03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (18 page)

On August 4 the twins and Celeste left on their seventeen-day trip to Australia. Steve gave Celeste another wad of cash, and, just as she had on the trip west, she quickly spent it all, this time on a bagful of opals. From that point on she had no money for food or side trips, and the girls subsisted on the meals included in the tour package, sometimes only one a day. “It didn’t matter to Celeste. She hardly left the room,” says Jennifer. “She was talking to Tracey all the time on her cell phone.”

What they were talking about, Tracey would later say, was the botulism. Tracey made it in an airtight jar, mixing corn, raw hamburger, and dirt. She then flooded the jar with water, sealed it, and left it in the Texas sun to bake. Just before Celeste returned home, Tracey put it to the test by feeding the
putrid mix to three mice she bought at a pet store. That day Celeste called nearly nonstop.

“Are they dead yet?” she asked.

“No,” Tracey answered. “It’s not working.”

When Celeste returned she took the jar home anyway, telling Tracey later that she fed the contents to Steve mixed into chili dogs. “The fat fuck didn’t even notice. Didn’t even upset his stomach,” she said, laughing and looking miffed at the same time. Celeste brushed the botulism’s failure off as a joke, yet Tracey understood Celeste’s message when she said, “I can’t go to Europe with him. I’d rather die.”

Perhaps Steve wanted to meet the woman his wife spent so much time with, the one she’d called so incessantly from Australia that she’d racked up a $2,000 phone bill. The Wednesday after she returned, Celeste invited Tracey to the Toro Canyon house for hamburger night. Tracey didn’t want to go. She remembered Timberlawn when she’d been transferred off Celeste’s unit. At the time, Celeste told her it was because of Steve’s interference, that he didn’t want Tracey near her.

“Oh, that,” Celeste said. “He’s an old man. He won’t remember that.”

At the Toro Canyon house that night, Steve welcomed Tracey, shaking her hand warmly. When Celeste was out of the room, he said, “I want to thank you for being such a good friend to Celeste.”

While the teens ate burgers in the kitchen, Steve, Celeste, and Tracey drank and talked outside. By ten that night none of the three had eaten and all showed the effects of the alcohol. When Steve went inside, Tracey and Celeste sat on the porch swing together, and, in front of Kristina, Tracey leaned over and kissed Celeste on the lips. Embarrassed, Kristina walked inside.

“I can’t believe Tracey kissed mom,” she told Steve.

With that, Steve walked outside. “I think it’s time your guest went home,” he told Celeste. “It’s late.”

When Tracey didn’t move, he said it again, “You should leave now.”

Jennifer and Christopher offered to drive her, judging she was in no condition to drive. As they stood at the door, they heard Steve ask once again, “Celeste, are you a lesbian?”

“Of course not,” she shouted, then rushed out the door. While Christopher put Tracey in her car, Kristina and Jennifer got in the Cadillac to follow and drive him home.

“I want to ride in the trunk,” Celeste said, motioning for them to open it. “I don’t want Tracey to see me. She’ll want me to come inside.”

In her car, Tracey was in a talkative mood. “Celeste and I are in love,” she told Christopher, who didn’t know what to say.

At the house on Wilson, Christopher and Jennifer went inside, while Kristina opened the trunk to let Celeste out. She was choking and gasping.

“I couldn’t breathe,” she complained.

Inside the house, Tracey stumbled, appearing unaware anyone was with her. While the teens tried to steady her, she peeled off her clothes until she stood naked in the living room. Stifling giggles, they led her to the bedroom and helped her into bed. When they told Celeste what happened, she roared with laughter.

Later, Christopher told Jen what Tracey had said in the car, that she and Celeste were a couple. “Oh, my God. I had a feeling,” she responded.

Despite the hamburger night clash, Steve wasn’t angry at Tracey, at least not enough to keep him from extending a second invitation. The twins had worked hard to earn hours
in summer school, and the following Friday night was their graduation. Steve had a celebration planned, including dinner at the Austin Country Club.

At the Tony Berger Center, the city’s south side sports complex, Kristina and Jennifer wore their blue Westlake High School graduation robes. In the stands, Steve, Celeste, Amy, Justin, Tracey, and Christopher sat together, cheering as the girls walked across the stage. Another visitor sat separated from the family; Jimmy. He saw Steve seated next to Celeste, happily unaware that he sat next to one of his wife’s lovers and across the auditorium from another.

