Throughout 1997 and into 1998, life at the Toro Canyon house resembled an advertisement for living the American dream. The whole family traveled to St. Thomas for Christmas. One summer, the girls studied biology in Hawaii for two weeks. At home, Celeste played on the country club bunco league—evenings she called “drunko bunco”—took golf lessons, and had her hair styled twice a week and nails manicured. And she doted on Steve, throwing him elaborate parties, once reserving an entire restaurant for his friends. He showered her with jewelry, and she gave him a bronze fountain of a young girl reading a book for the front yard. To those who didn’t know what lurked beneath, Steve and Celeste, the twins, and their menagerie of pets—cats Priscilla and Ollie and dogs Meagan and Nikki—seemed picture perfect. And when Celeste wasn’t wrestling with yet another crisis, Steve did appear happy. Ray called one day, and Steve answered the phone.
“What are you doing?” Ray asked.
“Playing Mr. Mom. I’m getting ready to take the girls to soccer practice.”
“Boy, things have sure changed.”
“Yeah,” said Steve. “But not in a bad way.”
“Steve was crazy about the girls,” remembers Anita. “And when Celeste wasn’t doing something awful, he was crazy about her, too.”
Even when she was furious, yelling and screaming, Steve dismissed her tantrums. “She doesn’t mean it,” he told Kristina. “Your mother’s a firecracker, and sometimes she blows up. Don’t pay attention. She’ll get over it.”
“I don’t know why he loved her, but he did,” says Kristina.
To visitors walking in the front door, the Toro Canyon house, too, looked perfect. If the maid jarred a knickknack, Celeste rushed to reposition it. It was as if the house had to testify to her perfection, no blemish ignored. Yet, out of the sight of guests and Steve, it was very different. Like their marriage: faultless on the surface and troubled beneath.
Celeste barred Steve from the girls’ wing—Kristina’s bedroom and the guest room, now Jennifer’s territory— telling him it was improper for a man to go into young girls’ quarters, even his daughters.’ There, in the attic crawl space and closets, Celeste hid what she didn’t want him to see, including credit card bills that poured into her four P.O. boxes. She was so bent on keeping them secret that one afternoon when Steve was out and she fell and broke her arm climbing down from the attic, she staged a second fall in the living room in front of him, to explain the injury.
When sleeping, Steve wore an oxygen mask for his sleep apnea, one that hummed and thumped throughout the night. Sometimes Celeste slept with him. Other nights she complained that the machine kept her awake, and she bunked in a spare bed in Kristina’s room. Until late in the night, Celeste sat at the computer, typing, searching the Internet. “It got so I had to be able to sleep with the light on and typing in the background,” says Kristina. “Sometimes she stayed awake all night.”
When she did sleep, Celeste had some odd habits. Not liking her toes to touch, she packed tissue between them. She felt the same way about her enhanced breasts, and wore a bra to bed to keep them from pressing against her chest. “No matter how late she was up, she put the tissue between her toes,” says Kristina. “She was obsessive about it.”
As perfect as she kept the front of the house and the master bedroom, she threw the twins’ wing into chaos. Celeste kept extra clothes in their closets, often throwing them on the floor so she could change after Steve fell asleep and go to the bars or shopping. She had a voracious appetite for reading, especially crime books, finishing three or four a week. Her books were scattered everywhere.
Many things seemed to occupy her thoughts that year. As she had been since childhood, she was fascinated with finding her biological mother. She hired a private investigator, tracked the woman down, and Celeste and Steve left for California to meet the woman who’d given her birth. They stayed at a country club, and she hired a limo to take them to the meeting. Celeste arrived dripping in jewelry, but the woman, whom she described as married to a wealthy and powerful man, wasn’t impressed. “She told me she was just an incubator,” Celeste said later. “I felt like renting a billboard and putting her name up there, with a picture of me that read, ‘I’m her illegitimate daughter.’”
