03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (6 page)

“She told the judge she didn’t want to come,” he answered.

“Mom told her to say that,” she replied.

In July, Craig and Kathryn wrote their letters to the judge, detailing reasons Kristina would be better off with them:
“Celeste is a pathological liar… She often takes the facts of situations … and twists them … taking something she did to someone and twisting it around as if they did it to her. It almost seems as if she believes it herself after a while.

“Celeste Martinez is a greedy, uncaring, cruel and evil individual …
She is an accomplished con artist and is extremely dangerous.”

A month later, on August 10, in Washington, Jennifer met with the lawyer the court appointed to represent her interests. She was nervous, fidgeting in the chair as they talked. But when he asked, she was resolute: She never wanted to visit or live with Celeste again.

“Why?” she was asked.

“Mom makes me tell people lies, and I don’t like that,” she said.

At the country club, many members grew fond of Celeste. Among them were Anita Inglis and her husband Jerry. “She was charming. And she talked a lot about trying to regain custody of her daughters,” says Anita, an attorney and former prosecutor. “Some members slipped her hundred dollar bills to help pay for an attorney.”

One week, Celeste called Anita and said she had nasal cancer and needed surgery. She said she had nowhere to leave Kristina. Although she hardly knew Celeste, Anita told her she’d care for her daughter.

Forty-five minutes later Celeste and Kristina rang the bell. When Anita opened the door, she saw Celeste with a slight, quiet young girl with her mother’s athletic build, dark blond hair, and large blue eyes. “She was a little mouse, just scared to death,” says Anita, whose heart went out to the girl.

That week, Anita, a kind woman with thick, dark hair and a motherly manner, took Kristina to school and helped with her homework. At night she and Jerry tucked her in. “The whole time, Kris worried about Celeste. She kept asking when she’d be coming back,” she says. “She was this very sad but very sweet little girl.”

A week later Celeste returned and reclaimed Kristina. Not long after, she called again, this time asking for legal help
with the custody battle. Craig had won, and the Washington court had ordered her to send Kristina to him in Washington. Anita met with her and with Kristina. Without Celeste in the room, Anita asked Kris, “Honey, what do you want? Do you want to live with your mom or with your dad?”

“I want to live with my mom,” Kristina answered.

Anita wrote petitions and tried to help, but the decisions went against Celeste. Days later Celeste put Kristina on an airplane in Austin, but Kristina never arrived in Seattle. During a Dallas layover, she refused to reboard. Although Celeste had repeatedly abandoned her, Kristina loved her mother so much she refused to leave her.

In Washington, Craig told Jennifer, “We have to let it be.”

That fall, many at the Austin Country Club noticed Steve Beard, a wealthy television executive, sitting alone at a table, eating dinner and staring out the window as darkness fell over the golf course. The death of his beloved wife had left the once gregarious man an empty shell. He asked around, looking for someone to hire as his house manager. Days later Celeste had the job.

In late 1994, Steve had no way of understanding who Celeste really was. Instead, he must have seen an attractive young mother who needed help and protection. As she had with so many others, Celeste told him her twisted version of her life, in which she was a victim, not someone who had destroyed lives across three states. “Steve was the kind of guy who figured he was a good judge of character. He went with his gut about people,” says a friend. “And Celeste was beautiful and persuasive.”

“S
teve Beard was an old-fashioned Texas busi
nessman,” says a friend. “He was the kind of guy who’d take a little bit to get to know you, maybe even give you a little shit about something at first, but if he liked you, he was your friend for the rest of your life.”

Born on November 27, 1924, Steven F. Beard Jr. grew up in a modest Dallas neighborhood and came of age in an era when men earned a living while women stayed home and raised families. He was a member of the old school, a successful businessman who worked hard and made his own way in the world, relying on his wits and talents. He believed in keeping his private life private, and that it was his duty to take care of his wife and children. Later, his youngest son, Paul, would remember little about his father’s father, except that Steve had a falling out with him and rarely talked of the man. But Steve loved his mother, a tall, proud woman with a well-carved profile.

