I cashed my check at a bank down on the boulevard where I’d kept my account open, then used a pay phone to call the home of Margaret Devonshire.
When I got the answering machine again, I decided Billy Lusk’s mother simply wasn’t picking up, and that calling again would be futile.
Down the block was a coffee bar run by a former priest who’d counseled young parishioners about sin until he’d been caught committing one with a teenaged acolyte. West Hollywood had more than its share—both coffee bars and former priests. I stopped in, grabbed a muffin with more grain in it than a walnut table, and washed it down with two cups of Vienna Roast strong enough to wake the dead.
Then I decided some exercise was in order, specifically a hike in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, just west of Doheny Drive.
By the time I passed the sign marking the southern entrance to Trousdale Estates, I was panting from the climb, and my legs were getting heavy. I passed lushly landscaped homes with circular driveways and tennis courts that covered more square footage than the average apartment. There wasn’t a piece of litter or even a trash can visible at the curb, and no children to be seen in the yards, not even toys.
A private guard passed in a patrol car, looking me over in his rearview mirror before disappearing up the hill. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the rattle of a gardener’s gasoline-powered leaf blower. Otherwise, the neighborhood was quiet and the streets vacant, carefully sealed off from the untidy world below.
According to Templeton’s notes, the Devonshires lived on Sky Vista Drive, a half mile up the hill. I found the street sign and turned, climbing for a short distance as Sky Vista curved west, opening up to city and ocean views that were now obscured by choking yellow smog.
The Devonshire home spread out across a plateau on the left side of the street. It was a one-story modular place that showed a touch of Streamline Moderne from the Thirties, with a white stucco exterior and the most verdant lawns chemical fertilizer could produce. Along the north-facing walls, the lace-covered stems of Australian tree ferns stretched imploringly for sunlight. At their feet, beds of obedient impatiens spilled over with blossoms of red, pink, and white.
For all its thriving vegetation, the Devonshire house had an antiseptic look, all the rough edges manicured away as if the people who lived there were afraid of life happening on its own.
I slipped into the shade of a ficus tree across the street and watched the windows. For several minutes, there was no visible movement in the house.
Then a woman in a white dress passed behind a bank of windows.
As I crossed to the house, she reappeared and began washing the glass, holding a bottle of window cleaner in one hand and a rag in the other. From the edge of the drive, I could see that she was young, short, and brown, and that the white dress was the standard uniform of a housekeeper.
Her hand moved the rag in circular motions on the glass until she saw me, when it stopped in mid-motion, upraised as if she were waving.
Behind her, the silhouette of another woman, thin and taller, passed like a shadow against the glare of the windows on the south side of the house. As I approached the front steps and rang the bell, the housekeeper kept watch. So did an electronic eye mounted above the door.
Moments later, the housekeeper opened it a crack, keeping the chain hooked. I asked to speak to Mrs. Devonshire. “She not home, sir.”
I heard the soft crunch of tires rolling to a slow stop on the street. The patrol guard sat behind the wheel of his car, peering at me across the wide, cobbled driveway.
“I believe she is home,” I said.
Then: “Por favor. Quiero hablar con la Señora Devonshire. Es muy importante.”
“She not home, sir.”
A car door slammed like a warning. I looked again toward the street.
The private guard stood with his arms folded across his unimpressive chest, eyeing me from behind his dark glasses and trying to look tough. He wore a gray uniform with yellow patches and had the unmistakable air of a police academy reject.
By the time I turned back, the door of the house was closed. The housekeeper reappeared at the window and started cleaning another pane, pretending not to watch me.
I sauntered down the driveway and turned back up Sky Vista Drive. The security guard stood rigidly with one hand on the baton hanging from his belt. He looked stiff and uneasy, like a figure at the Hollywood Wax Museum, except that he wasn’t famous.
“Going someplace special?”
“Out walking,” I said.
“You live up here?”
“Unless I’m mistaken, these are public streets.”
“They’re public.”
“And so well maintained.”
I continued hiking, knowing his eyes were on me every step of the way. When I reached the sharpest part of the roadway’s curve, I took off in a sprint and was out of his sight within seconds.
I heard the car door slam and then peeling rubber as he smoked his tires. I ducked behind a thick stand of pink-flowered oleander that rose up from a carpet of ivy. Another second or two passed before the guard sped by, shooting up the hill just the way real cops do but without the siren.
When he was around the bend, I dashed back down to the Devonshire house, slipping up on the west edge of the property, where the housekeeper wouldn’t see me from the front windows.
