Sex. Murder. Mystery. (12 page)

No one bought it.

In the end, custody papers in her face, she gave in.

“Let him have them,” she said quietly.

Judy thought her sister didn’t fight that hard to keep the little girls. Not really.

Not as hard as she would have if she had been their mother.

When Sharon Fuller returned to Rocky Ford for good in December 1976, it brought an unexpected sense of relief to Julie Nelson. She had been unable to eat or sleep decently for weeks. Julie knew her marriage was over and her husband had wanted to be with the preacher’s wife. She even suspected they had met during one of his business trips to Denver, though she couldn’t prove it. She longed for the day when she wouldn’t have to prove anything. When she wouldn’t have to worry she would stumble on a motel-room receipt or a bill from a jeweler for something given to the Other Woman. When Christmas came and went, it was clear the family would never be as it was before Sharon Nelson had crept into their lives.

The preacher’s wife had a hold on the doctor that was tungsten.

When Perry told Julie that he and Sharon were once again going to make a life together, he said that she could stay on in Rocky Ford and even keep her old job in the medical office.

Julie didn’t think so.

“I’m going to California,” she said. “I’ve already made up my mind. No matter what happens here.”

Mother and youngest daughter packed what they could load into an old Pontiac on January 2, 1977. Julie knew she was not coming back. Lorri halfway hoped that her parents would work it out eventually. She didn’t want to leave her father. She didn’t see why she had to go.

When Perry came out to wish them a safe trip, he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and whispered, “Julie, everything’s going to be all right.”

Julie said nothing. She had heard that before. Ten thousand times.

“I meant to get you a better car,” he said.

Julie didn’t care one whit about the car. “It’s fine,” she answered.

“Maybe, if things don’t work out,” Perry continued, “you’ll want to come back and we can start over.”

His remark stunned Julie. “I won’t,” she said. She couldn’t imagine why he would even suggest such a thing. “And if I ever did,” she said, “I would not want to start over here.”

Not with you.

She stopped herself from saying more. It was a reflex, not a true assessment about how she felt. She wondered how Perry and Sharon thought they could start over in Rocky Ford. They had stirred up a scandal the likes of which no one had ever seen. And they believed they could act as though they had done nothing wrong? Incredible.

Still crying as she put the car into gear and drove out of town, something came over Julie and stopped the tears. Almost in an instant, she started laughing with Lorri. All of the hurt of her marriage was gone. All of the pain she had endured left as suddenly as the sun dropping behind a cloud.

She knew everything would be all right.

“I had a promise from God,” Julie said later. ”I couldn’t have shed another tear from that moment on.”

When her mood was foul, Sharon had the demeanor of an executioner. When she started back to work in the Trinidad optometry office, she picked up where she had left off. She would make no doctor’s employee of the month, even if the office had a staff of one.

Some of Dr. Nelson’s patients tolerated Sharon, but many found her to be snotty, impatient and downright rude. A well-to-do family from up the river was one of the first to bail out on Dr. Nelson’s practice because of Sharon’s rotten attitude. The family’s youngest son planned on getting contact lenses as a wedding present for his 17-year-old bride. Since Barb was mired in a mountain of paperwork, Perry asked Sharon to dispense the lenses to the girl.

Out of the corner of her eye, Barb watched as Sharon showed the girl how to put the hard contacts in. The girl winced in pain, as many first-time wearers do. She started to shake and cry.

“This hurts,” she sobbed. “Please get them out! Take them out!”

For some reason, Sharon just sat there. So Barb got up and helped the girl.

“I don’t want these,” the girl said, tears still running down her cheeks. “They hurt.”

Sharon stood up like a rocket.

“You’re nothing but a damn baby! I won’t even bother with you.” She turned on her heels and advised Barb that if she wanted to dispense the lenses, it was fine with her.

“I’m not even going to bother with her!”

Then she disappeared into a back office.

The young husband shot a glare in Sharon’s direction and told Barb they didn’t have to take that kind of abuse from anyone.

“Mrs. Ruscetti,” he said, “this doesn’t pertain to you, but none of my family will ever come back to this office as long as she’s here.”

