Keepsake Crimes (9 page)

“A lovely tribute,” said Tandy, grasping Jack’s hand in a goodwill gesture.

“This is the saddest day of my life,” declared Jack tearfully. “Jimmy Earl was like . . .” He hesitated.

“Like a brother to him,” filled in Ruby Dumaine. “And, don’t you know, our dear girls practically grew up together.”

Ruby Dumaine was referring to their daughter, Swan, who was standing some twenty feet away, looking morose and talking with Shelby Clayton and several other young women.

“When Jimmy Earl collapsed on that float . . . it was like a member of my family died,” said Jack tearfully.

“You were riding on the sea serpent float together?” said Carmela.

Jack nodded sadly, then unfurled a large, white handkerchief, held it to his nose, and blew loudly. “It’s a bad business about Shamus,” he rumbled solemnly, directing his gaze at Carmela. His eyes, buried in the massive flesh of his face, looked like glinting little pig eyes. Blowing his nose again, hitting yet a higher octave, Jack shook his giant head regretfully. “A real bad business.”

“Bad business,” echoed Ruby as the two of them slid off into the crowd.

Carmela watched Jack Dumaine lumber off toward the minister and wondered,
What exactly did Jack Dumaine mean by that remark? And whose corner is he in, anyway? Does Jack think Shamus is guilty? Or innocent?

“I thought I’d find you here,” murmured a clipped, slightly menacing voice at Carmela’s elbow. “Catch the paper this morning?” Granger Rathbone’s eyes glinted like an alley cat who’d just spied a cowering mouse.

“Granger Rathbone,” Carmela muttered as she turned to face him. “Tandy, have you met the illustrious Mr. Rathbone?”

Tandy fixed Granger with a hostile gaze. “You were in such a rush yesterday, I’m afraid we didn’t have the pleasure of a formal introduction. Such a pity.”

Carmela smiled at Tandy. For someone who weighed barely a hundred pounds soaking wet, this gal was certainly blessed with
beaucoup
guts.

“Tell Shamus to call me,” snarled Granger as he moved off. “I’ve got more questions.”

“Tell him yourself,” snapped Carmela.

Tandy gave Carmela a playful punch on the arm. “You go, girl! Don’t let that little dog turd push you around.”

Then, when Granger Rathbone was out of earshot, Tandy asked in a somewhat more worried tone of voice, “Have you talked with Shamus, honey? ’Cause things really
are
getting weird.”

“I guess you saw this morning’s newspaper?”

“Honey, I guarantee that, right after checking out Jeane Dixon and Dear Abby,
everybody
read Bufford Maple’s column. Heck, the darn thing’s probably on the Internet by now, whirling around out there in cyberspace.”

“It’s drivel,” said Carmela.

“Of course, it’s drivel,” said Tandy. “But it’s drivel people are starting to pay attention to.” She squeezed Carmela’s hand, then added, “Girl, you have to
do
something.”

Somewhat unnerved by Tandy’s words, Carmela turned to gaze toward the crowd that lingered, seemingly reluctant to disperse.

Last night she’d almost convinced herself that the real culprit might show up here today.
Had he? Well, if he had, there’d been no dramatic graveside confession, no bolt of lightning that had shot from the sky and singled him out. There had only been more heavy-handed insinuations against Shamus.

Are witnesses being interviewed?
Carmela wondered.
And if so, who? And, if things continue to go against Shamus, will formal charges be filed?

Oh lord, thought Carmela. Why couldn’t Shamus have kept his size-eleven Thom McCanns parked safely under his desk at the Crescent City Bank? Why couldn’t he have gone on doing his mortgage banking thing during the day and plunking his banjo while relaxing on the side portico at night? Better yet, why hadn’t their life just gone on and on and on instead of him acting like such a dunce? And why was Shamus suddenly in this terrible fix?

As Carmela and Tandy wound their way through the tangle of tombstones and graves, they could see the very proud Ruby Dumaine dragging her daughter, Swan, over to a cluster of women. Even from forty feet away, they could hear Ruby’s high-pitched bray.

“Swan’s going to be Pluvius queen this year!” bragged Ruby. “Just look at her, isn’t my girl absolutely
gorgeous?”

Swan, who was indeed very pretty, squirmed uncomfortably under the heavy-handedness of her mother’s words.

