03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (9 page)

“Sure,” Gene agreed. “I bet she’d be happy to.”

Days later, Sue and Celeste met at a Mexican restaurant. What began as an ordinary lunch suddenly took an odd turn. Although Celeste knew that Sue and Gene were close to Steve, she confided in Sue as if they were old friends. Celeste called Steve a fat slob and bemoaned the way she said he ruled her life. “I have to turn my cell phone off to get away, otherwise he’d call me twenty times a day,” she said. “I never have any peace.”

By the time the check arrived, Sue couldn’t wait to leave. That evening she told Gene, “They’re not even married yet, and she’s saying awful things. It makes me uncomfortable. If Steve asks, tell him I’m not going out with Celeste again.”

When Steve’s children heard about his upcoming wedding, they, too, worried. “Why would a woman of thirty-two marry a seventy-year-old man except for his money?” says Becky. She called Paul and Steven III, and they all talked. Afterward, Paul called Steve’s ex-brother-in-law, Judge Harold Entz, who’d remained a close friend. A state district court judge in Dallas, Entz listened patiently, then said what Paul expected to hear: that their father was a bright man and had to be trusted to know what he was getting into. “The bottom line was we all agreed we had to abide by Dad’s decision,” says Paul.

Steve, too, must have remained at least somewhat unsure of the match. As the time for the ceremony neared, he asked David Kuperman, his attorney, who’d handled his personal and business matters for years, to write a prenuptial agreement, limiting his losses if his marriage to Celeste failed.

On the papers Kuperman drew up, Celeste estimated her net worth—mainly clothes and jewelry—at $20,000. She listed no liabilities, ignoring her credit card bills and the $20,000 she’d been ordered by the Arizona court to pay in restitution for the fraud case.

Meanwhile, Steve estimated his net worth—after paying taxes on the sale of KBVO—at $11 to $12 million. Under the agreement, Steve and Celeste each retained their personal property, including Steve’s separate ownership of the house on Terrace Mountain Drive and the lake house. If they divorced before their third anniversary, Celeste agreed she would receive nothing. If the marriage lasted a minimum of three years, however, she was entitled to a onetime payment of $500,000. If married when he died, he doubled that bequest to $1 million.

Yet, that was only a fraction of his money. It was a conservative document engineered by a conservative man. Steve wanted to share his life with Celeste but didn’t intend to act rashly. As in love with her as he appeared, he’d spent a lifetime building his fortune, and he didn’t intend to lose it.

It must have seemed the ultimate triumph, as Celeste stood beside Steve under an arch in Harvey’s, the main dining room at the Austin Country Club, on February 18, 1995, near windows that overlooked a garden. Little more than a year earlier she’d been a waitress in that same room. Now, surrounded by fifty or so guests, many from Austin’s elite, she was becoming the bride of a very wealthy man.

The ceremony didn’t escape the notice of the staff. “There
was a lot of talk,” says the maitre d’, Fernando von Hapsburgh. “We’d never had a waitress marry a member before.”

As her matron of honor, Celeste had Ana Presse, a petite and pretty woman with frosted hair. She and her attorney husband, Philip, had been acquaintances of Steve’s and Elise’s, meeting in the early nineties on a radio station trip to Hong Kong. Some would wonder why Celeste asked Ana, whom she’d only recently met through Steve, when such honors are often reserved for old, dear friends.

Meanwhile, Steve’s best man was someone he’d known since boyhood, his first cousin, C.W. Beard. A tall, dour-looking Dallas banker with large ears and horn-rimmed glasses, C. W. had handled Steve’s financial affairs since the eighties.

Paul was on a ship and couldn’t attend the ceremony, but Becky was in the audience, watching apprehensively as her father recited his vows. In her heart she knew it was a terrible mistake. Celeste was a full fourteen years younger than Steve III, and Becky was acutely aware that her father was nearly old enough to be Celeste’s grandfather. But that wasn’t what bothered her. There was something about Celeste she simply didn’t trust. “She was fake,” says Becky. “We could see it. We just wished Dad could have seen it.”

