03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (7 page)

Of the three children, Becky visited the most often. By then she was teaching school in Dallas. Steve was settled in Chicago and Paul had joined the navy. “Dad convinced me,” Paul says. “He said the navy would give me a chance to find myself and to see the world.”

When it came time to buy, the Beards chose a house in Westlake Hills, on a bluff overlooking the city. On Terrace Mountain Drive, it was one of the best examples of why Austin’s moneyed crowd was migrating to the hills. The land had a rugged charm, a rough-and-tumble wildness that fit Texas, and incredible views of the city skyline.

The one-story house rambled across the crest of a hill. From the street it resembled giant blocks with Mediterranean arches. Beige stucco, it appeared to be formed out of the same pale earth as the hills on which it stood. Inside it boasted rough-hewn Spanish tile floors and a wall of windows. In the panorama visible from nearly every room lay downtown Austin, striking upward from a bed of trees. At night, Steve and Elise swam in the enclosed pool or gazed out at the city lights while drinking cocktails in their hot tub.
The former owners had built a hothouse on the property and raised orchids. Elise, who laughed about having a black thumb, took up the calling and won a garden club competition with an orchid her second year in the house.

The Beards added on, bringing the house to more than 4,700 square feet. It had a study, game room, formal living and dining room, and four and a half baths. Steve was so proud, he photographed the renovated house, and Elise put together a before and after album to show friends. In his study, Steve hung mementoes, including photos of himself with
Bonanza’s
Hoss, Dan Blocker, from a promotional trip when KBVO bought the rights to air the reruns, and White House Christmas cards signed by Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

While KBVO flourished, all Steve’s money wasn’t from the new station. He’d left Blair a wealthy man. McEachern estimated the Beards were already worth three million dollars when they arrived in Austin. “Steve did well, and he and Elise were both careful. They saved,” says Ray. “He was the kind of man who knew how to build wealth.”

At lunch, Steve had a rule: Although he could have easily afforded it, he rarely spent more than five dollars. Later, McEachern would chuckle remembering how one day in a Chinese restaurant Steve looked at the menu and asked for the owner. When the man walked up, he said, “Is this the dinner menu or lunch?”

“Lunch,” the man, who spoke little English, replied.

“Hell, I can’t afford your prices,” Steve growled, handing it back to him. “Just bring me a bowl of egg drop soup and an egg roll.”

At first the man didn’t know how to take the big, brash customer. Then Steve’s laugh echoed through the restaurant, and soon the man laughed along with him. From that day on, Steve was a regular, and the owner greeted him by name.
“Steve wasn’t cheap. He just liked to know what he was getting for his money,” says Ray. “He didn’t give it away.”

Once, in a rare moment of candor, Steve confided in McEachern about his past, saying that when he and Elise were newlyweds, he lost their savings in a bad investment. “I learned my lesson,” he said. “I won’t ever let myself be poor again.”

By the late eighties Steve was well-known in his adopted city. He was active on the city’s Red Cross, volunteering as director one year. At the Headliners, a private club for media types, including execs, editors, and reporters, he made many good friends. Among them were Austin’s former mayor, Roy Butler, who owned the city’s main beer distributorship, and Gene Bauman, who ran Butler’s two popular country western radio stations. Steve advertised KBVO on Butler’s stations, and every year he and Elise went on the radio stations’ advertising trip. They were extravagant, all-expenses-paid outings, often to points in Europe. And in China, Steve and Elise purchased an intricate embroidered silk kimono they hung over the fireplace.

At the station, Steve’s management style reflected his roots, in an era when successful men drew careful boundaries. Although he cared deeply about the people who worked for him, he kept a certain distance. Still, when he knew someone needed help, he often quietly did what he could. One year, when a custodian fell upon hard times, Steve brought the man clothing. When his secretary’s car broke down, he talked a friend who ran a dealership into giving her a good deal on a new one.