The story of how she met her biological mother became fodder for the beauty salon circuit. At Tramps, Celeste confided in Denise Renfeldt about the injustice. She never lowered her voice to keep others from hearing, even when she grumbled about Steve. One day she laughed, saying, “He’s so dumb he thinks my breasts are real.” Another afternoon, when she was particularly animated, Celeste groaned about their sex life, although it wasn’t true, complaining she had to give Steve shots in his penis for him to get an erection. “I threw the needles away, so now he just makes me give him oral sex,” she whined. “Once a week, every Sunday, I go make some money. I call it the Sunday suck.”
Word traveled back to Steve’s friends, including the Baumans. As upset as they were, Gene decided not to tell Steve. “I told a friend once that his wife was unfaithful, and he wasn’t grateful,” he says. “I figured the worst that would happen was Steve’s reputation would get tarnished. I never thought it could be more serious.”
A businessman at heart, Steve kept to his old habits. He had a daily planner in which he carefully jotted down each day’s schedule, and he asked Celeste and the girls to do the same. The appointment book was filled with social events, commitments with the girls and Celeste, doctor appointments and vacations. But it wasn’t enough. Steve was used to running a television station, and he was bored. That spring he called Gus Voelzel, complaining, “Now that the house is finished, I don’t feel like I have a job.”
Voelzel told Steve about Eatsies, a trendy grocery store, gourmet carryout in Dallas and Houston. Robbie Mayfield, a contractor Voelzel knew, was developing an exclusive shopping center down the hill from the Beards’ new house, on Capitol of Texas Highway, next to a dress shop where Susan Dell, Michael Dell’s wife, sold the expensive little frocks she designed. “Why don’t you open an Eatsies in it?” Voelzel asked.
Intrigued by the idea, Steve went to Dallas to see Eatsies and considered the possibility, ultimately deciding it would entail too much work. Instead, he bantered about the idea of a liquor store in the new shopping center. Voelzel made the introductions, and Steve came away from the meeting with Mayfield convinced he wanted to be involved not as a lessee, but as one of the lessors. So, instead of renting space in the center, Steve became the money man, supplying the funds to back the development.
That year, Jennifer played on the Westlake High School softball team, and Steve was a frequent spectator, clapping for her in the stands. Celeste never made it to one of the games. “Where’s your mom?” the coach asked. When Jennifer replied that she wasn’t coming, he made light of the situation. Years later Jennifer would remember the sting of knowing that of all the players’ moms, only hers never came. When she’d finished her required physical education credits, Celeste wouldn’t let her play. “I think she just wanted to make me miserable. Or maybe it reminded her of our dad,” says Jen. At times Celeste yelled at her for the way she opened Coke cans, saying it reminded her of Craig. As many times as Celeste screamed at her, Jennifer did it anyway.
Before long many at Westlake High knew Celeste better than they cared to. She had arguments with teachers and counselors, and pulled the girls out at a moment’s notice for capricious reasons. Once, a shouting match with the girls’ biology teacher became so heated that a security guard was called. Another day, when Jen forgot a book, Celeste brought it to school. She fumed when the office staff told her to leave it with them and wouldn’t let her take it into Jennifer’s classroom. Furious, Celeste screamed that they’d better call Jennifer to the office. When Jen arrived, she told her they were leaving. Soon, the staff stopped questioning the girls’ absences. “They knew it wasn’t us. It was our mom,” says Kristina. “Jen and I did as we were told.”
At times Bess and Bob Dennison wondered about the girls, who migrated to the house next door off and on during the week. Bess thought the girls seemed lonely, “like they wanted a little love.” They were charmed by the teenagers, especially their naiveté. When Bob talked to them about college, they seemed reluctant to attend a large university and terrified to leave Austin and live alone. “I’d be afraid to do that,” Kristina told him. “I’m not sure I could take care of myself.”
“She was really a timid young girl,” says Bess. “The girls looked like their mother, but they were like a shy reflection of her.”
What the Dennisons didn’t understand was that since they were toddlers, the girls had grown up afraid of their own mother. So much so that when Jennifer walked in one day to find Celeste grinding up sleeping pills and mixing them into Steve’s food, she never asked why. Another day, she saw her topping off his Wolfschmidt bottle with Everclear. “You’d better not say anything,” Celeste told her. “Keep your mouth shut.”