A path of stepping stones led to a gate no more than four feet high. I was over it and hidden before the patrol car came speeding back.
The guard climbed out, looking around the property from the roadway, then up and down the hill. After a while, he got back in, wheeled the car around, and disappeared up the street again on squealing tires. It was probably the most excitement he’d had in a long time.
I found myself in a small area of several large recycling bins. Beyond that was a potting table, where the carcasses of dead plants withered in plastic containers from lack of water, as if purchased on a whim and then forgotten.
I worked my way through to a small gate that opened into the rear yard.
On an expansive patio of polished terra-cotta tile, a woman I took to be Margaret Devonshire sat alone staring out vacantly at a sea of pollution. She clutched a photo album in her lap and, beneath a broad-brimmed straw hat, appeared as tastefully dressed and carefully manicured as her home.
“Mrs. Devonshire?”
She turned her head slowly, as though she no longer had the energy to be startled.
“My name is Benjamin Justice. I’m from the Los Angeles Sun. We’re doing a story about Billy’s death.”
She removed the hat to see me better, exposing herself to the cruel light.
It revealed a painfully thin, once-beautiful woman with a face pulled grotesquely taut from too many facelifts. Her nose, upturned and petite, reminded me of the photos I’d seen of Billy Lusk. Apparently, that much of her face was natural.
“You’re trespassing,” she said, her voice less fearful than weary. “And I have no wish to speak with you.”
“I called several times, Mrs. Devonshire, but only got your machine.”
“You left no message.”
“I wasn’t where I could be reached.” I took a step closer and removed my dark glasses. “I realize this is a difficult time. I just have a few questions.”
She glanced over my outfit, which looked more suitable for collecting garbage than reporting, although I’m not sure she appreciated the difference.
“Do you have credentials, Mr. Justice?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m freelance.”
Her weariness finally gave way to reality: She was alone with a strange man who was in her yard without invitation, and who did not appear to be what he said he was.
“I don’t think your coming here like this is at all appropriate.”
The haughty displeasure in her voice was at odds with the fear that had crept into her rheumy eyes. She turned her head toward the house, keeping an eye on me at the same time.
“Francesca!”
The housekeeper scurried out, reacting with alarm when she saw me.
“Francesca, por favor quédate conmigo.”
Francesca, please stay with me.
Mrs. Devonshire apparently expected her housekeeper to lay down her life for her employer for five dollars an hour, the kind of thinking that would make sense only to the very rich and the very poor.
The older woman picked up a portable phone on the table beside her, pulled up the antenna, and punched in numbers.
“You can call the patrol or the police if you wish,” I said. “But I think you’ll only hurt yourself in the long run.”
She put the phone to her ear and refused to look at me.
“I’ve already spoken with Derek Brunheim,” I said.
When she heard his name, she dug her frosted nails into the armrest of her chair so hard I thought they might snap.
“I think it only fair that I get your side of things, Mrs. Devonshire. It would be a shame to quote Derek Brunheim at length, with nothing from you but a ‘no comment.’”
She looked at me as one might a garden slug.
Then, into the phone, she said, “I’m sorry. I must have misdialed.” She pushed the antenna back into the phone and laid it aside. “Thank you, Francesca, it’s all right.”
“¿Sí?”
“Sí. Please bring iced tea. Dos, por favor.”
When Francesca had gone, Mrs. Devonshire said, “Please sit down, Mr. Justice. There’s no reason both of us should exhibit poor manners.”
She slipped on a pair of dark glasses and turned her gaze back out at the smog-shrouded skyscrapers of Century City. I took a chair next to her, found a pen, and opened my notebook.
“I’ll talk to you on one condition,” Margaret Devonshire said. “That every word I say is off the record, unless I signify otherwise. Then you may write it down.”
“Fair enough.”
“Also, before the article is printed, you will submit it to me for my approval.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
She stiffened, peering sharply at me over her surgically shaped cheekbones.
“And why is that not possible, Mr. Justice?”
“Someone else will write the article, so it’s not my call. But I can tell you that no self-respecting journalist would ever submit their copy for a subject’s approval.”
“Are you sure you work for the Sun, Mr. Justice? I didn’t think it had standards.”
“I’ll be happy to check quotes with you, Mrs. Devonshire. But that’s as far as I’ll go.”
She sighed like someone who was still adjusting to the insubordination of a rudely changing world.
Francesca appeared and served us iced tea in goblets of Waterford crystal, with wedges of fresh lime on the side.
“Drink your iced tea while it’s cold, Mr. Justice.”
I did as I was told. When Mrs. Devonshire spoke again, much of the superiority was gone from her voice.