With Elise’s love of golf, one of the first places the Beards set up roots was the Austin Country Club, just minutes down the hill from the Terrace Mountain Drive house, paying the then-going rate for a membership of $50,000. One of the top
women players, she teed off three to four times a week and was jubilant the day she made a hole-in-one. While Elise, whose voice grew gravelly from the cigarettes—and her skin leathery from years in the sun—never hesitated to offer an opinion, she did it with such gusto that the other women enjoyed the give and take. At night the Beards often drank and dined with friends. “They were always there,” says a waitress. “Mr. Beard would tell me to cut him off after a few drinks, and I did. Sometimes he’d want more and grumble, but he’d say, ‘Good girl.’”

Elise and Steve loved animals, and in the early nineties she bought him a dog, Meagan, a yellow lab–golden retriever mix, from a local shelter. Meagan quickly became Steve’s shadow, following him through the house and sleeping at the foot of their bed. When strangers arrived, Meagan announced their presence with a formidable bark, then eyed them, looking for cues from Steve.

In 1992, Steve and his partner, Cannan, bought out KBVO-TV’s third investor, and his share of the station jumped to thirty percent. He threw a party for the staff at the Headliners Club to mark the station’s tenth anniversary. It was a grand event, with food and drink, and he presided proudly. It seemed his life just kept getting better. Then his success became bittersweet.

Elise fell ill.

“It started when Mom had this backache,” says Paul. At first doctors speculated that Elise, whose words were slurred, had suffered a small stroke. But that wasn’t it. “Mom had a brain tumor.”

It happened in March 1993, and at first Steve told no one. Lisa Ottenbacher, his personal secretary, didn’t understand why he seemed so preoccupied until the day he finally called her to his office. She knew he was carefully controlling his
emotions as he explained that Elise was gravely ill. It was a family matter, and he didn’t discuss it further, except to tell Lisa that she might have to cover for him, since he’d be absent more than usual. From that day on, he left often, first to take Elise to doctors, then to be with her while she underwent chemo and radiation. When Lisa saw Elise at the hospital, she was struck by her courage. Some friends affectionately called Elise “a tough old broad” for speaking her mind. That strength served her well as she waged a battle for her very life.

That spring and summer, Elise’s doctors seemed hopeful. In July, Steve came into the office with good news. “She’s cured,” he told Lisa. “No signs of the tumor.”

“Steve was on cloud nine,” says Lisa. “He was sure they’d gotten it all. Her doctors told Elise she didn’t even have to return for a checkup until December.”

That summer, Steve and Elise took a trip, a Panama Canal cruise. They were thrilled at her progress, believing she’d escaped death and that they had more years together. They celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary and made plans to take the annual radio station trip that fall to Italy. Then, in September, their world fell apart for a second time.

“The cancer was back,” says Paul.

It returned with a vengeance. In the hospital, Elise suffered horrific headaches. One day, McEachern walked in and found Steve tenderly massaging her forehead. As the cancer spread, she grew weaker. Steve stayed beside her, holding her hand and running to get her cool compresses for her head.

As the end approached, Paul flew into Austin. Becky picked him up at the airport. At the hospital, Steve tried to control his mounting grief but couldn’t. “Dad broke down and cried,” says Paul. “He talked about how much he loved her.”

When Paul saw his mother, the cancer had taken a terrible toll. She was pale and weak, and for the second time chemo and radiation had caused her hair to fall out. Still, she’d asked Becky to bring her wig and makeup to the hospital. “She wanted to look good for Dad,” says Paul. “Here she is dying, married all those years, and she still wanted to look pretty for him.”

Finally, on October 13, 1993, Elise Adams Beard died at the age of sixty-seven. Paul, by then back on his aircraft carrier, received a call from Steve.

“She’s gone,” he said.

After the funeral, Steve asked Becky to move to Austin, to live with him. She had a life and a teaching career in Dallas. “I couldn’t just leave everything I’d built there,” she says. “I wanted to help him, but I couldn’t move.”

For the first time in the nearly half a century since he’d met Elise, Steve was alone. That fall, Steve III and his wife took the radio station trip to Italy, and Steve stayed home. He was despondent, and complained to Ray, “I’m the type of person who needs to be married. I need someone to take care of. The saddest thing is a rich, lonely old man.”

To Paul, Steve complained that he was uncomfortable with wealthy women of his age, widows who asked him to escort them to functions or approached him in the local grocery store to offer their condolences then invite him to dinner. “He complained he couldn’t go anywhere without some woman hitting on him,” says Paul.

