Keepsake Crimes (16 page)

But Carmela didn’t. She was anxious to get on back to New Orleans. To get home. After all, like Cinderella who’d bumped about in the dust all day, she had to get all cleaned up and pretty for a very fancy party tonight at Baby Fontaine’s.

T
HE hot, needlelike spray from the shower pinged against Carmela’s back and shoulders. After rattling around Jefferson Parish for the better part of the day hunting for Shamus and eluding whatever obnoxious oaf had been tailing her, Carmela was anxious to shrug off any dust and residual bad karma she might have picked up and start the evening in splendiferous freshness.

Which meant emerging from her shower all pink and wet like a freshly netted gulf shrimp, then slathering on her favorite shea butter lotion. Once said lotion had been absorbed into her skin and her hair had been tousled and finger-combed into a semblance of the choppy do that Mr. Montrose Chineal had perfected at the Looking Glass Salon a scant two weeks ago, Carmela plunked herself down in front of the old vanity her momma had given her to do her makeup.

The vanity was an old-fashioned fifties-style piece of furniture. Big round mirror, sunken table in the center, drawers to either side. Carmela had a clear memory of being maybe six or seven years old and watching her momma get ready to go out with her daddy on Saturday nights. Her mother’s
toilette
had always seemed like such an elegant ritual. Makeup dabbed on just so, dark eyeliner applied, fingers dipped into shimmering pots of colorful lip gloss, finishing spritz of floral perfume.

She remembered the look her momma and every other woman had tried to affect some twenty years ago. Big hair, big shoulders, big eyes. A vision that was slightly disco, a little bit
Dallas
TV show, and a little bit New Orleans. Nothing that would qualify as the natural look.

The phone rang, rousing Boo from one of her snory little dog dreams and causing her to utter a high-pitched yip.

“Shush,” warned Carmela as she picked up the phone.

“You ready?” came a sharp voice. It was Ava, checking up on her.

“Almost,” said Carmela.

“Honey, I’ve poured myself into my gold silk dress and, I don’t mind telling you, it’s pure evil. I only hope you can boast the same.”

“I didn’t know I was vying for runner-up in the Miss Slinky Tits contest.”

“Life’s a contest,” shot back Ava.

Still holding the phone, Carmela studied her image in the mirror.
Hmm, not bad.
“I’ll try not to disappoint you, Ava,” she told her friend.

“Try not to disappoint faster. This girl is ready to party.”

“Five minutes,” said Carmela. “I’m heading down the home stretch even as we speak.”

“Hey, did you see him?” asked Ava.

“Nope,” replied Carmela. “Nobody home out there.”

Carmela dropped the phone in its cradle and finished dabbing on her makeup, using a light touch with the eyeliner and mascara, preferring to adapt a softer, more natural look.

Thank goodness Baby’s party hadn’t been designated a costume ball, she thought to herself. There were
so
many costume parties during Mardi Gras. And by last count, she’d already attended four. Instead, Baby had carefully specified on her invitation that the evening would be
“black tie or suitably elegant attire.”
Which was just hunky-dory with Carmela, since it offered the pluperfect opportunity to wear the black slit skirt and matching camisole bodice she’d bought in a wild fit of madcap spending right after the holidays.

Zipping the pencil-thin skirt, pulling the laces of the bodice tight, Carmela marveled to herself how she wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing an outfit like this a year ago. Back then, life with Shamus had always seemed like it should be fairly proper and filled with decorum. He’d been a banker, she a banker’s wife.

On the other hand, dressing like this was decidedly fun. She was young and attractive and, when she wasn’t mooning about Shamus, could almost manage vivacious. So why on earth shouldn’t she dress the part? Besides, Ava Grieux had threatened to put a curse on her head if she didn’t start getting her head in the game.

Ava Grieux would have also whispered in her ear,
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it, kiddo.”
But then again, Ava had long legs, a mass of curly auburn hair, and a body with seriously dangerous curves. In other words, an awful lot to flaunt.

Pulling open the closet door, Carmela searched for her shoes. Ah, there they were. Black suede, very strappy and sexy. Perfect. She studied her toenails for a moment, glanced at the clock. She had one minute before she was supposed to meet Ava. Carmela grabbed for her nail buffer and gave them a quick shine. There. She straightened up, stared at herself in the mirror, decided she was pleased with the pretty lady who smiled back. She hadn’t quite achieved drop-dead vamp. No, that role still belonged to Ava for now. But still . . . she was looking mighty fine.

