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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.
    â€œBut those latex gloves were used for stripping and shellacking,” argued Gabby. “Everybody knows that.”
    â€œSure,” 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.”
    â€œDidn’t you try to take over part of Barty’s space a few months ago?” asked Baby.
    â€œI did,” said Carmela.
    Baby put a finger to her mouth. “Ssshhh.”
    â€œAll this talk about murder is making me very jumpy,” said Byrle. “Can’t we just work on our projects for a while?”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œHow would you ladies like a few ideas on how to create your own album covers?” asked Carmela.
    â€œWhat 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.”
    â€œLet me show you one quick idea,” said Carmela. “And then you can improvise and do your own versions.”
    â€œFreestyle,” joked Byrle.
    â€œExactly,” replied Carmela as she pulled open cupboard doors, gathering the materials she needed.
    â€œOkay, 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.”
    â€œYou need the colored oil crayons, too?” asked Gabby, hovering nearby.
    â€œPlease,” 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.
    â€œPretty,” said Byrle. “Now what? You smudge it?”
    â€œCarefully 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.
    â€œNow,” 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.
    â€œThat’s gorgeous,” said Dawn. “Very rich looking. But what about the Eiffel Tower image?”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œTo add a finishing touch to our cover, I’m going to do some hand-lettering across the cream and gold