She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [134]
When Justin began his statement, Mange listened carefully. While Christopher had been animated and forceful, Kristina’s boyfriend gave a deliberate recounting, point for point, of all that had happened since he’d first met Celeste, including her affair with Jimmy Martinez. Mange judged that Justin had been thinking long and hard about Celeste’s involvement and that the teenager felt like the dams were opening, all his suspicions finally free to spill out. Justin, it appeared, didn’t want to leave out anything potentially important. Before he left that afternoon, Mange had in his hands the evidence the boys had brought with them: Celeste’s journals, cards from Tracey, and even her secret personal calendar. After they left, Mange paged through the cards, including the one in which Tracey remarked on Celeste’s “long, slender body.”
Taking it all in, Mange felt sure Celeste was involved. Still, he wondered, was there enough evidence to seek an indictment? No, he thought. Not yet.
“We believe our mother was in on it,” Jennifer told him two days later, when she and Kristina returned for their interviews. “She put Tracey up to murdering our dad.”
As Mange listened, Jennifer described her mother’s ruthlessness and the callous way she’d treated Steve. To Celeste, Mange was learning, nothing was more important than money. “I saw her signing Steve’s name to checks,” Jennifer said. “We were all afraid to tell Steve anything, afraid she’d come after us if we did.”
When it was finally her turn, Kristina added other facts to the mix. Justin, Christopher, and Jennifer had all already told him about the Everclear and sleeping pills, but they didn’t understand the extent of Celeste’s actions. “She called the drinks the ‘Graveyard,’” Kristina said, frowning. “She laughed about it.”
Finally, Kristina handed over to Mange her stash of audio tapes of Celeste’s phone calls. The first she played—the conversation about Donna—sent chills through him. “I hired someone to kill Tracey,” Celeste said on the tape.
“Play that again,” Mange said.
Just like the first time, he heard Celeste say, “I hired someone to kill Tracey.”
It was there, recorded, Celeste’s admission that she’d solicited Tracey’s murder. Why did Celeste want Tracey dead? To shut her up, Mange thought.
“I didn’t want to believe our mom was involved,” Kristina told him, crying. “All my life she’s done bad things, but this was just too horrible. Are you going to arrest her?”
Mange wasn’t sure exactly what he had yet. Was there enough evidence for a murder charge, for solicitation of murder? It was something he’d have to take a close look at. “I’m not going to do anything until I’m sure I can take her into a courtroom and make the charges stick,” he said. “Let me look into this, and we’ll talk again.”
One thing had come through loud and clear during his interviews with all the teenagers: They were terrified of Celeste. Both girls cried when they talked about the caskets and Celeste’s admission: “I could physically kill Kristina.” Since that night, they’d been in hiding. Mange didn’t ask how he could reach them. He didn’t want to know. “I’ll call your attorneys to get messages to you,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Then Kristina said something that brought home to him just how helpless she felt. “I’m afraid to see my mom on the street. If I do and she tells me to, I’ll get in the car and drive away with her,” she said, crying. “I do what she tells me to do. I always have.”
“Would you get in the car, too?” Mange asked Jennifer.
“No,” Jen said. “Not me.”
The prosecutor realized that although the twins were identical in appearance, they were very different people, especially when it came to their mother.
The possibility that Celeste would find them was a real one. For days she’d been searching, showing up at Jennifer’s orthodontist’s office and trying to get their schedules at Concordia, where they were both taking classes. The phone rang repeatedly at Anita’s house, and Kristina heard their mother screaming into the answering machine. She’d called Jimmy,