“If you’d been in the bedroom with Steve, Tracey could have killed you,” Kristina told her mother. Ever since the shooting, she’d worried about what might have happened that night. To Kristina, Celeste was her responsibility. She’d spent her young life caring for her mother, watching over her, everything from waking her in the morning to making sure she took her medicine. Now her mother could be in danger, and she wanted to protect her. “Promise me you won’t talk to Tracey. Promise me that you’ll be careful.”
Celeste agreed.
All of the teenagers were panicked. They didn’t know if or when Tracey would be back. They just knew that she’d shot Steve and that she might come back for Celeste, maybe even for them. They were too afraid to return to Toro Canyon. The house still had yellow crime scene tape strung across the front and fingerprint dust on the walls. Worried about their safety, Christopher went to a Marriott just blocks from the hospital and booked rooms. “Nobody is going to scare me out of my house,” Celeste said.
The twins couldn’t understand her reaction. They were terrified, but Celeste didn’t seem afraid. Finally, she agreed to stay at the hotel, but only because they insisted.
At the hospital the following day, Sunday, Steve remained critical. A pulmonologist attempted to wean him off the ventilator. After twenty minutes of unassisted breathing, his oxygen levels dropped and the ventilator was reinstalled. As the doctors saw it, nothing about Steve’s recovery would be easy. He was overweight, had an enlarged heart, compromised lungs, and a wound that was dangerous even for a healthy person.
In the waiting room, Celeste, the twins, and their boyfriends held a vigil, waiting for the ten minutes each hour they were allowed to see him. Steve’s friends circulated in and out of the waiting room. To each, Celeste told the story, saying she’d awakened to find the police at the door. And to each she pledged her love for Steve, saying, “I just want him to come home, so we can take care of him.”
No one really knew what Steve was thinking, not until early on Monday morning when a nurse called Brackenridge’s social worker, Barbara Jefferson. When Jefferson responded, the nurse relayed a message. “Mr. Beard is afraid someone in his family might be involved in the shooting,” she said. “He doesn’t want them in his room, and he wants the police sent in as soon as possible to talk to him.”
Jefferson went to Steve’s room in the ICU, where the nurse waited.
“Do you want me to go through the names of your family members?” the nurse asked. “You can tell me who you don’t want to see.”
Steve, weak and pale, said nothing.
“Are you saying you don’t want to see any of them?” she said.
Steve nodded yes.
With that, Jefferson left to contact the hospital’s trauma social worker, while the nurse put in a call for Sergeant Knight at the Sheriff’s Department.
When Knight arrived, he asked Steve, “Mr. Beard, I’m told you don’t want your family in your room, your wife and daughters, is that true?”
Steve blinked once for yes.
Knight turned to the social worker. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Do as he says.”
An order went out; the medical personnel and deputies standing guard were instructed not to admit anyone to his room, including his family.
Celeste arrived minutes later, with Kristina and Jennifer in tow.
“Mr. Beard doesn’t want to see anyone,” the nurse told her.
“I’m his wife,” she said, indignant.
“He said no one, ma’am,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“They can’t do this,” Celeste fumed. “He’s my husband.”
Furious, Celeste went back to the hotel. When she talked to Tracey that day, she was frantic. “They’re trying to make Steve suspicious,” she said. “And I can’t talk to him.”
“What are you going to do?” Tracey asked.
“I can handle Steve,” Celeste said. “I just need some time to play the devoted wife.”
Her defense attorney, Charles Burton, was due at the hotel later that afternoon to take statements. Before he arrived, Celeste sat the girls down. “She told us what she wanted us to say, that she and Steve were a loving couple,” says Jennifer. “And she told us that he was representing all of us, Steve, Kristina and me, even Justin and Christopher.”
When she spoke to them, Celeste concentrated on Kristina, telling her it was important she say they were both home by midnight and that they’d talked before going to bed. “They might try to say I’m involved in this,” she told her. “The police could make anyone seem guilty, even you and Jennifer. We have to protect each other.”
Then Celeste spent that morning as she had so many others, shopping. The telephone rang at Louis Shanks Furniture, and she asked for her regular salesman, Greg Logsdon.
“Greg, I need something,” she said.
