03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (32 page)

On August 31 the judge came down with his ruling. Citing insufficient evidence, he ruled against the Beard children and refused to stop Celeste from spending the money in the estate while they pursued other action against her.

In the newspaper article on the hearing, Steven III was quoted as saying that the criminal investigation into his father’s murder continued. But it was something else, something near the end of the article, that caught Tracey’s interest: The reason Celeste hadn’t been at the twins’ protective hearing in July was that she’d gone to Aspen,
on her honeymoon.

Tracey had never heard of Celeste’s fifth husband, Spencer Cole Johnson. A thirty-eight-year-old bartender and
carpenter, he’d been introduced to Celeste by Donna that spring while they bar-hopped Sixth Street. Friends say he had little more than his clothes—mostly jeans—and a motorcycle and a run-down truck when he started dating Celeste. “He’s a nice guy, sweet, worked hard,” says a friend. “He’s a little on the wild side, loved to party. And he was head over heels in love with Celeste.”

Tracey was devastated by the news. “She was married, just weeks after she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore,” she says. “Even I could figure out that they were together before we split.”

If Celeste had lied when she’d told her she wasn’t seeing anyone else, Tracey wondered, what else had her former lover misled her about? Her mind grazed over the past year, since they’d met in St. David’s. Was it all a lie? One thing had never stopped bothering her: On the night of the shooting, Tracey had wondered about Celeste’s story about why she’d removed Meagan—that she was protective of Steve— when all along she’d said Steve beat the dog. If the dog was faithful to him, didn’t that say something about who he was?

Maybe he wasn’t the way she portrayed him,
Tracey thought.
Maybe it was all a lie.

Soon Tracey came to the conclusion that she had never really known Celeste as she thought she did. “I wondered if Celeste broke me in gradually or just found a way to make me more malleable. She wanted Steve dead, and she knew I would do it for her,” she says. “I wondered if she just planted a seed within me and let it grow.”

What Tracey had been dreading happened the following February, when Mange took the evidence against her to a grand jury for a murder indictment. For more than a year, she’d been out on $25,000 bail, awaiting trial on a charge of injury to the elderly. Since Steve Beard’s death, Keith Hampton, Tracey’s attorney, had fought hard to keep the
shotgun out of evidence, arguing that Wines and Knight had intimidated her into turning it over. Consistently, the judges had ruled against him.

As the grand jury met, Hampton called Tracey and told her that once the indictment came down, she could expect to be arrested. After a year of working only off and on, she didn’t have the money for bail. That week, Tracey stayed home and boxed up her possessions. She had no illusions about her future. From the beginning, she believed she’d one day enter jail and never emerge. Her dog, Wren, seemed to sense something was wrong. All weekend he stayed beside her, following her from room to room, nestling against her when she sat on the floor and cried.

On Friday, February 16, the grand jury added capital murder to the charges against her. Immediately her bail jumped to $500,000.

“We are still investigating the matter and still looking at Celeste Beard’s involvement,” Mange’s boss was quoted as saying in the
Statesman
the following day. “This is one of the most complicated cases I’ve ever seen.”

Days later officers showed up at the house on Wilson. One handcuffed Tracey and led her to a squad car. By then she’d taken Wren and her cats to a friend’s house, and made arrangements for her things to be stored and her home sold. Still, as she entered the Travis County Jail, it all seemed surreal. “It was like it was happening to someone else,” she says. “It felt like everything was over and Celeste had gotten away with it.”

Meanwhile, Celeste cashed in, and Steve Beard’s children were helpless to stop her. The week after Tracey entered jail, Celeste and Cole signed a contract to buy a brand new home, a stately edifice on Yeargin Court in the town of Southlake, Texas. An exclusive enclave where the average house cost
more than $400,000, Southlake lay halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas, a suburban refuge with a charming town square and a Fourth of July celebration that included fireworks sprayed across the sky.

By April she’d sold the Austin homes—the lake house for $280,000, of which $120,000 went toward paying her attorneys on the civil matter; and Steve’s dream house on Toro Canyon, for $1,890,000. The mortgages paid up by the trust, after expenses she pocketed more than $2 million.

