Keepsake Crimes (5 page)

“That’s it?”

“Of course that’s it, Shamus. I even gave you the benefit of the doubt. I assumed you had absolutely nothing to do with this.”

“You assumed right, darlin’.”

“So what was it that prompted the police to come knocking on my door then?” asked Carmela, more than a little peeved.

“Nothing. I was taking pictures of the Pluvius floats, for Christ sake. I suppose I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, that sort of thing.”

“And you just happened to snap a few photos of the sea serpent float,” said Carmela.

“Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Of course, that’s it,” said Shamus. He paused. “Well, I might of had words with Jimmy Earl.”

“Words,” Carmela repeated.

“Yes, words,” Shamus said crossly.

“What exactly did you say to Jimmy Earl?” asked Carmela.

“What does it matter what I said?” Shamus answered in a huff. “It was nothing. Just because something happened to Jimmy Earl Clayton later on, doesn’t mean it had anything to do with me. I’m truly sorry the man is dead, but I can assure you, I had nothing to do with it.”

A tiny pinprick of heat slowly ignited behind Carmela’s eyes. It spread into her forehead and set her nerves to jangling. Carmela knew what was happening. She was getting one of her Shamus headaches. They swept over her whenever he acted this way. Belligerent, aggressive, manipulative. In other words, your typical Southern male.

“I have to go, Shamus,” she told him. “Nice talkin’ to you. Bye-bye.” Carmela slapped the phone back in its cradle, flopped back into bed. She lay on her back, staring up at the lazily spinning ceiling fan.

Just when you think you’re safe
, she thought to herself.
Just when you think your heart won’t hurt again. What was it the tin man said when Dorothy was about to leave Oz and fly back home to Kansas? “Now I know I’ve really got a heart because I can feel it breaking.”

Carmela pulled the covers over her head. Did she want to be married to this clod, or should she go ahead and get that divorce? Which was it going to be? Door number one or door number two?

Carmela lay there trying to release the tension from her body. If she could just relax and clear her head. Maybe catch a couple more hours of sleep . . .

Nope. No way, nohow. Try as she might, counting sheep, counting her chickens before they were hatched, counting on her own resourcefulness, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. That vision of Jimmy Earl Clayton being dropped from the float and laid out on the pavement seemed burned in her memory. It played over and over in her head like a bad news bulletin on CNN.

She shook her head in disgust.
Preposterous. Shamus may be a louse, he might even turn out to be a sneaky two-timing bum, but no way is he a killer.

Carmela pulled herself out of bed, crept to the little kitchen, brewed a pot of nice, strong, chicory coffee. Scrounging one of yesterday’s beignets, she went out to sit in the courtyard. Wisely, Boo remained tucked in her cozy little dog bed, the L.L.Bean version that had cost way more than Carmela’s down comforter.

The sun, just beginning to peep over the crumbling brick wall that separated her little slice of the world from the rest of the French Quarter, felt warm on her shoulders. The steady drip-drip of the fountain was somehow reassuring.

Sipping her coffee, Carmela tried to banish thoughts of Shamus from her mind.

Begone
, she commanded, as she let her eyes take in the beauty of the courtyard garden. The wrought-iron benches, the lush thickets of bougainvillea, the old magnolia tree dripping with lacy fronds of Spanish moss. Against the brick wall, tender green shoots of cannus peeped up through the dirt, and tendrils of tuberose curled on gnarled pine trellises that had been cut and woven by hand more than a hundred years ago.

There was a powerful amount of history here in the French Quarter, Carmela told herself as she took a fortifying sip of hot coffee. Which would make it a logical place to begin one’s life anew.

“
K
ETAMINE,” exclaimed Gabby. “What on earth is ketamine?” She stared at Tandy Bliss in wide-eyed amazement.

Tandy had shown up promptly at ten o’clock. A packet of photos that showcased two of her grandchildren, wide-eyed, grubby-faced, and cooing over last night’s Pluvius parade, were clutched in her hot little hands. Carmela figured Tandy must have hit the one-hour photo mill at first light.

