Keepsake Crimes (2 page)

From out on the street came a loud hoot followed by raucous laughter.

“Parade goers,” pronounced Tandy. She wrinkled her nose, swiveled her small, tight head of curls toward Gabby. Her smile yielded lots of teeth. “You going tonight?” she asked.

Gabby glanced down at her watch. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it. Stuart’s picking me up in . . .” She frowned as she studied the time. “. . . half an hour.” Then, glancing quickly at Carmela, she asked, “I can still borrow your digital camera, right?”

“Not a problem,” replied Carmela. “Knock yourself out.”

“And we
are
closing at five today, aren’t we?” said Gabby.

Carmela nodded again. “If we don’t, we’ll all be trapped here,” she joked. Carmela loved her location next to one of the romantic, tucked-away courtyards on the edge of the French Quarter. With the gently pattering three-tiered fountain, overflowing pots of bougainvillea, and tiny, twinkling lights adorning the spreading acacia tree, it was a truly magical setting. But when Mardi Gras was in full swing, as it certainly would be tonight with the traditionally raucous Pluvius parade wending its way through downtown, the ordinarily manageable throngs of tourists would swell to an enormous, rowdy crowd. And that was way over here on Governor Nicholls Street. By the time you got to Bourbon Street, with its jazz clubs, daiquiri bars, and second-floor balustrades lined with shrieking, bawdy revelers, the scene would be utter chaos.

“Stuart got us an invitation to the Pluvius den,” boasted Gabby.

The den she was referring to was the big barnlike structure down in the Warehouse District. Here, amid great secrecy, the Pluvius krewe had constructed twenty or so glittering Mardi Gras floats that would be revealed to appreciative crowds when their gala parade rolled through the streets of New Orleans in just a matter of hours.

The Stuart that Gabby gushed over so breathlessly was her husband of two months, Stuart Mercer-Morris. Mercer-Morris wasn’t just a politically correct hybrid of their two last names, it was Stuart’s family name. The same Mercer-Morris family that had owned the Mercer-Morris Sugar Cane Plantation out on River Road since the mid-1800s. The same Mercer-Morris family that owned eight car dealerships.

Baby nodded her approval. “It’s a kick to visit the dens. Del’s in the Societé Avignon, so you can believe we’ve done our fair share of preparade partying.” Baby rolled her eyes in a knowing, exaggerated gesture, and Tandy and Beryl giggled. “Lots of mud bugs and hurricanes,” Baby added, referring to those two perennial New Orleans favorites, crawfish and rum drinks.

Carmela was only half listening to Baby’s chitchat as she studied a New Baby Boy scrapbook page she was planning to display in her front window. Then she let her eyes roam about Memory Mine, the little scrapbooking store she had created.

Memory Mine had been her dream come true. She’d always “shown a creative bent” as her momma put it, excelling in drawing and painting all through high school, then graduating with a studio arts degree from Clarkston College over in nearby Algiers. That degree had helped land Carmela a job as a graphic designer for the
Times-Picayune
, New Orleans’s daily newspaper. Once she’d mastered the art of retail advertising, she’d parlayed her design experience into that of package goods designer for Bayou Bob’s Foods.

Bayou Bob, whose real name was Bob Beaufrain, fancied himself a marketing maven and spun off new products at a dizzying rate. Carmela designed outrageous labels for Big Easy Etouffee, Turtle Chili, and Catahoula Catsup. In Carmela’s second year on the job, just after she married Shamus Allan Meechum, Bayou Bob hit it big with his Gulfaroo Gumbo and got approached by Capital Foods International. Not one to pass up a buyout opportunity, Bayou Bob sealed the deal in three days flat. Carmela may have sharpened her skills as a package goods designer, but she was suddenly out of a job.

She trudged around to design studios and ad agencies, showing her portfolio, schmoozing with art directors. She got positive feedback and more than a few chuckles over her Turtle Chili layouts, along with a couple of tentative job offers.

But her heart just wasn’t in it.

Deep inside, Carmela nursed a burning desire to build a business of her own. She was already consumed with scrapbooking, as were many of her friends, and New Orleans still didn’t have the kind of specialized store that offered albums, colorful papers, stencils, rubber stamps, and punches, the scrapbooking necessities that true scrapbook addicts crave.