In early pictures, Steve was a handsome boy, with a crop of dusty brown hair combed determinedly to the side. Even
then he had a wide smile and a slight paunch around the middle. After high school he had a hard time finding himself. He migrated to three colleges: Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, and the University of Georgia, majoring in advertising and marketing. He earned a degree in chiropractic medicine, although he never practiced. In World War II, with the nation in turmoil, Steve joined the navy and trained as a pilot and an engineer at the U.S. Maritime Academy in Kings Point, New York. He worked as a supply officer on a ship, and after the war, joined the Coast Guard for a stint.

Out of the service, with thousands of GIs returning home, jobs were scarce, and Steve felt lucky to land a fifteen-dollar-a-week shoe salesman’s job at Neiman Marcus in Dallas. There he met a young model from Arkansas, Elise Adams. A pretty girl with a petite figure, she’d attended the University of Texas at Austin and played clarinet in the band during the time Tom Landry, the legendary Dallas Cowboy’s coach, played football for the school.

Steve and Elise had much in common. Both loved the outdoors. For all her grace on a runway, Elise was a tomboy at heart. They went camping and fishing, and quickly fell in love. “I don’t know that it was love at first sight, but I think it must have been,” says Paul. “My mom and dad had their ups and downs, but they loved each other dearly.”

In their wedding photo, Elise is stunning in a flowing chiffon wedding gown and carrying a bouquet of roses. She looks so thrilled to be marrying Steve that looking at the photo, one might have assumed her groom was Neiman’s chairman of the board, not a young shoe salesman. At twenty-three, Steve has a boyish face, dark eyes, and generous cheeks. He is wide in the girth, giving him an ample appearance in his white dinner jacket and slender, Errol Flynn–style bow tie.

The future media exec first got interested in TV and radio in college, when he worked as a student broadcaster at TCU. Knowing where his interests lay, as soon as he could he quit Neiman Marcus and joined Dallas’s KRLD radio, doing whatever they asked, even sweeping floors. From KRLD he signed on at Tracy-Locke Advertising Agency. It was there Steve came into his own, finding his niche, selling ads. He produced TV commercials for the nation’s top companies, including Haggar Slacks, Borden Dairies, and Imperial Sugar. In 1948, Locke transferred Steve to New York, where he and Elise had their first child, Steven III, while living in the suburbs.

From Tracy-Locke, Steve signed on in 1950 with John Blair & Company, a nationwide firm that sold radio and television commercial time, and he returned to Dallas to open the firm’s southwest regional sales operation. While they were there, their second child, Becky, was born. In 1953 their third and final child, Paul, made his entrance.

At just twenty-six years old, Steve was a superstar at Blair. He was committed, hardworking, and bright. And he had a way about him, a boisterous, effervescent personality that advertisers liked. When he entertained clients in New Orleans, he introduced himself to the proprietors of the city’s best restaurants. They remembered him when he returned, and he got top-shelf service. Soon, Steve could walk into any of that city’s top restaurants without reservations and get a center-stage table. “We called him the mayor of Bourbon Street,” says a friend. “Everybody knew Steve. He was the kind of guy who made an impression. He was easy to do business with, ethical, never a question about him honoring a promise, and fun to be around. Just an all-around good guy.”

Quickly, Steve was promoted and brought back to New York to work for Blair’s television division, where he was
responsible for sales development with many of the city’s largest ad agencies. But he never truly settled in back East. He loved Texas and asked to be transferred home to Dallas. In 1954 he got his wish and returned as Blair’s vice president and manager of the southwest regional operation. He and Elise bought a two-story, five-bedroom house in exclusive North Dallas. With a putting green and a swimming pool in the backyard, the Beard house became a destination on July Fourth, when Steve manned the grill and closed the festivities with fireworks. “On holidays, he always assumed we’d be together with family,” says Paul. “Family was important to Dad and Mom both.”