“How’s your husband?” he asked. “I heard about what happened.”
“In the hospital,” she said. “Listen, I need a new mattress for the master bedroom, and a new rug for beside the bed. Would your men mind taking the old mattress with them? Would they mind moving a mattress with blood on it?”
That taken care of, Celeste drove to Foley’s department store, where she purchased a replacement set of king-size Ralph Lauren sheets. The police had taken the bloodstained set that was on the bed when the bullet ripped through Steve as evidence.
Meanwhile, Jennifer followed orders and left a voice mail for Stacy Sadler, the travel agent. When Sadler played Jennifer’s message back, she heard tears in the teenager’s voice. There’d been an emergency, Jen said, and her parents’ trip had to be cancelled. Later in the day Celeste called personally, demanding the money from the trip insurance she’d purchased, more than $50,000. Stacy explained it would take four to six weeks.
“I need the money now,” Celeste insisted.
“I’m sorry Mrs. Beard,” Stacy said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Back at his office, Wines and an ID tech shipped Tracey’s shotgun to ballistics at the Texas Department of Safety, DPS. A second shotgun was going as well. On a later search of the house, Jennifer had pointed out a shotgun she’d hidden in the attic, one she’d bought to give Christopher for their first anniversary as boyfriend and girlfriend. It, too, was a .20 gauge. This second shotgun was in the box. The tape sealing it appeared to be original and undisturbed, and Wines doubted it had anything to do with the shooting. But to be sure, he labeled and documented both guns to be tested.
That finished, Wines headed back to the hospital. If Steve could communicate, the detective wanted to have a preliminary interview to find out what he knew about the shooting and the days leading up to it. But when Wines arrived at Brackenridge’s ICU, Celeste waited for him, and she was livid.
“You’re not going in there,” she said.
“Why not?” Wines asked. Victims and their families can act in odd ways, but in all his years on the force he’d never had any become as defensive as Celeste
“I’m his wife and I have a legal right to keep you out of his room. Our family has hired Charles Burton,” she said. “If you need anything further from us, you’ll have to go through him.”
Wines had known Burton for years. His firm, Minton Burton Foster and Collins, was an Austin powerhouse, the most prestigious in the city. Wines looked at Celeste. This was another first. He’d never had a victim’s family hire a criminal defense attorney before. No doubt about it, he thought. That gun’s going to be a match, and that woman’s involved.
Before the day was over, Celeste would also rescind her consent for further searches at the house on Toro Canyon and post a handwritten sign on the door to Steve’s hospital room:
NO LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL ALLOWED TO INTERVIEW PATIENT EXCEPT IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS ATTORNEY.
That afternoon, Becky Beard arrived at Brackenridge to see her father. The nurses turned her away, but Wines happened to be there. The day before, he’d talked to all Steve’s grown children. He’d told them little except that the investigation was under way. Individually, each had advised him to consider Celeste. They seemed sure she was behind the shooting. Wines assured them he was following every lead.
When Wines saw the nurse refuse to let Becky in, he went up to the woman and talked to her, assuring her that Mr. Beard would want to see his daughter. With that, the nurse brought Becky into the room. Steve couldn’t talk, but he opened his eyes and saw that she was there. “Paul and Steven send their love, dad,” she told him. “I love you.”
He smiled and held her hand.
Steve had another visitor that day, Harold Entz, a state district judge from Dallas and his old friend. This time Becky intervened to get him in to see Steve, who held his hand, squeezing hard, happy to see him. Days later, after the judge returned home, Celeste called, screaming that he wasn’t ever allowed to visit Steve again. Entz hung up on her.
At BookPeople that Monday after the shooting, Tracey’s employees noticed she was distracted and jumpy. They were all curious about the shooting at the Beard house, asking what she knew and if she’d heard from Celeste. “I can’t really talk to her now. She’s busy,” Tracey told one. “I don’t know anything about what happened.”
Yet, the two women had been talking on the telephone throughout the weekend, calling from pay phones, in case their home phones were tapped.
“How’s Steve?” Tracey asked.
“Not good,” Celeste replied. “I can’t believe he hasn’t died.”
Then Tracey asked something she’d wondered since the moment she learned that a shotgun shell had been found on the scene. “Why didn’t you pick up the shell?”