Dinner at the club went well that night, without a replay of the incident earlier that week. They had cocktails, talked, and laughed. But Tracey watched Steve carefully, thinking about what Celeste had told her. He was in an expansive mood, happy and proud of the girls, yet under the magnification of Celeste’s words, she noticed small things she interpreted as confirming the worst about him. Steve ordered Celeste’s dinner without asking what she wanted, and her drink before she seemed ready. In Tracey’s mind she thought he could easily be overbearing.

The following afternoon, Tracey met Celeste and the girls at Tramps. They had a big night coming up. On the family planner Celeste had written “girls and Celeste to AstroWorld.” In her own date book, however, she mentioned nothing about an overnight at the Houston amusement park, but instead had scratched in “Jimmy’s for girls’ graduation.” The party had been planned for weeks. At seven-thirty that evening at Jimmy Martinez’s house, the real celebration would begin, one Steve wasn’t invited to.

At Tramps, Celeste and the twins had their hair done. Tracey, too, showed up. After Denise finished their hairdos, Celeste asked, “Do you have time to do Tracey’s?”

“Sure, sit down,” she said. Denise went to work, fluffing and brushing. Then she looked at Tracey’s lips. “You need some lipstick. I’ll get some.”

She came back with a tester tube she smoothed over Tracey’s rough lips.

“You look dykey,” Celeste said laughing, when she was finished. Denise laughed, too, but Tracey didn’t seem to mind. Denise thought she seemed proud to get the attention.

That night, Jimmy served hamburgers and hot dogs to a group of forty that included a few of the twins’ friends but mostly Celeste’s buddies, everyone from Dawn and Jim Madigan, her friends from the lake, to both her hairdressers. On the buffet table Celeste placed trays of vegetables, cheeses, and fruit, a crockpot of chili con queso for chips, and cheese cake for dessert. Music blared, and many danced, including Jimmy and Celeste, so close that few who saw them wouldn’t assume that they were lovers.

Among the crowd, Tracey watched Celeste’s every move, wondering what was going on between her lover and her ex-husband. As the night wore on, Celeste announced another party, for Halloween. “Everyone will dress up as Jimmy,” she said, visibly drunk. “You can all wear cowboy boots and jeans.”

Soon after, she disappeared upstairs. Downstairs, the party continued, but Tracey, a short time later, followed her and found Celeste sleeping in Jimmy’s bed. When Kristina walked in moments later, Tracey was draped over her mother, stroking her.

Upset, she found Jimmy. “Tell Tracey to get off mom,” she said.

Jimmy ran upstairs and saw the two women in bed. “Get the hell off her,” he ordered Tracey.

Tracey appeared not to hear, continuing to rub against Celeste.

“I said get out,” he ordered, pulling her arm. Tracey stood, unsteady on her feet.

“Tell her I’m not a lesbian,” Celeste mumbled.

Jimmy turned and followed Tracey downstairs, pushing her when she stopped and tried to go back upstairs. At the door, Kristina and Justin offered her a ride home.

“No,” she shouted. “I’m fine.”

She wove out the door, obviously drunk. At the street, she stopped and shouted. “You tell Celeste I want her at my house in one hour.”

Jimmy slammed the door and locked it.

Inside, the party wound down. Amy had so much to drink she threw up and put her foot on the floor to keep the bed from spinning. Jennifer fell and scratched her face.

Half an hour later a guest who’d left called. “That gay woman got arrested,” he told Jimmy. “We saw her on the side of the road with a squad car.”

The phone rang and Travis County Jail came up on Jimmy’s caller ID. He took the phone off the hook.

At the jail, Tracey tried Celeste’s cell phone, then, in the early hours of the morning, the Toro Canyon house. When the operator told Steve he had a call from Tracey Tarlton at the Travis County Jail, he hung up, too. The next day he told Celeste what had happened and to bail Tracey out and stop seeing her. “I don’t want you to spend any more time with that woman.”

Celeste laughed that afternoon when she picked Tracey up at the jail. “Steve’s really mad at you,” she said. “He didn’t even know about the party. He was so pissed.”

