Two rituals the next day marked the passing of Lucy Heartfilia...

The first, a command performance in the coroners office. It was for the Master, Team Natsu and the Thunder Legion. Levy was invited but she declined, saying she would go to the memorial service and the the funeral itself. Laxus, who had been detailing the investigation, would not attempt to report the unimaginative proceedings which went into the hideous lengths to prove a fact that everyone had known from the start- that Lucy Heartfilia was dead; the cause, murder by the hand of an unknown assailant. Natsu stood away from the body. He was suspicious, the smell was off. But he was told that was probably just the smell of a dead body and the chemicals used in the coroners office.

The second ritual, her funeral took place that afternoon in the Kardia Cathedral. The cathedral, long experienced in the internment of movie stars, Ward leaders, successful gangsters, supervised the arrangement so that there might be a semblance of order among the morbid who started their clamor at their doors at 8 in the morning.

Laxus had asked Magnus to meet him on the balcony that overlooked the chapel. As usual Laxus liked to look down upon what was happening before him and this was no special case. He watched the proceedings, his eyes watching carefully each and every person that arrived and left the cathedral.

Magnus hesitated when Laxus asked him to come. He told him he did not like going to funerals. "But she was your friend." Laxus countered.

"Lucy was too considerate to demand that anyone venture out at such a barbaric hour and to exhibit emotions, which if earnest, are too personal for scrutiny."

"That's a shame I was hoping that you could help me identify some of the people in her address book that I did not know."

"Do you think the murderer will be there?"

"It's possible."

"How do we know him? Do you think he might swoon at the bier?"

"Will you come?"

"No," he said, "let Vincent and her father help you this time."

"They are chief mourners. You must come. No one will see you. Use the side entrance and tell them you're meeting me. I'll be on the balcony."

Laxus could tell Magnus was annoyed. What Magnus didn't know was that Laxus was persistent. Her friends had loved Lucy and been desolate on her passing, but they had failed to enjoy the excitement. All of Fairy Tail had showed up. They were bawling and filled with anger and rage. Looking at Lucy's other friends from her other in life in scruntity. Even MiraJane was suspiciously looking at them. The attendees from her other life were strange to them. Makarov looked on in disgust. He sat next to Jude, who he had been lending a shoulder to the man to cry on. Like Laxus, people from Lucy's former life had hoped for some crisis of discovery. Eyes that should have been down cast in grief and piety were sliding this way and that in the hope of receiving the flush countenance , the guilty gesture that would enable lips, later, to boast, "I knew it the moment I saw that sly face and noted the way he rubbed his hands together during the 23rd psalm."

She lay in a coffin covered in white silk, pale ringless hands had been folded against the lavender tinted white moiré of her once upon a time favorite evening gown. An arrangement of gardenias, put together by MiraJane, draped like a confirmation veil, covering the ruined face. The only mourners deserving seats in the section reserved for deepest suffering were her aunt , father, her team and Vincent. As the service was read, the organ pealed and attendants wheeled the casket into a private chamber from which it was later transferred to a crematorium.

Magnus never showed up, much to Laxus's annoyance. As he descended from the balcony and join the slowly moving mass, he noted a hand, gloved and black, signaling him. It was Bessie Clary, she pushed her way through the crowd.

"I've got something to tell you, Mr. Dreyar."

He took her arm. "Shall we go up stairs where it's quiet or does this place depress you?"

"If you wouldn't mind, we could go up to the flat," Bessie suggested. "It's up there, what I got to show you."

Laxus teleported him and Bessie to Lucy's apartment. Bessie was dazed and confused. "That's just unnatural to go anywhere like that!" She muttered. Laxus smirked. "What did you say?"

"I said it's hot enough to kill a cat!" She said quickly. Laxus smirked again.

"What have you got to tell me?"

"You needn't to yell at me. I'm not afraid of mages, or dicks either!" She drew out her best handkerchief and blew such a clarion note that her nose seemed an instrument fashion for the purpose of sounding defiant. "You know I was brought up spit whenever I saw one. That's why Mr. Heartfilia hired me because I hated mages."

"And yet you worked for a girl who wanted to be a mage?"

"I discouraged that dream whenever I could!"

Laxus laughed. "And I was brought up to hate anybody who was not a mage, but I'm a grown man now and I haven't asked for love, what is it that you want to tell me?"

