Sex. Murder. Mystery. (20 page)

Or how unhappy the tall, salt-and-pepper-bearded man had become.

Friends from out of town came calling not long after Sharon and Perry had fallen on hard financial times. The visitors could not believe how much the former churchgoing doctor had changed. He drank to get drunk. He partied to get drunk. He had forsaken everything he once considered important.

Sharon was another matter.

“She was in her element,” said a friend who had accompanied the two of them out dancing at a Trinidad bar where Perry guzzled drinks and Sharon took to the dance floor. “She would twist and wiggle and hang on everyone she could. I just never felt comfortable going out with Perry and Sharon. I could never feel comfortable around her.”

He was an eye doctor, for Heaven's sake. How come he didn’t see so well? Kay Mitchell, the chiropractor's wife, felt sorry for Perry Nelson. He was being destroyed by hanging on to the woman that he had chosen as his wife. Sharon had done everything she could to ruin him. She had drained his business, trashed his reputation, embarrassed him at every turn. And no matter what Sharon did before or after she left Round House, he said he still couldn’t get over her. He didn’t want a divorce.

“You just have to get mad about this whole thing and get over it,” Kay told Perry in the office one morning.

Perry said nothing. He just listened.

“If you can get mad at her, you can get over her. She's done some bad things, you have, too. But no one deserves to be treated like this. Get mad and get over her.”

Perry promised to try.

Kay Mitchell doubted he’d be successful. There was something strange about Sharon's grip on her husband. No matter what she did, he still wanted her.

“Sharon was a typical gold digger,” she said later. “She was out for whatever she could get. She had used Perry for all he had and then moved on. If I were him, I’d have won-dered about what it was that he had that would make her come back. She was a complete user.”

About that same time, Gary was working on a roofing job up in Denver and the two lovers had to keep in contact by telephone. He called Sharon on a Thursday just after she got the new Eagle. She was dying to show it off and suggested they meet at the Denny's in Pueblo.

“To make sure everything is all right,” she said. “Don’t want any mistakes.”

While sipping iced tea at the Denny's, Sharon bragged that if everything went according to plan she would be a wealthy woman. She’d have the insurance money and the car paid off.

“Free and clear,” she asserted. “And if it's done right, I won’t even have to make a regular payment on it.”

Chapter 14

GARY ADAMS WAS NOT ALONE THAT BALMY June night in 1983. He and another man, a friend from way back, waited at the rest stop on 1-25, just outside of Castle Rock. The two smoked cigarettes down to their fibery filters as they passed the time in the cab of Gary's Datsun pickup talking about Sharon and how she had been beaten and abused and ignored by her doctor husband.

Perry didn’t love her.

Perry didn’t treat her right.

Perry was a mean old bastard.

When a familiar little black VW putted by, Gary and his buddy laid a patch of smoldering rubber to catch up. Perry smiled and laughed out loud when Gary pulled his truck alongside and waved him to follow. They pulled over at a tavern in Castle Rock for a few beers. Gary introduced his friend and told Perry he was heading up to Denver, too.

“Sure was a coincidence that we’d meet on the way up,” Gary said.

After downing a few rounds, the three men decided to go to a strip club on the outskirts of Denver. By then, Gary's plan had fully fermented. It was simple and sweet. While he and Perry were in the bathroom, Gary instructed his pal to slip some knockout drops in the doctor's beer. They’d walk the doc out of the place and finish him off.

It was a simple, a good plan. It was a plan all for Sharon.

Back at the table, Perry put the glass to his lips and drank.

After a couple of gulps, he smacked the glass down. He looked disgusted.

“That doesn’t taste good at all,” he said. “Real flat tasting.”

Gary said his beer tasted just fine, but Perry didn’t want any more.

Perry Nelson held his liquor that night. He didn’t get sloppy. He didn’t make it easy for Gary to do what he had come there to do. The music blared and the mix of over-the-hill dancers with makeup-covered stretch marks and younger strippers who were working for enough money for implants slid across the stage. As the hours grew later, eyelids became heavy and it was time to go.

“Where do you want to stay?” Perry called out over the club's obnoxiously loud sound system.

Gary had no idea. He had no preference. Neither did his buddy.

