03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (27 page)

It was when the minister said, “Ashes to ashes and dust to dust,” that Kristina finally cried. The last week had been a hell for her, losing Steve and worrying about her safety and that of her mother and sister. She couldn’t take any more. Justin wrapped his arm around her to comfort her.

After the service the twins and Celeste were alone with Steve’s body before they closed the casket. Jennifer and
Kristina walked up to say their last good-byes. Then they tucked two small gifts into the casket, a small photo album of all of them together during happy times and a teddy bear they’d given him in the hospital. When it was Celeste’s turn, she, too, had brought something for Steve to carry into eternity. From her bag she pulled a small bottle of Wolfschmidt vodka.

“For the trip,” she said, slipping it in beside him and smiling.

In the limo as they followed the hearse to the mausoleum, Celeste laughed again. “Did you see what I put in his coffin?” she said. Then she bragged about buying the trip insurance. “I knew we’d never go.”

Steve’s adult children kept their distance at the funeral, hanging back and watching their stepmother. That night they were on Celeste’s mind. “The attorneys are such chickens they haven’t told Steve’s kids they aren’t getting anything,” she snickered to Brett Spicer, when he was on security duty at the house. “Under Steve’s will, I get every penny.”

Later Spicer would return to his office and tell Wines about the evening. “She didn’t appear at all sad,” he said.

Boxes from Celeste began arriving the day after the funeral at the homes of many of Steve’s friends. When Gus Voelzel unpacked his, he found Steve’s stuffed and mounted jackalope, a jackrabbit head with antlers attached. He and Steve had laughed about it together when they’d first met. McEachern’s box held Steve’s beloved KBVO license plates. Others received crystal snifters and martini glasses. It was a grand gesture many found thoughtful. Yet, they wondered why Celeste was doing it. Did she simply want them to have something to remember him by? Or did she want them to think well of her, to discount all the rumors about her involvement in Steve’s murder?

Days after the funeral, Celeste arrived at Studio 29 early, before the shop opened, in her bathrobe and lamb’s wool slippers, to have her hair done. She hoisted her black-and-white cocker spaniel, Nikki, onto the counter while she talked to Donna. The dog urinated, and Celeste laughed. “Oh, well,” she giggled.

As Joseph cut Celeste’s hair, Donna listened in. “People are being so mean. They all think I was involved,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’m sure they don’t.”

“Yes they do,” she whined, saying she’d just gotten back from a meeting with her bankers in Dallas. “They’re trying to put me on a budget. They think I don’t need five telephone lines and that I ought to be able to live on ten thousand dollars a month. I told them next time I go to Dallas I want them to put all my money in a room, every bit of it, so I can sit there and look at it.”

Donna smiled, envisioning Celeste doing just that in her Chanel suit with her Gucci sunglasses and dripping in diamonds.

At Charles Burton’s office, Celeste called often, worried that she was a suspect. She called so often, she told friends Burton had threatened to drop her as a client.

“I don’t know why the police department would think I was involved,” she told Brett Spicer, the deputy she had working off-duty as security at the house. “I hate Tracey for what she did. I hate her so much I have dreams where I’m running over her with my car.”

What she didn’t mention was that she was still meeting Tracey at the park two to three days a week. Somehow, despite changing the phone numbers three times, Tracey always seemed able to get the new unlisted numbers.

“Put your mother on the telephone,” Tracey told Jennifer one day.

Jennifer hung up. When she asked her mother about it, Celeste just shrugged.

“I know she’s still talking to Tracey,” Jen told Christopher. “I see her number on the caller ID.”

In Dallas, the bankers questioned Celeste’s household expenses and refused to pay the way they had before Steve died. Once, she called one of the bank officers and claimed to have breast cancer. “I need money,” she said. When the woman refused, she screamed. “I’m going to cut off my fucking breast and mail it to you.”

Trying to mediate, David Kuperman came out to the Toro Canyon house to explain to Celeste the way the trust worked. She was entitled to disbursements from the trust’s income. With the stock market down and Davenport Village not yet fully leased, that would be between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. Under the terms of the estate, the bank, he said, would pay off the mortgages on both the house and the lake house, so her monthly stipend would only need to cover her living expenses.

Celeste was incensed. She wasn’t to be calmed, even when Kuperman explained she could easily sell the lake house and have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank to cover extra expenses.

