I wondered if this was all a dream. Like when I dreamt that she was on the train with me. But as the hours ticked by I was realizing this was no dream. She was here. But I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I?
We sat on the couch while I told her about the discovery of the body, the destruction of the face by BB shot, and the identification at the morgue by her aunt and Bessie Clary.
She said: "Yes, of course. We were about the same size and she had my robe on. We wore the same size; I'd given her a few of my dresses and clothes in general in the past. Her hair was darker, but if there was a lot of blood . . ."
She groped for her purse. I gave her a towel that was nearby. She laughed, it was a heartbreaking sort of laugh.
After she had dried her eyes, she read the rest of the story in the paper. "So you got stuck handling my case?"
I nodded.
"You haven't found the murderer?"
"Nope."
"Did he want to murder her or me?"
"I don't know."
"What are you going to do now that I'm alive?"
"Find out who murdered the other girl. or the case maybe taken out of my hands because of the fact it's no longer a crime against a mage."
She sighed and sank back against the cushions. "You'd better have a drink," I said, and went to the corner cabinet. "Scotch, gin, or Bourbon?"
There was the bottle of Three Horses. I should have asked her about it then, before she had time to think. But I was thinking less about the job and more about the girl, and still so dazed that I wasn't even sure I was alive, awake and in my right mind.
"How do you know my house so well, Laxus?"
"There isn't much about you I don't know about you at this point."
"Gosh," she said; and after a little while, she laughed and asked: "Do you realize that you're the only person in Fiore who knows I'm alive? The only one out of at least six million people?"
Thunder and lightning had ceased, but rain beat on the windows. It made us feel separate from everyone else in the city, and important because we shared a secret.
She held up her glass. "To life!"
"To resurrection," I said.
We laughed.
"Go and change your dress," I said. "You'll catch cold."
"Oh," she said. "You're giving me orders."
"Change it. You'll catch cold." I ordered.
"How masterful, Laxus!"
She went. I was too nervous to sit down. I was like a kid in a dark house on Hallowe'en; everything seemed mystic and supernatural, and I listened at the door so I should hear her moving about the bedroom, and know that she had not vanished again. I was ready for her to leave just like she had in my dream. My mind was filled with a miracle, life and resurrection and I had to battle my way through clouds before I could think like a human being. Finally I managed to anchor myself to a chair and light a cigar.
There was, of course, no more Lucy Heartfilia case. But what about the other girl? The body had been cremated. You've got to have a corpus delicti to prove murder.
This did not mean that my job was finished. Neither the Department, the D.A.'s office would let a case slip through their hands so smoothly. But now it was out of the Magic Councils hands. There was no mages involved now, unless a mage proved to be the killer. Would I retain my job for the case? My job was to establish circumstantial evidence of the girl's disappearance, to discover where she had last been seen and by whom. Unless we had cogent evidence that the crime had been committed, the murderer might confess and still escape conviction.
"What do you know about this girl?" I called in to Lucy. "What did you say her name was? Were you close friends?"
The bedroom door opened and there was Lucy in a long, loose sort of gold-colored robe that made her look like a saint on the window of the Catholic Church. She carried a magazine that had been on the bed table. On the back cover there was a photograph of a girl in evening clothes smiling at a fellow as he lit her cigarette. The advertisement said:
COMPANIONABLE!
THERE'S NOTHING
AS COMPANIONABLE
AS A LANCASTER
"Oh, she was a model?"
"Wasn't she lovely?" Lucy asked.
"She looks like a model," I said. I didn't get the appeal.
"She was beautiful," Lucy insisted.
"What else?"
"What else what?"
"What was she like? How well did you know her? Where did she live? How much did she earn? Married, single, divorced? How old? Did she have a family? Who were her friends?"
"Please, Laxus. One question at a time. What was Diane like?" She hesitated. "I don't think a woman can answer that question quite honestly. You ought to ask a man."
"Your opinion would probably be safer."
"I might be prejudiced. Women with faces like mine can't be too objective about girls like Diane."
"I see nothing wrong with your face, Miss Heartfilia." I said that probably a tad too flirtatiously. She smiled at that though none the less. "Skip it. I've tried to get by on my beauty, and it's never worked, so I've given up on it. And if I should tell you that I considered Diane rather unintelligent and awfully shallow and quite a negative person, you might think I was jealous."
"If you felt that way about her, why did you let her have your apartment?"
"We used to not get along. But after I ran away to find myself, she was one of the first people I made amends with in my past life. I was grateful, she never ratted me out. She swore she didn't. I wondered briefly if she told my father where I was and that's why he paid Phantom to get me. She swore she didn't. My father must have found out another way. She lived in a hot little room in a boarding house. And since nobody would have been using this place for a few days, I gave her the key. Since I have AC.
"Why did you keep it so secret? Even Bessie didn't know."