“First, you need to know that Billy was my only child. Do you have children, Mr. Justice?”
“No.”
“Then you wouldn’t understand. Especially for a mother, I think, losing a child goes beyond common grief. But to lose your only child…you feel that your entire world is gone. That every support, every prop that’s held you up has suddenly been pulled away.”
She glanced around at the house and the expansive grounds, then at the costly crystal in her hands. “You also take sum of your life, and realize it doesn’t add up to an awful lot.”
“I think I can understand that.”
“You’ve lost someone who meant that much?”
I nodded.
“Then perhaps,” she said, “we share something in common after all.”
She smiled artificially, without a trace of sincerity, the way she’d probably smiled thousands of times during her life.
“Billy’s father died when he was eight. I remarried much too quickly, within the year. I’m not the kind of person who’s comfortable on her own. I like a life that’s predictable from day to day, moment to moment. Instability unsettles me to a serious degree.”
“You and Phil Devonshire have been together close to twenty years, then.”
“Yes. It’s been a good arrangement. Phillip is much like myself. Orderly, disciplined, very much in control. Although a more—how shall I put it—commanding person.”
She stopped, as if she’d just realized how much she was telling me. She took another sip of tea, then put her drink aside.
“What exactly did Derek Brunheim tell you?”
“He told me that Billy was charming and a loyal friend in many ways.”
“Go on.”
“That you and he didn’t get along.”
“That much is certainly true.”
“He also said that Billy hadn’t worked for some time. That he had a serious cocaine habit. And that, sexually, he was rather promiscuous.”
She gripped the chair’s armrests again, and a bit of color seeped into her ghostly face.
“I suppose he offered details.”
“Some.”
“Are you going to put any of that in your paper?”
“Possibly.”
“My God.”
She rested her forehead on her hand, rubbing at the worry lines.
“Would you care to go on the record, Mrs. Devonshire? The more substantial the information I have from you, the less likely I’m going to need to rely on Derek Brunheim.”
“I don’t seem to have much choice, do I? Thanks to Derek Brunheim and his pathetic fantasies.”
I opened my notebook, jotting notes while she talked.
“When my first husband died he left Billy a modest trust fund. It was closed to Billy until his thirtieth birthday, as an incentive for him to make something of himself. About two years ago, we realized that Billy was using cocaine on a regular basis. That’s when Phillip stepped in. He was adamant that Billy enroll in a treatment program and submit to regular drug tests. Billy flatly refused, insisted he didn’t have a problem. So Phillip cut off his allowance. They had some terrible fights over that.”
“Was cocaine the only issue?”
“If you thought it was, I doubt you would have asked the question.”
I waited. The silence loomed larger until it forced her to say something.
“All right, you may as well know. We also demanded that Billy end his friendship with that awful man. Derek Brunheim.”
She closed her eyes for a moment in apparent revulsion.
“I doubt you’ve told me everything he said, Mr. Justice. I can imagine that most of it was lies.”
“That’s why I’m here, Mrs. Devonshire. To try to sort things out.”
“Trust me, he’s a sick man. He was the one who introduced Billy to drugs.”
“Do you have proof of that?”
“He wanted to make Billy dependent on him, to take him away from me. What better way?”
She wrung her hands together as if they were cold. Her chin trembled as she spoke again.
“He succeeded quite well, wouldn’t you say?”
“Did it bother you that your son was homosexual, Mrs. Devonshire?”
She regarded me critically for a long moment, as if deciding exactly how to respond.
“Billy was not homosexual, Mr. Justice. He was rebellious. And that’s where I take much of the blame.”
She stood and wandered to the edge of the patio, carrying the photo album with her. I followed, standing beside her as she looked out across the city.
“I think Billy always wanted to hurt me, for remarrying so soon. For sharing myself with another man, so to speak. Through the years, he acted out in certain ways. Moving in with that perverted man was one of them. But it had nothing to do with his sexuality. It was just a phase.”
She glanced over.
“I know that sounds naive and unenlightened in this day and age. But in Billy’s case, it happens to be the truth. A mother knows.”
“Billy died outside a gay bar, Mrs. Devonshire. He was a regular customer there.”
“I spend much of my time and a good deal of my money helping the disadvantaged, Mr. Justice. That doesn’t make me poor.”
The phone rang in the background. There was a click, and the answering machine picked up the call.
She opened the album to a photo of her son at about age two, all big blue eyes and golden curls, clutching a toy airplane in his tiny plump hand.
