She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [43]
That summer at the lake house, Kristina walked in and found her mother standing at a window, holding up a blank check over a cancelled one. With the light shining through illuminating the checks from behind, she traced Steve’s signature onto the blank check. Again, Chuck Fuqua called, this time to tell Steve that his personal checking account was overdrawn. “I’m not sure how Steve figured it out, but what he came up with was that Celeste had gotten very, very good at forging his signature,” says Fuqua.
After that, Steve had his financial papers, including his bank statements, sent to a P.O. box. For a short time he again pondered divorce, telling Kuperman that all wasn’t well, but he never went forward with it. “I guess he just decided against it,” Fuqua would say later. “He did love Celeste and the girls. He thought of them as his family.”
Throughout that summer, Celeste was in a whirlwind. While Steve had controlled the design of the home itself, inside he gave her free reign. Little from the first house except personal mementoes would be moved. Instead, as the house neared completion, Steve took Celeste to Louis Shanks, Austin’s top-end furniture store, where he introduced her to Michael Forwood. Decades earlier Steve had bought furniture from Forwood’s grandfather, the original Louis Shanks, who founded the chain in 1945. With the house plans under his arm, he showed Forwood the vast rooms they’d need to furnish. “I don’t mind paying what’s fair, but I want a good price,” Steve said.
“We’ll take care of it,” Forwood assured him.
From then on Celeste took over. The first time Greg Logsdon, a salesperson at the store, met Celeste, he saw an attractive blonde wandering the store in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Is anyone helping you?” he asked.
“No,” she said, flippantly adding, “probably because of the way I’m dressed. I want to see your Henredon and Baker catalogues.”
Fifteen minutes later Celeste had flipped through the Henredon catalogue and chosen $20,000 in occasional tables and benches. When she instructed Logsdon to put in the order, he asked for a deposit.
“You won’t need that,” she said. “Tell Mike Forwood that Celeste Beard was in.”
Later that day Logsdon relayed the message. “Order anything she wants. Mr. Beard is good for it,” Forwood instructed.
Over the next three years, Celeste was Logsdon’s best customer. She never quibbled about price, and she chose only the very best. For a woman who’d had little money in the past, everyone at Louis Shanks had to admit that Celeste knew what to buy. Sometimes, her requests were exceptional, however, even for a store as upscale as Shanks. There was the time she bought a heavily carved bedroom suite from the Henredon line named Natchez, after the Mississippi city. The king-size, four-poster bed alone ran more than $4,000. Celeste had Logsdon custom-order a heavy damask bedspread and pillows. While such a purchase wasn’t unusual, Celeste’s next request was: She wanted a duplicate of the bed made including the bedding but on a small scale, for her cocker spaniel, Nikki.
They did, at a cost of $3,000.
“I think that’s the first time we ever had a request like that from a customer,” says Forwood. “We were all frankly amazed.”
Steve, however, never questioned the expenditure. In fact, he rarely balked at any of her purchases. The one exception: the day Celeste spent $7,000 on throw pillows. When the bill arrived, Celeste called Logsdon.
“Steve got the bill,” she said. “He called me every name in the book, except my own.”
To mollify the situation, Logsdon gave Celeste an adjustment on the bill. But the next time she walked into Louis Shanks, Steve was beside her, watching over her shoulder as she made purchases. At times, he shook his head no. Celeste bristled.
“That’s why I don’t like to bring him shopping,” she said to Logsdon, loud enough