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DREAM HOUSE
A Novel of Suspense
Rochelle Krich
National bestselling author of Blues in the Night
Friday, October 31. 9:37 P.M., 100 block of South Martel. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door.
The police report read like just another Halloween prank–a nasty, petty act. But the attack is one in a recent spate of increasingly violent vandalisms targeting residents who have paid millions of dollars for their dream homes in the ritziest enclaves of Los Angeles.
Residents are already seething, hotly divided about the growing number of Historical Architectural Restoration and Preservation (HARP) boards that prevent homeowners from remodeling their expensive real estate, forcing them to preserve the traditional integrity of neighborhoods where Hollywood legends once lived. So impassioned are pro-and anti-HARP forces that Crime Sheet columnist Molly Blume suspects that members from both side of the debate may perpetrating the vandalism that claims new victims almost daily.
But the arson that destroys an empty house on Fuller Street doesn’t fit the pattern. This beautiful property belongs to Margaret Reston and her husband, Hank; and the sick old man who dies when it burns is Margaret’s father. Margaret herself has disappeared. She was last seen working in her garden five months ago–and although traces of her blood were found in her car, the police have no idea what has happened to the missing woman.
This intrigue all makes good copy for hard-hitting newshound Molly. Almost in love again with the high-school sweetheart who dumped her and is now a rabbi, Molly can’t stop thinking about Margaret and Hank Reston and the old man whose life was tragically, though accidentally, cut short. But was it an accident? What has happened to Margaret Reston? Where does malice end and evil begin?
In her second Molly Blume chiller, award-winning novelist Rochelle Krich takes us right inside L.A.’s most exclusive neighborhoods and into the elegant old houses whose wrought-iron fences and barred windows offer scant protection from violence. Even in a dream house, life can turn nightmarish in a heartbeat.
Rochelle Krich is the author of many acclaimed novels of suspense, including Blues in the Night (which introduced Molly Blume), Shadows of Sin, Dead Air, Blood Money, and Fertile Ground. An Anthony Award winner for her debut novel, Where’s Mommy Now? (which was adapted as the TV movie Perfect Alibi), Ms. Krich now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.
Visit Rochelle Krich’s Web site at www.rochellekrich.com
Praise for Rochelle Krich and Blues in the Night
“Blues in the Night is superb. . . . Molly Blume is a fresh new presence on the mystery scene. . . . Smart, resourceful, and curious–not much escapes her.”
–SUE GRAFTON
“One of America’s finest suspense novelists.”
–CAROLYN HART
“Molly investigates with both thoroughness and compassion, making this new sleuth worth her salt.”
–The New York Times Book Review
“An authentic, first-rate book . . . [that] demonstrates once again why she has won for herself an important place in the pantheon of outstanding mystery writers.”
–Jerusalem Post
“Smoothly written . . . A charming new series . . . Skillfully plotted, with a satisfying solution.”
–Milwaukee Journal
“An unqualified winner.”
–Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
A Novel of Suspense
Rochelle Krich
National bestselling author of Blues in the Night
Friday, October 31. 9:37 P.M., 100 block of South Martel. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door.
The police report read like just another Halloween prank–a nasty, petty act. But the attack is one in a recent spate of increasingly violent vandalisms targeting residents who have paid millions of dollars for their dream homes in the ritziest enclaves of Los Angeles.
Residents are already seething, hotly divided about the growing number of Historical Architectural Restoration and Preservation (HARP) boards that prevent homeowners from remodeling their expensive real estate, forcing them to preserve the traditional integrity of neighborhoods where Hollywood legends once lived. So impassioned are pro-and anti-HARP forces that Crime Sheet columnist Molly Blume suspects that members from both side of the debate may perpetrating the vandalism that claims new victims almost daily.
But the arson that destroys an empty house on Fuller Street doesn’t fit the pattern. This beautiful property belongs to Margaret Reston and her husband, Hank; and the sick old man who dies when it burns is Margaret’s father. Margaret herself has disappeared. She was last seen working in her garden five months ago–and although traces of her blood were found in her car, the police have no idea what has happened to the missing woman.
This intrigue all makes good copy for hard-hitting newshound Molly. Almost in love again with the high-school sweetheart who dumped her and is now a rabbi, Molly can’t stop thinking about Margaret and Hank Reston and the old man whose life was tragically, though accidentally, cut short. But was it an accident? What has happened to Margaret Reston? Where does malice end and evil begin?
In her second Molly Blume chiller, award-winning novelist Rochelle Krich takes us right inside L.A.’s most exclusive neighborhoods and into the elegant old houses whose wrought-iron fences and barred windows offer scant protection from violence. Even in a dream house, life can turn nightmarish in a heartbeat.
