Blood Rites (The Dresden Files #6) - Jim Butcher Page 0,82

ago, so I guess the money all goes to charity."

"What about his wives?" I asked.

"Control of their fund would have gone to his mother, but since she's dead they get to keep drawing from it indefinitely. It's in the prenuptial agreement for all three of them."

"Three?" I asked. Hell's bells, if the man was in love… "Does it mention a fourth wife?"

"Nope."

"What about a fourth marriage license?"

I heard her rustling around the file, and tested the coffee while she did. Ah, perfection. "Stupid fax machine paper," she growled. "It's floppy and the pages all stick together." Then she stopped for a second and said, "Son of a bitch, there is one."

"When?"

"Dated for next Thursday."

"To who?"

"I can't tell. There's a big blurry spot," Murphy said. "Fax machine must have messed it up. But it's definitely marriage license number four."

"But with no prenuptial number four," I said.

"No prenup number four."

"Hello, new next of kin," I said.

"Hello, motive," Murphy agreed. "Hello, suspects."

The greenroom door opened and I looked up in time to see a woman with a lingerie-model body under a flimsy robe enter the room, holding a big revolver. She pointed the gun at me, found the extension of the phone I was on and pulled it out of the wall, then said into a cell phone, "I've got him."

I sat there holding the dead phone and the warm coffee and said, "Hello, Trixie."

Chapter Twenty-Five

Trixie Scrump-Genosa-Vixen-Expialidocius leaned against the door and said, "Don't get up, Barry. And don't move your hands." Her voice shook with nervous energy, and the barrel of the gun waved drunkenly back and forth. The knuckles of the hand holding the cell phone to her ear were white. "I don't want to shoot you."

"You know, people don't want to crash their cars either. But there is always some idiot who drives and talks on the cell phone at the same time, and crunch," I said. "Maybe you should put your phone down until we're done. Just to be safe."

"Don't give me orders," she snapped, pushing the gun at me like it was some sort of sexual aid. She wobbled on her high heels when she did, but managed not to fall over. "Don't you dare give me orders!"

I shut up. She was already wound pretty tight. I have a bad habit of turning into a real wiseass when someone makes me nervous. It's just a reflex. But if I pushed Trixie too hard, her precarious self-control might snap, accidentally setting off the gun. I'd die of shame if she unintentionally shot me, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut. Mostly. "Okay."

"Keep your hands right there, and don't move."

"Can I sip some of my coffee at least?" I asked. "It just got to the right temperature."

She scowled. "No. You never got me my latte."

"Right," I said. "Good point."

We sat there for a couple of minutes while my arms started getting tired, holding coffee and a useless phone in place like that. "So what happens now, Ms. Vixen?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, there's me and you here, and then there's that gun. Usually there's a specific purpose to using a gun as a negotiation tactic, but so far all you're doing is pointing it at me. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, you get to make demands or something."

"I know you're afraid," she spat. "That's why you're talking. You're nervous and talking because you're afraid of me."

"I am paralyzed at the thought of losing my senior division shuffleboard career," I said. "That's just how much you scare me. But I'm also curious about our next step."

"There is no next step," she said.

"Um. So we sit here for the rest of eternity?"

She sneered. "No. In a minute I'm going to leave."

I lifted my eyebrows. "Just like that?"

"Yeah."

"You… brilliant fiend," I said. "I wouldn't ever have guessed that your plan was to do nothing."

She smirked. "It's all I need to do."

"I thought you might be worried that I would tell the police about it afterward."

Trixie laughed and looked genuinely amused. "Oh? You're going to tell them what? That I held a gun on you for no reason, did nothing, and then left?"

"Well. Yeah."

"Which are they going to believe? That crappy story or that you confronted me when I was alone, made unwanted sexual advances, and that I had to pull the gun out of my purse to discourage you?"

I narrowed my eyes. Actually, that wasn't a stupid plan, which made me doubt Trixie had come up with it all on