Shadowed-Death by Design

Chapter Five - A Loaded Phone Call?

Pierre guided Lucy across the dance floor until, at Hercule's request, Lucy was retrieved for a very special slow dance with the elderly man. Out of consideration for his age and health, the eighty-plus year-old Hercule was limited by his doctor to the one dance. Lucy remembered Hercule from his son’s funeral. As her shoulders replaced his cane, they danced and he spoke of happy memories with his belated wife and called Lucy "Marilyn." The other guests deserted the dance floor and all eyes were on the couple. One minute they were gliding across the dance floor. But the next he was grasping his left arm and collapsing. Lucy helped Hercule down to the floor and knelt beside him on the highly polished wood, situating his head on her lap and cradled in her arms. He smiled up at her, whispering, "Marilyn, have you and Marcel come to take me home?"

"Hercule, I am here for you," Lucy spoke to him softly and gently. She smiled down at him, kissed his forehead, and gently stroked his face. She instinctively knew that Hercule was dying in her arms. He took his last breath and she gently closed his eyes with her finger tips. Pierre approached, already in detective mode and seemingly interviewing all the guests along the way. To him they were all possible murder suspects. He reached Lucy, muttering, "Another possible homicide like Marcel, or natural causes?" Pierre attempted to remove Lucy from the situation, but she refused to leave Hercule until the paramedics arrived and lifted him from her arms. Pierre held Lucy tightly as she cried uncontrollably, grieving for the old man. Pierre blotted her endless streams of tears as he assisted her to the vacant foyer where he kissed her, long and sensuously. She kissed him back. He comforted her and reassured her, "There was nothing more you could do, Lucy. He has gone. Like Marcel, it was likely a massive heart attack! You made his last moments the best he has had in fifteen years, Lucy. You are an angel!" 

Several days later, at Hercule's funeral, a fleet of television cameras was focused on the highly polished mahogany casket in the center of the church. But the telecasters followed the crowd's cue and refocused their lenses when Lucy arrived. She paused in the open doorway of the grand cathedral in Ville, an aura of sunlight backlighting her trim silhouette as her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness within. 

New at all this media attention, and not having been instructed to wear a black veil over her delicate features, Lucy would have to suffer the same reaction she always caused when she was in Ville, everyone staring as though they had all seen her before and knew who she was. Pierre smiled and passionately kissed her, then attentively placed a miniature black lace square over her platinum hair. Lucy was wearing the same classic little black dress she had recently worn to Marcel's funeral. Intimidated by television cameras and the relentless lenses of the paparazzi, she was clinging to Pierre's arm. He lingered a moment longer, allowing her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness within the church. It was then that she realized that she was the focal point of three hundred sixty degrees worth of television cameras poised inside the church.

Lucy was unnerved, the object of everyone's curiosity. In the collective silence of the mourners, Lucy could hear wide angle lense cameras clicking, the paparazzi seemingly more interested in her. Her eyes having adjusted to the darkness, she took Pierre's arm and he escorted her from the lime light. Finally television cameras stationed around the circumference of the church were repositioned, aiming at the casket at the bottom of the five stairs where the white coffin of Hercule's belated wife had rested in state fifteen years before. The altar, atop the five stairs, where the deceased and his late beloved wife had been married many years before, boasted candles and flowers, exactly the same as on that joyful day. Every pew was filled to capacity, with standing room only behind the benches. The special memorial service had all the trappings and pomp and circumstance of a state funeral, soldiers in dress uniforms and the casket draped with both the French flag and that of the Ville Principality. Pierre held Lucy's hand during an impressive changing of the guard protocol, with soldiers saluting and then addressing the coffin with their fire arms.