“Sweetie,” said Tandy, obviously enjoying her inside track, “don’t you ever watch
Sixty Minutes
? Haven’t you ever heard of
club drugs?”

Gabby shrugged. The only clubs she was familiar with were the boisterous, rollicking clubs in the French Quarter. Jasmine’s, Dr. Boogie’s, Moon Glow. She assumed some drug trafficking went on there. But didn’t it go on most everywhere now?

“Ketamine as in Special K,” explained Tandy. “It’s the stuff kids are always OD’ing on at raves.”

“Oh,” said Gabby as understanding began to dawn. “Come to think of it, I
have
heard of Special K. And raves. Aren’t those like . . .” She searched for the right words. “. . . .
unauthorized
parties for high school kids?”

“More like
illegal,
” snapped Tandy.

Standing behind the counter, listening intently, Carmela gave an involuntary shudder. How on earth did something like that connect with Jimmy Earl?
Or Shamus
, she mentally added.
Or Shamus
.

“Here’s the thing,” said Tandy as she waggled her index finger and moved closer to the counter. Carmela and Gabby, fascinated by her words, leaned in to listen, even though no one else was in the shop yet. “Poor Jimmy Earl had a whopping dose of this Special K stuff in his bloodstream.”

The news of Jimmy Earl’s death had made front-page headlines in the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
, though the story that followed was short, with very few details. Carmela knew it was only a matter of time, however, before a mix of rumors and truth concerning Jimmy Earl’s demise would spread like wildfire throughout the city.

Gabby frowned. “Isn’t too much of that stuff like
poison
? Where did you hear this?” she demanded. “And are you sure it was ketamine?”

“Darlings,” Tandy’s hyperthyroidal eyes got even bigger, “I heard it first-person from CeCe Goodwin, Darwin’s sister-in-law.” Darwin was Tandy’s husband. “I’m not sure you-all know this,” continued Tandy, “but CeCe is a nurse over at Saint Ignatius. And,” she added triumphantly, “she just happened to be on duty last night when Jimmy Earl Clayton was brought in to the emergency room, all pale and white on a stretcher!”

That level of confirmation was good enough for Gabby. “Wow,” she breathed. “Do they know how he overdosed? I mean, it
was
an overdose that killed him, right? Or did someone . . . what? Put it in his drink?”

“Nobody’s saying anything about that yet,” said Tandy. “Of course, it’s possible Jimmy Earl could have taken the drugs himself. He
did
have a slight tendency to overdo.”

Slight tendency,
thought Carmela,
now there’s an understatement
. She recalled seeing Jimmy Earl Clayton at a Garden District party one night doing the macarena on top of someone’s Louis XVI table, stoned out of his mind. Then there were his so-called after work “martini races” at Beltoine’s. Those were legendary. And he’d once tossed his cookies on the eighteenth green at the Belvedere Country Club in full view of the clubhouse after he’d imbibed in a few too many bourbons.
No,
she thought,
Jimmy Earl Clayton hadn’t been just a social drinker; he had darn near achieved professional status.

“I’m sure the police will explore all possibilities,” continued Tandy. “They’re
extremely
clever when it comes to things like toxicology screening and forensic tests.” Tandy talked as though she’d just earned a master’s degree in criminal justice. “They can run tests that narrow everything down to the nth degree,” she added.

Carmela listened intently to Tandy. That was exactly what the police had told her last night when they revealed that Jimmy Earl had been poisoned.
No wonder Shamus had been heartsick and worried this morning,
thought Carmela.
Being accused of such a heinous crime. And poor Jimmy Earl. Dead from an overdose of a drug that was popular, easy to obtain, and so very lethal.

