Partnerships Can Kill-C

Following a none too restful sojourn in Hawaii (Vacations Can Be Murder), Charlie Parker, accountant in her brother's detective agency, returns home to Albuquerque to learn that a high-school friend's once successful restaurant is in trouble. Sharon Ortega approaches Charlie after David Ruiz, her partner in Nouvelle Mexicano, dies. The police say it was suicide, but Sharon asks Charlie to investigate, especially since her commercial insurance policy won't pay off if David did kill himself. Because her brother is too wrapped up in his own cases and in his burgeoning relationship with a much younger woman, Charlie agrees. As she questions David's family and friends and snoops in his office and apartment, she wonders how he was able to afford his extravagant lifestyle. When she finally gets a look at the restaurant's books, which he kept, she learns that he has been embezzling and that the IRS has initiated an audit. Although these facts seem to support the suicide theory, Charlie's skeptical, especially when she finds that it's impossible for David to have shot himself in the tight quarters of his sports car, as the police say he did. Companioned by her faithful hound, Charlie is as methodical in her search for the killer as Shelton is in constructing this routine whodunit. (May)