Keepsake Crimes Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Scrapbooking Tips from Laura Childs

  Favorite New Orleans Recipes

  DON’T MISS THE NEXT SCRAPBOOK MYSTERY

  Be sure to read the Tea Shop Mystery series, also by Laura Childs

  High Praise for the Tea Shop Mystery Series

  Praise for the Tea Shop Mystery series by Laura Childs

  Gunpowder Green

  “This mystery series could single-handedly propel the tea shop business in this country to the status of wine bars and bustling coffeehouses.” —Buon Gusto, Minneapolis, MN

  “Engages the audience from the start . . . Laura Childs provides the right combination of tidbits on tea and an amateur sleuth cozy that will send readers seeking a cup of Death By Darjeeling, the series’ previous novel.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Death By Darjeeling

  “Highly recommended” by the Ladies Tea Guild

  “Book of Choice” by the Red Hat Society

  “Tea lovers, mystery lovers, [this] is for you. Just the right blend of cozy fun and clever plotting.”

  —Susan Wittig Albert, bestselling author of Bloodroot

  “It’s a delightful book!” —Tea: a magazine

  “Murder suits [Laura Childs] to a Tea.”

  —St. Paul Pioneer Press

  “If you devoured Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, this new series is right up your alley.”

  —The Goose Creek (SC) Gazette

  “Death By Darjeeling is a good beginning to a new culinary series that will quickly become a favorite of readers who favor this genre. The cozy and inviting setting will quickly draw readers in and a likable cast of characters will have them eager to return.” —The Mystery Reader

  “Gives the reader a sense of traveling through the streets and environs of the beautiful, historic city of Charleston.”

  —Lakeshore Weekly News

  Shades of Earl Grey

  Chosen as a Monthly Alternate by the Literary Guild’s Mystery Book Club®

  “A heart-stopping opening scene.” —St. Paul Pioneer Press

  “Delicious cozy.”—BooksnBites.com

  “Once again, the reader experiences the scents, atmosphere, and elegance of Charleston.”

  —Lakeshore Weekly News

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either

  are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,

  and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KEEPSAKE CRIMES

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with

  the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2003

  Copyright © 2003 by Gerry Schmitt.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

  in any form without permission.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or

  via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal

  and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic

  editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

  copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-16152-4

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published

  by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  The name BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the BERKLEY PRIME

  CRIME design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is dedicated to my dad,

  who died a few short months before I became

  a published author.

  Find out more about the

  Scrapbook Mystery Series

  and the Tea Shop Mystery Series

  at www.laurachilds.com.

  Acknowledgments

  A million thanks to my husband, Bob, who urged me to pursue this scrapbooking theme; to mystery great Mary Higgins Clark who has been so encouraging with every book I write; to my agent, Sam Pinkus; to Henri Schindler, Mardi Gras float designer, historian, and author, and Stone and Joan in New Orleans who revealed the fascinating world of Mardi Gras parades, float dens, and balls; to my sister, Jennie, who was this book’s first reader and critic; to my mother who always believes in me, no matter what; to Jim Smith, dear friend and tireless cheerleader; to my Chinese shar-pei dogs, Madison and Maximillian, who were the inspiration for little Boo; to everyone at Berkley who was so enthusiastic about a scrapbooking series; to all the thousands of scrapbookers out there who are so marvelously creative; and to readers of my Tea Shop Mystery series who expressed genuine excitement over my new series.

  Chapter 1

  CARMELA Bertrand spun out a good fifteen inches of gold ribbon and snipped it off tidily. “This,” she told the little group of scrapbookers clustered around her table, “gets added to the center panel.” Heads bobbed, and eager eyes followed Carmela’s hands as she punched two quick holes in the scrapbook page, then deftly threaded the ribbon through.

  The ladies had been asking about wedding scrapbooks, and Carmela had come up with a layout that was easy for beginners yet elegant in appearance. Color photos of a bride and bridesmaids were alternated with squares of embossed floral paper, three down and three across, like a giant tic-tac-toe board. A diamond-shaped card, perfect for personal jottings, was positioned in the center.

  As Carmela’s hands worked to fashion a bow, her mind was working overtime. She had about a gazillion things to do on this late February afternoon. Call her momma, pick up batteries for her camera, check with her friend, Ava, about the Mardi Gras parade tonight, figure out just what the heck she was going to wear.

  But there was time, right? Sure there was, there had to be time.