When Paul joined the YMCA swim team, Steve rushed home from the office early to be his coach. He timed his son’s laps in the backyard pool, pushing him to be competitive. One day, Paul was hit by a car while bicycling. Steve, in his Jaguar, rushed to the scene so fast the police couldn’t stop him on the freeway. When he finally pulled over, he informed them that they could follow him and write the ticket but that he was headed to the accident. “He was a good dad, always there for us,” says Paul.

There was little that Steve liked better than giving gifts. At Christmas he presided over the celebration, grinning as the family opened their presents. One year he surprised Elise with a beautiful gold watch; another year, he parked a brand new 1962 Oldsmobile F85 station wagon out front, visible from the bay window. “Don’t you notice anything?” he said, growing exasperated as he waited with excitement for Elise to see the car.

The truth was, Elise never liked station wagons. She preferred sportier cars, like another of Steve’s presents, a 1969 Camaro with a black and orange houndstooth interior, just like that year’s Indy pace car. “He knocked her socks off,” says Paul.

As his success grew, Steve bought the family a three-hundred-acre weekend ranch with two creeks and a lake, near Gainesville, Texas, where they raised Beefmaster cattle, horses, and 150 head of sheep. Steve worked long hours, but in his time off, he took Paul and Steve fishing and hunting for dove, geese, and quail. Later, when beef prices plummeted and Steve’s allergies worsened, he sold the ranch and bought a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser they kept on Lake Dallas. Summer vacations were car trips to Padre Island, a Texas barrier island that forms a long string of beach fringed by high-rise hotels. In 1964 he took the entire family to the New York World’s Fair.

A man with a big appetite, over the years Steve grew round at the waistline. He slicked his hair back and wore a small mustache. With a ruddy complexion, he resembled the rotund comic Jackie Gleason. His laugh as full of life as the star of the
Honeymooners,
friends described Steve as “hale and hearty,” “a man’s man,” “boisterous,” and “fun.”

Known for never mincing words and telling friends exactly what she thought, Elise was his match. Never shy, she sang in a women’s barbershop quartet wearing a fringed, 1920s flapper dress on her petite and athletic frame. After the early years of raising three children, she took up golf and became an exceptional player, one year winning the championship at Brookhaven Country Club, where they were members. She taught Paul and Steven III to golf and spent so much time on the links, three to four days a week, that at times Steve resented her dedication to the game. Yet, as active as she was, Elise was a chain smoker. Friends rarely saw her without a cigarette in her mouth. And, they both enjoyed their cocktails. “Dad liked his vodka,” says Paul. “He wasn’t an alcoholic, but he definitely liked to drink.”

Yet, Steve was a careful man. He often told friends that while young he’d been pulled over for drinking and driving.
From that point on, he never drank more than he knew he could manage if he planned to get behind the wheel. “He called his drinks ‘Whitey Loudmouths,’ because he got happier when he was drinking, and louder,” says a friend. “But he never drank before five and never that I saw to the stage that he was sloppy drunk.”

As they aged, Elise and Steve remained very much a conservative and traditional married couple. She spoke her mind, but he ruled the family. As he grew successful, they became wealthy, but never threw around money. “Steve remembered the Great Depression,” says one old friend. “He didn’t much care for people who bought just to buy. He wasn’t cheap, but he expected to get something for his dollar.”

At work, Steve’s employees called him Mr. Beard, but he didn’t treat them as underlings. Instead, he had a deep interest in people and worked hard to bring along those who showed promise. When Blair purchased KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, Steve was appointed to the board of directors and helped plan programming. He did well at Blair, but then, with the children grown and gone, he eyed a new challenge. In 1982, Steve heard that the FCC was offering a license for a new Austin television station. Steve called Darrold Cannan, a wealthy friend and a customer throughout his years at Blair, and asked him to be his partner in the deal.

