Keepsake Crimes (10 page)

“My gosh, Carmela,” said Tandy as she squinted over her glasses. “Those little masks are wonderful! I can’t believe all the crafts that seem to spin off from scrapbooking and your collection of wonderful papers!”

Tandy was right. Scrapbooking was only the tip of the iceberg. The same techniques used for scrapbooking could be employed to create beautiful journals as well as family history books. And the fabulous arsenal of paper she had amassed was perfect for creating invitations, tags, cards, and even picture frames. Likewise, the rubber stamps the ladies were using to emboss their keepsake boxes could just as easily be creatively employed to decorate scrapbook pages.

Laying in a more substantial supply of rubber stamps and inks would probably be her next big investment, Carmela had decided. Why, you could do incredible things using rubber stamps! You could even use them to apply the most marvelous designs to flowerpots, jars, velvet pillows, and even evening bags!

 

 

IT WAS QUARTER TO ONE, AND NOBODY WAS
showing signs of quitting or even a slowdown in enthusiasm. So Gabby was tasked with running down the block to the Orleans Market to bring back a sack full of po’boys and a couple pints of coleslaw.

Po’boys were the quintessential New Orleans sandwich. They usually consisted of a long French roll stuffed with fried shrimp, fried oysters, or meatballs. Of course, po’boys could also veer toward being highly creative, with fillings of crab, roast beef, deli cheeses, or ham, usually slathered with Creole mustard or
mynaz
, which is what everyone in New Orleans called mayonnaise.

“Byrle!” called Tandy, who was in the middle of biting into her very squishy po’boy sandwich. “You made it!”

Byrle Coopersmith, whose first experience at Memory Mine had been this past Tuesday, came hurtling toward the craft table.

“Do you think I could get out of my house today?” Byrle exclaimed loudly. Then, without waiting for an answer, declared, “Of course not. The Wicked Witch of the West called to request a recipe for pickled okra that I
know
I’ve already given her a zillion times.”

“Who’s the Wicked Witch of the West?” asked Gabby.

“Zelda Coopersmith,” answered Tandy. “Byrle’s mother-in-law and queen bee of the New Orleans Garden Club.” Tandy paused, an impish grin dancing on her face. “I prefer to address
my
mother-in-law as Mum-zilla.”

“And my kids . . .” continued Byrle as she shook her head in mock despair. “Sometimes I want to string the little darlings up by their thumbs.” Byrle swiveled her head and flashed a quick smile at Carmela, who was quietly listening as she worked. “Hello again,” said Byrle pleasantly. “Could you please tell me what those delightful little masks are all about?”

“Carmela’s doing place cards for a luncheon at the Claiborne Club,” volunteered Tandy. “Aren’t they adorable?”

“Too cute,” said Byrle as she hoisted a floral duffel bag into a clear spot on the craft table. “And look at those little boxes. What do you call those?”

“Keepsake boxes,” said Baby. “Don’t you just love them?”

“I do,” declared Byrle. “Gonna have to make me one of those, once I finish up my scrapbook.”

Carmela smiled over at Byrle. “Before you get started, can I interest you in half a sandwich? We’ve got lots.”

Byrle waved a hand. “Thanks, but I just choked down a candy bar on my way over.”

“A woman after my own heart,” murmured Baby, who was notorious for her passion for chocolate and her firm belief that chocolate should definitely be acknowledged as one of the four major food groups.

 

 

CARMELA TOUCHED THE TIP OF HER INDEX FIN
GER to the face on one of the masks. It came away clean, which meant the paint had dried.

Good
, decided Carmela.
While Byrle works on her scrapbook and Tandy, Baby, and Gabby finish their keepsake boxes, I’ll letter names onto these tags to finish them off.

She pulled out the luncheon list Alyse had faxed her a couple weeks ago, counted the names again just to make sure, then laid out two dozen gold tags. With a ruler and a pen filled with special disappearing ink, Carmela drew a quick guideline across the lower length of each tag. Then, using a calligraphy pen, she meticulously hand-lettered each name onto the tag. By the time Carmela finished hand-lettering the final name, the guidelines she’d drawn on the first few tags had begun to disappear. Gradually, all the lines would disappear. Using this disappearing ink was a technique Carmela often employed in scrapbooking. It was perfect when you wanted to add a bit of text under a picture or write a poem or fun phrase on a page.

