lemon, drop the sections down the drain, and then hit the switch, flushing as usual. You can do this while implementing the previous tip or anytime in between. It will eliminate most bad smells from the drain without using chemical deodorizers.

5. Want your house to smell clean besides looking it? Simple. Open the window for a half hour every morning when the weather’s nice. No plug-in you can buy is as wonderfully invigorating as fresh air—and it’s free!

As I went downstairs to Chloe’s at a quarter to eight the next morning, I found the baking smells in the hall a merciful contrast to the horrid stinkiness of Drecksel’s bologna quiche.

They also came as an immediate—if all-too-brief—comfort. After a night when I’d felt my world tilt 180 degrees off its axis, the delicious aroma from Chloe’s oven helped reorient it toward normalcy and balance. In fact, I felt better just knowing she was back from her mysterious late-night excursion. After lying awake in bed till around two a.m., I’d finally gotten some spotty rest, drifting in and out of sleep for the next few hours.

One of the times I dozed off must have been right around when Chloe got home—either that or she’d been really quiet, because I hadn’t heard her come in. Whatever the case, I’d grown mighty uneasy after watching her slip off into the darkness with the silver-haired Lexus driver . . . and could no more stop worrying about her all night than wipe the image of Dr. Pilsner’s dead body from my mind.

Standing in the hall now, I still didn’t know what to make of her nocturnal outing. But at least she was safely home and ready to start the day with our standard routine—coffee klatching over a tray of her homemade breakfast goodies.

I opened her door, poked my head in. “Knock, knock.”

“Sky.” Chloe turned from over by the kitchen range and yawned. “Hello, dear.”

I paused in the entry to the front parlor. Chloe’s voice sounded kind of flat to me. And though she obviously had her face on, I felt she looked tired and bleary-eyed.

There you have it, class . . . I said my sense of comfort didn’t last long, didn’t I? Might as well scratch the word “balance” too.

Chloe never looked tired or bleary. Ever. And she usually singsonged her “hello” to me. Good days, bad days, blah days. It always came out as, “
Hel-loooo-oooooo!
”

I went through the parlor to the dining room, doing my best to hide my befuddled scrutiny. Chloe had on a ribbed black V-neck sweater with a flowery cooking apron over it, and a pair of black athletic running pants with a pale pink double stripe up the outside of each leg. A cell phone case hung from a cord around her neck, its floral pattern matching the apron. Coiled toward the top of her head, her light brown hair was twisted into a low ponytail. It had been secured with a tortoiseshell claw clip.

I supposed things were normal in one respect, then. Chloe was so consistent about putting together nice outfits for herself that a part of me always imagined she did it by snapping her fingers like Samantha in the old television show
Bewitched
. No matter how stressed she was, or what sort of craziness was going on around her, she was always nicely dressed.

I joined her in the kitchen, poured our coffees, added some one percent milk to Chloe’s cup, and carried them back to the dining room table. Then I pulled up a chair and sat as she arranged some goodies on her tray with an oven-mitted hand and carried it over from the kitchen.

“Yum,” I said. “What have we here?”

“A Gloucester blueberry bread.” Chloe smiled and set the tray down in front of me.

“Ah-hah.” I picked up a slice and tasted it. “Chloe, this is fantastic.”

“Thank you, Sky. Dig in. It’s a simple, old-fashioned recipe. Pastry flour, two cups of blueberries, a tablespoon of softened butter, a couple of eggs . . . I add a little grated lemon rind to give it some snap.”

“
Definitely
very snappy,” I said, chewing.

Chloe took the chair opposite me, her smile broadening. As I sat there eating and sipping coffee, I was almost fooled into thinking I’d let my suspicions get the better of me. Maybe I was reading too much into things.

Then Chloe had to go and yawn again, making me focus on the puffiness under her eyes, and blowing any illusions that she was her normal, positive-vibe-radiating self to smithereens.

There wasn’t any avoiding it. I had to ask about her mysterious night ride.

“Chloe, I need you to help me understand something,” I said. “Last night when I went upstairs—right before I went up, that is—didn’t you say you were going straight to bed?”

She nodded in the affirmative. “I was exhausted. It must have been the news about Gail Pilsner.”

“So I’m not mistaken. You did go to bed. With Oscar. In your bedroom.”

“Of course. Where else would we have slept?” She gave me a funny look. “What’s bothering you, Sky?”

A moment passed. And I’d thought I was putting
her
on the spot.

“Sky?” Chloe urged.

“I don’t know,” I said.

That drew another glance.