And they never did.

As much as she enjoyed the full freedom of the office, at least as it had been in the days before Sharon, Barb Ruscetti began to hate to leave her desk. It seemed that every time she did, she’d return to find Sharon rifling papers, going through files and generally poking her nose into every piece of paperwork she could get her hands on.

As the guerrilla attacks on the office files continued, no matter how often Barb asked Sharon to cool it, she’d laugh it off. Tension increased. Sharon was pushing Barb’s buttons with reckless abandon.

“What are you looking for?” Barb asked, as Sharon bent over and fanned out some files from a bottom drawer. Caught, Sharon stood up, her skirt still clinging halfway up her thigh.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Then get the hell out from behind my desk or I’ll throw you out the damn window!”

Sharon smiled and moved out of the way.

Barb wished she had pushed her out. In the long run, it probably would have been an act of mercy for so many.

Chapter 8

SHARON’S EYES HAD TURNED FROM BLUE TO red. Her prettily painted mouth was a taut gash of lipstick and anger. If she was a bitch on wheels, as Barb Ruscetti had characterized her during their first encounter, that morning in Perry Nelson’s Trinidad office she was running the Indy 500. She had heard more bad news: Now Mike was seeking full, permanent custody of Rochelle and Denise in Otero County Superior Court. When she arrived to tell Perry about it, she stomped her heels like a petulant child and flung obscenities about the room like boomerangs welded of steak knives. One after another sliced through the air. Sharon seemed to pay no mind that patients could hear her tirade. She cared nothing about anyone. Sharon Fuller was, as Barb could see, the center of her own universe. And she was fit to be tied. “That fucker! That fucker can’t do this to me!”

Barb was aghast. This was Dr. Nelson’s office, not a miners’ pool hall. She tried to understand Sharon’s bitterness. She tried very hard. Each time she went to the place in her heart where she could retrieve sympathy for others, she came up with nothing for the woman slamming things around the office and using every dirty name in the book against her husband. The minister’s estranged wife was not going to get any support from her. She had done her husband dirtier than any woman Barb had ever seen, heard about, read about. She was vile and evil. Sharon had lost her children because she was a neglectful mother. The two little girls were better off without her.

“Perry, call the goddamn judge in La Junta and put a stop to this. You know him! Call him now!”

Perry stepped back from Sharon’s screaming mouth and slowly shook his head.

“No,” he said, quietly but with considerable firmness. “This is between you and Mike. I’m staying out of it.”

Sharon grabbed for the phone. In a minute she was on the line screaming at the top of her lungs to the unlucky court employee who picked up the line.

“Don’t fuck with me and my girls!” Sharon raged into the mouthpiece. “They’re my girls! Mike can’t have them!”

After she vented her anger for what had to be only a few seconds, but seemed much longer, the line went dead. Enraged at being disconnected by some two-bit clerk, Sharon threw the phone halfway across the back office. It clattered against the floor.

“I’ll show that son of a bitch! If he thinks he’s going to take my girls away from me! I’m not going to lose my daughters! They’re mine! Mine!`

A few weeks later, Perry pulled Barb aside in the office to tell her what had happened when Sharon went to court to hammer out a final joint-custody agreement with her former husband.

“Oh Barb, it was something else,” Perry said one afternoon when Sharon was not around.

“Well, what happened?” Barb asked.

“Mike got up and said what she did—she didn’t even get to talk—the judge just said, ‘I declare you a whore, and I am taking your two daughters away from you! You will not even have visiting rights until they turn thirteen years old! When they turn thirteen years of age they can make up their minds if they want to stay with their so-called mother or go with their father.’”

Barb couldn’t imagine a judge saying such things. No man of the law talked that way. But then she couldn’t have dreamed up a woman like Sharon Lynn Fuller, either.

Sharon hated living in another woman’s house. Signs of Perry’s life with Julie were evident everywhere she looked: the wallpaper, the carpet, the way the dishes had been put away. All were reminders of her man’s life with another woman. She couldn’t stand living there one more minute. They put the Nelson place in Rocky Ford up for sale. Sharon sold the convertible Mike had left her, and she and Perry bought a tiny gray ‘‘dollhouse’’ further down 10th, between Pine and Locust Streets.