“I fell asleep,” Celeste answered. “I didn’t wake up until the police broke into the house. By then it was too late.”
By the time Charles Burton arrived at the Marriott, Celeste had made sure both the twins knew what she wanted them to say. As always, the girls did as they were told, saying Celeste was devoted to Steve.
After Burton left, Celeste pulled Kristina to the side, away from the other teens.
“He says Tracey is implicating me,” she told her. “That’s why I need an attorney, and why we have to be careful what we tell people.”
Later at the hospital, Wines approached Kristina asking for the family’s phone numbers. There were three lines coming into the Beard house; each of the Cadillacs had a car phone; plus all four of them, Celeste, Steve, Kristina, and Jennifer, had cell phones. It was a maze of phone numbers to weed through. But when Celeste saw Kristina talking to the detective, she shouted at her: “Kristina, come over here, now.”
Quietly she whispered in her daughter’s ear, “I don’t want you talking to police or anyone from the D.A.’s Office. They’re people we all need to be afraid of.”
The next morning Wines drew up a request for a subpoena for all the Beard family phone records and Tracey Tarlton’s cell and home phones. That done, he headed back to the hospital. When he got there, the sign was still on Steve’s door and Celeste was standing guard. Rather than cause a scene, Wines decided to put off interviewing Steve, who nurses said was resting comfortably but was still in guarded condition.
Back at his office, he ran a more complete search on Tracey, coming up with not just her DWI, but the run-in she’d had with Reginald Breaux at the convenience store. Next, he expanded the search, looking for criminal records on Celeste. After a bit of searching, the database pulled up her insurance fraud conviction in Arizona. It was a minor charge, but to Wines it opened up another window into her true identity.
That done, he checked in at the District Attorney’s Office and found out that Bill Mange had been assigned to the case. Wines had worked with Mange before and liked him. He was a good, resourceful prosecutor.
“Let me know what you find out from ballistics,” Mange told him. From that point on there was little Wines could do but wait.
Finally, on the afternoon of Thursday, October 7, five days after the shooting, Wines stood outside Sergeant Knight’s door and grinned.
“Ballistics got a match,” he said. “We’ve got an arrest to make.”
The report on the shell casing came back, and, as they’d both suspected, Jennifer’s shotgun was easily ruled out. Tracey’s Franchi, however, was an exact match. The rest of that day, Wines prepared the paperwork to arrest Tracey on charges of aggravated assault and injury to the elderly, with a possible sentence of life in prison. He also wrote up and had signed a search warrant for her house. Before he left the office, he named his file on the Beard case: “Victim (Beard, Steven); Defendant (Tarlton, Tracey), Case #9924038.”
Early Friday morning, with a signed warrant in his hands, Wines called Tracey’s attorney, Keith Hampton, and instructed him to bring Tracey in for booking.
“I’ll take care of it,” Hampton assured him.
Later that day, at the courthouse, Tracey was read her rights and booked for the shooting of Steve Beard. While she went through the system and made arrangements to put up a $25,000 bond, Wines went to her house with a search warrant.
Inside the house on Wilson, the crime scene unit combed through Tracey’s possessions, looking for anything that tied her to the shooting. Many of the items they confiscated that day would yield no real clues. Tracey’s computer and two zip drives and a stack of videos would all be deemed worthless to the investigation. The videos were nothing more than home movies, many with her cats and dogs. But on a backroom bookshelf Wines found framed photos of Tracey and Celeste. In a box he discovered even more, including photos from the lake house party, with Celeste sitting on Tracey’s lap.
When Wines happened upon Tracey’s journals from St. David’s and Timberlawn, he put those in the box as well. Back at his office, he read through them. On page after page Tracey poured her heart out. It was obvious that her relationship with Celeste was much more than a brief affair. As Wines saw it, Tracey was obsessed with Celeste.
A birthday card completed the picture for him. With a flowered heart on the front it read: “For the One I Love. “Any doubts Wines had about whether Tracey’s interest was reciprocated ended when he saw the signature: “Love, Celeste.”
Wines was cataloguing the evidence when Keith Hampton stopped in after walking Tracey through the process. They talked, and then Wines walked him to the door. “Thanks for taking care of this for us,” he said. “Hope to see you again.”
