She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [106]
After a pleasant enough hello, Celeste said she wanted to bring her attorney to talk to Oppel about the news coverage. Oppel agreed.
Celeste may have assumed the meeting would be only the three of them. Instead, when she arrived with one of Burton’s associates, they were escorted into a conference room, where Oppel waited with two of his editors and Copelin, the reporter who’d written the article. That morning, Celeste was dressed for business in a suit and big jewelry, looking like a woman of wealth. She got right to the point, complaining that the article raised questions about her relationship with Tracey and exposed her to public scrutiny. While she may have come hoping for sympathy and a retraction, Oppel didn’t budge. Instead he shot questions at her, asking her to describe her relationship with Tracey and asking point blank, “Were you involved in the shooting?”
Celeste hesitated. Oppel thought she might answer, but the attorney interceded.
“We need to go,” he said.
When she spun on her high heels and walked to the door, the room was cool with her anger.
With the eyes of Austin on her, Celeste paced restlessly about the picnic table when she next met with Tracey at the park. The twins had noticed Tracey’s name on the caller ID on her cell phone and on the home phones, she said. They questioned how Tracey had the numbers, when they’d all been changed and were unlisted. “Buy me a cell phone,” Celeste told Tracey. “I’ll pay for it, but they won’t know. We’ll be able to talk.”
Tracey agreed. She was willing to do whatever she could to stay close to Celeste. At her psychiatrist appointments, she talked of nothing but the toll the separation took on her. Not only was she charged with a felony that carried a possible life sentence, but the woman she loved was rarely in her life. They no longer even had stolen nights together, just the brief encounters in the park where they were careful not to touch. At times Tracey felt desperate to talk to Celeste, just to hear her voice.
“It’ll be over, and then we’ll be together,” Celeste told her. “You’ll see. If that old man would just go ahead and die.”
Tracey tried not to listen to the doubt inside her, the certainty that it would never be over and that things would never be as they were.
Having Steve confined to the hospital appeared to fit Celeste’s purposes well. She flitted in and out of his room during the day, on her way to have her hair or nails done or to shop. With the go-ahead from the bank to cover household and living expenses, money was no object. The work at the house continued, with new projects starting weekly. But as the costs continued to climb, Kuperman and the bankers asked questions.
In response, Celeste wrote a letter for Steve and brought it to the hospital for him to sign. In it, Steve agreed with all her expenditures, saying that she was making the house improvements to accommodate his needs and that he had planned to purchase the three Cadillacs. “I’m coherent and Celeste read this entire letter to me before I signed it,” it said. “Everything she’s doing is for my comfort and security.” The nurse who witnessed his signature noted that Steve blinked once to acknowledge the letter before signing it. When Kuperman received it, Steve’s signature was jagged and barely resembled his old one. Kuperman went to the hospital, but Steve was so heavily medicated he was barely awake. When Kuperman returned two days later, Steve didn’t remember that he’d been there.
When she was at the hospital, Celeste catered to Steve, running to get him water, holding his hand and kissing him. “We’re going to get you home and take good care of you,” she said.
Meanwhile, with Tracey, she raved about how she couldn’t stand him and that she never wanted him to come home. In his weakened condition, she said, if he came home it would be easy to ensure that he never fully recovered. She’d been told the importance of keeping