Until the late seventies, the three networks—NBC, ABC, and CBS—ruled the marketplace, and independent stations weren’t considered viable. The availability of sitcom reruns changed that, making independents suddenly attractive investments. Cannan readily agreed that the new Austin station appeared to be a good opportunity. With his own money and Cannan’s to back him, Steve spearheaded a bid to win the FCC license. Out of five applications, three made it to the final stages: Steve’s and two others. To win the license,
Steve negotiated an alliance, bringing one of the competing applicants in as a third partner. The strategy worked, and in 1982 he won his bid to found Austin’s new, independent television station. When Steve left Blair and Dallas, his staff threw him a party. As a parting gift, they commissioned a caricature of him as a cowboy in chaps and spurs heading toward Austin.

The owner of fifteen percent of the stock in the new station, Steve moved quickly. He and Elise rented an Austin apartment, and he took on the formidable job of general manager. In a smart marketing move, he named Channel 42 KBVO after the University of Texas football team’s beloved mascot, Bevo, a Texas longhorn steer. Running the operation on a shoestring, he opened a small office and hired a skeleton staff. At the opening party, Steve was an enthusiastic host, introducing KBVO to the city and potential advertisers.

“Steve was nearing sixty when he came to Austin, and he was older in body but had a young mind and a young heart,” says Ray McEachern, KBVO-TV’s financial officer, and later its station manager. “Lots of the television stations ran ads in the little towns in the viewing area. Steve hired the local high school bands and put on parades. People loved it. He drove his BMW in the parades and waved at people, with a big smile on his face.”

Yet Steve wasn’t all sunshine and smiles. If someone crossed him, he stood his ground. One afternoon McEachern came to him about a client who owed the station more than $100,000. Steve was furious. It was in the first months of the station, when ratings weren’t commanding big ad dollars and drawing in ads wasn’t easy. McEachern feared alienating the customer, a media buyer for a large soap company. Steve had no such qualms. He picked up the phone and called the man. “I have to pay when I buy at the store. You’ve
got to pay here,” he said. He then told the man that in the future he’d have to pay cash to advertise on KBVO.

McEachern thought that Steve had lost a big client, but the following day a check for the client’s arrears arrived plus another $20,000 for future ads. When Ray showed him the check, Steve wasn’t surprised. “Never, ever let anyone mess with you,” he said.

Over the years, the one blind spot McEachern noticed in Steve involved women. “They seemed to be able to hoodwink him,” he says, saying Steve made exceptions for women that he wouldn’t for the men, such as not questioning when they needed time off. “Steve never thought badly of a woman. He respected them.”

At KBVO, Steve’s acumen quickly paid off, making the station a resounding success. “There was a real opening for a fourth station,” says one observer. “Steve ran old movies and sitcom reruns, and the ads came in, and the revenues climbed.”

In 1986 the Fox network mushroomed across the nation. Under Steve’s guidance, KBVO became Austin’s Fox affiliate, and more success followed. Throughout Austin, Steve became a familiar sight, driving his BMW with his KBVO license plates. He affixed magnetic
FOX
42,
KIDS’ CLUB
placards on the sides, advertising the station’s children’s show, where the main character dressed as Bevo, the steer. Children waved and called out to him, and Steve waved back, loving the attention.

Living the good life, Steve loved food and drank, and his weight climbed until he flirted with 300 pounds on his five-foot-ten-inch frame. Yet his weight never seemed to bother him. On the golf course he was too wide to bend down to tee his ball. His friends did it for him. When McEachern drove in his car with him, Steve snickered at joggers. “Look at that guy,” he said playfully. “Hell, he’s all red in the face, huffing
and puffing. You can’t tell me that damned exercise is good for people.”

He told a friend: “Elise loves me the way I am, and I’m happy. That’s all that matters. Life is good.”

And Elise did love him. Throughout their years together, they were a team. “She adored him,” says a friend. “When she looked at him, you could see she’d never stopped loving him.”

Steve felt the same way about her. Each day at five-thirty he stopped what he was doing, straightened his desk, then called Elise and asked what he could pick up for her at the grocery store. “Do you need anything?” he’d ask, taking out his pen to write a list.