Hampton shook his hand, then looked at Wines intently and said, “I’m sure you will.”
As the defense attorney walked away, Wines thought, He’s telling me Tracey has something to barter with.
While Keith Hampton insinuated the possibility of a deal, Celeste worried about evidence that she and the woman now charged with her husband’s shooting were lovers. One afternoon in the car, she called Cindy Light, the photographer. Light had heard about the shooting and was surprised to hear from Celeste so soon.
“How’s Steve? How are you?” she asked.
“He’s in the hospital,” Celeste said. “Do you have the photos from Tracey’s party?”
Light thought for a minute, stunned. It seemed an odd request just days after an attempted murder. “No,” she said. “I gave them to you, negatives and all.”
“Okay,” Celeste said, and hung up.
Afterward, Cindy realized that she’d been wrong. She’d given the photos to Tracey, not Celeste. What neither she nor Celeste yet knew was that they were already in evidence at the Sheriff’s Department. Celeste, Light thought, what have you done?
The phone rang at Keith Hampton’s office that week as well, and in weeks to come. Celeste wanted to talk with him about Tracey’s case.
“I can’t talk to you about that,” he said. “Tracey’s my client.”
As many times as he refused, Celeste continued to call.
That afternoon at the hotel, Celeste pulled Kristina to the side. “Don’t tell anybody, but I talked to Tracey,” she said. “They’ve arrested her for Steve’s shooting.” She then repeated what Keith Hampton had advised Tracey in their meeting that day, that he would fight to keep the gun out of evidence by claiming the search was unconstitutional.
The knowledge that her mother had been talking to Tracey frightened Kristina. “You promised you wouldn’t talk to Tracey,” she said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Celeste told her. “I won’t do it again.”
Days later Jennifer looked at the caller ID on Celeste’s cell telephone and saw Tracey’s name and phone number. Frightened, she confronted Celeste. “You’re talking to Tracey, aren’t you?”
“No,” Celeste insisted. “She must be calling and hanging up.”
Not long after, Celeste changed the password on her voice mail, so the girls could no longer pick up her calls.
With Tracey now charged, Wines had to inform Steve of her arrest. Ignoring the sign on the door, he went inside and found Steve still hooked up to a ventilator and appearing as if each breath might be his last. He took the news with little emotion and showed no surprise. After the detective left, Steve motioned for a pen and pad from the nurses. “Let my family in to see me,” he wrote. Perhaps he reasoned that now he knew who the shooter was, and it wasn’t Celeste.
Not knowing Celeste had already learned about the arrest from Tracey, Wines’s last task that day was to tell her. He called Charles Burton and learned that she and the girls had changed hotels and were now staying at a La Quinta Inn near the hospital. When he arrived, the desk clerk called upstairs. “You have a visitor,” he said.
“She doesn’t want to see anyone,” the man said when he hung up.
Wines pulled out his badge. “Tell Mrs. Beard that Detective Wines wants to talk to her.”
Minutes later Celeste and the twins walked into the lobby. When Wines started talking, she pulled him outside, away from the ears of the clerk.
“Am I a suspect?” she asked.
“I’m here to tell you we arrested Tracey,” Wines said.
“Is the investigation closed?”
“No,” he said. She frowned when he added, “We’re still investigating.”
Although it had been nearly a week since the shooting, Steve’s outlook remained dire. Much of the time he was heavily drugged and asleep. Over the coming weeks, Dr. Coscia would first try to stabilize Steve and then wean him from the ventilator. Repeatedly he’d have to be put back on as his oxygen levels plummeted. Since the gunshot tore through his intestines, it had polluted Steve’s body with debris, raising the risk of serious infection. Signs at the door to his room asked visitors to don surgical gowns and wash their hands, to protect him from what in others might be a minor cold or flu, but to Steve could prove fatal.
Justin said nothing of his suspicions to Kristina, but he watched Celeste carefully. More than once he saw her walk into Steve’s room without washing her hands. Once, when she had a sore throat, she went into his room in the ICU anyway. Inside, she took off her mask and kissed Steve full on the lips. Later, Justin reasoned that he was afraid to tell anyone what he was thinking. If he did, it would make it real.