M
ARK Twain once wrote, “There is no architecture in New Orleans, except in the cemeteries.” But anyone who has actually wandered the tree-bowered lanes of the elegant Garden District might hasten to take exception to Mr. Twain’s somewhat flippant remark. For here are huge, elegant homes that resonate with history, with architectural symbolism, and with such pure Southern style that you feel like you’ve slipped back a hundred genteel years in time.

Just as the French Quarter is revered for its bawdy clubs, posh shops, cutting-edge restaurants, and picturesque architecture, the Garden District is the
pièce de résistance
of residential bliss. Once the sight of the great Livaudais plantation, the Garden District is now a grand dowager neighborhood filled with Victorian, Italianate, and Greek Revival homes that stand shoulder to elegant shoulder alongside each other. And just as its name implies, the Garden District delivers gardens galore. Gardens awash with camellias, azaleas, and crape myrtle. Gardens that echo with pattering fountains, chirping birds, and the quiet crunch of footsteps on pebbled walkways. Even private, hidden gardens enhanced with crumbling Roman-style columns, cascading vines, and greenery-shrouded loggias.

Tonight, as Carmela and Ava hopped from Carmela’s car, the Garden District seemed to resonate with excitement. Up and down Third Street, homes were ablaze with lights, and stretch limousines rolled up, one after the other, to drop off elegantly attired couples. Strains of music from the hired jazz trios, bands, and combos echoed throughout the neighborhood.

“Don’t you just love the smell of money?” exclaimed Ava as she adjusted a shimmery little shawl about her bare shoulders.

“What does money smell like?” Carmela asked with amusement.

Ava scrunched up her shoulders in a gesture that was pure Marilyn Monroe. “Like this!”

As Carmela and Ava hastened down the sidewalk, drawn like moths to the light, it seemed that
everybody
in the Garden District was throwing a party tonight. But on this sparkling evening, with lights blazing from every window and tiny garden lights dotting the path to her door, none of the houses seemed so grand as Baby Fontaine’s.

Baby stood in the entry of her Italianate home, looking cool and pixieish in a shimmery emerald-green strapless gown. Her husband, Del, who was her physical opposite, swarthy and dark, wide-shouldered and tall, held court next to her.

“Carmela! Ava!” cried Baby as two maids, specially employed for this grand evening, ushered the two women through the wrought-iron and glass double doors. Rushing to embrace them, Baby bestowed enormous air kisses which, of course, were eagerly returned.

“Gosh, this is absolutely stupendous,” said Ava, dropping her shawl a little lower to show off her spectacular décolletage and gazing about at the interior of Baby’s house. The walls of the front entry were covered with pale pink silk fabric. Ornate plasterwork and carved cypress moldings crowned the room, an enormous crystal chandelier dangled overhead, a huge circular staircase curled upward.

Peering down the center hallway, Ava could see a grand living room furnished with Louis XVI furniture and hung with original oil paintings to her right, a spectacular library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on her left.

“Baby, I really love your house,” gushed Ava.

Baby waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, it’s just home,” she said. “Casa Fontaine.”

But Ava was still very impressed. “I do believe this is even nicer than Anne Rice’s behemoth over on First Street.” Ava had once peeked inside when she delivered some of her voodoo trinkets for use as favors at a Hal loween party.

“Well,
we
certainly think so,” allowed Baby. “And thank heavens we’re located over here on Third Street. We don’t get quite the hordes of sightseers that First Street or Washington Avenue or some of the other streets in the Garden District do.”

“Lafayette Cemetery and Commander’s Palace
are
awfully big draws,” allowed Ava, referring to City of Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, a historic cemetery crowded with family tombs and wall vaults that abutted the Garden District, and Commander’s Palace, the famed restaurant from whence Emeril Lagasse got his start.

Del put an arm around Baby. “If we start drawing crowds, honey, we’ll just go on ahead and charge admission,” he said in a leisurely drawl.