The instant their divorces went through, Sharon wanted to get married. She had given up so much for Perry Nelson that she damn well would not tolerate a long engagement. Perry readily agreed. In reality, he had no choice. He had been the focus of such derision since leaving Julie for Sharon that a happy ending would be his only salvation.

Sharon made her own wedding dress, not because she had to, but because she could and she wanted to. It was a Gunny Sax pattern that flowed full and long to the floor with a cinched bodice that accentuated her full breasts. She selected a light, wheat-colored material, though it was more a preference than an acknowledgment that white fabric would have been inappropriate for the bride. She also fashioned the flouncy brim of a straw hat with silk flowers and lace. She picked out a beige leisure suit for Perry.

On July 1, 1977, the pair that had scandalized Trinidad and Rocky Ford exchanged wedding vows in a private ceremony at the St. Francis of Assisi Mission in Taos. It had to be Taos, for Sharon. The place had seemed magical from that first weekend trip during which she’d gotten to know Perry. The couple honeymooned over the next couple of days, spending their last afternoon in Santa Fe.

When they returned to Colorado, the local gossip line percolated with the latest.

He married her. The eye doc married the minister’s wife!

For many in Rocky Ford, the news that Sharon and Perry had tied the knot brought more resignation than joy. When they came back as man and wife, few marked the occasion with a gift. It just didn’t seem appropriate.

Nor, to some, did it seem genuine.

“I felt like the whole marriage was a show,” said a woman who knew all parties in the sordid and tragic Nelson saga. “It was like they were trying so hard to portray that they were so happy. They were trying to prove to the world they had done nothing wrong, that their love was good and right. It didn’t matter about Mike and the kids or Julie and the girls. Their love was higher than that. Sharon was always a big one for appearances. She wanted everything new and perfect in her home. But it was just for looks. Her marriage was the same way. There was no heart to anything she had or did.”

Living in California with Lorri, Julie, for one, was surprised when she got word of the July union. She checked with her lawyer and he confirmed that though the divorce was pending, it had not yet been made final at the time of the Taos wedding. Julie let it sit. She didn’t want the man anymore.

Those two deserve each other
, she thought.

Sharon Nelson could spit tacks. She had never been so angry in all her life; at least, she couldn’t think of a time when she had been. At the end of a visit, Rochelle Fuller informed her mother that her daddy was moving her and her sister to Ohio the next morning. Since Mike had legal custody, Sharon saw no way of stopping him.

“I saw them drive away,” she told a friend, “and I didn’t know when I’d see my girls again.”

Three weeks later, a letter arrived addressed to Sharon. In the missive, Mike indicated that even though he had moved to pastor a new church out-of-state, visitation with their daughters could continue. Sharon and Perry would get Rochelle and Denise for Christmas vacation and two weeks in the summer. They’d have to arrange for transportation to and from Ohio.

Sharon considered waging a legal battle for her daughters, particularly Rochelle, whom she knew was not Mike’s biological daughter.

“I didn’t know how to do it without tearing [Rochelle] up, totally. How do I drag [Rochelle] through court without screwing [her] up more than [her] mother?” she asked.

Sharon did what she did best when it came to her children. She let them go. She let Mike have them.

* * *

Sharon was supposed to pay the bills at the office. It was such a joke. Sharon paid nothing. All the money that came into the business was hers. She was now the doctor’s wife and she was entitled to all the bucks that come with the title. She certainly wasn’t helping matters. Whenever there were two nickels in the till, she’d liberate the funds. She had made a practice of shopping in the mornings and coming back to the office to show Barb what she had purchased before leaving for lunch with her husband.

One day Barb got a nasty surprise when she got on the line to place an order for contact lenses with a Dallas manufacturer that had been doing business with the Nelson practice for years.

“Barb,” the account manager said before they could barely exchange the pleasantries that cross-country vendors and clients often do, “we can’t send you any more lenses until your bill is paid.”

“What do you mean? It’s paid the first of every month.”