At times Steve cried, depressed. At other moments, with the kids, he smiled, mouthing that the IV fluids and ice chips didn’t match real food. Once, Jennifer put her ear to his lips, and he whispered, “I see hamburgers in my dreams.”
Jen laughed, but when Steve chuckled, he stopped, holding his abdomen and squeezing the button on the drug dispenser for more pain killers. By then doctors had taken him in for more surgeries, including cutting a tracheotomy, a hole in his throat for the breathing tube. He was still being fed through tubes going directly into his stomach. Daily, nurses debreeded his wounds, cleaning out infection.
Long term, no one could predict how he’d mend, but the doctors agreed he’d be in a wheelchair for the foreseeable future. Although before the shooting he’d been a robust man, Steve was now in constant pain, bedridden and feeble, dependent on others to do the simplest tasks. The social workers talked to Celeste and Kristina about the future, a series of operations in which skin grafts would be transplanted over his gaping wounds. Once he healed, he’d be transferred to a rehab facility, where Celeste would be taught to care for him. Every conversation with his doctors began with, “If Mr. Beard survives…”
Even with Steve battling for his life, Celeste’s attention seemed drawn not to him but to his accounts at the Bank of America, where his money remained out of her grasp. While Steve was incapacitated, C.W. Beard, the banker, and Steve’s attorney, Kuperman, had agreed on a system to pay household expenses. With that go-ahead, Celeste spent lavishly. Some of the expenses claimed were for preparing the house for Steve’s return home in a wheelchair, which included $26,000 for an ornamental stair railing.
Her handyman practically lived at the Toro Canyon house, building bookshelves and doing repairs. She had a gazebo built outside, telling the Dennisons it would be a place for Steve to sit in his wheelchair and look out at the trees. Dr. Dennison shook his head in wonder when she then had a pathway of loose river rocks laid to it, one on which it would have been nearly impossible to push a wheelchair.
Louis Shanks trucks pulled up weekly with new furniture both at the Toro Canyon house and the lake house. The carpeting had been torn out and replaced, Celeste bought new wallpaper for the bathrooms, and, in what was still a brand new house, she hired painters to change the finish on the window ledges from satin to glossy.
Other expenditures, Celeste said, were for security. She paid $7,600 for chain-link fencing and razor wire, the spirals of thin steel blades often seen on the tops of fences and buildings in rough parts of large cities. For two weeks Jimmy Martinez worked daily at the Toro Canyon house, installing a cutting edge camera-equipped security system. From a central command center, Celeste could watch every door and every room.
It didn’t help the girls’ peace of mind that spectators drove by and stared at the house. Celeste posted a sign more often seen on dark country roads than in affluent neighborhoods: “No Trespassing. This property is under 24 hour video surveillance.”
In mid-October she and the girls moved back to Toro Canyon. Jimmy left his German shepherd to guard them; and the teens, all on edge, slept together in Kristina’s room, listening for Tracey’s footsteps. “We were terrified she’d come back,” says Kristina.
Jennifer was not only frightened of Tracey; she was afraid of Celeste, so much so that whenever she could, she stayed with friends. “I just knew she was involved, and I didn’t know what she’d do to us,” she says. “I wouldn’t leave Kristina, but I shook every time I got in the car with Celeste. I was afraid she’d drive us off the side of a hill.”
Meanwhile, the bills rolled into Kuperman’s office. Along with all the house repairs, Celeste had purchased two Cadillac Cateras for the twins and a brand new $55,000 bronze mist Cadillac for herself. Combined, the three cars cost $105,000. With the bills climbing from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, Kuperman went to the hospital to see Steve. Celeste was with him, but Steve, still on a ventilator, was unable to talk. Kuperman stayed only briefly, getting no answers to any of his questions.
Ten days after Steve was shot, Becky returned to the hospital. This time she came armed with papers her father had signed years earlier that gave her his power of attorney for medical purposes. She took them to a social worker and had a notation made on his chart. When she went down to see him, Celeste tried to keep her from entering the room.
“He’s been my father a lot longer than he’s been your husband,” Becky told her. “Get out of my way.”
“He has a new family now. He doesn’t love any of you!” Celeste screamed.
