When a quake hit Los Angeles, it practically trashed senior investment counselor Iris Thorne's condo - but spared her give-me-a-ticket-red 1972 Triumph TR6. Iris's life has been on the move ever since. She already has the corner office, the title, the salary, and the major accounts. Iris is good at forward motion: never looking back. That's why the voice-mail message is chilling. Dolly Gayton DeLacey, the mother of Iris's childhood friend, Paula, has left a frightened warning that her husband is planning to kill her. Before Iris can investigate, she gets another call, this time from Bill DeLacey, a ruthless city slumlord and Dolly's husband. His wife, he says in a voice thinned and quivering with rage, has committed suicide. He wants Iris to find Paula and bring her home for the funeral: home to Las Mariposas, the neighborhood where Iris grew up and became keeper of a grisly secret that haunts her still. They say you can't go home again. Iris is about to try ... risking her entire career and her heart, if she exposes a terrible truth about close family members and fast, fast friends.