"There was nothing secret about it. I had lunch with Diane. She told me how beastly hot it was in her room and I said she might come up here and live in comparative comfort. If I'd seen Bessie, I'd have mentioned it, but Bessie would have found it out anyway when she came here during the weekend like she has been."
"Have you ever lent your apartment before?"
"Of course. Laxus before Bessie was even back in my life, I would give Diane a key to stay here. She would water the plants, make sure the outside cat that I feed had food and water. So why not?"
"They said you were generous. Impulsive, too, aren't you?"
She laughed again. "My Aunt Susie says I'm a sucker for a hard-luck story, but I always tell her the sucker wins in the end. You don't get neuroses worrying over people's motives and wondering whether they're trying to use you."
"Sometimes you get shot by mistake," I said. "You happened to be lucky this time."
"Go on," she laughed. "You're not so hardboiled, Laxus. How many shirts have you given away in your life out of true compassion to those in need?"
I did not want to show too much pleasure in the way she had read my character. While I'm known as a jerk, I can be a real softie around children, and people who have lost everything in a natural disaster. "I can be soft when I want to be."
She laughed again.
"Are you very religious?" Lucy asked. Laxus hesitated to answer that. He swallowed hard.
"My mother was. But original sin started in my father's side of the family."
Lucy laughed. "Ah-hah!" she said. "Dissension in the home. I can see that with how Master Makarov is. Don't tell me that your father read Darwin."
"Robert Ingersoll."
She clapped her hand to her head. "What a childhood you must have had!"
"Only when my old man took a drop too much. Otherwise Robert Ingersoll never even got to the Apostles' forty-yard line because of my mom."
"But the name had a sort of magic and you read him secretly as you grew older."
"How did you know?"
"And you decided to learn everything in the world so people couldn't push you around."
That started the life story. It must have sounded like combination of Frank Merriwell and Superman in ninety-nine volumes, each worth a jewel. Dreyar vs. Associated Dairymen. Dreyar in Crocus. Dreyar's Big Night with the Hopheads. Down Among the Bucket Shops with Laxus Dreyar. Labor Spy Rackets as Seen by Dreyar. Killers I have Known. From there somehow we got back to almost all of Laxus Dreyar's Childhood Days. From Rags to Riches, or Barefoot Boy in Magnolia. I guess I described every game I'd pitched for. And told her about the time I knocked out Rocco, the Wop Terror, and how Sparks Lampini, who had bet his paper route on Rocco, knocked me out for revenge. And about my grandfather and mother. She nodded sympathetically about my dad.
She sat with her hands folded against the gold-colored cloth of her dress and a look on her face as if she were hearing the Commandments read by Moses himself. That's probably what Magnus meant by delicate flattery.
She said, "You don't seem at all like a typical detective right now."
"Have you ever known any detectives?"
"In detective stories there are two kinds, the hardboiled ones who are always drunk and talk out the corners of their mouths and do it all by instinct; and the cold, dry, scientific kind who split hairs under a microscope."
"Which do you prefer?"
"Neither," she said. "I don't like people who make their livings out of spying and poking into people's lives. I barely tolerate Sorcerer Weekly, I read it for the fashion, and horoscopes, maybe the how tos and interviews, but the paparazzi," she shuddered. "Detectives aren't heroes to me, they're detestable."
"Good thing I'm not a true detective," I said.
She smiled a little. "But you're different. The people you've gone after ought to be exposed. Your work is important. I hope you've got a million more stories to tell me."
"Sure," I said, swelling like a balloon. "I'm the Arabian Nights. Spend a thousand and one evenings with me and you won't hear the half of my daring exploits."
"You don't talk like a detective, either."
"Neither hardboiled nor scientific?"
We laughed. A girl had died. Her body had lain on the floor of this room. That is how Lucy and I met. And we couldn't stop laughing. We were like old friends, and later, at half-past three, when she said she was hungry, we went into the kitchen and opened some cans. We drank strong tea at the kitchen table like home-folks. Everything was just the way I had felt it would be with her there, alive and warm and interested in a fellow.
Thank you to; dewt, Rickmel, m. , laelalu, for the follows :)
Thank you to; Sassycassy69, Draconaise Chiaro, StarRocker4600 for the favorites :)
Reviews:
Dear Sunshinerosie1998,
Don't worry I'mma keep going Lol Thank you!
AN: Hi! Leave reviews please! I actually like them. Anyways, how many of you guys saw Lucy coming back alive? In the book it threw me, (who knew they could throw plot twists like that in 1942 XD) Anyways Lucy's character is in her 30s I would almost say 40s but is described as being a beauty. So if Lucy seems more mature than a 17 year old in the story this is why I'm trying to water it down some but if she seems out of character this is why. Love you all and hope to see y'all next chapter!
Madaleine