She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [120]
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.
Chapter
16
“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