She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [122]
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,