Jimmy Earl had so loved to party, Carmela mused. So there was that possibility. It wouldn’t be the first time a white-collar business type had been caught using drugs. Just look at the popularity of cocaine. It was not only rampant these days, cocaine was most often the
drug du jour
among executives. Jimmy Earl could have just as easily developed a taste for club drugs. It happened. God knows, it happened.

On the other hand, Jimmy Earl was also a high-test financier. He was one of the senior partners in Clayton Crown Securities. Clayton Crown was one of the few independently owned brokerage firms left in New Orleans, and they handled millions, maybe billions, in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and corporate financing. They also engineered mergers and acquisitions. Shamus had mentioned Clayton Crown on more than one occasion and had obviously had a lot of respect for them. In fact, Clayton Crown was considered a major player in New Orleans.

But as head of a prominent company like that, it was also possible Jimmy Earl had courted a few enemies over the years. Sooner or later, investors lost money, mergers went sour, financing fell through.

The question was, would someone have gone so far as to
kill
Jimmy Earl? Carmela thought about this for moment, didn’t come up with anything definitive. That would be a good question for Miss Cleo’s Psychic Hotline, she decided.

“What happened to the float?” Carmela asked Tandy as an afterthought.

“Impounded,” said Tandy. “Apparently, poor Jimmy Earl really choked down a megadose so they’re checking
everybody
out.”

The tightness in Carmela’s chest loosened a notch.

“So . . .” said Gabby, unwilling to let the issue of Jimmy Earl Clayton’s death go, “they
are
surmising that someone put ketamine in his drink?”

“Honey, nobody knows for sure yet,” said Tandy. “But I’m not surprised that Jimmy Earl ingested so much,” she sniffed. “Given the way most of those men tipple all that whiskey.” Tandy gave a tight nod of her curly head, then headed for the back table to work on what would be her fourteenth scrapbook.

“GABBY, THIS COULDN’T BE OUR LAST SHEET
of purple foil.” Carmela stood at the paper cabinet, pulling open drawers, riffling though stacks of colored paper. She was feeling slightly discombobulated by Tandy’s news as well as her obvious excitement over all the gory details.

Gabby looked up from the counter. “I think it is. Didn’t you order more?”

Purple, green, and gold were the official colors of Mardi Gras, and Carmela knew that, over the next few weeks, everybody and his brother would be looking for those specific colors when they put together scrapbooks to showcase their Mardi Gras photos.

“I ordered a ream of foil paper. What’s happened to it?”

Gabby frowned as though trying to recall. “I think Baby bought a hundred sheets for wrapping party favors. Then, the other day, while you were at lunch, some of the people from the Isis krewe came in and bought a whole bunch more. What with your regulars . . .” Gabby’s voice trailed off uncertainly.

“I get the picture,” said Carmela. “But we’re going to need more. Pronto.”

“Can you put an order in?” Gabby asked as she stood at the counter, arranging packets of foil stickers.

“I’ll place an order on-line,” Carmela assured her. “That way we’ll get free shipping, and the order should be processed today.”

“Good.” Gabby looked up as the bell over the door sounded. “Oh, hi there,” she said as Baby walked in, accompanied by one of her spectacularly beautiful daughters.

“You remember Dawn, don’t you, everybody?” asked Baby as she proudly thrust her daughter in front of her. Dawn possessed the same classic features as her mother, but at twenty-five was a far younger and perkier version.

“Of course,” said Carmela, greeting her warmly. “And this is Gabby, my assistant.”

“Hello,” said Dawn pleasantly as she pushed back a tendril of golden blond hair. “Hi, Tandy,” she waved a hand toward the back of the store.

“Hi, sweetie,” replied Tandy, barely looking up from her stack of photos.

“You heard about Jimmy Earl?” asked Baby.

Everybody nodded.

“Tragic,” breathed Baby, “simply tragic.”

“Tandy’s husband’s sister-in-law was there,” said Gabby. It was a tangled reference, but Baby and Dawn seemed to pick up on it right away and nod expectantly.