03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (22 page)

“We’re here to ask a few questions,” Knight said. “Do you know Steven Beard?”

“Sure,” Tracey said. “Celeste’s husband.”

“He’s been shot,” Wines said. He didn’t see surprise on Tracey’s face, but dread.

“Can we come in?” Knight asked.

“Sure,” Tracey said.

In the living room Wines asked, “Do you know why anyone would shoot Mr. Beard?”

“No. Do I need an attorney?” Tracey asked.

“Not unless you think you do,” Knight answered.

Under questioning, Tracey said that she and Celeste had met at St. David’s, in the psychiatric unit, after they’d both attempted suicide. “We had a brief affair,” she told the officers. “It didn’t mean anything to either one of us. Now we’re just friends.”

“When did you last talk to Mrs. Beard?” Wines asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess it was Thursday or Friday.”

As well as listening to Tracey, Wines watched her body language. While she appeared relaxed, her eyes flicked about the room, never resting on his face or Knight’s.

“Do you have a gun?” Knight asked.

“I have a shotgun I use to shoot skeet,” Tracey said. “A .20 gauge.”

“We’d like to see it,” Knight said. “Will you get it for me?”

Tracey hesitated.

“We can go get it, or I’ll wait here while Detective Wines gets a search warrant and we’ll find it ourselves,” Knight said. “Take your pick.”

With that, Tracey led them to a closet in a back bedroom she used as an office. From inside, she pulled the Franchi
shotgun in its zippered case and handed it to Wines. The smell of cleaning fluid was so strong he didn’t have to ask if it had been recently cleaned.

“When’s the last time you fired this?” Knight asked.

“I shot skeet Thursday night,” she said.

“Can we take this downtown to ballistics?”

“Sure,” Tracey said.

She felt her chest tighten when he said, “We’d like you to come downtown to our office and make a statement.”

Hours later Tracey had signed a statement at the Travis County Sheriff’s Department headquarters. In it she described meeting Celeste at St. David’s and then Timberlawn, and said again that they’d had a brief affair. Since returning to Austin, she said, they were just friends. “We talked on the telephone some and went shopping a couple of times.” When it came to Steve, Tracey said Celeste told her that she didn’t sleep with him and that they didn’t have a good relationship. “There was no sex in the marriage, and I think that her depression was caused by her relationship with him,” she said. When asked where she’d been at the time of the murder, Tracey said she’d had a few beers, ate pizza, and then went to bed. “I did not shoot Steve Beard, and I do not know who did,” she said.

Wines brought Tracey back to the house on Wilson. As she turned to walk inside, he said, “You’ll be hearing from us again.”

Paul Beard was the first of the older children to hear of their father’s shooting. He called the house Saturday to wish Steve a good trip to Europe. Christopher Doose answered and told him what had happened. Wines got on the telephone and explained what he knew about Steve’s condition.

“Who shot him?” Paul demanded.

“We’re investigating,” Wines said.

“Make sure you take a good look at his wife,” Paul said.

As soon as he hung up the telephone, Paul said to his wife, Kim, “Celeste is behind this. I’d be willing to bet my life on it.”

That afternoon Paul left calls for his brother, Steve, and sister, Becky.

Meanwhile, at the hospital, Celeste was making phone calls of her own, one to Steve’s Austin banker, Chuck Fuqua. “Steve’s in the hospital and can’t take care of the bills,” she said. “I want to be put on his bank accounts.”

Fuqua refused, but Celeste insisted. Then Fuqua reminded her that she had $10,000 in traveler’s checks Steve had bought for the trip. “Use those,” he said.

“What happens when those are gone?”

“We’ll work it out,” Fuqua said. “That should carry you over for now.”

When Fuqua wouldn’t release Steve’s money to her, Celeste called C.W. Beard, Steve’s cousin and his Dallas banker. The frantic message on his machine said, “Steve’s been shot, and I need to be put on his bank accounts.”

