She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [116]
Hours later Mange was even angrier. After going through the materials Wines had left with him, he was appalled by the lack of care the investigation had been given. At first he thought there might be other crime scene photos, which weren’t included in the packet. He went so far as to call the crime scene officer on duty that day. “You must have a roll of film you didn’t develop,” he said. “Where are the photos of the crime scene?”
“You have everything,” the deputy said. “That’s all they told me to take.”
Mange was furious. Wines hadn’t made a diagram of the house and the crime scene. While he had access to the house, he hadn’t conducted a test to see if the sound of the gunshot carried to the guest wing, where Kristina awoke to find her mother standing at the door. Instead of photos of the bloody sheets and the blood spray against the wall—in an investigation like this he usually had dozens—he had one photo of blood on the bed and a stack of photos of Hummel figurines and the homes’ opulent furnishings. Mange blamed Wines. Although he’d worked with the detective on other cases and found him to be thorough, he judged that in this case he’d allowed himself to be distracted by the Beards’ wealth, losing his focus on the crime. Perhaps when Steve Beard seemed to be recovering he’d given the case a lower priority. And then there was Burton, the formidable criminal defense attorney. “He’d allowed his presence to intimidate the investigation. It never should have happened,” says Mange. “Rick was usually a good cop, and he was a good guy. I liked him. He just did a bad job on this case.”
The mistake couldn’t be undone. Steve was dead. Celeste had withdrawn the consent to search and disposed of the mattress, repainted the walls, and replaced the carpeting. Everything was gone. Mange didn’t think it could get much worse, but he was wrong. That afternoon an e-mail circulated from Ronnie Earle, Travis County’s district attorney, saying he wanted to meet with the prosecutor working the Beard case. Now Mange knew he not only had a botched investigation, but a high-profile one.
“Rich Oppel, the editor of the Statesman, called me about this case,” Earle said. “He knew Beard. How do we stand on this?”
Mange swallowed hard and then told him the truth. “We’ve got a mess,” he said, talking about the crime scene photos and Celeste’s bullying tactics. “We don’t even know what the victim had to say. We never asked him.”
Earle looked angry. “Work the case,” he told Mange. “And keep me informed.”
A snowstorm in Virginia kept Paul and his wife from flying out on Monday, and Celeste agreed to push the funeral back until that Wednesday, January 26. She was busy anyway. Early in the morning, she sent Kristina to the bank along with a signature card with Steve’s name on it to give Chuck Fuqua. When the teenager walked in and handed it to him, Fuqua was embarrassed for her. Later, a stack of checks would also pour into the bank dated January 22, the day Steve died, bearing his signature. It would seem that despite having spent much of the day unconscious, he’d somehow been able to sign the card and checks. Fuqua wasn’t buying it, but in truth it didn’t matter. With Steve dead, the trust kicked into effect, and he was no longer involved.
“I’ll accept the card but I can’t change anything,” he said. “Now that your father’s dead, it’s up to the trust department to administer the estate.”
When Kristina told Celeste, she was livid.
“That’s my money, not theirs,” she said. “We’ll see who controls it.”
When she called Fuqua to complain, he said only, “There’s nothing I can do.”
She was better off with Steve alive than with him dead, Fuqua thought after he hung up the telephone. Steve made decisions with his heart. The bank makes them by the book.
The business of death is a sad and often confusing one, with families rushing to make arrangements. Always a careful man, Steve had ensured that when he died that wouldn’t be the case. Years earlier, when he buried Elise, he planned his own funeral as well. Still, one unforeseen glitch