She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [118]
On the way to the services, the limo was filled with Celeste, Dawn, the twins and their boyfriends. Celeste was animated and full of life, throwing her head back and laughing. “Pull over in Davenport Village,” she ordered the driver. “I want to stop at the pharmacy.”
At Northwest Hills Pharmacy, Celeste and the others left the car and ran inside. The twins assumed she had a last minute item to pick up. Instead she made her way to the pharmacist. “Now I own this place. It’s time for you people to kiss my ass like you kissed Steve’s,” she taunted. Then she turned and left.
In the limo again, she chuckled as if she’d just pulled off a great coup. “Did you see her face?” she said, laughing even harder.
They drove around Austin, then north to the funeral home. As if someone had turned a switch, when the limo pulled into the parking lot, Celeste stopped laughing. As she emerged from the limo for the 11:00 A.M. service, she had tears in her eyes. Two hundred people, most Steve’s friends, attended. Paul, still snowed in, couldn’t be there, but Steven III held up his cell phone so he could listen to the eulogy. During the sermon the minister—the same one who’d performed their wedding five years earlier—talked about Steve and his many talents as a businessman and a father. Then he turned the subject to his marriage to Celeste. “Yes, they had the differences all couples do, but they loved each other dearly. After he lost Elise, I saw Celeste bring Steve out of his depression,” he said. As he spoke those words, Celeste dabbed at tears while one of Steve’s closest friends walked out.
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