“This will be a year to remember for all of us,” continued Ruby Dumaine. “Swan’s official coming out as a New Orleans debutante
and
the beginning of her reign as Pluvius queen. Don’t you know, her poppa and I are
soooo
proud.”

“Does she know something we don’t?” asked Tandy out of the corner of her mouth. “Swan has to get
elected
first, doesn’t she?”

Carmela, again wondering whether poor Shelby Clayton had, in fact, formally withdrawn from the queen contest, shook her head in disgust at Ruby Dumaine’s braggadocio manner. “Poor girl,” she said, “to have such an overbearing momma.”

“
H
AVE you seen this?” asked Gabby, not long after Carmela returned to the store. She hesitantly held up a copy of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
.

“Yes,” Carmela sighed, “I read it first thing this morning.”

“And you
still
went to Jimmy Earl’s funeral?” asked Gabby, surprised.

“I’m afraid so. I thought maybe I’d be able to—” Carmela stopped in midsentence.
She’d be able to what? Figure out what really happened? Yeah, right. Lotsa luck, kiddo.

“I thought I’d shoot some current photos of Saint Cyril’s for the scrapbook,” Carmela told Gabby instead.

Gabby seemed to accept that as a plausible answer. “Oh, right. I can see where you might want to do that,” she said.

Fifty minutes later, Baby pushed her way through the front door of Memory Mine.

“Carmela, honey, I’m
really
sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to you at Jimmy Earl’s funeral. Del wanted to leave immediately so he could get back to his office.” Del was a hotshot attorney.

Carmela waved a hand. “Not a problem. As it was, my time was fairly well occupied.”

Baby blinked her blue eyes in a quizzical gesture.

“Oh my, yes,” continued Carmela. “Fending off Granger Rathbone, getting hate looks from Rhonda Lee . . .”

“Say, Rhonda Lee
was
in a fairly foul mood, wasn’t she?” gushed Baby as she shifted her scrapbooking bag off her shoulder to the front counter. “Of course, the poor woman was burying her husband. I suppose you wouldn’t classify that as a major social event where you were obligated to appear totally hidebound and
proper
.”

“Ruby Dumaine would have,” said Tandy as the front door closed behind her and she hastened to join in the conversation. “She was all gussied up, with her hair in those weird little wiener rolls.”

Gabby put a hand to her face and laughed, despite herself. “Oh no!”

“My gosh,” said Baby, “did you get a load of that wrap dress Ruby was wearing! Did that look go out in the sev enties, or did I miss something?”

“Maybe she just dresses vintage,” suggested Gabby. “There are lots of stores where you can get stuff like that today.”

“Vintage shmintage,” hooted Tandy, “Ruby just pulled it from the back of her closet. That old gal is so tight with her money she doesn’t throw a thing away!” This produced absolute howls from the women, including Gabby, who normally refrained from gossiping and cracking jokes at the expense of others.

“Say now,” said Baby, delicately wiping tears from her eyes. “Carmela mentioned something last week about making keepsake boxes. What say we press her into action and have her deliver a quick lesson?”

“Carmela?” said Tandy eagerly. “Would you?”

Carmela nodded.
Why not? The store isn’t particularly busy today. My two best customers are here. And keepsake boxes really are a terrific project.

“Say,” said Tandy suddenly. “You’re open tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” said Carmela, reaching under the counter for her stash of brown kraft paper boxes.

“Well, CeCe Goodwin is planning to stop by,” said Tandy.

“For heaven’s sake,” exclaimed Baby as they all walked back to the craft table. “You don’t mean Darwin’s sister-in-law, do you?”

“The one who’s a nurse?” asked Gabby, suddenly interested.

Tandy nodded. “Yup. CeCe’s off for the rest of the week now, and she wants to work on some scrapbook pages. Remember, Carmela, CeCe was in a few months ago?”

“She worked on her vacation pictures,” said Carmela as she set an array of small cardboard boxes, some square, some round, and some octagonal, in the middle of the table. “From when she went to Saint Barth. That’s great, it’ll be nice to have her back again.

And nice to perhaps get a firsthand account of Jimmy Earl’s demise,
Carmela thought to herself. For CeCe, who was a nurse at Saint Ignatius Hospital, had been on duty the night Jimmy Earl had been lifted down from his float and rushed to the emergency room.

“Okay,” said Carmela, holding up one of the cardboard boxes, “they’re rather lowly looking boxes right now, but once you get going, I guarantee they’ll be reincarnated in some very marvelous ways. Gabby, if you could get my plastic box . . . the one filled with rubber stamps and stamp pads . . .”

