You fiction writers, stop and read this one

The Times is running a contest in which readers supply daily “chapters” of a mystery novel that’s appearing in our print and online editions. We’re up to Chapter 7 so far, and I’m not clear yet what mystery we’re solving but have every confidence it’ll all come together eventually. My fear is that it’ll sound like a Hollywood script that a dozen screenwriters worked on.

Meanwhile, back at the Fairmont Newport Beach hotel . . .

Now, there’s a mystery.

Or if not exactly a mystery, one heck of an all-too-true but kooky case that the cops are waiting to close out.

So far, we’ve got a dead woman packed in dry ice in Room 966. The thing is, she may have been dead for a year. Cops found her a month ago when they looked inside a plastic tub in the room while executing a search warrant in a drug case.

The guy who apparently had been living in the upscale hotel for years has been charged with drug-related offenses but isn’t considered a suspect in the death of the woman, a former stripper and waitress. The coroner thinks she died of a drug overdose.

The hotel room tenant, Stephen David Royds, is believed to be a former championship-caliber skier from New Zealand who came to America about 20 years ago. The woman, 33, was a former high school cheerleader. A Times online video report this week also included an Associated Press interview with a limo driver who knew the woman several years ago and said she appeared then to be prematurely wrinkled.

The police search of the hotel room last month also turned up what appeared to be cocaine. When police entered the room, the man became so distraught that he was taken to a hospital. While police searched the plastic tub, a reddish brown substance that might have been blood squirted onto a detective’s arm, according to information in the police search warrants.

In the room, the cops also found a saw, articles on body decomposition and cleaning up crime scenes and some wrapped Christmas presents.

Here’s the kicker: this may be a love story.

A love story, that is, involving a skier, a stripper, cocaine, a high-end hotel in Orange County’s toniest town and the body of a pretty blond encased in ice for a year or so.

I don’t want to cast aspersions on the loyal readers who are writing our newspaper novel. But come on, people, you’ve got to go some to keep up with this nonfiction case.

What is it people always say about real life being stranger than fiction? That you can’t make this stuff up?

It makes you wonder why cops don’t write more novels.

Newport Beach Police Sgt. Evan Sailor said Friday that detectives are checking out the man’s story but have no reason to believe he’s involved in the woman’s death. He’s been charged with possession and intent to sell drugs and apparently was involved romantically with the woman, Sailor said.

Royds has told police that he found the woman, identified as Monique Trepp, dead when he returned to the room one day in March 2007. He didn’t notify police because he had outstanding warrants.

When an Orange County Register reporter asked him why he’d kept her body in the room, he replied, “Everything that happened was for religious reasons.”

Police are awaiting the coroner’s final report before putting the wraps on the case, Sailor said.

In a city that doesn’t exactly have a lot of murders, the Fairmont case had even the cops chattering, at least in its early stages last month.

“It’s died down . . . but it was mainly the same things the public was talking about,” Sailor said. “Shock and surprise. Even in police work, it’s not the norm.

“You typically don’t find a frozen body, especially when serving a search warrant for drugs. For some reason in Newport Beach, when we do have a homicide, it doesn’t seem to be the norm.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.