Next, Carmela dabbed a cloth in gold paint, then buffed the gold around the edges of each tag to give it a soft, rich look. Then she attached each of the finished name tags to the finished masks. Leaning back, she admired her handiwork.

“Those are spectacular,” commented Byrle.

“I wish I would’ve asked you to do the invitations for my party,” lamented Baby. “Then they really would’ve been special.”

Baby and her husband, Del, were having their traditional Mardi Gras party this Saturday night at their large Garden District home. This year Baby had mailed out invitations in little silver picture frames, which were just as spectacular in their own right.

Tandy stood up to stretch. Her keepsake box was looking good, she decided. That brass dragonfly charm she’d added to the top of it looked really fun. Now she was debating about adding a ribbon edging around the bottom of the box. It had definitely progressed from a little box made of kraft paper to something that looked like a gilded treasure from the turn of the century. “My gosh,” Tandy exclaimed, suddenly glancing at her watch. “It’s almost three o’clock. We’ve been at this for
hours
.”

T
HE infamous streetcar named
Desire
had been re tired way back in 1948. And, while the Regional Transit Authority has memorialized the name by emblazoning it on a city bus that dutifully chugged along New Orleans city streets, something seemed forever lost in the translation.

But the St. Charles Avenue streetcar was still very much alive and operating.

Hopping on at Canal Street and Carondolet in the French Quarter, a rider could travel on the old-fashioned trolley through some of New Orleans’s most historic and picturesque neighborhoods for the bargain price of one dollar each way.

Rather than pull her vintage Caddy, Samantha, out of her carefully guarded parking space, Carmela had opted to pack up her finished place cards and ride the trolley to the Claiborne Club to deliver her handiwork.

Bells clanged, metal wheels clicked steadily, and passengers shouted with glee as the old green trolley zoomed down St. Charles Avenue past LaFayette Square, around Lee Circle, and through the bustling CBD, or central business district.

As the trolley approached the fashionable Garden District, noses were suddenly pressed to windows, the better to catch a glimpse of the elegant old mansions, stately live oaks draped in Spanish moss, and Gothic-looking wrought-iron fences. For here was antebellum Louisiana at its finest. Novelist Truman Capote and French Impressionist Edgar Degas had both called the Garden District home for a short while. Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, had died here. And though many of the old homes now exuded a patina of age, they were still quite spectacular.

Carefully gathering up her package, Carmela hopped off the trolley at Fourth Street and walked a block over to Prytania. As she strode down Prytania, just blocks from where she had lived not so long ago with Shamus, she could see a spill of women on the steps of the Claiborne Club. Probably, they’d just emerged from one of their afternoon teas and were hanging around to chitchat and speculate whose daughter or granddaughter would be chosen as reigning queen this year by the various Mardi Gras krewes.

As she approached the front door, the gossip and chatter suddenly died out, and Carmela found herself edging her way past a half-dozen women who stood on the front steps eyeing her cautiously.

“Afternoon,” she said, smiling and nodding, determined to maintain her poise.

“Afternoon,” came cool replies back as heads nodded imperceptibly.

Good lord,
thought Carmela as she pushed her way through the ornately carved doors of the old mansion into what was now the lobby and reception area.
What’s going on here? The sins, or in this case, alleged sins, of the husband are suddenly (and rather rudely!) being heaped on the head of the soon-to-be ex-wife? Talk about jumping to conclusions and being utterly unfair.

“Hey there, Carmela,” called Alyse Eskew as she spotted Carmela from her office. “I was just about ready to take off.”

Carmela walked into Alyse’s office, set her box down on top of Alyse’s rather disorganized-looking desk. “Special delivery,” she said.

“You finished the place cards!” exclaimed Alyse. “Ooh, I can’t wait to take a peek.” She popped up from her chair and wrestled the top off the box. Then, upon seeing the finished place cards, Alyse’s face lit up with joy. “Oh, my gosh,” she marveled. Then, carefully lifting one of the masks out, she cradled it in her hand. “These are beautiful,” she crooned. “You’ve absolutely outdone yourself, Carmela. I know everyone is going to be extremely pleased with these. In fact, I’d say they’re probably going to be viewed as Mardi Gras collectibles.”

