DON'T FORGET TO DIE

You never know what treasures those unclaimed storage lockers will hold. After contractor Sal Migliatore dies, Dill Eisenhardt, the man who bids on Sal's locker, finds a mummified corpse inside. Because this corpse, said to be Vic Smith, is really Vicenzo Cervantes, long-lost father of Angel Cervantes, one of Charlie Plato's partners in the CHAPS country-and-western tavern, Charlie gets pulled into the case. The first thing she and her on-again boyfriend, TV dreamboat and CHAPS half-owner Zack Hunter, find out from Angel and his brother, rodeo-rider Miguel, is that Vicenzo Cervantes had a terrific reason for being long-lost: he took off shortly after murdering his wife. The second thing, which they find out nanoseconds later, is that Angel and Miguel share a powerful motive for murder. Luckily, it looks as if Vic, in his 17-year absence from his sons, had managed to surround himself with other people who had equally little use for him, from his common-law wife Roxy Smith, highly miffed that he'd just left her for a mystery teenager named Bambi, to Roxy's father, potty king Warren Spangler, and her born-to-screw-up brother Hank Spangler. Zack takes the lead in the ensuing interrogatories--because, as Charlie says, ""Women answer any question he asks. (Especially if it requires a 'yes' answer)""--but it's Charlie who puts together the pieces to a surprisingly complicated puzzle. Lively and gently humorous, though it's a little tiresome hearing Charlie, from the safe confines of her tried-and-true formula (Dead Beat and Deadly, 1998, etc.), complain that Zack acts as if he were on TV.