"You won't get on my good side by that talk! I'm domestic and I got nothing to be ashamed of!"

Laxus was slowly losing his temper with the woman. He read about Bessie in Lucy's diary. A tempered old woman who hated mages and magic in general. She had felt threatened whenever she had found out that Lucy had replaced her with Virgo. Virgo a magical being and a maid at that took care of every whim the heiress had, annoyed the woman greatly. Virgo herself also didn't care much for Bessie. Laxus chuckled at that, apparently Aquarius and Virgo had said some choice words for the woman. When they pass by policemen who stood guard at the door of Lucy's place, Bessie smiled down upon them with virtuous hauteur. Once in the apartment, she assumed the airs of ownership, raised windows, adjusted curtains, emptied trays filled with ashes from Laxus's cigars.

"You mages are brought up in barns," she muttered. She sniffed as she drew hat pins from out of the structure that road high on her head. "Don't know how to act when they get into a decent place." Laxus smiled at the woman. When she had drawn off her black gloves, folded them and stored them in her bag, settled herself on the straightest chair, she fixed a glassy stare upon his face, she asked, "what do they do to people that hide something from the cops?"

Laxus raised an eyebrow. The question, so humble and contrast with her belligerence, provided him with a weapon. "So you've been trying to shield the murderer? That's dangerous, Bessie!"

Her knotted hands unfolded. "What makes you think that I know the murderer?"

"By hiding evidence, you have become an accessory after the fact. What is the evidence, and what was your purpose in concealing it?"

Bessie turned her eyes ceilingward as though she was expecting help from heaven. "If I'd hold out on you, you'd never've know about it. And if they hadn't played that music at the funeral, I'd never've told you. Church music makes me soft."

"Whom are you shielding, Bessie?"

"Her." She sobbed.

"Lucy?"

Bessie nodded grimly.

"Why, Bessie? She's dead."

"Her reputation ain't," Bessie observe righteously and went to the corner cabinet, in which Lucy had always kept a small stock of liquor. "Just look at this." She pulled out a bottle of half empty liquor.

Laxus leapt. "Hey be careful. There may be fingerprints."

Bessie laughed. "Maybe there was a lot of fingerprints around here! But the cops will never see them!"

"Are you fucking telling me you wiped them all off?" Laxus demanded. Red sparks shot out of his eyes. He was now not amused by Bessie.

"That ain't all I wiped off," Bessie chuckled. "I cleaned off the bed and table in there and the bathroom before the cops came. I got here early in the morning on Sunday and found Lucy's body the way it was, cleaned up what I could and then I left."

Laxus was livid he punched the wall. "You god damn bitch. I have half a mind to take your ass in!"

He grabbed her by the wrists. She struggled against him. She panicked, realizing she had pissed off the mage. "I don't believe in fingerprints anyway. All afternoon the cops was sprinkling white powder around my clean flat didn't do them no good because I polished all the furniture on Friday after she went! If they found any fingerprints it was mine! I did it to protect her! Her reputation!"

"I know damn well you weren't asked to clean this apartment all right! She had Virgo replace you! She did not need you coming over here and cleaning her goddamn apartment!" He was angry. He knew Virgo wasn't a replacement but he was livid this was serious. This changed the case.

Bessie cried at that. Hot tears rolled down her face. Laxus echoed something deep inside of her. It was true. Lucy had left, and forgotten her. And she had some magical being cleaning for her! It was unnatural! Lucy said that wasn't true. She loved Bessie, Virgo was just Virgo and she couldn't help that she was a spirit who loved to serve her and be quirky. But to Bessie, in her opinion, Virgo was licentious, asking to be punished. It was a disgrace in her opinion. It just wasn't normal or natural!

"I know how you offered your services to her when you found out where she lived and she turned you down saying that she did not need your help nor did she want your help!"

"No! That's not true! She said she didn't need my help! I had taught her to be self efficient and she had her spirits to help her if she needed it! She did let me help while she was healing!"

"Another thing! If you don't believe in fingerprints, why were you so anxious to get rid of those in the bedroom?" He let go of her wrists.

"People like you have dirty minds! I don't want the whole world thinking she was some kind of woman that got drunk with a fellow in her place, God bless her soul!"

