“No, they’re not,” blubbered Tandy. “They keep asking Billy about the latex gloves.”
“What about latex gloves?” asked Carmela.
“The police found a box of them in Barty’s workroom.” Tandy paused and there was a loud honk as she blew her nose. “Carmela, this is awful!” she cried. “The police think that, just because they couldn’t find any fingerprints, Billy might be involved!”
Billy Cobb involved? No way. Billy was a good kid. Bright, polite, upstanding. Right?
“Has Billy got an attorney?” asked Carmela. She knew that even if you were totally innocent, it was always smart to be represented by a crackerjack attorney. A lot of people learn that one the hard way.
“I already called Baby,” sniffled Tandy. “And Del ’s agreed to represent Billy.” Baby’s husband, Del Fontaine, was a high-powered attorney and senior partner with the law firm Jackson, Fontaine & DeWitt.
“Okay, honey,” said Carmela. “Let us know if you hear anything.”
“I might be coming in later,” said Tandy.
“Really?” said Carmela, surprised by Tandy’s remark.
“There’s nothing else to do right now,” said Tandy, her voice quavering wildly.
Twenty minutes later, Baby Fontaine and her daughter Dawn Bodine, who’d married into the Brewton Creek Bod-ines, pushed their way through the door. Shortly after that, Byrle Coopersmith, another of Carmela’s staunch regulars, also arrived. They were all shocked to hear that the police were now eyeing Billy Cobb as a possible suspect.
“But those latex gloves were used for stripping and shellacking,” argued Gabby. “Everybody knows that.”
“Sure,” said Carmela. “Even I keep a box of latex gloves in the store. For when I work with glass paints and things. It doesn’t make me a murderer.”
“Didn’t you try to take over part of Barty’s space a few months ago?” asked Baby.
“I did,” said Carmela.
Baby put a finger to her mouth. “Ssshhh.”
“All this talk about murder is making me very jumpy,” said Byrle. “Can’t we just work on our projects for a while?”
“I’m making a vacation scrapbook,” piped up Dawn. She was the youngest of Baby’s daughters, youthful and vivacious, recently married and just back from a trip to Paris. Dawn was also the spitting image of her mother, only twenty-six years younger.
“What kind of album are you using?” Carmela asked Dawn.
Dawn held up a large square album with a plain cream-colored cover. “This one. Momma got it for me.” She smiled at Baby, who was sitting next to her.
“How would you ladies like a few ideas on how to create your own album covers?” asked Carmela.
“What fun!” exclaimed Baby, pulling out an album of her own. “We design all these wonderful scrapbook pages and sometimes forget that our album covers can be personalized, too.”
“Let me show you one quick idea,” said Carmela. “And then you can improvise and do your own versions.”
“Freestyle,” joked Byrle.
“Exactly,” replied Carmela as she pulled open cupboard doors, gathering the materials she needed.
“Okay, then,” said Carmela, spreading everything out around her. “I’m going to start with this Eiffel Tower rubber stamp. Using gold ink, I’m going to stamp an Eiffel Tower image onto a three-by-three-inch square of light blue card stock.”
“You need the colored oil crayons, too?” asked Gabby, hovering nearby.
“Please,” said Carmela. She took the box of crayons from Gabby and pulled out a dark blue and a purple crayon. As an afterthought she grabbed a pink oil crayon, too. “Now I’m just going to color in a little bit of the Eiffel Tower,” said Carmela, rubbing the oil crayons on the inside and around the outer edges of the Eiffel Tower image.
“Pretty,” said Byrle. “Now what? You smudge it?”
“Carefully smudge it,” said Carmela. “A controlled smudge, like doing your eye shadow. To achieve a soft, almost pastel look. Then we trim the square with a deckle-edged scissors to get a nice torn-edge effect.” Carmela trimmed the image, then carefully set it down on the table. It shone like an oversized French postage stamp.
“Now,” said Carmela, “we’ll take our album cover and adhere this dark blue and purple paisley paper to the right side. On the left side we’ll use this light-colored cream and gold paisley paper.” Carmela’s hands worked swiftly with the papers and adhesive and, in a few minutes, the album cover had assumed a whole new look.
“That’s gorgeous,” said Dawn. “Very rich looking. But what about the Eiffel Tower image?”
“I’m getting to that,” said Carmela. “Now we take our deckle-edged Eiffel Tower square and paste it on. Not quite centered… maybe a little to the right.” The Eiffel Tower image went on, then Carmela picked up a calligraphy pen.
“To add a finishing touch to our cover, I’m going to do some hand-lettering across the cream and gold paper.” She uncapped a bronze-colored pen, paused for a moment, then bent over the album and began to write in a long, looping script.
Baby watched her closely. “ ‘ Paris, City of Light.’ Beautiful. Now it’s the perfect album for preserving memories of Dawn and Buddy’s Paris trip.” Baby’s fingers touched the edge of Dawn’s sleeve; she was clearly proud of her daughter.
“Do you think I could do something similar using heart images?” asked Dawn. “For an anniversary album?”
“I think hearts would be adorable,” said Carmela. “We could even add some heart-shaped charms for a dimensional effect.”
“Could you attach charms to this?” asked Baby, indicating the album cover Carmela had just completed.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Carmela. “Tiny charms, stickers, gold tassels, a wax seal… the more layers you put on, the more depth you achieve.”
“Here are some rubber stamps with heart images,” said Gabby, passing a half-dozen rubber stamps to Dawn. “And this handmade mulberry paper has tiny rosebud petals imbedded in it.”
“Wow,” said Dawn, clearly impressed.
“That paper comes in cream, white, and pink,” said Carmela. “And I think we also have some pretty gold paper with poetry verses etched in the background. That would certainly go well with your romantic theme.” Carmela rose from her chair and headed for the front of the shop. “Let me take a look.”
As Carmela was searching through her stock of special papers, the phone rang. She grabbed the handset.
“Hello,” she said, fully expecting to hear Tandy once again.
But it wasn’t Tandy. It was Lt. Edgar Babcock of the New Orleans Police Department. Asking Carmela if she would kindly put together a list of customers who’d attended her scrapbook crop this past Saturday night.
“Sure I will, of course I will,” Carmela replied into the phone. God, am I babbling? Sure sounds like it. Why am I suddenly nervous?
“Today, if possible?” asked Lieutenant Babcock.
“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Carmela told him. She glanced toward the back of the shop. Everybody seemed involved in their own projects and she was pretty sure Gabby had kept that reservation list. Positive they had it, in fact.
Lieutenant Babcock’s request had also made Carmela suddenly hopeful.
If the police are looking at other people, surely that means they’re not entirely focused on Billy Cobb. On the other hand, they’re starting to look at my customers…
“Shall I e-mail you the list or…?”
“I’d like to stop by and pick it up if I could,” said Lieutenant Babcock.
“I’ll have it ready,” Carmela promised him.
“Problems?” asked Gabby as Carmela hung up the phone.
Carmela pulled the gold paper from the front display and hurried back to her friends.
“Not a problem per se,” Carmela answered slowly. “That was a police detective. He’s asking for a list of Saturday night’s customers.”