“Sure thing,” said Gabby, hopping up.

“And a few sheets of pale yellow parchment paper,” added Carmela. “I’ll grab a couple bottles of paint . . . let’s see, probably the gold, the bronze, and the almond . . . and some brushes.”

“I love this already,” declared Baby as Gabby and Carmela pulled craft supplies out of the various cabinets and scattered them in the middle of the table.

“Start with your sheet of parchment paper,” instructed Carmela. “Then use one of these stiff brushes to stipple on a couple layers of paint. You can work light to dark or dark to light, it doesn’t matter, but strive for a nice
aged
look. Think of how the gilt frame on an antique mirror looks. Or maybe an old hand-painted music box. Then, once you’ve built up your layers of color and your ink has dried, you’ll start rubber stamping some of these flower motifs.” Carmela held up a tray that held a selection of rubber stamps. “Be sure to trade off on different floral designs, though, and vary the sizes. Use black ink or sepia for stamping the flower outlines.” Carmela placed the rubber stamps in the center of the table. “Once your flowers are stamped on in a pattern you like, we’ll color them in using varying hues of yellow, gold, and bronze. That will give your sheet an amazing variety of gold tones and mottled hues.”

“This is great!” declared Tandy as she grabbed a brush, gingerly dabbed it into one of the dishes of paint Gabby had poured out, then began carefully stippling her parchment.

“Once you get your sheet of parchment painted and stamped exactly the way you want it,” continued Carmela, “you’ll decoupage that sheet onto your cardboard box. From there, it’s simply a matter of adding extra touches.”

“Like what kind of touches?” asked Gabby, fascinated by this new dimension to crafting.

“Charms threaded on gauzy ribbons, Roman numerals, even tiny photos,” said Carmela. “You could even add a string of antique beads, little gold keys, old coins, you name it.”

For the next twenty minutes, heads were bent diligently over their sheets of parchment, as Baby, Tandy, and Gabby transformed their paper into gilded sheets that carried an old world, hand-rubbed look.

As they worked, Carmela gazed around her shop happily.
This is what it’s all about,
she decided.
Everyone absorbed by the activity of their craft, excited over creating something that’s both beautiful and one of a kind.

And, since the women were all working diligently on their keepsake boxes, Carmela decided this was the perfect time to finish up the place cards she’d begun for the Claiborne Club.

The Claiborne Club was a private club over on Esplanade Avenue that had been in existence since the mid- 1800s. Housed in an Italianate mansion with Greek columns, stained-glass windows, and dark woodwork, and surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence, the Claiborne Club had once been the cloistered sanctuary of New Orleans’s power elite. It was where men had finalized business deals over lunch, smoked cigars till the air turned blue and, in general, gotten away from it all. As a final testament to an earlier, male-dominated era, brass spittoons had ringed the Claiborne Club’s mahogany bar.

But that had all changed. In the mid-’70s, the businessmen’s wives decided to claim it as their own. Out went the old mahogany bar and the brass spittoons that had ringed it; in came a silver tea service, Spode dinner-ware, and Chippendale furniture. Bathrooms were enlarged, urinals yanked out of the walls, and counter space and pink lightbulbs installed.

A few weeks ago, Alyse Eskew, the Claiborne Club’s event coordinator, had asked Carmela to create a couple dozen place cards for a special brunch that was being held at the Claiborne Club on Lundi Gras, this coming Monday.

For these place cards, Carmela had, in turn, asked Ava Grieux to design a plaster mold of a miniature carnival mask. Once that mold had hardened, Carmela had soaked two dozen sheets of thick, handmade paper in water, then pressed each sheet over the mold to create an individual paper mask. When each sheet of paper had dried and formed in the exact shape of the mask mold, Carmela had trimmed and gently rounded the bottom part of each paper mask. Top edges were cut and crimped to create the look of cascading hair.

Now, as Carmela sat at the craft table surrounded by Baby, Tandy, and Gabby, she took a soft piece of cloth, dipped it into a puddle of purple pearlescent paint, and dabbed it gently across the cheeks of each paper mask. She repeated that process using green paint for the hair and luminous bronze paint over the eyes and nose. After a good hour of painting, Carmela had two dozen colorful, gilded mask faces. Once the paint was dry, she would attach a purple tassel to the right side of the mask and a gold name tag strung on tiny pearls to the other side.