The day of the Toro Canyon closing, Celeste gave the title company a list of cashier’s checks she wanted drawn from the proceeds: more than $50,000 to American Express, $10,000 to Louis Shanks Furniture stores, and a string of checks for banks, from $15,000 to Bank of America to $250,000 to Wells Fargo. Just under half a million went into her trust fund, and $516,892 went to First Fidelity Title Company to pay cash for their grand new home. She asked for the rest, $227,000, in a check made out to her.

Steven Beard’s death had made Celeste, the former waitress, a very wealthy woman.

By then Jennifer was living with Anita’s aged mother in Midland, but Kristina and Justin moved back to Austin and in with his parents, where they hired on at a Best Buy store. Always, they were on alert, watching for Celeste, knowing that at any moment she or someone she’d sent to look for them could walk through the door.

One day Jimmy did just that. Kristina had been out on a lunch break. When she returned, Justin played the security tape for her, showing Jimmy walking the aisles, looking about but buying nothing. He finally stood in the computer department, staring at Justin, watching. Finally he turned and left. Kristina thought he was there for her.

Even separated from them, Celeste continued to haunt their lives. The twins were reminded of her every time they
tried to get a cell phone or a credit card. Over the years, they discovered, she’d used their Social Security numbers, beginning when they were just twelve. The bills were paid late or not at all. When Kristina tried to get a Sprint cell phone, the company turned her down, saying that someone named Celeste had been in there with her Social Security number and that she’d screamed at the clerks. When they contacted the credit reporting agencies and tried to clear up their credit reports, they were told there was nothing they could do. Although the twins were just children when the charges were made, they were unable to prove they hadn’t been the ones who made them.

When Paul Beard called Mange that summer, the prosecutor was blunt. He’d been over the evidence again and again and found no way to convict Celeste on what he had. “The only way we get Celeste is if Tracey testifies against her,” Mange said.

“We all want Celeste,” Paul said.

“Well, then the best thing we can do is put pressure on Tracey. Let her sit in jail and stew, knowing Celeste is out enjoying the good life.”

Throughout 2001, Bill Mange continued to build his case against Tracey, always keeping in mind that he also wanted Celeste. His office was filled with boxes of subpoenaed phone, medical, and financial records. Tracey’s bank records were carefully searched, and Mange found no indication that money had passed between the two women. That didn’t surprise him. He’d never thought the murder was about money, not on Tracey’s part. He’d had no doubt that was precisely what it was about for Celeste.

In October another motion came before the court. Stuart Kinard and Mike Maguire, two white-haired, well-respected criminal attorneys, had taken over Tracey’s case. Like Hampton before them, they argued to keep the gun out. Like
Hampton, they failed. Tracey had not been intimidated, the judge ruled. Her .20 gauge shotgun would be evidence against her at her trial, scheduled for March of the coming year.

After the hearing, Kinard and Maguire approached Mange about the possibility of a deal. If Tracey could build the case against Celeste, was there a chance for a deal? Mange balked. First, they were asking for transactional immunity, meaning that Tracey would walk out the jail door and serve no more time for murder. Second, neither Kinard nor Maguire would say exactly what Tracey had. Instead of one hypothetical outline of the evidence they had to bargain with, as defense attorneys often do, they floated four possible scenarios. When they wouldn’t be more specific, Mange refused to bargain. “I wasn’t letting her walk, and I wasn’t buying a pig in a poke,” he says. “I wanted to know exactly what they had to offer.”

Off and on when their paths crossed at the courthouse, the defense attorneys tested the waters. Mange stood firm.

“I thought you wanted Celeste Beard,” Maguire said.

“I want the person I’ve got enough evidence to put away,” Mange replied. “Right now, that’s your client. That’s the case I’m taking to trial.”

In Del Valle, the sprawling Travis County Jail annex southeast of the city, Tracey was silent. She said little to anyone, quietly staying in her cell thinking about the past. “I realized Celeste had played me. All along for her it was a game,” she says. “But I still agreed to do it, and I wasn’t going to pull her into the mess I was in.”

Then she met someone. On the courtyard one day, during exercise period, Jeannie Jenkins, who’d been in and out of jails and prisons all her life on charges from prostitution to burglary, saw Tracey walking quietly in circles and crying. She thought she’d never seen anyone who looked so totally
alone. Jeannie went up to her and began to draw her into a conversation. Before long Tracey spilled out her story, telling her everything that had led to Steve’s murder.