“That’s my money!” she screamed. “My money! Not the bank’s!”

A second Dallas meeting with Bank of America didn’t leave her in any better a mood. “The bank has the sole discretion on the distribution of the funds,” Janet Hudnall, the officer in charge of the trust, informed her. “With the house paid off, you can expect about fifteen thousand dollars a month.”

While she had Celeste there, Hudnall questioned her about the expenses incurred while Steve was in the hospital,
including the $74,000 check to Jimmy. Confronted, Celeste admitted it had been inflated. On a sheet of paper, Hudnall then added up the expenses that were out of line, including an $80,000 eight-carat diamond Celeste bought for herself, claiming the stone had been ordered by Steve before the shooting. Hudnall didn’t know that the Christmas before, Celeste had asked for such a diamond and Steve had refused to buy it, but the banker had her suspicions. By the time she was done, the banker had a chart that showed that in four months Celeste had spent $717,610 of Steve’s estate. At that rate she’d work her way through his fortune in five years.

Days later Hudnall called with more bad news for Celeste. After reviewing the checks she’d written over the previous months, the bank was charging many of the items—including the check she’d written to Jimmy Martinez—against the $500,000 onetime payment she was entitled to under Steve’s will. Celeste had unwittingly used up her security cushion, thrown it away on needless house repairs.

With the bank coming down hard on her, money was all Celeste talked about. To raise funds, she sent Jennifer to return racks of her clothes hanging in the master closet, things she’d bought that still had the tags affixed, to Talbots, Dillard’s, and Foley’s. In all, Jen returned so many of Celeste’s unworn clothes that they totaled $20,000. Yet the clothes had been bought so long ago, she was given only store credits.

She also began talking about suing HealthSouth for malpractice, claiming unsanitary conditions there caused Steve’s death. When her hands broke out in a nasty infection just days after his death, Celeste had Justin photograph the ugly sores, saying the photo proved Steve died of an infection, because she’d contracted it from him. Justin had no way of knowing that the photo could one day be used as evidence of something vastly different: not that Steve infected Celeste, but that she might have done as she threatened, purposely infecting him.

Little about Celeste’s behavior seemed to make sense that February. While she threw away money with abandon, she schemed to find ways not to have to pay bills. In early February she went up to Studio 29 and called the police. “I don’t want the cops in my house,” she told Donna. “Last time they were there they tore the place up.”

When they arrived, she told them that the maid had stolen from her, that her white gold Baume & Mercier watch with the diamonds was missing. The officer took the report and said he’d talk to the woman. After he left, Celeste turned to Donna and laughed. “Now I won’t have to pay the lazy bitch unemployment.”

With the girls’ nineteenth birthday approaching, at first Celeste said she’d take them to New Orleans, then backed out. “The bank won’t give me money,” she said. That year, Celeste failed to even give the girls birthday cards.

Perhaps Celeste was beginning to realize what Chuck Fuqua had known all along—that she had been better off with Steve alive than with him dead. Without him, she was at the mercy of a faceless bank, one that didn’t succumb to ravings or sad stories. That, coupled with the constant stares from those who believed she was responsible for Steve’s death, must have seemed overwhelming. She talked often about the newspaper article that questioned her involvement, and her name came up often on the radio talk shows, usually followed by the word murder.

On February 9, little more than two weeks after Steve’s death, Celeste called the twins from the lobby of Studio 29, ordering them to meet her there. When they arrived, she sat on a bench, glassy-eyed. Worried, Kristina and Justin sat beside her, while Jennifer and Christopher knelt at her feet.

“Tracey and I made a pact that when things got too tough,
we’d kill ourselves together,” she told them. “I don’t want to die alone. Will all of you die with me?”

None of the kids answered. Weeks earlier she’d bought the girls and herself coffins. Now she wanted them to agree to kill themselves. While Jennifer fought back the terror building inside her, Christopher simply changed the subject. They left the salon that day acting as if nothing had just happened.

A week later Celeste wasn’t talking about suicide anymore. By then she had a new plan, and a new friend she’d enlisted to erase all her problems.

