When Cheryl and her roommate quarrel, Cheryl moves into her aunt's skid-row hotel in downtown L      A       rather than return home to Ohio       The lodgers are odd, Aunt Martha is a moralizer obsessed with funerals, murder is afoot, and the inexperienced and trusting Cheryl may be the next victim       She wants to be treated like a woman, and she's drawn to George, a handsome photographer who longs for human contact but sleeps with a water-inflated doll and spies on Cheryl as she bathes       Jeff, a neighborhood clerk, may be Cheryl's only ally in what she doesn't realize is a perilous residence haunted by family secrets       And, what happened to Alice, a model who used to have Cheryl's room