Baby batted her blue eyes at her husband. “Trust Del to find a way to turn a profit! Now, you two girls run along and kindly enjoy yourselves,” she urged Carmela and Ava. “Gabby and Stuart are already in there somewhere, cooing like lovebirds and acting like the newly-weds they are. Say, that Stuart
is
a handsome devil, isn’t he? And Tandy and Darwin are here, too. Although I think Darwin is huddled in the library with a bunch of menfolk, puffing on one of those awful cigars that Edgar Langley imports illegally from Cuba. I don’t understand
what
the fascination is, those things stink to high heaven. We’re probably going to have to air the place out for at least a week!”

“Is Jekyl Hardy here?” asked Carmela.

“He’s here somewhere,” said Baby. “And he was so worried about finishing up some of his floats. But then he got one of his assistants to oversee the final preparations, and he made it here just the same.” She smiled, pleased. “
Everyone’s
here tonight.”

Del put a hand on his wife’s bare shoulder. “Course they are, darlin.’ Nobody in their right mind would miss one of
your
parties.”

“My gosh,” exclaimed Ava as Carmela propelled her toward the bar. “Baby’s husband seems like he might be from one of those old Southern aristocrat families whose ancestors fought with Andrew Jackson.”

“Actually,” said Carmela, “I think Del’s great-great grandfather
did
fight with Andrew Jackson.”

“Cool,” exclaimed Ava. “Very cool.”

 

 

THE PARTY WAS, AS AVA PUT IT, A BLAST. BEAU
TIFULLY dressed women and elegantly attired gentlemen rubbed shoulders and exchanged outrageous compliments and pleasantries. Crystal tumblers and champagne flutes were filled and refilled, and melodious strains from a string quartet drifted gently from room to opulent room.

Carmela drifted from room to room, too. Ava had disappeared almost immediately in a flurry of golden silk, having laid eyes on two thirty-something men she deemed “extremely interesting.” In Ava-speak it meant the two men were bachelors whom she was itching to subject to her rigorous yet surreptitious questioning. For when it came to determining a man’s merit as a “likely prospect,” Ava was definitely an analytical left-brain type. And her scrutiny rivaled the process used for admitting prospects to the FBI Academy. Carmela had even kidded her about being a “profiler.”

“Carmela,” squealed Gabby as she waved from across Baby’s glittering living room. “Come say hello to Stuart. He’s absolutely
dying
to see you again.”

Carmela threaded her way through a sea of silk-covered sofas and ottomans, noting that Stuart Mercer-Morris looked nowhere near dying to see anyone. Rather, his youthful face bore a somewhat bored, been-there done-that look. It was, Carmela figured, the jaded countenance of a young man who was raised with money, lived with money, would always have a plenitude of money.

“Carmela darlin’.” Stuart greeted her with a chaste peck on the cheek and a hearty handshake. Carmela noted it was not the limp-rag grasp that many New Orleans males reserved for the fairer sex. Then again, Stuart had gone to an East Coast school. Princeton. Or maybe it had been Harvard. Carmela couldn’t recall exactly which one, except that it was one of those stalwart, preppy institutions where women were refreshingly considered the intellectual equal of men. Quite unlike little Clarkston College over in Algiers, where she’d attended school. There, they still elected a Crawfish Queen, Cotton Blossom Queen, and Sternwheeler Queen. Or course, there was never a crawfish, cotton blossom, or sternwheeler
king
. Gosh, life just wasn’t fair.

“Gabby is always regaling me with the most marvelous stories about the things that go on in your shop,” said Stuart pleasantly. “It would seem the problems of the world get sorted out there. Or at least the social pecca dilloes of greater New Orleans.”

“I’ve always thought we’d make a good premise for one of those reality TV shows,” said Carmela. “Just prop a camera in the corner and see what goes on when you get a pack of Southern women together.”

“What would you call it?” asked Gabby, clapping her hands together, caught up in the fun of the moment.

Carmela thought for a moment. “ ‘Cotton Mouths’?”

“Ah, very good,” said Stuart with a somewhat forced smile on his face. He snaked one arm about Gabby’s waist possessively. “And how is your husband, Shamus?”

Carmela kept her smile plastered on her face, maintained her voice at an even pitch. “Gone,” she said. She hoped it sounded like a casual, offhand remark.