Life in New Orleans! Colette enjoys the finer things in life, and is willing to do just about anything it takes to keep herself within the social circles of the cities upper middle class. It used to be different: Colette was once the darling of the upper crust of New Orleans society, but her desire to explore the seedier side of the wealthy frequently brought her into conflict with the stolid blue blooded matrons who control the city's social ladder. Colette's parents had always managed to soothe enough ruffled feathers to keep her in good graces with the high class -- not that Colette disliked life among the snobs: she was one herself.
Then came that disastrous affair during her junior year at Tulane with the much older Professor Jones. Even Colette's parents were helpless to prevent her ostracism from high society. And poor Doctor Jones was forced to leave the University and work as director of some second rate museum down in the French Quarter. Colette assumed that the uproar would settle down and she'd be sitting pretty once people forget about her indiscretion, and so she planned a summer trip to Europe with dreams of a triumphant return to "her people" in the fall. Unfortunately, one month into her trip she was forced to return because her parents had died.
Back in New Orleans Colette discovered that the family fortune was gone (frivolously spent over the years, said friends of the family), and that nobody was clear how her parents died (a boating accident?). The police were content with the terse explanations for her parents' death and loss of fortune. Colette was still in disgrace from her affair with Professor Jones, and had little recourse but to take up lodgings in a moderately expensive suite in the French Quarter. Her small reserve of funds would have dwindled long ago had it not been for Colette's keen observational skills and her ability to move quietly. Over the past three years Colette has supported herself by stealing various expensive curious from the wealthy inhabitants of the Garden District: her former friends and neighbors who's homes and treasures she knew so well.
Colette is still close friends with Henry Jones, although the two are no longer regular lovers. She spends her evenings attending the various social saurez of the French Quarter, or in the Jazz Clubs of Rampart Street. While she moves about low and middle class society of New Orleans like a diva, she still dreams of a glorious return to the upper class. Colette knows it will take more than petty thefts to put her back on top.