Amid zydeco rhythms and popping champagne corks, scrapbook shop owner Carmela Bertrand and her friend Ava are partying in the French Quarter.  It's Mardi Gras, and they never imagined this might be the scene of a murder, but as the evening progresses, float designer Archie Baudier is found dead on the balcony--strangled with a barbed wire garrote.  The only thing wilder than this crime are the theories about who did it--from a ritualistic slaying to a mob hit to the outlandish work of a rival Mardi Gras float builder.  As Carmela flirts with handsome detective Edgar Babcock, she also ponders the odd clues; gold paint on the victim's shoes, a ransacked apartment, and a glimmering gold doubloon.