“Why don’t we just pull over to the side of the road?” he suggested.

With what they all had spent drinking, saving a few bucks on a motel seemed like a good idea. Neither Gary nor his friend knew the doctor had about as much money as they had. Sharon had been reupholstering the VW so he could sleep in it to save on a motel, anyway.

“Perry,” Gary said, “don’t tell Nancy you saw me up here. I don’t want her to know I went to a strip joint.”

Perry laughed.

“Don’t you tell Sharon, either.”

“Promise.”

The water of Clear Creek ran through the chasm with the rushing sound that lulls weary travelers to sleep when nightfall comes and they cannot drive a mile further. It was after 2:00 A.M. and the sky was pockmarked with stars poking through pinholes in the blackness when the two vehicles pulled over along the highway in Jefferson County. They were just outside of Golden, west of Denver. Perry popped his seat back and stretched out in the VW, while Gary and his buddy tried to get comfortable in the cramped cab of the pickup.

Even though Perry had let him down by holding his booze with impressive fortitude, Gary Adams still wanted to do the job. But he was tired. His friend was beat. The idea of hitting Perry Nelson over the head with a tire iron sounded like too much work.

“To hell with it, ” he said to his co-conspirator. “Let's just let it go.”

The next morning the three ate breakfast at a Golden cafe, chatted as if they were the best of friends, and waved good-bye.

Gary scratched his head years after, wondering why it was that the plan didn’t work that night. It would have been just perfect.

Damn it anyway,
he thought.

Hours later in the quiet solitude of Round House, Sharon got the shock of her life: Her husband came home. He was supposed to be dead. She was stunned and mad.

Gary Adams recalled what happened:

“Sharon was positive that Perry was not coming back. So when Perry came back she turned white as a ghost. She wasn’t expecting it. She had it in her mind how she was going to tell the cops. How she was going to be the grieving widow. She said she was shaking, turned white as a sheet, you know, scared.”

And very disappointed.

Thursday, a week after the fiasco with the dud knockout drops, Gary left Denver in his rearview mirror and returned to Wet Canyon. He had heard he could scrounge up some construction work in Trinidad, though that was not the real reason he came back. He had to see the woman he had disappointed. But before he made his way to Dr. Nelson's office on Country Club Drive, he ran into Sharon and a car salesman in downtown Trinidad.

“What happened?” She whispered her hot breath into his ear. “What happened?”

It was neither the right time nor the right place to talk. Sharon told Gary they’d have to meet another time.

“Perry's in town today,” she said. What she meant: Do not come to the office. Do not.

“Maybe we could meet next week?” she said softly, out of earshot of the car salesman. “At the lake.”

Trinidad Lake was still one of the lovers’ special places. It always would be. Like an incredible sapphire, the lake shimmered across its surface from one side to the other. Conifers met the water like the jagged edge of a two-man saw. Eagles soared overhead searching for the fish that brought sportsmen from all over the region. Trinidad Lake was serene and lovely. Yet within the beauty of it all was a woman mad at the world. Mad at her lover.

Sharon had become increasingly upset in the days after Perry's miraculous return from the dead. She blamed Gary for botching the plan to murder the man who was the source of all her problems. Gary had no idea how hard it had been on her when Perry returned unscathed. Why hadn’t he thought of how she would react? It scared her to death. Was he so selfish that could not have warned her that he had failed? Gary hadn’t thought of her.

Gary held Sharon, trying to placate her and stop her tirade. He said he would do it again, but not right away. He suggested they might have to wait awhile, perhaps another year.

Sharon's face froze in disbelief. She wouldn’t hear of it.

“Oh no, no,” she said. “Perry's got another meeting up in Denver in July. It would be better to do it then.”

Though Gary had hoped they’d have sex that afternoon, they didn’t. Sharon said she was too upset.

A few days after the lake rendezvous, Sharon invited Gary and Nancy Adams to join her and Perry for dinner up at Round House. Though the timing was suspect, the invitation was not unusual. The Adamses and the Nelsons occasionally got together to play cards, share a dinner or drink coffee or beer. Despite what she had done with Nancy's husband, Sharon still considered the quiet, gentle woman her friend. After the meal, while the women stayed in the kitchen talking, Gary and Perry visited outside on the driveway. Gary told Perry he had heard he was heading back to Denver and he wondered if he could catch a ride.

