Grave Designs by Michael A. Kahn

to the year before and the year after. Those were definitely unusual.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œGraham almost died in 1984.”
    â€œI do remember he spent some time in a hospital. Was that in 1984?”
    â€œYes. Down in Houston. He had open heart surgery to replace a valve in his heart with an artificial one. His heart disease wasn’t all that advanced, and it was supposed to be fairly routine.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t?”
    â€œIt was terrifying. He had a heart attack during the surgery. That’s very unusual, but it does happen. Then he had an allergic reaction to the anesthesia. Apparently an extremely rare reaction, according to the doctor. Anyway, he barely survived the operation and was in a coma for three days.”
    â€œGod.”
    Julia gazed at the pool. “It changed him. I noticed it when we came back from Houston. He felt like he’d been brought back from the edge of the grave. Which he had.” She was still looking at the pool. “I guess everyone reacts differently. You know, someone else might drop out and go live on a mountaintop, or change careers, or something like that. For Graham, though, it just seemed to make him even more determined to throw himself into his work with all his energy.” She paused. “I had hoped it might bring us closer together.” She turned to me. “It didn’t.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    She ran her fingers through her hair. “My husband was a very manipulative man.” She drew an index finger down the condensation on the outside of her glass. “I suppose all lawyers are manipulative, at least to a certain degree. But nothing like Graham.” She gave me a rueful smile. “I think he was happiest during his years at the State Department. He loved all those behind-the-scenes maneuvers, the cloak-and dagger part of foreign policy. He’d have been perfect for the CIA.”
    â€œHe seemed right at home in complex lawsuits,” I said. “He loved to plot strategies.”
    Julia Marshall sighed. “My husband had a powerful need to control events…and the people caught up in them. It could be terrifying.” She paused. “Ten years ago I finally extricated myself from his grasp.” She looked at me. “To outsiders we still were the perfect couple. Graham was a master at keeping up appearances.” She turned toward the pool. “It worked quite well. He left early in the morning and came home late at night. Unless we were going to a social function, we rarely ate together. We slept in separate bedrooms.” She turned to me with a shrug. “Except for a few times a year when we were both drunk. The All-American couple.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Mrs. Marshall.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “The firm hired you to investigate the Canaan grave, correct?”
    I nodded.
    â€œAnd the firm represents me in that matter?”
    â€œThey do.”
    â€œSo in a sense you’re my lawyer too.”
    â€œI suppose I am.”
    â€œGood. I want you to have that coffin dug up.”
    I looked down at my legal pad. “It may not be that easy,” I said.
    â€œI told you I want to know what’s in that coffin. He took forty thousand dollars of my money and sunk it in that box. I want to know whose pet it was. Dig it up.”
    â€œThere are probably rules and regulations covering animal burials,” I said.
    â€œThen find out what they are. If you can exhume a human corpse, you can surely dig up a dead dog.”
    â€œI’ll look into it,” I said, keeping it vague.
    â€œSee if you can get it publicized too,” she said, her voice rising. “Maybe that’ll force one of his little bimbos to come forward to claim it. She must be something special to rate forty thousand dollars for her dead pet.”
    â€œYou don’t want that, Mrs. Marshall. Your husband is dead. That kind of publicity would only