If he sensed his daughter’s apprehension, Steve didn’t acknowledge it. That day, he exuded happiness. He must have believed he had good reason to be proud. Dressed in a cream brocade suit cut to show off her trim waistline, with her blond hair swept up in a sophisticated French twist, Celeste looked truly lovely. She was dressed with exquisite care and taste. Her jewelry was simple, a strand of pearls around her neck with matching earrings, and on her left-hand ring finger a beautiful diamond solitaire. “It wasn’t flashy big, but it was stunning,” says a friend.

After the ceremony, the group dispersed to tables adorned
with rose centerpieces for a four-course dinner as waiters circulated with trays of crystal flutes bubbling with champagne. As they mingled, Steve grinned so broadly one friend said that a young wife must be the road to happiness.

Still, many of his friends had a sense of impending trouble. In the men’s rest room one asked another, “What the hell is Steve doing?”

“I’ve got no damn clue,” the other answered.

At the wedding, Kristina was delighted for her mother. Celeste was exuberant, flushed with excitement, and Kris wondered if this, perhaps, would be it—the match that gave her mother everything she’d ever wanted, the marriage that would finally make her happy. Halfway through dinner, Kristina left for softball practice. At the door, as she walked out, she took one last look at the happy couple. “I hoped it worked,” she says. “Steve seemed like such a nice man.”

Jennifer learned the way she had always did about Celeste’s wedding. “I got a postcard,” she says. “I just threw it away. I figured, well, here’s another new guy.”

On March 3, 1995, after they returned from a New Orleans honeymoon, Celeste and Steve signed a postnuptial agreement confirming the terms of their prenup. It must have made Celeste pause, realizing she hovered so close to wealth and all it could buy, but it still wasn’t hers. Even as Steve’s wife, she had no claim to his money. Only if he died while they were married would she be entitled to any substantial portion of his fortune.

That same month, Kristina saw her mother do something odd. Steve, who fashioned himself a gourmet cook, made dinner, but she and Celeste set the table and served. That night, Celeste ground up pills in a bowl, then mixed the powder into Steve’s food.

“What’s that?” Kristina asked.

“Sleeping pills. I can’t stand being here all night with that fat fuck,” she said. “This way, he’ll have a couple of drinks and pass out. Then I can go out.”

When she put the food on the table, Celeste beamed at Steve, from every appearance the dedicated wife. Kristina would later say that she was so used to her mother doing odd things, she thought little of it, never thinking the pills could be dangerous.

About that same time, little more than a month after the wedding, Ray heard rumors around the television station. A friend had seen Celeste out on Sixth Street, partying at night. “I figured it was true,” says Ray. “But it wasn’t my business. I never told Steve.”

Celeste had made it amply clear to Kristina that money was the reason she was with Steve, and she lived the part. As his wife, she had a wallet full of credit cards and spent with abandon. She had a beautiful home, and he bought her jewelry and presents. Yet, it must have troubled her that she had little she could truly call her own. That summer, Steve was furious when she overdrew the checking account, and an incident from her past loomed—Celeste still owed the $20,000 in Arizona.

In June, Steve went to his safe deposit box at the Bank of America, where he’d banked since the eighties. When he opened the box, he called out for an officer. In moments he was complaining to a teller and the branch manager that his valuables had been stolen. When they couldn’t explain it, Steve called Chuck Fuqua, who’d handled his affairs with the bank since he arrived in Austin. “Someone’s stolen Elise’s jewelry out of my box,” Steve told him. “It’s all gone.”

“We’ll look into it,” Fuqua told him. The bank ran a records check, and later that same day Fuqua, who’d been at the wedding, reluctantly called Steve. It was a duty he dreaded. “Celeste’s been in your box,” he said. “She’s been in twice, once on May third and again on the twenty-second. She signed the register. No one else has been in there.”

The phone was silent. Then Steve said only, “Thank you.”

That day, he ordered Celeste to leave his house, and within a week he’d hired a divorce attorney. He brought the prenuptial agreement and the postnup that reaffirmed it to the first meeting. Celeste was frantic. If Steve divorced her then, she’d have nothing more than her personal possessions, no share of his fortune, no alimony. The message must have come through loud and clear when he brought in a locksmith and changed all the locks on the Austin house and the lake house.

When Anita encountered her at a shop, Celeste looked awful, tired, with large circles under her eyes, as if she’d been crying through sleepless nights.