  Willing herself to calm down, Carmela pushed an errant strand of hair from her face and took a deep breath.

  People always asked Carmela if she’d gotten her name because of her hair. Dark blond, shot through with strands of taffy and caramel, it offered a startling contrast to the clear, pale skin of her oval face and blue gray eyes that mirrored the flat glint of the Gulf of Mexico.

  Of course, Carmela didn’t have the heart to tell folks she’d been born hairless, just like a baby opossum.

  Over the years Carmela had chunked and skunked her hair, as Ava laughingly called it, in an effort to shed her cloak of conservatism and adopt an
image that was a trifle more outgoing and a little more . . . well, hip.

  Too often, people thought her reserved. Not so, she told herself. She only looked reserved. Inside was a zydeco lovin’, foot-stompin’ Cajun. Well, half Cajun anyway. On her mother’s side. Her father had been Norwegian, which, when she thought about it, probably had given her a slight genetic tendency toward wearing beige and voting Republican.

  When she was little, before her dad died in a barge accident on the Mississippi, he’d jokingly told her she was Cawegian. Half Cajun, half Norwegian.

  Carmela had been enchanted by that. And as she got older, chalked up her orderly sense of design to her Norwegian side, her passion for life to her Cajun side. It made her uniquely suited for New Orleans, a city that was eccentric, fanciful, and profoundly religious, yet casually tossed ladies’ panties from Mardi Gras floats.

  Carmela had taken to New Orleans like a duck to water. The Crescent City, the City That Care Forgot, the Big Easy. Only lately, things hadn’t been so easy.

  Carmela finished with a flourish, “There,” she told her group. “The amazing Technicolor wedding layout.”

  “How very elegant,” marveled Tandy Bliss. She slid a pair of bright red cheaters halfway down her bony nose and studied Carmela’s handiwork. Tandy was a scrapbook fanatic of the first magnitude and one of Carmela’s regulars at Memory Mine, the little scrapbooking store she owned on the fringe of the French Quarter in New Orleans. “But didn’t you mention something about using vellum?”

  Carmela dug into her pile of paper scraps and came up with a quick solution. “Three-inch squares of vellum go here and here,” she said as she slid the thin, transparent paper atop the floral paper. “Gabby, you want to hand me those stickers?”

  Gabby Mercer-Morris, Carmela’s young assistant, passed over a sheet of embossed gold foil stickers. Carmela peeled one off gingerly and pressed it at the top of the velum to anchor it.

  “What a lovely, soft look,” marveled Byrle Coopersmith. This was her first scrapbooking class, and she was wide-eyed with excitement. “I had no idea scrapbooks could be so elegant.”

  “People are always amazed at the sophisticated looks you can achieve,” explained Carmela. She picked up a sample vacation scrapbook she’d created and flipped through the pages for all to see. “See . . . you can highlight a single photo by creating a gangbuster layout around it, use several photos for a fun montage effect, or turn your page into a kind of travel journal by incorporating your own personal notes and clippings. No matter what you do, scrapbooking is all about preserving memory in a very personal way.” She passed the album to Byrle, who accepted it eagerly. “Think about it,” continued Carmela. “Most people have snapshot collections that document all sorts of precious events: new babies, weddings, graduations, vacations. But what do they do with them?”

  “Stick ’em in little plastic albums,” said Tandy in her soft drawl. “Which is so borrring.”

  “You got that right,” said Carmela.

  “Or toss ’em in shoe boxes like I used to,” piped up a fifty-something woman with the incongruous name of Baby. Baby Fontaine was on the far side of fifty, but her tiny figure, pixie blond hair, peaches and cream complexion, and genteel accent lent a youthful aura. And Baby’s friends, in no hurry to abandon the familiar, endearing moniker that had been bestowed on her back during her sorority days, continued to call her Baby.

  There were five of them seated around the table. Carmela and her assistant, Gabby. And Tandy, Byrle, and Baby.

  Tandy had found her way to Carmela’s shop when it first opened, almost a year ago, and she was practically a fixture now. Tandy had completed elaborate scrapbooks that celebrated her wedding anniversary, vacations in Maui, and all of her children’s varied and sundry accomplishments. Now she was working on a combination journal /scrapbook that documented her family heritage. Blessed with six grandchildren, Tandy had also done scrapbooks on each of the little darlings. And with two more grandchildren on the way, Tandy was now mulling over creative ways to showcase sonograms.

  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.

  Why not do what she loved and fill the niche at the same time?

  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.