Steve’s friends worried about him, too, that fall and winter. He appeared lost without Elise, tired and broken. Most nights, he sat alone at the nineteenth-hole dining room at the Austin Country Club, drinking his two vodkas, eating his dinner, and staring out the window, not wanting to look at the couples spread throughout the dining room. Friends invited
him to their homes, and he went, but eventually he had to leave, and when he did, it was to go home alone to a dark, empty house. Before long Steve began talking about hiring a house manager to keep the place up for him. One evening at the club he asked a bus girl if she might be interested in the job. She refused, but offered to pass the word around to others on the staff.

The first anyone knew that Steve had hired Celeste Martinez for the job was when she drove into Austin Country Club’s parking lot in his brand new white and gold Explorer with its Channel 42—KBVO placards on the sides. Those who did notice weren’t surprised. Celeste was a beautiful woman, just thirty years old, with a glow about her, tall, with a wispy voice and a playful manner. Still, not everyone at the club believed she was as wholesome or as harmless as she appeared. “She flirted endlessly with the men. Some of them just lapped it up,” says one member. “There was a group of women who never had a doubt what Celeste Martinez was all about.”

As Christmas approached, Steve called his secretary, Lisa, into his office. Spread across his desk, he had women’s clothing catalogues. “I’ve got this housekeeper, and I need to buy her a Christmas gift,” he said. “What would a nice young woman wear?”

Amused at her gruff boss stewing over buying the housekeeper a present, Lisa paged through the catalogues. They appeared to be from companies that catered to older women in the country club set, probably places where Elise bought her clothes.

“How old is this woman?” she asked.

“About thirty,” he said.

Lisa flipped through the pages of shapeless dresses and found one that had a youthful flair. “How about this?” she asked.

“That might work,” Steve said, smiling. “I think we’ll give it a try.”

Days before Christmas, Kristina left to spend the holiday with Craig and Jennifer in Washington, and Jimmy drove to see his family in El Paso. Celeste stayed home, saying she had to work at the country club. “When I got home, Celeste had already moved out. She told me she’d found someone else,” says Jimmy. “She was moving in with Steve.”

“It’s for the best,” she told him. “Steve can afford to support me and Kristina.”

Friends would later say that they believed Celeste had broken Jimmy’s heart. “He changed after Celeste,” says one. “Jimmy was just a different, a little sadder, guy.”

Reeling under all the debts she’d amassed during their short marriage, Jimmy didn’t argue and soon after he filed for divorce. “You fall in love, get married, and think it’s supposed to be forever,” he says. “It didn’t work that way.”

On Christmas Eve, Gene Bauman and his wife, Sue, invited Steve to dinner.

“I’d like that, but is it okay if I bring my house manager?” Steve asked.

“I didn’t know you had one,” said Gene. “Who is she?”

“You know, Celeste, the blond waitress from the club.”

“I can’t picture her, but sure, bring her,” Gene said.

“We’ll be there,” Steve said.

At dinner that night, the Baumans’ Christmas tree glowed and they were in a festive mood. Gene, tall, gray-haired, and ruggedly handsome, looked carefully at his old friend. Steve was in high spirits, more buoyant than he had been since Elise relapsed. Understanding what Steve had gone through, he couldn’t help but be happy for him. Celeste was attractive and young, and making it clear that she wasn’t just on Steve’s payroll.

“I needed someone to let in the repairmen and do some light cooking and laundry,” Steve said.

“Except that I don’t cook, and I send out the clothes,” she said, giggling, with her arm through Steve’s. “That’s just not me.”

Gene laughed, and decided he wouldn’t take Steve’s fling too seriously. “He was just having a bit of fun with a girl who was younger than his own kids. I never thought it would turn out to be anything serious,” he says. “I figured, he’d have his fun, buy her some baubles, maybe give her some money—Steve had plenty—and then move on.”

However, Gene’s wife, Sue—pencil thin with short blond hair—was more concerned. From the beginning, something about Celeste Martinez bothered her. She seemed evasive about who she was and where she’d come from. Sue had nothing tangible to pin her fears on. Celeste acted charming, solicitous of Steve and devoted to him. But Sue wasn’t buying it.

“To me, it all looked like an act,” she says.