Rochelle Krich is the author of many acclaimed novels of suspense, including Blues in the Night (which introduced Molly Blume), Shadows of Sin, Dead Air, Blood Money, and Fertile Ground. An Anthony Award winner for her debut novel, Where’s Mommy Now? (which was adapted as the TV movie Perfect Alibi), Ms. Krich now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.
Visit Rochelle Krich’s Web site at www.rochellekrich.com
Praise for Rochelle Krich and Blues in the Night
“Blues in the Night is superb. . . . Molly Blume is a fresh new presence on the mystery scene. . . . Smart, resourceful, and curious–not much escapes her.”
–SUE GRAFTON
“One of America’s finest suspense novelists.”
–CAROLYN HART
“Molly investigates with both thoroughness and compassion, making this new sleuth worth her salt.”
–The New York Times Book Review
“An authentic, first-rate book . . . [that] demonstrates once again why she has won for herself an important place in the pantheon of outstanding mystery writers.”
–Jerusalem Post
“Smoothly written . . . A charming new series . . . Skillfully plotted, with a satisfying solution.”
–Milwaukee Journal
“An unqualified winner.”
–Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Rochelle Krich is the author of many acclaimed novels of suspense, including Rachel’s Tomb, Blues in the Night (which introduced Molly Blume), Shadows of Sin, Dead Air, Blood Money, and Fertile Ground. An Anthony Award winner for her debut novel, Where’s Mommy Now? (which was adapted as the TV movie Perfect Alibi), Ms. Krich now lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their children.
Visit Rochelle Krich’s website at www.rochellekrich.com.
From the Paperback edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Visit Rochelle Krich’s website at www.rochellekrich.com.
From the Paperback edition.
Chapter One
If you had asked me before I heard of Maggie Reston whether a house could be a magnet for murder, I would have automatically thought of The Dungeon, which is what we've always called the coal-gray house on Martel. As it turned out, I would have been wrong, but I would have been in good company. For as long as I can remember, everyone in the neighborhood has hated the three-story cube that hogs sky and sunlight and its gloomy facade, and has speculated about its reclusive owners.
The house has become the stuff of dark legend. As kids, my friends and I, intimidated by its brooding countenance, shivered as we whispered deliciously gruesome stories about occupants we never saw, men who kidnapped children and kept them in a Chateau D'If-like basement. Years have passed. The flowers along the walk, beheaded regularly like Henry the Eighth's wives, have been replaced by threatening junglelike shrubs. But the house's charcoal walls are still decorated from time to time with bright-colored graffiti, probably by a new generation of kids who whisper about the bad guys inside.
I have learned that bad men have become brazen in the sunlight. I have learned that, as Tennyson says, "Woods have tongues/As walls have ears," and that dark houses are not necessarily those with dark secrets. But on that Monday morning I assumed the police report was about The Dungeon:
Friday, October 31. 9:37 p.m. 100 block of South Martel Avenue. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door.
It was probably another Halloween prank, I thought, all trick and no treat, a nasty, petty act. According to the police reports I'd read on my rounds of the stations, there had been Halloween vandalisms all over the city of angels--disheartening, but not surprising.
I copied the data from the Wilshire Division board for my weekly Crime Sheet column, the one that appears in the rubber-banded, sprinkler-soaked, sun-bleached independent tabloids you find on your lawn next to the Kmart and Target flyers. Several hours later, back in my apartment, I phoned my sister Mindy.
"It was The Dungeon, right?" I asked after I told her what I'd read. The house is across the street from hers.
"You'd think, huh?" Her sentence blossomed into a yawn. "No, it's the one-story taupe Tudor down the block. It looks awful, but they have someone repairing the damage right now." She yawned again.
Whoever said yawns are contagious was right. Mindy's three-month-old son is the reason for hers. Mine are the result of another late-nighter with (Rabbi) Zack Abrams, the man in my life, although you'd think by now my body would have adjusted to sleep deprivation.
Not that I'm complaining. "Did you or Norm hear or see anything?"
Mindy laughed. "Are you serious, Molly? At nine-thirty on Friday Norm and the girls were sleeping, and I was trying to stay awake while nursing Yitz. We weren't exactly out trick-or-treating."
My family--my mom and dad and seven of us Blume kids (Mindy is second, I'm third)--is Orthodox Jewish and we observe the Sabbath. Even if Halloween hadn't fallen on Friday night, Mindy and Norm wouldn't have taken their two girls trick-or-treating (despite its commercialization and allure, the holiday has its origins in religious ritual), though they always stock up on Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Pieces for the children who come to their door. And for me.
