She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [125]
“I told him to leave,” Justin said. “He won’t be back.”
That night, when they were partying at a club, Celeste said to Donna, “I hope no one ever says it’s him or you again, because you’re my best friend.”
Donna smiled, but she had no doubts about why Celeste wanted her as a friend: Celeste thought she could get rid of Tracey.
At the Toro Canyon house the days fell into a pattern. The cleaning lady circulated in and out, and the dry cleaner picked up the laundry, all of it, including the sheets and Celeste’s panties and bras. Most days, Celeste and Donna slept until three in the afternoon, then rose and dressed to go out for the night. Celeste always had a man around. The night after Bruce departed, she met Joey Fina, a tall, dark Italian with a melodic accent. He told her he’d solve all of her problems by taking her to Italy, where they’d live on a hillside vineyard. At the same time, she dated Cole Johnson, a good-looking, sandy-haired construction worker who tended bar at the 311 Club. Ironically, Johnson had the same name as Celeste’s older brother. Soft-spoken and polite, he was an old friend of Donna’s. On his nights off, the three of them bar-hopped together.
Celeste’s erratic behavior hadn’t gone unnoticed. Charles Burton cautioned Kristina to rein in her mother, lest there be talk about the young widow who wasn’t grieving. And not long after the Studio 29 incident, Petra Mueller, the owner, filed a lawsuit, charging that Celeste had destroyed her business by frightening away her clientele. Livid, Celeste told Donna she was going to hire someone to hack into the salon computer and delete all the customer files. For weeks after she learned of the suit, Celeste made a game of avoiding the process server who sat outside the gates on Toro Canyon. Evenings, Donna drove and Celeste ducked down in the backseat as they pulled out of the driveway. A block away, she sat up and laughed. Finally, Charles Burton called Donna, asking her to convince Celeste to take the papers. To get her to agree, Donna turned it into a game.
“She’ll be home in an hour,” she told the process server. “Come then.”
When he arrived, Celeste waited on the patio. Despite temperatures in the seventies, she wore a full-length mink with a matching hat and sunglasses. Covered in diamonds, she had on Chanel shoes and held a bag with diamond clasps. She had a martini in one hand and a see-through plastic bag filled with prescription drugs at her side. As the man stared at her, Celeste popped pills, then washed them down with a swig of vodka.
The man laughed, but Celeste never broke a smile.
When he tore the papers apart to give her the receipt, a staple fell to the floor.
“You can’t leave that. Somebody else will die around here,” Donna deadpanned. “Get on your knees and find it.”
With that, the man dropped onto all fours, searching around the patio, chuckling.
With his client acting so oddly, that spring Charles Burton told Kristina he wanted her to have power of attorney over her mother’s affairs. He said he worried about Celeste’s behavior, throwing away money and frequenting bars. It bred suspicion. Burton said he wanted Celeste back at Timberlawn. Perhaps he thought she belonged there. Or maybe it was as Donna and Kristina later maintained, that he said the police wouldn’t be able to arrest Celeste for Steve’s murder while she was hospitalized.
There was also the matter of the girls’ statements to the District Attorney’s Office. Mange wanted to talk to them, but every time it came up, Celeste became hysterical. Once, she had an anxiety attack on the steps to Burton’s office, and an ambulance had to be called. “He told us once Celeste was in the hospital we could talk to the D.A.,” Kristina said. “I was scared, but I wanted to help them.”
In truth, Burton didn’t need to be so concerned, since the investigation had stalled. Wines’s admission to Mange that he hadn’t interviewed Steve had caused a rift between the men. The detective thought about the case often but felt cut out of the investigation. Mange, on the other