With a hope and a dream, Carmela put together a bare-bones business plan and shared her idea with husband Shamus. Turned out, he was as fired up as she was, proud that his wife had “
gumption
,” as he put it. Shamus, who was pulling down a reasonably good salary from his job as vice president at his family’s Crescent City Bank, even offered to foot the rent for the first four months.

Locating an empty storefront on Governor Nicholls Street, Carmela set about masterminding a shoestring renovation. Once the site of an antique shop, the former owners had packed up their choicest items and fled to Santa Fe, where competition in the antique business wasn’t quite so fierce. Abandoned in their wake were a few of their clunkier, less tasty pieces. An old cupboard, a tippy library table, a dusty lamp.

The jumble of furniture hadn’t deterred Carmela in the least. She took the old cupboard, gave it a wash of bright yellow paint, and lined it with mauve fabric. By adding a few painted shelves, the newly refurbished cupboard became the perfect display case for papers, foils, and stencils.

Likewise, the old library table, which had probably been too ponderous to transport, was also put to good use. Carmela shoved it into the back of the store, jacked up the errant leg, bought a dozen wooden chairs at a flea market, and declared the table “craft central.” For five dollars an hour, scrapbookers were welcome to sit at the table and use all the stencils, punches, paper cutters, and calligraphy pens they wanted, as well as dip into a huge bin of scrap paper.

Flat files were added, as well as displays of albums, photo mats, how-to books, acid-free pens and adhesives, markers, brass stencils, scissors, and card stock. The walls were lined with wire racks that held hundreds of sheets of different papers that featured all manner of designs and colors.

Shamus had encouraged Carmela every step of the way. After all, she’d been a designer and had a real knack for teaching others how to piece together a great layout. And Shamus had been bragging-rights proud that his wife was able to demonstrate such business smarts. In New Orleans, a woman-owned business, albeit a small one, was still as scarce as hen’s teeth.

But all that had been a year ago, when life had seemed as eternally bright as sunlight on Lake Pontchartrain. Because four months ago, Shamus up and left her. Had tossed his jockey underwear into his suitecase, grabbed his football trophies and camera gear, and taken his leave from their home in the rather elegant Garden District. Reluctantly (or so he said) and pleading the Gauguin precedent, Shamus left in his wake a closet full of three-piece suits, a rack of wing tips, and his rose gold wedding band.

Carmela bit her lip as she passed a piece of teddy bear art over to Tandy. Shamus’s parting words still stung like nettles.

The rat had told her he craved space, that he desperately needed breathing room. He’d pleaded and cajoled, telling her he
despised
banking, that he needed a respite, a timeout from
everything
in his life. Tearfully, Shamus told her he wanted to focus on photography and that he needed to find a renewed sense of
balance
in his life.

Carmela had been stunned. She thought Shamus
loved
banking. She thought Shamus had
found
balance. She thought Shamus loved
her
.

But there was something else, something that didn’t sit right. All this raw emotion from a good old boy who tended to display his feelings only in such instances as a superlative bourbon mash or a well-thrown Tulane touchdown, had seemed, well . . . forced.

Why, suddenly, seemingly overnight, had Shamus,
her
Shamus, become a touchy-feely, need-my-space, got-to-break-free-and-grow kind of guy?

Carmela wasn’t sure, she hadn’t yet found
concrete
proof, but Shamus’s departing words had sounded suspiciously as though he’d been reading from a TelePrompTer. As though the words had been . . . borrowed? Had a few key phrases in Shamus’s exit speech been culled from the current crop of self-help books? Yeah . . . maybe.

Carmela had even racked her brain, trying to remember if she’d heard some of those same phrases uttered by Dr. Phil on
Oprah
. Could be.

Whatever fishy circumstances had surrounded Shamus’s departure, Carmela’s humiliation hadn’t ended there.

Two weeks after Shamus traded their large brick home in the Garden District for the bare-bones privacy of his family’s old camp house in the Barataria Bayou, her in-laws had come a-knocking. Led by Glory Meechum, Shamus’s overbearing older sister, the in-laws had politely yet resolutely asked her to vacate the premises of what, they explained, was technically
the family’s
house.