“I
used to be a guy. My name was Don Goodson,”
Donna told people, in her deep, whiskey voice. At nearly six feet tall, with angular features and a prominent Adam’s apple, she looked as if she might be telling the truth. But she simply enjoyed the quizzical stares she got from such a remark. Donna Rose Goodson was just a big girl, the kind who in high school wears flats not to tower over every guy in her class. That wasn’t Donna’s style, however. Instead, she had a personality to match her height, bold and brash. In a crowd, she never went unnoticed, not just because of her size or her thick mane of long red hair, but her attitude. “Donna’s aggressive,” says an old friend. “She’s the type of person who moves into a situation and uses it to her advantage.”

Throughout that fall and winter, Donna, who had just turned thirty-nine to Celeste’s thirty-seven, had been a sympathetic voice. When the girls came into Studio 29, she’d told them to give her best wishes to their mom and to watch over her so Celeste didn’t become depressed. The girls
passed her kind words on. In February, Jennifer came into Studio 29 and said, “Donna, we’re going to the Houston rodeo for our mom’s birthday. My mom wants to know if you want to come along.”

“Sure,” Donna said.

That Friday, February 11, Celeste arrived at Studio 29 ready to go, and they were off, leaving Donna’s 1998 Buick Regal in the salon parking lot.

The drive from Austin to Houston in Celeste’s bronze mist Cadillac was anything but leisurely. The kids drove behind in one of the Cateras, and they talked back and forth between the cars on walkie-talkies. At times Donna held on to the dashboard to keep from sliding out of her seat as Celeste, smoking a cigarette and talking on the telephone, wove in and out of traffic, setting such a frantic pace that they covered the 160 miles in less than two hours. On the way, Celeste talked about her marriage, bragging about the money Steve spent on her. When it came to the shooting, Donna was surprised when Celeste admitted she’d told the teens not to mention Tracey to the police.

“Why’d you do that?” Donna asked.

“I couldn’t imagine Tracey did it,” Celeste said.

In Houston, they pulled into the circular drive of the Doubletree Galleria Hotel, a curved edifice that overlooks Post Oak Drive, one of the most exclusive shopping districts in the country. On their way up in the elevator Celeste turned and grinned at Donna. With pride, she said, “You’re with a woman who fucked her way to the top.”

When a guy named Bubba called the suite, Donna realized Celeste had plans for that night. Someone Celeste had met at the lake, Bubba was supposed to bring a date for Donna, but his friend had backed out. Celeste appeared annoyed but said little when Bubba picked them up that night and drove them to Sullivan’s, an art deco chophouse. There,
they met Bubba’s friend George and his girlfriend. Donna, not interested in a blind date, was relieved.

George’s girlfriend said she was sorry about Steve’s death and she asked Celeste, “How are you doing?”

“You don’t look like you’re letting it slow you down,” George observed.

“Don’t make me shoot you,” Celeste snapped back with a wide grin, forming a pistol with her fingers and pretending to pull back the trigger.

The others groaned. “That’s pretty cold,” Bubba said.

“You need not to say things like that,” Donna said.

But Celeste just laughed.

Next, they drove to a hole-in-the-wall bar in Bubba’s Jaguar. Celeste whispered to Donna, “Bubba’s got more money than Steve. You’re looking at my next husband.”

On the dance floor, Bubba and Celeste held each other and kissed.

Near closing time, Donna left. At the hotel, Kristina and Justin slept in the pull-out couch, and Donna bedded down in one of the two double beds with Jennifer, leaving the other open for Celeste. Before long she was asleep.

Sometime later Jennifer awoke—to the sound of Celeste undressing Bubba.

“No,” he whispered. But Celeste pulled at his clothes, unzipping his pants, and then her face disappeared between his legs.

Angry, Jennifer elbowed Donna.

Startled, Donna bellowed, “What’s going on?” She opened her eyes just in time to see Bubba grab his clothes and run to the bathroom. Jennifer switched the lights on.

Drunk, Celeste giggled. Minutes later Bubba emerged and quickly left.

The next morning, Jennifer and Kristina were angry. “I can’t believe you did that,” Kristina said.

“So what?” Celeste shouted, going on the offensive. “It’s none of your business.”

That afternoon, Donna and Celeste headed to Saks Fifth Avenue, to have their hair brushed into curls. Twice they missed their appointments, but the hairdresser didn’t complain when Celeste handed her a hundred dollar tip. In the store, Celeste bought a fringed cowgirl outfit she wore that night when Bubba, dressed in jeans and cowboy boots, picked them up for the rodeo. After the show—a mixture of bull riding, calf roping, and music—they ate sushi, then ended up at a country western bar.