Thinking of chocolate made me long for some, but I'd had my quota for the day. "Who lives in that house?"
"Walter Fennel. He thinks he owns the neighborhood."
Every neighborhood has a Walter Fennel. I scribbled his name on a pad, though the Crime Sheet doesn't identify victims. "I take it you don't like him."
"Walter's okay. He's kind of cute sometimes. But he's an eighty-year-old busybody with way too much time on his hands. He's Mister HARP. H-A-R-P? We call him Harpy."
I crinkled my nose at an image of the predatory bird. "Not a great name for an organization."
"They were thinking the musical instrument. That's their Web site logo. Community harmony and all that. Fennel headed our area board until a month ago. He still patrols the neighborhood daily looking for violators."
"One of whom may have lobbed the pumpkin and eggs?" I'd heard Mindy and others complain about the Historic Architectural Restoration and Preservation board in their Miracle Mile North area. The members decide what you can do to your property's exterior--which, according to Mindy et al., isn't much.
"I'd hate to think it's a neighbor." There was a but in Mindy's voice. "Walter was harassing a homeowner on South Formosa about a new exterior light fixture, demanded to know whether he'd received HARP board approval. The homeowner, Ed Strom, told Walter to mind his own business."
"Strom?" I mentally scanned South Formosa and came up blank. Until five years ago, when I was twenty-four and left home to marry the philandering charmer who is now my ex, I'd grown up in the neighborhood, which has a large population of Orthodox Jews, many of whom I know.
"You wouldn't know him, Molly. He and his wife just moved here from New York. They bought the Gluckmans' house. Anyway, someone reported Strom to the board, and the city fined him. He refused to take down the fixture and swore he wouldn't pay the fine. Wednesday somebody ripped the fixture off the wall."
"Fennel."
"Fennel swears he doesn't know anything about it."
"I assume the police questioned Strom."
"He and his wife were with friends Friday night."
"He could've paid someone to do it," I said, pointing out the obvious. It's one of my failings.
"He could have. But a lot of the area homeowners are angry at HARP, Molly. They sympathize with Strom. Of course, Walter has his allies." Mindy sighed. "I'm all for preserving the neighborhood's character, but some HARP rulings are egregious, not to mention expensive. I don't think people realized how intrusive and controlling HARP could be. And it's all because of that damn house."
The Dungeon, I knew, had prompted area homeowners, anxious to prevent the construction of similarly oversize structures, to request HARP status. As my grandmother Bubbie G says, you have to be careful what you ask for.
"What's the makeup of the board?" I drained the last of my coffee and, with the cordless phone at my ear, padded barefoot to the kitchen for a refill.
"Five people, all appointed, so there's no neighborhood input. There's going to be an opening soon. I'm tempted to try to get on the board to add a little sanity, but until Yitz sleeps through the night, I'm too tired to commit to anything. I'm not even working full-time yet." She yawned again, as if to emphasize her point.
I yawned, too. Pavlov would have loved me. "When do they meet?"
"Once a month, seven p.m. on Thursdays. Unless there's an emergency. Why, are you planning on going?"
"Maybe. Sounds like good material for a feature."
In addition to penning my weekly Crime Sheet column, I'm a freelance reporter and I write books about true crime under my pseudonym, Morgan Blake. I also have income from a substantial divorce settlement I invested in property. I think I earned every penny, and if you met my ex-husband, Ron, you'd agree.
Right now I was between projects, as they say in Hollywood. I'd just pitched a piece to the L.A. Times on the latest outrage in the health care industry. This was prompted by my parents' insurer advising my mom that mammograms and ultrasounds are covered "in network" at the facilities she'd selected, those within reasonable driving distance of her home, but the radiologist's reading of the films isn't, if you can believe that.
I was also awaiting the galleys of my second book, Sins of the Father, and I'd completed the second draft of my newest true crime, The Lady from Twentynine Palms. I needed a few weeks to achieve objectivity and distance before I reread the manuscript, made changes, agonized about the book's worthiness, and FedExed it to my editor and agent. A HARP story sounded like the perfect filler.
"It's been done," Mindy said. "There was an article in the L.A. Times magazine a couple of years ago on another HARP. Whitley Heights, I think."
At least I hadn't spent hours on the piece. "I must have missed that."
"You can try a different angle. Some Hancock Park homeowners are pushing for HARP status. They got the city to commission a historical survey, which is a major step. Wednesday night they're presenting the survey and getting neighborhood reaction. Should be interesting."
"How do you know all this? From a client?" Mindy is a tax attorney, and many of her clients deal in real estate.
