Photo Finished

Shamus threw his hands in the air. “That doesn’t mean Glory hates you, honey. It’s just…”

“It’s just what?” demanded Carmela. She clambered to her feet and placed her hands on her hips, pretty sure now that she’d been blindsided on the dinner invitation.

“It’s… it’s just the way some families are,” stammered Shamus.

He leaned down, brushed his lips across the top of her head in a quick semi-kiss, and headed for the door. As the door flew open and chill air wafted in, Carmela was surprised to see a mixture of confusion and unhappiness on Shamus’s departing face.

And deep within her heart, in the part where she tried to suppress her true feelings for him, Carmela felt a painful stab.

Chapter 5

GABBY, I’m so sorry about Saturday night,” Carmela apologized for about the twentieth time. “I should never have let you go out back by yourself.”

“Carmela, it’s okay, really,” said Gabby. “I’ll get over it. I am over it.”

It was Monday morning. Gabby had shown up on time at nine o’clock, looking slightly subdued, but certainly no less enthusiastic about her job as Carmela’s assistant.

“I was afraid Stuart wouldn’t let you come back to work,” said Carmela. Gabby’s husband of barely two years was a combination worrywart and hard-ass. Stuart was also, as Tandy whispered when Gabby was absent from the shop, a male chauvinist pig. Only Tandy never actually said the word, she just spelled it out: p-i-g.

“My coming back to work here was an issue,” Gabby admitted. “But I promised Stuart I’d never venture into the back alley again, even during daytime hours.” Gabby grimaced. “Stuart’s not particularly happy making that concession, but I wasn’t about to give up a job I love.” Gabby adjusted her black velvet headband and nervously picked at a mythical speck of lint on her camel-colored sweater. “Besides, it’s not as though murder was a rare occurrence around here.”

Gabby was right. New Orleans was infamous for its nasty murder rate, and the French Quarter had always been a hotbed of trouble. Hot music, hot women, hot tempers.

Gabby smiled broadly. For her the issue was closed. “Okay to put the OPEN sign on the front door?” she asked Carmela as the phone on the front counter shrilled.

“Please,” said Carmela.

Gabby flipped over the sign, then swiped at the telephone. “Hello.” She listened for a few seconds, then held it out to Carmela. “It’s Tandy and she’s super upset!”

“Tandy,” said Carmela, taking the phone.

“The police kept him until five in the morning and now they’ve called him in again,” said the tearful voice on the other end of the phone.

“You mean Billy?” Carmela gasped. Of course Billy. Who else?

“It’s downright crazy,” shrilled Tandy. “Insane. Billy had absolutely nothing to do with Bartholomew Hayward’s death! You know that and so do I!”

“Of course he didn’t,” said Carmela. “The police are probably just trying to put together a possible timeline or something. Or they’re quizzing Billy about acquaintances of Barty’s, fishing around for possible suspects.”

“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