Laxus blinked. He seized her wrists again. "Why are you making up the story, Bessie? What have you to gain by it? If you knew Blondie as well as you think you damn did then you knew she didn't give a rat's ass about reputation in that sense! As far as reputation goes, she only wanted to change the world and how they viewed Celestial mages! Be considered not weird like her teammates! What you did was look out for a woman who didn't care about that shit! A fictitious woman in your mind! You may have just set us back further and finding out who murdered her!"

Laxus felt sick to his stomach. "By the way, what do you mean drunk in her place?"

"So help me," Bessie swore. "There were two glasses!"

Laxus stopped and thought about it, the report, the receipt...a bottle of liquor charged, and no glasses found and no unopened bottle either...

"What right do you have to yell at me?" She asked the hauteur of an enraged duchess. "You don't believe me, huh? Say, I was the one that cared about her reputation. You never even knew her. What are you getting so mad about?"

Laxus retreated. The sudden display of temper puzzling and shaming him. His fury had grown out of all proportions to its cause. Bessie drew out the bottle. "Where do you think I found this? Right here!" She said putting it on her table. Laxus looked around the apartment it was chaste and peaceful, the chamber of a young girl whose experience of love have been confined to sonnets, dreams and a diary. The pink Swiss spread smooth and starch, the pillow rounded neatly, the polished pine headboard, a white and blue knitted afghan folded at the foot of the bed.

"I cleaned up the room best I could and wash the glasses before Natsu even got here. To protect her. Lucky I came to my senses in time," she sniffed. "The bottle I put in the cabinet so's no one would notice. It wasn't her kind of liquor anyway. I can tell you that much Mr. Dreyar."

"How would you know?"

She glared. "This bottle was brought in after I left the night before she left. Before she decided to leave. On Friday it was not here. Saturday afternoon it was not here. She then "left," and Sunday morning it was here."

Laxus examined the bottle. It was Three Horses Bourbon, a brand favored by frugal tipplers. "If you don't believe me, ask Mr. Mosconi, he delivered liquor to Lucy's place back when she lived with her father and she bought from him after she ran away. She bought better stuff than this, I'm telling you. When she live with her father she always left me the list, I ordered on the phone. When she moved out, she went to him personally to go and get it herself. This here is the brand she used." She swung the doors wider and revealed, among the neatly arranged bottles, 4 unopened fifths of J&D Blue Grass Bourbon.

Such unexpected evidence, throwing unmistakable light on the last moments of the murdered, should have gladden his heart. Contrarily, Laxus found himself loathing to accept the facts. This was not because he had a reason to disbelieve Bessie's story, but because the sort of character of her revelation had disarranged the pattern of his thinking. Last night, alone in her apartment, he had made unscientific investigation of of Lucy's closets, chest of drawers, dressing table, and bathroom. He knew Lucy, the only with his intelligence, but with his senses. His fingers had touch fabrics that had known her body, his ears had heard the rustle of her silks, his nostrils sniffed at the varied, heady fragrances of her perfumes. Never before had the stern young man known a woman in this fashion. Just as her library revealed the quality of her mind, the boudoir had yielded the secrets of feminine personality.

He did not like to think of her drinking with a man in her bedroom like a cutie in a hotel.

In his coldest, most official voice he had, "if there was someone in the bedroom with her, we have a completely new picture of the crime."

"You mean it wasn't like you said in the paper, that it must have happened when the doorbell rang and she went to open it?"

"No!" He screamed. "What did you think I meant when I said you set this investigation further back! I accepted that as the most probable explanation, considering the body's position." He crossed from the bed slowly, his eyes upon the arrangement of carpets on the polished floor. "If a man had been in the bedroom with her, he might have been on the point of leaving. She went to the door with him, perhaps." He said rigid at the spot where the river of dark blood had been damned by the thick pile of carpet. "Perhaps they were quarreling and, just as he reached the door, he turned and shot her."

"Gosh." Said Bessie, blowing her nose weakly. "It gives you the creeps, don't it?"

From the wall Stuart Jacoby's portrait smiled down upon them.

AN: AnimeGamerGirl23, Star of Blue Rose, Chiithop, xSnowey thank you for the favorites and follows!

I don't know about y'all but how dare Lucy have someone in her bedroom! Who was the mystery man alluded to in chapter 1? Lol and how dare Magnus not go to the funeral and poor Laxus this chapter. Is he losing it yet?

Reviews:

Summer: ah! Your review gave me life and I updated this first lol I can't thank you enough for your review!