“I did because I didn’t think Steve would believe me. If I told him and he believed her, not me, she’d make my life miserable,” she says. “And I didn’t think it would really hurt him. I never thought it would give him more than a bad hangover.”
By 1998 the twins had a tight group of friends, including Justin Grimm, a tall, dark-haired, shy teenager, who met Kristina when they were yearbook photographers. Kristina and Justin were just friends, but Jennifer was dating a sandy-haired, jowly teenager with small blue eyes, Christopher Doose, whose family had oil money. The fifth member of their tight-knit group was Amy Cozart, a pudgy, wide-faced girl with vivid blond hair. “Amy, Justin, and Christopher were the first friends we brought home,” says Jennifer. “They liked us enough to put up with Celeste.”
As extensions of her daughters, Celeste treated all five teens as her servants, sending them to retrieve her mail from her secret P.O. boxes and ordering them to run errands. “You’re my little niglets,” she said, laughing. “Now go off and do as you’re told.”
Celeste always seemed too busy shopping or partying to run her own errands or fulfill her promises, even when her friend Dawn needed help raising money for her son’s Montessori school. For months Kristina sold tickets to a fund-raising dinner and convinced local merchants to donate items for the auction. “Then Celeste took the credit,” says Anita. “She acted like she’d done the work, never mentioning Kristina.”
When the teens weren’t off chasing about Austin as she directed, Celeste presided over them, flirting with Justin, teasing Christopher, and confiding all manner of things, including details about her sex life with Steve. When they were at the Beard house on Sundays, she made a show of getting ready for sex with Steve. “Time to make some money,” she’d say, ordering them to take the dogs out of the master wing, complaining, “It takes him too long if he gets distracted.”
Often when she was angry with him, Celeste raged, “That fat old man, I never thought he’d live this long.”
Afterward, in front of the others, Celeste bragged about her sexual prowess, giving the girls pointers on what she considered the essentials of life, including her insights into the finer points of oral sex. Embarrassed, the twins tried to deflect the conversation.
Still, Celeste could be great fun. Rarely did she allow a quiet moment, and for the teens her enthusiasm could be infectious. There were pizza raids, when Celeste placed phone orders for stacks of pizzas and had them delivered to an unsuspecting family, then sat in the car with the teens giggling when the delivery man walked dejectedly back to his car still carrying the full cardboard boxes. When a family bought a lot at the lake, Celeste held a lot party, supplying orange juice and vodka screwdrivers and a grocery store cake. Celeste, the Madigans, the twins and their friends, and Celeste’s other lake friends partied, laughing and carrying on. At one point Celeste drove around the subdivision pilfering For Sale signs to litter the new buyers’ lot.
If the others were amused by her mother, Jennifer never lost sight of the real Celeste. “I walked on eggshells around her,” she says. “When she’d be in a good mood, laughing and fun, it never seemed real, because any minute she could change.”
When she did, her favorite subject was Steve, complaining that he was controlling and mean. At first the twins’ friends believed her. “I thought Steve was evil,” says Justin.
Over time, however, their views changed. Slowly they grew to like the girls’ cantankerous stepfather, who often bellowed at them, as if for fun, then laughed. They noticed it wasn’t Celeste who made it a point to be there for the girls, but Steve. Although Celeste fawned over her friends, showering them with gifts, she was very different with the girls. “She treated them like nonpersons,” says Justin.
One day, driving the thirty-five miles from the lake house back to Toro Canyon with Jennifer, Justin, and Kristina in her new Ford Expedition, Celeste was in one of her flamboyant moods, smoking and laughing, when she suddenly became serious. “I don’t like the way Steve’s will is written,” she told them. “I deserve more of his money. I’m his wife. I’m going to have to do something about getting it changed.”
Whatever she did, it worked. On July 30, 1998, Steve not only finalized his trust, naming her beneficiary, but he drew up a new will. If he died and they remained married, she’d receive both houses, free and clear, mortgages paid up by the estate. On top of that, she was entitled to his personal property, including his IRAs and club memberships, plus the $500,000 gift in the original will. When Steve died, Celeste could expect to become a very wealthy woman. As before, if they divorced, she’d get much less.