"From Edie. She's with the opposition."
Edie is the oldest Blume sibling. She's organized and determined and formidable once she's committed to a cause. "I see fireworks ahead."
"You see a story."
"Here's hoping," I said, ignoring Bubbie G's advice, and we both laughed.
Chapter Two
After grabbing a handful of Kisses from my pantry (they're barricaded behind a pathetic first-line defense of cereal boxes and canned goods), I returned to my office and continued entering police data into my computer files.
If you've read my column or one like it, you're familiar with the kinds of crimes listed: car thefts, armed robbery, sexual and nonsexual assaults, DUIs, car thefts, stolen wallets, domestic violence, home burglaries, vandalized cars, shoplifting, car thefts, indecent exposure. And have I mentioned car thefts?
Until I started doing the column four ...
If you had asked me before I heard of Maggie Reston whether a house could be a magnet for murder, I would have automatically thought of The Dungeon, which is what we've always called the coal-gray house on Martel. As it turned out, I would have been wrong, but I would have been in good company. For as long as I can remember, everyone in the neighborhood has hated the three-story cube that hogs sky and sunlight and its gloomy facade, and has speculated about its reclusive owners.
The house has become the stuff of dark legend. As kids, my friends and I, intimidated by its brooding countenance, shivered as we whispered deliciously gruesome stories about occupants we never saw, men who kidnapped children and kept them in a Chateau D'If-like basement. Years have passed. The flowers along the walk, beheaded regularly like Henry the Eighth's wives, have been replaced by threatening junglelike shrubs. But the house's charcoal walls are still decorated from time to time with bright-colored graffiti, probably by a new generation of kids who whisper about the bad guys inside.
I have learned that bad men have become brazen in the sunlight. I have learned that, as Tennyson says, "Woods have tongues/As walls have ears," and that dark houses are not necessarily those with dark secrets. But on that Monday morning I assumed the police report was about The Dungeon:
Friday, October 31. 9:37 p.m. 100 block of South Martel Avenue. A vandal threw a pumpkin through the front window of a house and several eggs at the front door.
It was probably another Halloween prank, I thought, all trick and no treat, a nasty, petty act. According to the police reports I'd read on my rounds of the stations, there had been Halloween vandalisms all over the city of angels--disheartening, but not surprising.
I copied the data from the Wilshire Division board for my weekly Crime Sheet column, the one that appears in the rubber-banded, sprinkler-soaked, sun-bleached independent tabloids you find on your lawn next to the Kmart and Target flyers. Several hours later, back in my apartment, I phoned my sister Mindy.
"It was The Dungeon, right?" I asked after I told her what I'd read. The house is across the street from hers.
"You'd think, huh?" Her sentence blossomed into a yawn. "No, it's the one-story taupe Tudor down the block. It looks awful, but they have someone repairing the damage right now." She yawned again.
Whoever said yawns are contagious was right. Mindy's three-month-old son is the reason for hers. Mine are the result of another late-nighter with (Rabbi) Zack Abrams, the man in my life, although you'd think by now my body would have adjusted to sleep deprivation.
Not that I'm complaining. "Did you or Norm hear or see anything?"
Mindy laughed. "Are you serious, Molly? At nine-thirty on Friday Norm and the girls were sleeping, and I was trying to stay awake while nursing Yitz. We weren't exactly out trick-or-treating."
My family--my mom and dad and seven of us Blume kids (Mindy is second, I'm third)--is Orthodox Jewish and we observe the Sabbath. Even if Halloween hadn't fallen on Friday night, Mindy and Norm wouldn't have taken their two girls trick-or-treating (despite its commercialization and allure, the holiday has its origins in religious ritual), though they always stock up on Hershey's Kisses and Reese's Pieces for the children who come to their door. And for me.
Thinking of chocolate made me long for some, but I'd had my quota for the day. "Who lives in that house?"
"Walter Fennel. He thinks he owns the neighborhood."
Every neighborhood has a Walter Fennel. I scribbled his name on a pad, though the Crime Sheet doesn't identify victims. "I take it you don't like him."
"Walter's okay. He's kind of cute sometimes. But he's an eighty-year-old busybody with way too much time on his hands. He's Mister HARP. H-A-R-P? We call him Harpy."
I crinkled my nose at an image of the predatory bird. "Not a great name for an organization."
"They were thinking the musical instrument. That's their Web site logo. Community harmony and all that. Fennel headed our area board until a month ago. He still patrols the neighborhood daily looking for violators."
