Death Benefits — Monette Michaels

Everybody dies sooner or later. It's the people dying sooner that cause attorney Mici Smith and Dr. Rob Craig to work together to seek answers.

Mici's response to Elinor Grace's death and the Grace family's suspicions she was murdered is, as always, thorough. What she doesn't realize is obtaining the exhumation order for Elinor's body will be opening the proverbial Pandora's box. Like Pandora, her life will never be the same again.

At the behest of the Grace family, Mici hires Rob to perform the autopsy. Rob finds that Elinor has been poisoned. His gut tells him it is neither suicide nor an accident.

After the police refuse to look into Elinor Grace's suspicious death, Rob and Mici start down the twisted path to discover who would want to kill the elderly woman. Did the person who killed Elinor Grace also kill the Medical Director of the viatical insurance company which had bought her life insurance policy? Was Elinor killed as part of a scheme to make money for an unscrupulous CEO? Or, was she killed for something she knew? Who is Master X and why does he want to kill Mici and Rob?

The answers to these questions lead the couple to a scene right out of Edgar Allen Poe, complete with a dark and stormy night, baying hounds and a crypt.