That November, Steve took Celeste on a $14,000, seventeen-day tour of China, including two days in Hong Kong, two in Beijing, and a cruise down the Yangtze River. They walked on the Great Wall and saw Tiananmen Square and the burial grounds of the Ming emperors. Despite bringing home suitcases full of souvenirs, Celeste returned groaning that she hated every minute of the trip. At Tramps, she ridiculed how he’d hired rickshaws to “pull his fat ass up and down the street.”
That year, Davenport Village I, the first stage of the shopping center Steve bankrolled, opened. In stone and stucco, with tile roofs, it soon boasted a pharmacy, a travel agency, a small restaurant, professional offices, and a shipping store named PakMail. At Koslow’s, a tony furrier, Celeste bought furs, having only Celeste with no last name embroidered inside. “That way I won’t have to change it when he dies,” she told the girls.
After Studio 29, a posh second-floor salon opened, Celeste often went there to Joseph Prete, a tall man with extravagant gestures. Throughout her appointments, they gossiped, providing entertainment for the rest of the clientele, many residents of the surrounding hills. One day a manicurist overheard Celeste and Joseph chortling about Steve. “I thought that old man would be dead by now,” she said.
The month after the China trip, things moved quickly in Celeste’s life. That fall, she and Dawn went to Katz’s, a downtown eatery with a sprawling bar. About ten that night Celeste called Jimmy Martinez, her last husband, who rarely minded going out at the drop of an invitation, and asked him to join them. Celeste and Jimmy flirted, the fire between them reigniting. He took her to his house and they made love. From then on she disappeared more often from Toro Canyon. She laughed about the affair with the teens, telling them, when Kristina asked why her knees were raw with scratches, that “sex with Jimmy got wild last night.”
The affair presented a conflict for the twins. They’d grown up knowing they needed to look the other way with their mother. They’d kept their mouths shut—as ordered—about the sleeping pills and Everclear. Now, Celeste was being openly unfaithful. Still, Kristina and Jennifer said nothing. “We’d talk with our friends about it, how screwed up life with Celeste was,” says Jennifer. “But we’d grown up with her always having some other guy on the side. We knew not to tell Steve. We knew it would only make our lives worse.”
Experience had taught Celeste that her daughters knew how to keep their mouths shut, and she flaunted the affair, not even attempting to hide it from them. Yet, they’d both grown to love Steve. “We’d grown up knowing not to let anyone into our hearts, because they always left,” says Kristina. “But Steve passed every test. We knew he loved us.”
The girls, it seemed, lived in two worlds—one with Steve and the other with Celeste’s secret life, where nothing was out of bounds. One night she took Justin and Kristina to a concert given by Jerry Jeff Walker, an aging rocker from Austin’s cosmic cowboy days. Celeste drank and became belligerent, screaming at the stage, attempting to get Walker’s attention. Justin thought she seemed determined to hook up with the artist, who ignored her. Afterward, she drove to Jimmy’s house. When he didn’t answer the door, she said a car parked on the street meant he was occupied with another woman. In front of the teens, she raised her skirt and peed on his grass.
That same month, in California, Celeste’s adoptive mother, Nancy, and her husband, Al, were talking about moving. “Al and I wanted to live somewhere less expensive,” says Nancy. “Celeste said, ‘Why not live in the lake house for the winter?’”
Before Thanksgiving, the twins drove to California with Celeste to pick up the grandmother they’d once been told was dead. Although she’d played no part in their lives, Nancy fawned over them, telling Jennifer, “You’re my favorite grandchild.”
“She was strange,” says Kristina. “She kept talking about how she loved us.”
The girls took turns driving Nancy in one car while Celeste, Al, and the other twin drove a second car and a rental truck heavy with Nancy and Al’s possessions. The girls took advantage of the time alone with the woman who’d raised their mother to ask questions. Kristina wanted to know what Celeste was like as a girl, if she’d had problems growing up. Jennifer asked if Celeste had really graduated from high school early and gone to Pepperdine. Nancy snapped at them and said it was none of their business.