After midnight, Donna, still stinging from the previous night’s episode, announced, “Bubba’s not coming to the room tonight.”

The man Celeste pegged as her next husband flushed with embarrassment. When she said she’d go home with him, he refused. He wouldn’t even drive by his house to show it to her, no matter how much she pleaded. After he dropped them at the hotel, the two women made their way to the Doubletree bar.

“He’s loaded,” Celeste told Donna. “He’s spent eight hundred dollars on us in the past two days.”

The following morning Celeste awoke to the kids holding a cake they’d baked for her before leaving on the trip. Candles lit, they sang “Happy Birthday.” A little while later the girls and Justin left for Austin. Once they were gone, Celeste called her bank.

“My money hit my account,” she said. “Let’s smoke a joint and go gamble.”

Celeste pulled a pot cigarette from her suitcase. She took a Coke can and used a pen to poke holes, then lit it and dropped it inside, breathing in the smoke as it wafted from the openings. Stoned, they lay around the hotel room, missing their checkout time, then their late checkout. After consuming
a bag of the hotel’s chocolate chip cookies from room service, they finally called the bellman to bring down their suitcases. In the Cadillac, Celeste called OnStar and rattled off Bubba’s address. “I want to see his house before we leave,” she said.

“There aren’t any houses there, just apartments,” the operator said.

“No,” Celeste insisted. “He has a house.”

They drove until they were at a block of apartments. “We must be in the wrong place,” Celeste said. But just then the gates opened and Bubba drove out in his Jaguar.

“He’s poor,” Celeste said. “Guess he’s out of the picture.”

Driving east, they stopped at an ATM machine and Celeste pulled out money, then they headed to Lake Charles, Louisiana, to gamble. On the two and a half hour drive, Donna prodded Celeste, curious about her relationship with Steve. Three weeks after his death, Celeste talked about him like he’d been the love of her life. Perhaps she didn’t realize that Donna had eavesdropped on conversations in which she’d called Steve a fat old bastard and said she hated the thought of going to Europe with him.

Then Donna talked about her own life. Two years earlier she’d been living with her fiancé, a cop. “I was crazy in love with him,” she said. The relationship ended badly, so badly that she narrowly escaped jail. As Donna explained it, her fiancé brought home sensitive police documents that ended up in the hands of those he was investigating. Donna was charged with misuse of public information, a third-degree felony. In a plea bargain, she got a thousand dollar fine and five year’s probation. Six months later, they fought, and the court ordered her to attend domestic violence counseling.

After telling Donna about her Arizona charges for insurance fraud, Celeste commented, “I wonder why Tracey’s not in jail by now.”

“Maybe she’s working with the District Attorney’s Office,” Donna said. “Has she got information to bargain with?”

Celeste said nothing at first, then mused, “My attorney says they need two pieces of information to make a murder charge stick. One is the gun. The other one is Tracey. If I could get rid of Tracey, I could justify Steve’s death.”

“You’ve got a good lawyer?” asked Donna.

“I hired Charles Burton,” Celeste bragged. “He’s only lost one murder case. That was some guy who left his bloody clothes in a Dumpster and they found them. They’re not going to find my clothes in a Dumpster. I’m no dumb blonde like Anna Nicole Smith.”

Later, Donna discovered Celeste had a thing about the busty actress, even listing her OnStar password as Nicole. Then Celeste took the conversation where Donna had suspected it was headed. “How much would it cost to get rid of Tracey?” she asked.

Donna smiled and said, “For the right price you could get rid of anybody.”

“Do you know anyone who could do it?”

“There’s this guy, Modesto, he’s part of the Mexican mafia,” Donna said.

“How much do you think Modesto would charge?” she asked.

“About five hundred,” Donna answered, taking a long drag from her cigarette.

“When can he do it?” Celeste asked.

Donna smiled, “He’ll need the money first.”

Later, Donna insisted that she never intended to hire anyone to kill Tracey and that from the beginning she was playing along to squeeze money out of Celeste. “It was a you-don’t-con-a-con situation,” she says with a smirk.

In Lake Charles, Celeste handed Donna $500 to play the
slots, which the tall redhead pocketed. At the craps table, Celeste dropped another thousand, then hooked up with a guy at the bar. A big loser that night, he took them for a comp dinner, and Celeste bankrolled him for $400, which he quickly lost.

“Let’s go,” Celeste said at about eleven.