Becky stared at her. “I know my father loves me. I’m not going to take this up with him now, but when he’s better, we’ll have a talk.” Then she went into his room.
After Becky left for Dallas, Celeste had Steve sign a new form, removing Becky and giving her his medical power of attorney. Once she had it noted on his chart, she began a code system; only people who knew the word of the day were given information about Steve’s condition. From that point on, the older Beard children were rebuffed when they called the hospital and asked about their father. “Steven finally got someone at the hospital to help us,” says Paul. “Celeste wouldn’t even let us talk to our father.”
Although she catered to him at the hospital, it gnawed at Celeste that Steve hadn’t died. She hated going to the hospital, and complained to the twins that she had other things to do. The day the nurse put her hand over Steve’s trach opening, so he could not just mouth words or write but talk, the kids were delighted. But his raspy voice struck a different chord with Celeste. Suddenly, all the weeks of pledging her love ended. “I can’t believe she did that,” she said. “Now I’ll have to listen to that fat old fuck telling me what to do.”
Many afternoons, Celeste and Tracey met at a picnic table in a small creekside park just north of downtown. Since her arrest, Tracey’s friends at work stared at her. People treated her differently; many, including Pat and Jane, kept a distance. She felt alone. In mid-October she overdosed on prescription drugs and booze and spent another night in St. David’s, barely pulling through. But when they were together, Celeste appeared unconcerned about Tracey. She was worried about her own future.
“I think the kids are suspicious of me,” she said. “Not Kristina, but the others.”
“Do they know anything?”
“I don’t think so. They’re just guessing,” she said. Rambling on, she talked about Steve, saying that she’d never expected him to hold on for so long. She had to be at the hospital every minute, she told Tracey, watching to see who he was talking to. She didn’t even want him talking alone to her attorney, Burton, afraid of what he might tell him. “And the will’s not what I thought it was,” she lamented. Celeste complained that she’d thought she’d have access to Steve’s money, not be at the mercy of the bank. “I’m going to get him to change it,” she said.
Perhaps Steve truly believed Celeste was innocent; still, there must have been a nagging doubt, a little voice that asked, “Why would Tracey do this?”
“Do you believe that crazy nut? She had the hots for Celeste and was jealous of a fat old guy like me,” he said to one friend when he came to visit. The friend, who doubted Tracey had acted alone, only nodded. Around Steve, they all watched every word.
“His condition was up and down,” says Jennifer. “We didn’t want to upset him. We were afraid for him. And if we said anything, we were afraid he’d tell our mom.”
Only Kristina, who had no doubts about her mother’s innocence, asked Steve one day what he remembered from the night of the shooting. “Just waking up hurting like hell,” he said. “Now don’t you worry your pretty head about it.”
Still, that doubt must have been there, perhaps fueled by a visit from Kuperman in early November, when he laid out Celeste’s expenditures. In the month since the shooting, she’d spent nearly $300,000. Upset, Steve just shook his head. “I can’t think about this now,” he said. “When I get out of here, then I’ll take care of it.”
A month after the shooting, however, Steve was suddenly forced to confront his doubts. That afternoon, Celeste answered her cell phone in his hospital room. The girls listened as she talked, and they realized it was Tracey.
“Girls, wait outside. I want to talk to your mother,” Steve ordered.
They did as they were told. Minutes later Celeste left Steve’s room fuming. “Change all the phone numbers on the cell phones,” Celeste told Kristina.
Later the twins would find out what went on in that room. Steve had looked at Celeste and asked her, “Did you put Tracey up to this?”
The following day, Celeste told Kristina to go to the hospital. She’d written a letter for Steve and wanted her to read it to him. Kristina didn’t want to, but Celeste insisted.
In his room, Steve listened as Kristina read the rambling letter, in which Celeste maintained her innocence and pledged her love and devotion. “I love you and I didn’t do this,” Celeste had written. “Please believe me.”
When Kristina finished, she looked up and realized Steve was crying. Angry, he took a glass full of ice and threw it at her.
“Get out,” he shouted.
Kristina ran crying from the room.
Later that day Celeste walked into Steve’s hospital room and massaged away his doubts. Just like so many men before him, he couldn’t extricate himself from her. Despite all he’d been through, all the reasons he had to doubt her, she reeled him back in.