She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [84]
Despite all that happened to him, Steve worried more about his home life and Celeste than his health. When David Kuperman, his attorney, dropped in to see him at the hospital, he was morose, saying the marriage “wasn’t working out.”
“Do you want to call the divorce attorney?” Kuperman asked. “The one you used when you filed against Celeste in 1995?”
“I’ll think about it,” he told him.
Days after he was released from the hospital for the second time, he called Celeste’s therapist, Dr. Michele Hauser, and complained about Celeste’s behavior. She was tired all the time, seeing three to five doctors a week, everyone from an internist to a dermatologist. “She acts guilty, and she’s spending money like crazy,” he told Hauser. “When she’s angry she screams.”
There was more. Steve had found Celeste’s stash of credit cards, four with aliases, including Celeste Martinez. “She doesn’t include me in her plans,” Steve said. “She does things with other people and doesn’t tell me.”
Still, Celeste had a hold on Steve he couldn’t shake. Like the others before him, he found it impossible to leave her. When Steve finally talked to Kuperman again about a divorce, he told him he’d decided not to pursue anything, at least not yet.
Later, Tracey would say that it simply came up in conversation, and Celeste latched onto it as if fascinated. “I have my shotgun back,” she told her.
For months one of Tracey’s friends had kept the gun for her, because Tracey feared she might use it on herself during a weak moment. Finally, she felt stable enough to have it home. The shotgun was the .20 gauge Franchi her father gave her in the late sixties. A lightweight weapon, it had Tracey Tarlton etched on the stock.
Five days before Celeste and Steve were scheduled to leave for Europe, on Wednesday, September 29, Celeste brought the shotgun up again.
“I can’t go with Steve,” she said. “If I go, I won’t come back. I don’t know how to get away from him. He’ll hunt me down. And if I stay, he’ll see that I don’t survive.”
As Tracey listened, Celeste told her that Steve ridiculed her and pushed her to kill herself, telling her she was “too stupid to bail water.”
“I want you to shoot him,” she said, putting her arms around Tracey and kissing her.
“No,” Tracey said, pulling away. “I can’t do that.”
Celeste covered her face and sobbed: “Then you might as well say good-bye to me. If I leave on that trip, I’ll never come back. Go get your gun, and I’ll use it on myself. I’ll do it quickly, before I change my mind. Then, at least he won’t ever touch me again.”
Inside, Tracey fought a vicious battle. She didn’t want to kill anyone, and it was Celeste’s problem, not hers. Yet she felt she couldn’t stand by and let Steve drive her lover to suicide. If she told her no, Celeste could do as she threatened, and kill herself that very night, driving off a freeway or finding a gun and pulling the trigger. She believed Celeste was powerless with Steve and desperate.
“I have no one else to turn to,” Celeste pleaded.
“Fine,” Tracey said. “I’ll do it.”
Smiling, Celeste took Tracey’s face in her hands and kissed her hard on the lips.
Later, in a strange way, it would all make sense to Tracey. All her life she’d searched for the reason she’d been born. “I always felt unnecessary,” she says. “I thought finally I’d found something I was necessary for. I had a purpose. I had to kill Steve to save Celeste’s life.”
Chapter
11
“Jennifer, why don’t you, Christopher, and Amy stay at the lake house this Friday night?” Celeste said, during hamburgers. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Sure,” Jen said, startled.
Celeste had first learned that the twins’ boyfriends slept over earlier that year. At the time, she’d been furious—not because Jennifer was sexually active, but that Kristina was. She’d been so upset, she went to the teenager’s next session with Peggy Farley,