“Did that woman just leave you here to rot?” Jeannie asked.

“I guess you could say she did,” Tracey admitted, thinking back on all the promises Celeste had made and not kept, everything from paying for her attorney to putting money into her commissary fund. She hadn’t even taken care of her animals.

“That’s not right,” Jeannie said. “You shouldn’t be doing all the time. That woman’s as guilty or guiltier than you are.”

After that day, Tracey thought often of Jeannie’s words.

In March 2002, a year after Tracey entered jail, Mange had his case against her lined up. He had traveled to Timberlawn and interviewed Susan Milholland. He knew about Tracey’s obsession with Celeste and her threat aimed at Steve: “All my problems would be solved if someone met an untimely death.”

On top of that, he had the shotgun shell tying her to the murder, and he had Terry, the Tramps manicurist who’d heard Tracey say that if Steve ever hurt Celeste, she’d kill him. Still, the case was a difficult one. Early on, Tracey had told the detectives that Celeste had a key to her house. At trial, Mange figured Maguire and Kinard would argue Celeste had the opportunity to get Tracey’s shotgun and kill Steve herself. It wasn’t as open-and-shut a case as he would have liked. Still, he wasn’t too worried. Everyone at the D.A.’s Office knew the investigation was flawed. If he lost, he lost. They’d pat him on the back and say he’d put up a good fight. The upside was that if he won, he’d be a hero.

“You’re really going to go ahead against Tracey and leave Celeste hanging out there?” Kinard said to him one day at the courthouse.

“You bet I am,” Mange said. “And I’m going to win.”

In his office, Mange had a list of facts he’d pulled together on the Beard case, indicators that pointed to Celeste’s involvement, everything from dropping Meagan at the lake house to the birthday card she’d sent Tracey, which read, “To the one I love.” Still, he didn’t have the thing he needed most: Tracey’s testimony. He wanted Celeste, and he was willing to deal to get her; but he couldn’t give Kinard and Maguire what they asked for—immunity that would free Tracey. Mange wasn’t buying it now any more than he had when Hampton brought it up nearly two years earlier. “No way I’ll let someone who shot a helpless old man in the middle of the night walk,” he said. “Forget it.”

In February, as Tracey’s trial approached, Maguire and Kinard met with Mange again. This time they were ready to deal. In Del Valle, Tracey had told them she was willing to talk. In fact, she said whether or not they worked out a deal, she wanted to tell Mange everything, including Celeste’s role in the murder. With an eager client, they didn’t dance around the issue. This time they floated only one hypothetical scenario for Tracey’s testimony. Mange was interested. From what he heard, it fit the evidence. With something concrete, the bargaining began. Still, they were worlds apart. Mange wanted Tracey to serve forty years, while Maguire pushed for probation. Gradually, they came to a compromise: Tracey would plead guilty to Steve Beard’s murder and serve twenty years. But before it was set in stone, Mange needed to hear from her what she had to say.

“We’ll talk to our client and get back with you,” Maguire told him.

That afternoon Mange called Paul Beard in Virginia. “Are you willing to plea out Tracey Tarlton on a reduced sentence to get Celeste?” he asked.

“Yes,” Paul said. “Tracey was a pawn. We want Celeste.”

“Okay,” Mange said.

The following day Kinard called Mange. “You’ve got a deal,” he said.

In late March, a week before her trial date, Mange, Kinard, and Maguire all traveled to Del Valle for the debriefing. There, in one of the rooms reserved for attorneys and their clients, over a period of four hours, Tracey talked. She started with the first day she met Celeste at St. David’s and went through to the night of the shooting and their confrontation in Celeste’s driveway the June after Steve died, when Celeste had told her she wanted nothing more to do with her. Then Mange brought out photos of the crime scene and an architect’s diagram of the house he’d gotten from Gus Voelzel.

“Show me how you entered and left the house,” he asked.

Using her finger to trace her path, she talked him through that night, telling how Celeste had done a walk-through with her, then changed it, having her drive up to the back of the house and enter through a door off the pool. While she talked, Mange assessed her. Her intelligence surprised him. It was rare that he’d run across a defendant so bright and articulate. On the witness stand, she’d be powerful. More important, everything she told him matched the physical evidence. It all rang true.