That afternoon, Celeste, Dawn Madigan, her friend from the lake, and Kristina and Jennifer returned to the house and picked up the Suburban. On the way back to the hospital, Celeste pulled over to a Dumpster. From under the seat she retrieved an empty Everclear bottle and a book entitled
The Poor Man’s James Bond.
On the cover it touted recipes for poisons and explosives. Nearly unable to believe what she’d just seen, Jennifer looked at Kristina, hoping she’d recognize the importance of the book. Instead Kristina stared out the window, looking frightened and sad.

About then, Celeste’s cell phone rang.

“I’ve been questioned,” Tracey said. “The cops just left. And they took my shotgun.”

“Steve’s not doing very well,” Celeste said. “I’ll call you back.”

Then the phone went dead.

At the hospital, Justin prodded Kristina. “Why would Tracey do this? Isn’t it strange that Celeste took Meagan to the lake house?”

Kristina ignored his insinuations, not wanting to hear what he was saying.

When the teens were together, they made small talk. Christopher and Jennifer didn’t know where Justin stood, if he’d tell Kristina that they believed Celeste was involved. “We couldn’t trust her,” says Jennifer. “We knew how loyal she was to our mom.”

Her hands shaking and tears clouding her eyes, Tracey’s next call was to Philip Presse, who’d been at the hospital much of the day with Celeste. Weeks earlier, Celeste had referred her to him to handle her DWI, and she’d hired him to represent her. Now she explained that the police had questioned her and taken her shotgun for ballistics. “I’m expecting it to match,” she said. When she started to talk about Celeste, Presse stopped her. He was already representing Celeste, he said, and he couldn’t talk to her. But he could refer her to another attorney, a man named Keith Hampton, who shared his office building. “He’s good and he handles criminal cases,” Presse said.

Tracey hung up and immediately dialed Hampton’s number. When he got on the phone, she launched into her explanation again, but Hampton stopped her. “I think we need to talk at the office,” he said. “When can you come in?”

Within an hour Tracey was seated in Hampton’s office, detailing her relationship with Celeste and the circumstances surrounding the shooting, as the attorney’s eyes
grew wide. “Celeste had told me that you don’t tell an attorney the truth. You tell him what you want him to represent,” Tracey said later. “But I didn’t believe that. I thought he should know everything, so he wouldn’t be blindsided.”

When she finished, Tracey told Hampton there was one thing she would never consider: turning on Celeste. “I pulled the trigger, and I’m taking the fall,” she said. “I’m telling you the rest because I think you need to know. But I don’t want you to use it.”

Hampton explained what they could do, including fighting the admissibility of the weapon, since Knight and Wines hadn’t had a search warrant. “And we could talk to the D.A. about a deal,” he said. “If you’re willing to tell the whole story… ”

“Absolutely not,” Tracey said. “Do what you can but if this thing goes bad, I don’t want Celeste involved.”

Afterward, Keith Hampton had a problem. He’d just been told that Celeste planned the shooting, that she wanted Steve dead. With Celeste at the hospital, Steve could still be in danger, and he had a duty to alert someone to keep her from finding a way to finish Steve off in the ICU. Hampton called Philip Presse. When Presse got off the telephone, he talked to Celeste, then put in a call for Charles Burton, Austin’s premier criminal attorney, to represent her.

Early that evening Celeste and the twins were allowed into Steve’s room. The girls were shocked by his condition. He was pale and barely responsive. When Jennifer touched his hand, it felt stone cold. He tried to talk, but the tubes running down his throat made it impossible. Instead they read his lips.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

“Someone shot you,” Kristina explained. “You’ve had an operation.”

Steve shook his head no and tears ran down his cheeks.

“Oh, Steve,” Celeste said, standing at his bedside, the picture of the perfect wife. She held his hand. “You’ll be all right. I love you.”

“I
f 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:

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.”