“I'm going up there to buy some mini-14s,” Gary said, piquing Perry's interest. The guns were stolen and selling for about $50, a bargain. Several men in the canyon had mini-14s and considered the combat-quality firearm perfect for shooting coyotes, even deer.

Perry definitely wanted one.

Gary's voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “Don’t tell Nancy,” he said. “She doesn’t know I'm going to go up there for that. She thinks I'm going to go up there to make some money.”

Perry laughed. He wouldn’t tell her anything.

A week later, Gary Adams was working at a Trinidad construction site when he got word to Nancy that he wouldn’t be coining home that Thursday night. He was going to stay in town to play poker with his buddies. He parked his Datsun at a repair center, telling the mechanics that his brakes needed work.

Next, he called the eye clinic on Country Club Drive.

Sharon, of course, answered.

“I'm planning on catching a ride with Perry,” Gary said.

“Fine,” she said as she handed the phone to her husband.

“On your way out,” Gary said, “can you stop by and pick me up and we’ll go up there and get the guns?”

Perry thought it was a fine idea.

Jim and Julie Whitley were the kind of outgoing people who always made a pack of friends wherever they went. They didn’t know any social boundaries. Julie ran the Pinon Plaza truck stop, and her husband, a former Air Force man, was a mechanic. They were in their late thirties, raising four children in Trinidad, when they met Terry Mitchell and Perry Nelson. At first, they went to the offices on Country Club Drive for their eye and lumbar care. In time, Jim and Julie went just to say hello. Good friends in Trinidad were precious commodities.

One July afternoon when the Whitleys were over at Terry and Kay Mitchell's house going over details on a boat he had hired the couple to refurbish, Perry Nelson drove up in his VW. Perry showed up to show off what Sharon had done to the old car. She had redone the interior, made up an upholstered slant-board that he could pop in place of a seat so he could sleep in it when camping.

Julie said she was impressed and Perry beamed.

Despite how much Sharon had dragged him through the mud, Perry Nelson still could manage to be proud of her. Dr. Mitchell felt sorry for the guy. He just didn’t see what everyone else did.

The drive from Trinidad to Denver is a long one. Four hours, six hours—depending on how fast one drives and how many pit stops are needed along the way. It is a beautiful drive up 1-25 nonetheless: mountains rising to the west and the last edge of the Great Plains to the east. As the black VW sped along, Gary mostly listened as Perry chatted on about his life, his children and, of course, Sharon.

Sharon, he said, had purchased some emeralds from the back pages of a magazine.

“Some investment,” Perry said shaking his head with a disgusted laugh. “Turns out when she went to sell them that they are worthless.”

An animated Perry carried the bulk of the conversation as he pressed his foot against the floorboard and zipped down the highway. The doc was a genuinely nice guy, Gary thought. He didn’t have a bad word for anyone. Gary was no expert on human behavior, but as far as he could tell it seemed out of character that Perry Nelson was an abuser of his wife and children. The bruises Sharon had pointed out on her body began to gnaw at the VW's passenger. Gary Adams wondered if he had been duped. While smacking Sharon wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities, considering how she acted some of the time, Dr. Nelson didn’t seem the type to do it.

“I don’t think I’ll ever see my older girls again,” Perry said at one point on the drive. His words were full of resignation and Gary chose not to follow up on the comment. He didn’t know if it was because of a wedge Sharon had driven between the girls and their father, though, he figured, that could have been the reason for it. Sharon had complained about the grown daughters.

Gary changed the subject. With what was on his mind, the comment bothered him.

It was close to 7:00 P.M. when the city of Pueblo came into view and they stopped for a bite at the Burger King. Perry had a chicken sandwich and Gary ate a hamburger. After eating, they zipped over to the mall so Perry could say hello to a friend who ran a Pearle Vision optical center there. When they pulled up it was obvious they were too late. The mall had closed.

Though Perry was disappointed, Gary felt relieved. He didn’t want to see anyone; he didn’t want anyone to see him.