This time, not wanting a replay of the trip to Houston, Donna drove.

“Pull into that ATM,” Celeste ordered as they passed a bank. When she did, Celeste withdrew $500 and handed it to her. “For Modesto,” she said.

The rest of the five hour drive, Celeste slept. As they pulled into Austin, at four that morning, a heavy fog clung to the road. “I want to drive you by Tracey’s,” Celeste said. “So Modesto can find it.”

Celeste then directed Donna to the corner house on Wilson. In the early morning hours of February 14, Tracey’s maroon Nissan Pathfinder was parked in the driveway.

“When can he do it?” Celeste asked again.

“I just need to talk to him,” Donna said.

Celeste dropped Donna at the salon to get her car. After driving home and changing, Donna headed to work. It was Valentine’s Day, and the salon was booked solid. But when she arrived, her check wasn’t what she thought it should be. Angry, she left and went to the Toro Canyon house.

“You don’t have to work there, you can work for me,” Celeste told her. “I can pay you four hundred dollars a week, and you don’t have to pay for anything. I’ll pick up all the tabs.”

From that point on, Donna worked for Celeste.

That day, Donna called Bruce Reynolds, a friend who owned a small plumbing company, to see if he wanted to go out. He agreed, met Donna at her house, and they drove to Toro Canyon at seven that evening. “She lives here?” said
Reynolds, who was tall with an aquiline nose and a runner’s body. On the porch, Donna rang the doorbell, then ran and hid behind a tree, like an adolescent playing a prank.

“Donna, are you fooling with me?” he said as Celeste opened the door.

“Nah, this is the place,” Donna said, laughing and walking toward him. Then she pointed at the door. “This is Celeste.”

Donna immediately sensed a connection between them. At dinner at Louie’s 106, a small, posh downtown eatery, they talked and drank, Bruce seated beside Celeste in the booth. On her way back from the rest room, Donna saw them kiss. That night, Bruce slept with Celeste, and Donna bunked in Kristina’s room alone. By then the twins were rarely home. Kristina spent most nights at Anita’s or at Justin’s parents’ home, while Jennifer overnighted with friends or Christopher. Since the shooting, the house had become a frightening place for them. And once Donna entered Celeste’s life, they stayed away even more, wary of her brashness and what they’d heard about her past, including that she was on probation. At times they stared at her, wondering if what else they’d heard was true—that she’d once been a man.

“When will Modesto do it?” Celeste asked off and on during the ensuing days.

“Pretty soon,” Donna said.

For a week Bruce hung so close he seemed physically attached to Celeste. During the day, they slept in the master bedroom. At night, they circulated from bar to bar, with Donna as driver. Later, who brought up marriage would be a point of dispute. Donna and the teens would say it was Bruce, who seemed entranced with Celeste and her wealth. But he maintained that Celeste asked him to elope with her to Las Vegas. At times Donna thought that Bruce wanted to keep her separated from Celeste. She grew tired of it, worried
he’d get in the way of what she wanted: more of Celeste’s money.

One day she told Celeste, “Modesto needs another thousand.” Celeste sent Kristina to an ATM machine and handed the envelope full of cash to Donna, who had noticed that Celeste seemed increasingly on edge. She didn’t like the rumors circulating through Austin, gossip that speculated Tracey hadn’t acted alone.

On the morning of February 16, Bruce had to work. Donna drove him home and then went to her mother’s house, where Donna lived with her teenage son, Henry. Celeste called, frantic. “I heard they’re talking about me at Studio 29,” she squealed, a manic edge to her voice. “Kim’s telling people I put Tracey up to killing Steve, and that the twins’ father died mysteriously. I want you to go there with me.”

Donna drove to the house to pick her up. She didn’t notice Celeste slip a butcher knife into her purse as they walked through the kitchen to the car, to head for the salon.

As Celeste had ordered when she called her, Kristina and Justin were waiting when Donna pulled into the parking lot. They immediately spotted Kim, a blond nail technician, smoking a cigarette outside the back door. Before the Cadillac even stopped, Celeste jumped out, charging at her with the knife. Kim turned and ran, her ankles tottering in her high heels. The following minutes could only be described as bedlam. Kristina and Donna grabbed Celeste and pleaded with her to throw down the knife. Appearing to acquiesce, Celeste tucked the knife inside her shirt, then stormed inside the salon.