“Great,” said Carmela, pleased at the thought. “It was a fun project to do.”

Alyse grabbed the box and moved it over to an equally crowded credenza that sat against a wall in her office. “I’m going to put these over here for safekeeping, since we don’t need them until next Tuesday.”

“I take it they’re going to be used for a luncheon?”

“That’s right,” said Alyse. Her thin shoulders rose in a shrug; her face assumed a harried look. “And I don’t mind saying we’ve been absolutely
inundated
lately. We’re catering luncheons, morning cream teas, afternoon high teas, receptions, you name it. It seems that the wives and daughters of almost every Mardi Gras krewe want to hold some special event. Of course, most of the events have to do with queen candidates and such.” Alyse focused weary eyes on Carmela. “And since we’re smack-dab in the middle of Mardi Gras, there doesn’t even seem time to breathe. But I imagine you know what that’s like,” said Alyse. “Your shop must be busy, too.”

“Fairly busy,” said Carmela. “Although the brunt of our business will come right
after
Mardi Gras, when people are most eager to incorporate their recent photos and mementos into scrapbooks.”

“Good for you,” said Alyse as she walked Carmela out.

Gazing about at the lovely interior of the Claiborne Club, Carmela remarked casually, “You know, I’ve been asked to join the Claiborne Club a number of times. Next time around, I think I just might seriously consider it.”

The smile froze on Alyse’s face.

Oh, no,
thought Carmela.
Not you, too.
“Is there a problem?” Carmela asked innocently.

Alyse fumbled to cover her faux pas. “It’s just that . . . well, the club is not actually
accepting
new members at the moment. And you understand, of course, that if one is fortunate enough to be nominated, that nomination has to be
seconded
by at least three long-standing members. . . .”

“Of course,” said Carmela. Looking down, she saw that her hand was gripping the doorknob so hard her knuckles had turned white. “I understand completely.”

M
ILD temperatures and a mass of warm air billowing up from the Gulf of Mexico had rushed smack-dab into a degenerating yet static cool front. And now fog, a vaporous haze that cast a scrim over the entire French Quarter and put everything into soft focus, had seeped in. In this strange atmosphere flickering gas lamps looked even more romantic. Old weathered wooden buildings, painted shades of bottle green and indigo blue like so many Caribbean cottages, took on a misty feel. Curlicued wrought-iron balustrades that topped the second stories of so many French Quarter buildings virtually disappeared. Even the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves that pulled the jitneys filled with tourists down Bourbon Street sounded muffled tonight. Redolent with atmosphere, the area suddenly felt very much like the Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, of a century ago.

As Carmela turned down the arched walkway that led to her courtyard apartment, she could hear Boo’s insistent, high-pitched bark.

“What’s going on?” she asked the little dog as she stuck her key in the rusty old gate that cordoned her courtyard off from the walkway.

Boo’s inquisitive little shar-pei face pushed up at her. Carmela could see a torrent of shredded paper in the dog’s wake.

At the same moment Carmela entered her courtyard, Ava Grieux peeked out the French double doors at the back of her voodoo shop and gestured at Carmela through the glass. Holding up one finger, she mouthed,
Be right there.
Then, moments later, Ava shut off her shop lights and let herself out the back door.

“How long has she been outside?” Carmela asked, surveying the damage.

“I let her out maybe ten minutes ago,” said Ava. “Fifteen at the most.” She grinned and shook her head at Boo. “Amazing, isn’t it? You’d swear a team from the FBI had swooped in here and gone through your garbage.”

“Maybe they did,” said Carmela. “Or at least a few spies from the New Orleans Police Department.”

“Uh-oh,” said Ava, “have you been having problems with Granger Rathbone again?”

“You might call it that,” replied Carmela. “The little slug accosted me at Jimmy Earl Clayton’s funeral this morning.”

Ava fixed Carmela with a level stare. “You showed your sweet little innocent face at Jimmy Earl’s final send-off? Girl, you are seriously endowed with chutzpah.”