“Frankly, I wish that Billy had been homosexual,” she said, studying the photo. “It would make his death much easier to accept.”
“Because you would have loved him less?”
“Grandchildren, Mr. Justice. If there was anything I was looking forward to, it was Billy settling down and having children.”
“Did your husband share that sentiment?”
“Phillip wouldn’t have liked it much, I don’t suppose. It would have brought not only Billy back into our lives, but a wife and grandchild, and it would have disrupted our routine. But that was a sacrifice I’d happily make to hold a grandchild in my arms.”
She flipped to the next page and to more photographs of her only child.
“At least if I’d been certain Billy was homosexual, I wouldn’t have expected that and been so disappointed. Would I?”
It was a long way to get to the kind of logic Margaret Devonshire needed to make her pain tolerable. Viewed through her narrow prism, I supposed it made some kind of sense.
She turned the page again, to a shot of her son splashing in a backyard play pool, dated twenty-five years earlier.
“You probably think I’m a very selfish woman, don’t you, Mr. Justice?”
“You seem lonely, Mrs. Devonshire.”
She tried to laugh but it didn’t quite get out.
“Since his passing, I’ve probably talked more about Billy with you than with anyone else. Most of the time, it’s just myself and Francesca here. I haven’t welcomed visitors.”
“And Mr. Devonshire?”
She continued turning the pages, almost in rhythm with her speech, which had slowed considerably, as though her emotion was winding down.
“Naturally, he feels badly about what happened. But he was never close to Billy. He has grown children of his own from his first marriage, and several grandchildren. So it’s not the same for him.”
The laugh finally came, sharp with bitterness.
“The day Billy died, Phillip played eighteen holes. He shot par.”
I remembered from Templeton’s notes that the police had called in Margaret Devonshire to identify her son’s body early that afternoon. She’d probably gone alone, while her husband golfed.
She glanced at my notebook, realizing again just how much she’d been saying.
“Please, nothing in your story about Phillip, or the part about grandchildren.”
“I see no reason for it.”
I looked over her shoulder to a picture of Billy in a Cub Scout uniform, his cap tilted to one side.
“Your son was a beautiful child,” I said.
“Wasn’t he? Look at that darling little nose. That’s the one thing everyone always commented on. Today, people pay fortunes for a nose like that. Billy was born with his.”
“I believe he got it from you.”
“Thank you for noticing, Mr. Justice.”
“Mrs. Devonshire, I’m going to ask you a difficult question.”
She braced herself with another false smile.
“Can you think of anyone who might have had a reason to kill your son? Someone other than the boy who was arrested?”
“That’s not a difficult question at all. From the beginning, I assumed Derek Brunheim was involved.”
“Why would Brunheim kill your son, when he was so fond of him?”
“That’s just it. Billy was ending their friendship.”
“Are you sure?”
“He told us so himself, two days before he was taken from us. He was tired of the way he was living. We told him that if he changed his ways, we’d set him up in his own apartment and help him finish his education. He planned to go back to film school for the spring term.”
“And you believed he’d follow through?”
“Phillip warned Billy that this was absolutely his last chance. That if he failed to meet certain expectations, we’d cut him off completely, including any future inheritance. All he would have would be the trust fund, which wasn’t much. We worked it all out, and Billy promised to tell Derek the next day that he was moving out.”
Her face became strained, but I also thought I saw a glint of satisfaction in her eyes.
“I can only imagine that man’s reaction,” she said, “when he realized we’d finally beaten him.”
I reminded her of Gonzalo Albundo’s confession.
“I believe he comes from a poor background,” she said.
“Meaning Derek Brunheim may have hired him to commit murder?”
“Your words, Mr. Justice. Not mine.”
I asked to look through her son’s personal belongings, but she flatly refused. She did, however, agree to loan me a recent photo of him to accompany any article the Sun might run, and removed one from the album’s last page.
I asked to use the bathroom before leaving, and she led me inside. With the bathroom door locked behind me, I quickly surveyed the contents of the drawers and medicine cabinet. The latter held a pharmacopoeia of prescription drugs, including pills for nerves and chronic depression; most of them were prescribed to Margaret Devonshire and dated long before the death of her son.
On my way out, I glanced into her husband’s trophy room, where he’d mounted an impressive collection of handguns and rifles in a glass cabinet.
“For some reason, Phillip enjoys collecting them,” Margaret Devonshire said. “I suppose he thinks it’s a manly kind of thing. Personally, I never liked having them around.”
She opened the front door, exposing her gaunt face again to the unkind light.
“But Phillip’s like most men, I’m afraid. He likes to have his way.”