"One of whom may have lobbed the pumpkin and eggs?" I'd heard Mindy and others complain about the Historic Architectural Restoration and Preservation board in their Miracle Mile North area. The members decide what you can do to your property's exterior--which, according to Mindy et al., isn't much.
"I'd hate to think it's a neighbor." There was a but in Mindy's voice. "Walter was harassing a homeowner on South Formosa about a new exterior light fixture, demanded to know whether he'd received HARP board approval. The homeowner, Ed Strom, told Walter to mind his own business."
"Strom?" I mentally scanned South Formosa and came up blank. Until five years ago, when I was twenty-four and left home to marry the philandering charmer who is now my ex, I'd grown up in the neighborhood, which has a large population of Orthodox Jews, many of whom I know.
"You wouldn't know him, Molly. He and his wife just moved here from New York. They bought the Gluckmans' house. Anyway, someone reported Strom to the board, and the city fined him. He refused to take down the fixture and swore he wouldn't pay the fine. Wednesday somebody ripped the fixture off the wall."
"Fennel."
"Fennel swears he doesn't know anything about it."
"I assume the police questioned Strom."
"He and his wife were with friends Friday night."
"He could've paid someone to do it," I said, pointing out the obvious. It's one of my failings.
"He could have. But a lot of the area homeowners are angry at HARP, Molly. They sympathize with Strom. Of course, Walter has his allies." Mindy sighed. "I'm all for preserving the neighborhood's character, but some HARP rulings are egregious, not to mention expensive. I don't think people realized how intrusive and controlling HARP could be. And it's all because of that damn house."
The Dungeon, I knew, had prompted area homeowners, anxious to prevent the construction of similarly oversize structures, to request HARP status. As my grandmother Bubbie G says, you have to be careful what you ask for.
"What's the makeup of the board?" I drained the last of my coffee and, with the cordless phone at my ear, padded barefoot to the kitchen for a refill.
"Five people, all appointed, so there's no neighborhood input. There's going to be an opening soon. I'm tempted to try to get on the board to add a little sanity, but until Yitz sleeps through the night, I'm too tired to commit to anything. I'm not even working full-time yet." She yawned again, as if to emphasize her point.
I yawned, too. Pavlov would have loved me. "When do they meet?"
"Once a month, seven p.m. on Thursdays. Unless there's an emergency. Why, are you planning on going?"
"Maybe. Sounds like good material for a feature."
In addition to penning my weekly Crime Sheet column, I'm a freelance reporter and I write books about true crime under my pseudonym, Morgan Blake. I also have income from a substantial divorce settlement I invested in property. I think I earned every penny, and if you met my ex-husband, Ron, you'd agree.
Right now I was between projects, as they say in Hollywood. I'd just pitched a piece to the L.A. Times on the latest outrage in the health care industry. This was prompted by my parents' insurer advising my mom that mammograms and ultrasounds are covered "in network" at the facilities she'd selected, those within reasonable driving distance of her home, but the radiologist's reading of the films isn't, if you can believe that.
I was also awaiting the galleys of my second book, Sins of the Father, and I'd completed the second draft of my newest true crime, The Lady from Twentynine Palms. I needed a few weeks to achieve objectivity and distance before I reread the manuscript, made changes, agonized about the book's worthiness, and FedExed it to my editor and agent. A HARP story sounded like the perfect filler.
"It's been done," Mindy said. "There was an article in the L.A. Times magazine a couple of years ago on another HARP. Whitley Heights, I think."
At least I hadn't spent hours on the piece. "I must have missed that."
"You can try a different angle. Some Hancock Park homeowners are pushing for HARP status. They got the city to commission a historical survey, which is a major step. Wednesday night they're presenting the survey and getting neighborhood reaction. Should be interesting."
"How do you know all this? From a client?" Mindy is a tax attorney, and many of her clients deal in real estate.
"From Edie. She's with the opposition."
Edie is the oldest Blume sibling. She's organized and determined and formidable once she's committed to a cause. "I see fireworks ahead."
"You see a story."
"Here's hoping," I said, ignoring Bubbie G's advice, and we both laughed.
Chapter Two
After grabbing a handful of Kisses from my pantry (they're barricaded behind a pathetic first-line defense of cereal boxes and canned goods), I returned to my office and continued entering police data into my computer files.
If you've read my column or one like it, you're familiar with the kinds of crimes listed: car thefts, armed robbery, sexual and nonsexual assaults, DUIs, car thefts, stolen wallets, domestic violence, home burglaries, vandalized cars, shoplifting, car thefts, indecent exposure. And have I mentioned car thefts?
Until I started doing the column four ...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherBallantine Books
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 034544972X
- ISBN 13 9780345449726
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages400
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