In Austin, Nancy and Al moved into the lake house while they looked for a home, and they spent the holidays with Celeste, Steve, and the twins at the Toro Canyon house. But Celeste quickly tired of them, complaining to friends that she wished Nancy had never come. At Tramps she told Denise, “I hate that she’s here. I just want her to leave.”
That Christmas, Celeste told Steve she wanted a new diamond solitaire, like a ring she’d seen on a woman at the country club, a flawless eight-carat stone. “Buy it for me,” she cajoled. Under the tree Celeste had professionally decorated for $3,000, waited a small box with her name on it. But it held a gold necklace, not the diamond ring.
“That fat fuck is going to regret this,” she told the twins.
While she fumed about the ring, Celeste seemed unconcerned about something else that happened late that year: Steve was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. His risk factors were climbing. His mother had died of heart disease at sixty-seven, his father at seventy-five, and he was following quickly in their footsteps. Dr. Handley questioned him about his drinking habits. Steve said that he drank only two or three cocktails a night. Of course, he had no way of knowing that the drinks Celeste served him contained pure grain alcohol. On his chart, Dr. Handley noted the troubling results of Steve’s blood tests: His kidney function was decreasing, often a result of high alcohol consumption.
One evening late that year, Becky called from Dallas and Steve got on the telephone. “He didn’t make sense, like he’d had too much to drink,” she’d say later. “I never even considered the possibility that he was drugged.”
After he passed out at night, Celeste threw off her bathrobe. Underneath she wore her clothes for the evening, either something to wear out with friends or to meet Jimmy. One day she talked with the girls’ friend, Amy, raving about the sex. Suddenly she looked worried. “Steve and I have a prenup,” she said. “If he divorces me, I won’t get any money. If he asks if I’m having an affair, will you lie for me?”
Amy didn’t hesitate. “No,” she said. “I don’t lie for anyone.”
Celeste became suddenly silent.
The possibility that Steve might ask didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility. He’d begun acting suspicious about Celeste’s whereabouts, asking her where she was off to, dressed up to go out. “To get my hair done,” or “Just out with friends,” she’d say, pausing to peck him on the cheek on her way out the door.
Despite Amy’s insistence that she wouldn’t lie for her, Celeste continued to confide in all the teens, and didn’t appear worried that she’d lose control over them. Amy was there the day Celeste ordered Kristina to grind up sleeping pills and mix them into Steve’s food. For one of the few times in her life, Kristina refused. Celeste then insisted Amy do it. “I wouldn’t do it, either,” she says. “So Celeste did it. The whole time, she was cackling, like she thought it was really amusing.”
That same month, Celeste, the teens, and a group of her friends from Tramps—including Denise and Terry Meyer, Celeste’s manicurist—drove to Houston on an antiquing trip. When they arrived at the Doubletree Hotel across from the city’s Galleria shopping complex, Celeste plopped down her credit card and paid for the rooms. When the charge was rejected by the credit card company, she said, “Try this one,” and rattled off another number. That credit card was accepted. On the way to the room, she laughed and told the teens, “That’s Steve’s. It always works.”
At a large warehouse complex dedicated to antique dealers, the women shopped. Many collected antique pickle jars, and Celeste bought the most expensive one they found that day, made out of cranberry glass, for $950. That night, the twins went to the Galleria to eat at the food court, while Celeste, Denise, and the others had reservations at Café Annie, a rosewood-paneled restaurant that caters to Houstonians who make the society column. At dinner, Celeste rattled on about Jimmy.
“Are you having an affair with him?” Denise asked.
“No,” Celeste lied. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re divorced.”
At the bar, Celeste struck up a conversation with two well-heeled men in business suits. The men followed them to a disco, where the women drank and Celeste danced with both. Before long she told Denise they were taking her back to the hotel, but that night she didn’t return to the room the two women shared. In the morning, Celeste arrived at the room she’d booked for the twins and their friends. “It’s too embarrassing to show up in the same clothes I had on last night,” she said, laughing. “Tell Denise I slept here.”
She never asked if they’d go along with the ruse, and they did as they were told.
