She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [160]
With MacLeod and the medical professionals who’d treated Steve, DeGuerin picked away at the gentlemanly image of Steve the prosecutors were building. While he might have been kind and generous when he was sober, he maintained, Steve was an alcoholic. “He denied dependence on alcohol, didn’t he?” the defense attorney railed.
“Yes,” MacLeod said.
Of course, another explanation was offered by the prosecutors’ witnesses: Steve had never known how much alcohol he was ingesting, unaware he drank Everclear instead of vodka. Christopher Doose backed up Amy Cozart’s testimony, but further exposed Celeste’s bizarre actions. On the trip West, he testified, he and Justin had to help Steve to the car, because Celeste fed him ground-up sleeping pills in his cottage cheese.
Then Wetzel turned her attention to the night of the shooting.
“Had she ever brought Meagan to the lake house late at night before?” she asked.
“No,” Christopher said, looking directly at the jury. “It was definitely out of the ordinary.”
“How did she look that night?”
“Frantic,” he said.
“Did you bring up a name of who you thought might have shot Steve?”
“Yes, Tracey,” Christopher said. “Celeste had been crying. She stopped. She got really serious and said, ‘No, it wasn’t and don’t say that. That’s not true.’”
“Her demeanor changed?”
“One hundred and eighty degrees,” he said.
During cross exam DeGuerin went on the attack. “You never told Steve that Celeste called him names behind his back?”
“No,” Christopher admitted.
“You never told him about the Everclear or the sleeping pills?”
“No.”
“I thought you liked Steve.”
“I did,” Christopher said.
DeGuerin came down hard on the somber-looking young man on the stand, dressed in a suit, his sandy brown hair closely cropped. As hard as he pushed, Christopher didn’t back off, even when the defense attorney accused him and the other teens of stealing the evidence they’d given prosecutors. The only time he resembled DeGuerin’s spoiled-brat theme was when he decribed ten million dollars as “a modest amount.”
For a moment the entire courtroom gasped.
“Didn’t Celeste fall apart after Steve’s death, have to go to Timberlawn?” DeGuerin asked, implying she had loved her husband.
“She went to appease the bank,” Christopher answered.
“I didn’t ask you that,” DeGuerin said, furious.
At the end, Wetzel had Christopher on redirect. “Why didn’t you tell Steve Beard the bad things his wife was doing?” she asked.
His face flushed and his eyes filled with tears. “I was young, but that’s no excuse,” he said. “I didn’t understand what was really going on, the implications.”
“Knowing what you know now, if you could go back and tell Steve Beard these things, would you?” Wetzel asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, crying harder. “Every day, I wish I could change what happened.”
In the gallery, Steve Beard’s grown children wept softly, and in the jury box some of those who would decide Celeste’s fate wiped their eyes.
“Did Celeste talk about her husband?” Cobb asked Justin when he took the stand.
“She called him, old, evil, fat, mean, and controlling… Prior to meeting him I believed he was an evil person.”
“Did your opinion change?”
“Yes. He would joke with me, tell stories, and talk to me about how I was doing in school… I liked him.”
“Was there a point where it was assumed without asking [that you would stay over in Kristina’s bedroom]?” Cobb asked.
“Yes.”
“Was there a night you were told you couldn’t stay there?”
Justin stared straight ahead, never looking toward the defense table. “Yes. The night Mr. Beard was shot.”
“Who told you that you couldn’t stay that night?”
“Celeste.”
On the stand, Justin hesitated at times,