In September, the month in Europe with Steve must have gaped before Celeste like approaching doom. She told Tracey to meet her at the lake house one afternoon, to brew a second batch of botulism. When Tracey got there, Celeste
had all the ingredients, and they began stirring into the jar corn, a few tablespoons of chopped meat, and dirt from the yard. Then, just as Tracey had the first time, Celeste filled the jar with water and sealed it.
“Taken through the bloodstream, death is quick and relatively symptomless,”
the recipe read.
“Botulism is fun and easy to make.”

Once she’d screwed the cap on, Celeste placed it in a cabinet in the garage, where the Texas heat would bake it. It wasn’t to be disturbed. But again the plan failed. Days later Justin noticed the jar with something that looked like liquid fertilizer brewing in it. He picked it up, unscrewed the top to look at it, and moved it, disturbing the growth of the botulism. When Celeste realized what had happened, she was despondent.

“Steve has to die,” she told Tracey. “He just has to.”

Within days she had another plan, asking Tracey to buy her ten tablets of ecstasy. “I’ll take him to a bar and slip it in his drink. They’ll think someone else did it,” she said.

As before, Tracey did as Celeste asked, reasoning she was not the one who’d be putting it into his drink. Days later Celeste claimed to have used the drugs, again without success. “That fat old fuck. He’s so big nothing can kill him,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “It’s like trying to kill an elephant.”

“Mom won’t get out of bed,” Kristina told Tracey on the phone the next day.

Tracey rushed over. As before, Steve was gone and Kristina was frantic, worried about Celeste. Tracey urged Celeste out of bed and convinced her to dress. “Living with Steve is killing me,” she said.

That day, Tracey told Kristina something she’d wanted to tell her for a long time. “Your mother and I are a couple,” she said. “She’s just not ready to tell you yet.”

“Okay,” Kristina said, not knowing what to think, except that in her heart she’d known it all along.

It seemed that Tracey was tired of hiding the relationship and was ready to tell the world. “I love Celeste,” she told Terry Meyer, the manicurist, the next time she was at Tramps having her nails done.

“Everyone does. She’s great,” Terry said.

“No, I
really
love Celeste,” Tracey emphasized. “And if that old man ever hurts her, I’ll kill him.” Terry was shocked, not knowing what to say. When Celeste came in, Terry told her what Tracey had said.

“Did she really say that?” Celeste said.

“She did.”

At home, Celeste watched Court TV and homicide investigations on the A&E channel. One program on how murderers were caught seemed to fascinate her. On Celeste’s desk Jennifer found a packet of grisly photos of dead bodies, mostly with gunshot wounds.

“Why’s she have these?” she asked Kristina.

“I don’t know,” her sister replied.

Steve had been bored that August, while Celeste and the girls were in Australia. With Davenport II nearing completion, he had no pet projects in the works. Again he turned his attention to the house. Now that he had some time on his hands, he called Gus Voelzel and asked him to design maid’s quarters and a guest house, one his grown kids could stay in when they visited. It had been years since any of Steve and Elise’s children had come. Most kept a distance from Celeste, who’d called them more than once, raging, usually about nothing of importance. “I’ll tell your father about this,” she stormed, as if talking to small children.

By mid-September, Celeste was frantic. At Tracey’s house three to four nights a week, she paced. Each time, they spent the evening drinking and talking about Steve. As Tracey saw it, Celeste was becoming increasingly unstable. “I’m giving him more sleeping pills and Everclear,” she said. “Eventually, it’s gotta kill him.”

On September 10, Stacy, the travel agent, ran into Celeste and Steve at a restaurant, having lunch. Steve introduced her to Celeste and they talked about the trip. “I really think you ought to take the insurance,” Stacy said again. “That’s a lot of money to risk.”

“I’m not going to cancel. Absolutely not,” Steve said firmly. “We don’t need insurance because we’re going on that trip.”

Many people noticed a change in Celeste that month. When she and Steve had dinner with Chuck Fuqua and his girlfriend, Celeste sat distracted at the table, not paying attention to the conversation, as if she had something else on her mind. Days later Anita and her husband ran into the Beards at a new posh, fusion restaurant in Davenport I. While Steve and the girls sat down for dinner, Celeste, her hair in a French twist and decked out in a designer dress and jewelry, paced outside. Through the windows they saw her smoking and talking on her cell phone.

“Should I go talk to her?” Anita asked.

Steve looked embarrassed and sad. “No,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

When Celeste finally came in, she sat with Steve and the girls, but it seemed to Anita that she wanted to be anywhere but in the restaurant with Steve.