Murder Under Glass

Book excerpt: Four Corners sleuth Annette Trieri doesn't want it to happen, but it does anyway: she gets sucked into the investigation of a mysterious death in the Arizona desert, a death that hits close to home because the victim graduated from Frémont State University, where Annette's husband is Dean of Natural Sciences. It's one of his students who's dead. With her newly minted PhD and a prestigious post-doctoral appointment at the Ecological Archive Research Center near Tucson, Melody Witherspoon has a bright future, bright, that is, until her body turns up half-buried in the Center's research greenhouse. Everything looks neat and clean when the local sheriff, preoccupied with re-election, takes the low road and arrests an undocumented worker from Mexico-case closed. Or is it? Annette can see that there is more to the story, and her investigation takes her places that Melody's family and friends in the small community of Durango just don't want to know about. Corruption in the sheriff's office, a stalker among Melody's co-workers, and academic politics also confuse the issue. But one thing is for sure: the Murder Under Glass needs an explanation, and Annette is the one who has to provide it.