Never mind that Shamus had also slapped
the family
in their collective faces when he renounced his vice presidency from their beloved Crescent City Bank. Blood was thicker than water and, right or wrong, the family was abiding with Shamus’s decision.

What could she do? In New Orleans, the only thing thicker than blood was gumbo.

Carmela abided by her in-laws’ wishes, making it clear to them that, when it came to cordiality and common decency, she regarded the Meechum family as being on a par with the Manson family.

Loading her few personal possessions into the vintage Cadillac she’d dubbed Samantha, Carmela and her dog, Boo, set off for her momma’s house in Chalmette. They spent five days there. Carmela wandered the woods and piney forests where she’d grown up, sat by the edge of Sebastopol Pond, and grieved. Boo, her little fawn-colored shar-pei, kept her company, gazing at her with a perpetually furrowed brow and sorrowful eyes. And when Carmela cried long, mournful sobs, the dog with the chubby face sighed deeply as well, the picture of soulful love and canine understanding.

Like pages in a scrapbook, Carmela looked back over her time with Shamus. She worried about what was good and true and okay to keep, what should be chucked out. Or at least stored in a file in the bottom drawer.

It wasn’t easy; her defeat was so recent.

On the fifth day spent at her momma’s, Carmela finally came around to worrying about
her
life,
her
future. She decided that was the most important thing now.

With a heavy heart but a clear head, she assured her momma that she was okay. Not exactly great yet, but she thought she’d be able to find her way there in her own good time.

Carmela and Boo drove back to the French Quarter, sacked out on a futon in her scrapbooking shop for a few days, then finally located a tiny garden apartment just two blocks from her store. The rent was right, the atmosphere slightly decadent, and the decor showed promise. Tucked behind Ava Grieux’s little tourist-trap voodoo shop, Carmela’s new apartment boasted coral red walls and all the incense she cared to inhale.

 

 

“ARE YOU GOING TO THE PLUVIUS PARADE?”
Gabby asked Carmela. Gabby was pretty and twenty-two, with dark hair and even darker eyes, primly turned out today in a pistachio-colored cashmere twin set and elegantly draped gray slacks. Carmela, on the other hand, with her newfound single status and French Quarter life-style, was now veering toward clothes with a slightly more flamboyant style. Today she wore slim black jeans and a hand-painted black denim jacket shot through with wisps of gold and mauve.

“I wouldn’t miss tonight’s parade for the world,” Carmela assured her. “I ran into Jekyl Hardy at the French Market the other day, and he was telling me that all this year’s floats have these fantastic
oceania
themes. Sea serpents and jellyfish and flying pirate ships.”

Jekyl Hardy was chief designer for the Pluvius floats and a dear friend of Carmela’s. They’d gone to art school together and both volunteered with the Children’s Art Association.

Gabby followed Carmela the few steps over to a flat file, where Carmela rummaged for paper. “I don’t suppose you’re going with Shamus?” Gabby asked quietly. Gabby was a newlywed of four months and regarded marriage as a holy sacrament and the Mount Olympus of feminine accomplishment. Gabby had confided to Carmela that she prayed to Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, every night to help mend her and Shamus’s differences. She also assured Carmela that she would light a candle each week until the two were once again reunited.

Carmela had thanked Gabby warmly, then suggested she might want to purchase those candles in bulk.

“I only ask,” continued Gabby, “since I know Shamus used to be a member of the Pluvius krewe.” They were back at the table again, and Carmela slid a sheet of calico-printed paper to Baby, a sheet of rose-printed paper to Tandy.

“That’s no longer an option for my dearly departed husband,” Carmela told her. Dearly departed was the term she most often used in polite society.

“Oh, I’m sorry, dear,” said Byrle. She looked up with a distracted air. “Your husband is dead?”

Carmela smiled pleasantly. “No, just living in the bayou.” She saw that Byrle was trying to fit way too many photographs onto a single page. Reaching a hand across the table, Carmela slid three of the photos off the page that Byrle seemed to be struggling with. “Try it with just these five,” suggested Carmela. “And maybe . . .” She reached behind her and grabbed a sheet of lettering. “. . . this nice blocky typeface.”