She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [142]
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