Still, the twins struggled with lying, especially to Steve. Months earlier Celeste had told them that he wanted to adopt them but he wanted them to ask him to do it, to be certain it was what they wanted. That day, Jennifer and Kristina walked outside and sat down next to him. “We’d like you to adopt us,” Jennifer said. “We love you.”
Tears filled his eyes. “I love you both, too,” he said.
Weeks later they officially became his daughters.
In February the twins celebrated their eighteenth birthday. That night the teens, Celeste, Steve, and Al and Nancy had dinner at the country club, then gathered at the Toro Canyon house to open presents. As Celeste handed them to the girls, she told Steve who’d sent them. More than once she lied, about gifts from Jimmy, saying they were from Dawn or another friend.
The following night she rented a private dining room at Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, an upscale TGI Friday’s type restaurant, and hired a disc jockey for a surprise party. Fifty of Celeste’s friends, a few of the girls’, and even some of Steve’s attended. He wasn’t there, but Jimmy was.
To the guests, Celeste bragged that just the flowers— fresh-cut centerpieces—cost her $5,000. Music filled the room, the bartender poured liberally, and male dancers in G-strings gave the embarrassed twins lap dances. Steve’s former secretary, Lisa, was there that night. “Steve didn’t want to come,” Celeste told her. Nuzzling Jimmy, she added, “Isn’t he cute? I don’t know why I ever divorced him.”
Later the teens would say Steve hadn’t known about the party and that they were ordered not to tell him. On that day in the family planner, the one Steve had access to, Celeste had written: “Girls spending night at Amy’s.” Weeks later, however, Celeste’s double life came into focus. Even if he wanted to, Steve could no longer ignore it. First he discovered $10,000 in bills from the party. It must have stung when he realized his wife hadn’t wanted him there. Then Chuck Fuqua called from Bank of America. Steve’s account had a $50,000 overdraft. When he investigated, Steve discovered that in a matter of months Celeste had gone through $300,000. When he demanded an explanation, she had no answers.
“I don’t care about the money. I won’t be mad. Just tell me what you did with it. Show me that you got something for the money,” he pleaded.
“I bought stuff,” she said, laughing. “Just stuff.”
Seething, Steve soon discovered something else. Somehow he learned about her affair with Jimmy. Hurt and angry, Steve called Kuperman and again discussed divorce. Friends say he was sick about the turn of his marriage, but determined that it was time for his life with Celeste to end. He said little to the girls about the conflict, except one day, when he and Jennifer took one of their car rides. “Your mother’s upsetting me,” he said.
Days later Kristina walked into the kitchen and found Celeste holding a pistol to her head. “I’m going to kill myself!” she screamed. “You don’t love me, nobody loves me!”
“I love you,” Kristina pleaded, crying. “Jen loves you, Steve loves you. We all do.”
“No, none of you love me,” Celeste insisted.
Terrified, Kristina called 911.
A squad car and an ambulance screeched through the gates at the Gardens of Westlake and pulled up in front of the beautiful house with the man-made stream. Two deputies ran inside followed by EMS workers. They talked calmly to Celeste, asking for the gun. Finally, she handed it to them.
Just then Steve pulled up the long tree-lined driveway and parked off to the side. He rushed toward the house in time to see Celeste put in a squad car and driven away.
Inside, he talked to a deputy who explained what had happened. He comforted Kristina as the deputy wrote down a case number.
“You’ll need this to get your gun back,” he said.
But as soon as the deputy left, Kristina begged him, “Please don’t pick the gun up. Don’t bring it back into the house.”
As she cried and he held her, Steve agreed. Later, Kristina would regret convincing her father to get rid of the gun, which he kept next to his bed.
Meanwhile, Celeste traveled through Austin’s downtown traffic on her way to St. David’s Pavilion, a critical care psychiatric unit. There she’d meet Tracey Tarlton, a smart, intense, and deeply troubled woman. From the first, Tracey felt drawn to the tall blond woman with the deep blue eyes. Later, after it was too late, she’d rethink that day and believe Celeste was already luring her into what would become a deadly dance.