“What’s wrong?” Anita asked.

“Steve and I are getting a divorce.”

“You’ve only just married,” Anita said, shocked.

On June 18, Celeste wrote a letter to Steve saying: “I
don’t know where to begin. 99% of our problems are my fault.”
She then bemoaned the horrors of her past, saying that even if she explained it, he couldn’t envision all she’d endured. Perhaps by then Steve knew about Harald, for she wrote that his leaving had devastated her. Or perhaps it was something else she said in the letter, something that must have been true—that she’d told so many people so many different stories she couldn’t keep them all straight. “I
don’t remember how much I have told you,”
she wrote.

In the letter, Celeste said she’d fallen in with bad friends:
“What I didn’t tell you is that I was fined $20,000 in order to remain in Texas so I could fight for the girls.”
When it came to the overdrawn checking account, she wrote:
“When you told me I didn’t believe you … I really didn’t realize I had spent so much money. So I went to the safety deposit box and got a loan on the missing jewelry. I owe about $2,500 … I know by telling you all of this our marriage is over …no matter what, I need to be honest with you. I am so sorry.”

In the end, she professed her love, saying: “I
am hurting so much that I seem to screw everything up. I really do want to get help… Whatever you want to do to me, I’ll accept it.”
She closed by writing that she and Kristina would be staying at the Harvey Hotel, and signed the letter, “I
love you—Celeste.”

As she had when Harald and Jimmy threatened divorce, Celeste then held out the promise that she could change. Maintaining that she wanted to stop feeling and acting the way she had been, she checked herself into a psychiatric hospital. There, for perhaps the first time, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder,

One of the most controversial of diagnoses, BPD describes a cluster of personality traits often tied to early trauma. Some experts believe that from birth, borderlines have biological tendencies to overreact to stress. Their emotions are volatile and violent, plunging from despair to euphoria. Even small slights become gaping emotional wounds. Without filters to keep them from fulfilling every desire, borderlines binge on food, sex, gambling, or compulsive shopping. They self-mutilate or threaten suicide, often using such threats to control others. They fear being alone, even for short periods, and experience anxiety at any sign of being abandoned. Borderlines push people away, then panic when they leave.

Often bright and witty, fun to be around, borderlines are
the life of the party. Yet for those who love them, the road is a hard one. They breed chaos and judge people without context, based not on an entire relationship but solely the most recent interaction. Years of devotion can be ignored for the slight of one unkind look. All the while, borderline personalities search for a rescuer, someone to save them from the disarray they create.

Steve was a bright man, one who’d lived long enough to learn when to be skeptical, and, at least initially, he didn’t accept Celeste’s excuses. On June 25 she was discharged from the hospital. Four days later he filed for a divorce.

His marriage crumbling, Steve told few about the impending divorce. Lifelong lessons are hard to ignore, and he was a reflection of his time, when such matters were not discussed. Perhaps he was embarrassed, fearing his friends and family thought him an old fool for marrying Celeste. To him, a divorce would prove them right.

Finally, in August, like the husbands before him, Steve took Celeste back. What convinced him would remain a mystery, but he told one friend that everyone deserved a second chance and that, with the difficult life she’d lived, he understood that Celeste would make mistakes. By then he’d recovered Elise’s precious things from a pawnshop. “Money is just money,” he said.

Soon after, Kristina and Celeste moved back into the house on Terrace Mountain Drive, and Steve paid off her debts— including the $20,000 restitution for the insurance fraud. On August 29, 1995, he withdrew his petition for divorce.

“Maybe it was just that Steve knew what it was like before Celeste, when he was lonely,” says a friend. “And by then he was in love not just with Celeste, but Kristina. Losing Celeste meant losing her as a daughter.” That fall, Kristina moved a step closer to becoming Steve’s child, when he agreed to have her name legally changed to Beard.

Later, it would seem Celeste learned from Steve’s threats of divorce. She’d nearly lost everything: her beautiful home and access to his millions. After living a life of wealth, how could she be forced back to her old life? It must have seemed impossible. From that point on, divorce was Celeste’s enemy. She’d forestalled losing Steve and his millions, but did she wonder how long she could hold him? Later, it would seem she had a motive: manipulating him into giving her a greater claim to his wealth.