“Well, maybe I do know,” I said, exhaling. “I wasn’t sleepy after I left here. I mean, I was at first. But then I wasn’t. Skiball seemed under the weather and it made me a little worried. So I took a shower and decided to get some stuff done on my computer. Catch up with my e-mail, work on my cleaning-tips blog, and so forth.” I shrugged. “After a while I heard a car outside and—”

“That must have been me pulling my Beetle out of the garage.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I had to drive down to Gloucester.”

I looked at her in disbelief. The car I’d seen her get into was no Beetle. Nor had she done any driving from the passenger seat. Whatever her destination might have been, the silver-haired man had taken her there.

“Chloe, it was eleven o’clock. Where in Gloucester were you going?”

“The drugstore. Lane’s Pharmacy here in town closes at nine.” She cleared her throat and put a slice of blueberry bread on her dish. “It was an emergency. A minor one—don’t be concerned. Oscar had a terrible headache and we couldn’t find any aspirin in the house.”

I still couldn’t believe it. My closest friend was lying to my face. It was wildly, irreconcilably out of character for her. Yet there it was.

She was lying. Straight to my face.

I stayed tight-lipped about the things I’d seen from the window. I wasn’t sure of my reasons. But I didn’t want her to know what I knew.

“You could’ve knocked on my door for aspirin,” I said. “Or Tylenol. Or whatever. If it’s a headache pill, I’ve got it in my medicine cabinet.”

Chloe sat quietly a few seconds, lowered her eyes to her dish. “I didn’t know. And as you said, it was late.”

“So what?” I kept playing along. “Even if the cabinet was empty, I would’ve been glad to keep you company.”

Now Chloe was sort of nudging her blueberry bread with a finger. “You seemed so exhausted when you got in,” she said. “I—I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Better I’m disturbed than have you drive down alone at that hour,” I said. “Chloe . . . are you sure you aren’t keeping anything from me?”

Her eyes suddenly met mine. “Why would I want to do that?”

She poked her bread around some more as we looked at each other across the table.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying to hide my disappointment. I’d offered her an out, but she wasn’t taking it. She didn’t intend to come clean. “Just asking, I guess.”

Chloe made a shooing gesture and laughed nervously. “It could be we’re both too mystery-minded for our own good,” she said. “Not that I’m close to being in your league.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t be modest.” She shooed me off again. “You’ve actually been involved in solving crimes. I’m just another couch potato
Flipped
fanatic.”

She was changing the subject. Or trying to change it. And as much as I didn’t want to accommodate her, she’d tickled my curiosity.

“What’s
Flipped
?” I asked, taking the bait.

“A television series about ordinary women who flip their lids and commit murder,” Chloe said. “On that new cable television channel . . . the Secret Investigation Network.”

“Never heard of it,” I said with a clueless expression.

“They call it SIN for short,” she said. “
Flipped
is the station’s newest hit. A typical episode might be about a wife who shoots her husband and his mistress after catching them in bed, then chops them to pieces and feeds them to—”

“Spare me the graphic details, Chloe,” I said. “I’d rather not regurgitate my blueberry bread.”

She frowned. “Pardon me, dear. I suppose the crimes can be distasteful. Some have fascinating twists, though. Last week’s case involved a society dame who plotted to kill her handyman. They’d gotten into a torrid affair several months before. Then the handyman murdered her husband, making his death seem like an accident. The wife was in on his scheme. She planned to wait a respectable period, collect her husband’s inheritance, and marry Mr. Fixit. But it turned out that
he
was secretly carrying on with her grown daughter too. When the wife discovered her lover was also her daughter’s lover, she decided to take revenge on him. So she paid her beautiful Venezuelan housekeeper to lure him into—”

“I get the general idea.” I hesitated. “Chloe . . . you’re positive there’s nothing else you want to tell me about last night?”

She stared at me kind of blankly.

“Nothing I maybe ought to know?” I asked.

She kept staring at me for another thirty seconds. Then she shook her head in silence.

What could I do? I was ethically opposed to waterboarding. If she didn’t want to fess up, I couldn’t make her.

Barely hiding my consternation, I finished my blueberry bread and dabbed my lips with my napkin. The longer I sat at the table, the more tempted I’d be to reveal what I saw from my window. And something told me that it wasn’t the time to confront Chloe with the truth. Besides, I had a legitimate reason to hustle along.

“Well,” I said, “I’m off to start the day.”

“In such a hurry?”

“Skiball’s been under the weather,” I said. “I want to take care of whatever’s wrong with her.”

The vacancy in Chloe’s expression was suddenly replaced with concern. “I hope it isn’t too serious.”

“Don’t think so,” I said. “Probably it’s just a hair ball. But, well, with Gail Pilsner gone . . . I’ve got no choice except to check the local phone book for another vet.”