Sex. Murder. Mystery. (21 page)

Nothing really stops a Colorado highway. Mountains that get in the way are bored clear through. Ledges are blasted out of granite slopes and roads are laid in like Band-Aids. A mile above tunnel one on Highway 6, near Golden, is Clear Creek. In the summer it is a scenic spot for a picnic as water gently runs the rocky gauntlet. Boulders rise high enough from the water for kids to hopscotch across one side to an-other. But spring and fall bring a different picture. Water courses through a rocky canyon making Clear Creek neither clear nor a creek.

A diamond-shaped road sign warned travelers who pulled over to rest or take photographs: CLIMB TO SAFETY IN CASE OF FLASH FLOOD.

Though it had been raining intermittently for hours, the clouds opened up and the freeway became the world's largest car wash. By the time the VW reached the creek, it was a full-fledged downpour. As they went through the tunnel, Gary asked Perry to pull over.

“Got to take a piss,” the younger man said.

It was around 4:00 A.M. when he made it back to his place in the canyon. Gary Adams’ blue jeans had dried by then, but his muscular body still hurt like hell. He winced vaguely as he pulled into the dusty driveway leading to the Dude Ranch. He was wired and agitated. He told himself Perry was dead, but he couldn’t be sure of it. He hoped that he was dead, because if he wasn’t there would be hell to pay. If Perry was alive, Gary knew he was going to jail for a long, long time. He watched the sun rise and paced the floor.

At 9:00 A.M., Gary could take just sitting around no more. He had to do something. He announced to his wife, Nancy, that he needed to take care of some business in Ratone, about an hour away. On the way out the door, he suggested a quick detour.

“Perry owes me some money,” he said to Nancy as she got into the car. “Let's go by there and see if he's home:”

Nancy agreed. Since it was early, she’d sit in the car while Gary ran inside to get the cash. It wasn’t polite to go bother neighbors without a phone call or an invitation.

Sharon answered the door in her bathrobe, slit open to reveal most of her ample breasts.

“Everything is okay,” he said. “Perry's not coming back.” He didn’t tell her he was not absolutely positive about it, because he worried that she’d get more skittish than he already was.

“You’re sure?” she asked. “Everything's all right?”

“Everything's okay.”

Sharon fished around for a hundred dollars and handed the money to her mountain man.

“You’re sure he's not coming back?” she asked once more.

“No, he's not.”

Gary and Nancy Adams spent the day and night in a Raton motel, a good hour from what Gary had assumed would be the heat of a crime investigation. Nancy, of course, had no idea why they needed to get away. She was just glad to be alone with her husband. When they made love, Nancy never noticed the scrapes and bruises on her husband's body. At least, she never said anything about it.

Nancy, Gary believed, suspected nothing. And why would she? Gary was certain his wife liked Sharon. Friends don’t steal another friend's husband.

“Sharon and Nancy were best friends,” he said later. “It might sound crazy, but I had everything covered.”

Chapter 15

SUMMER TEMPERATURES HAD SHORN THE mountains of much of their snow, but they were as magnificent as Bob and Donna Goodhead remembered from their visit in October, the year before. En route to a Denver optical convention, the Goodheads returned to Weston and Wet Canyon the afternoon of July 23, 1983. Of course, they came to see Perry, but they also wanted another look at the thirty-two-acre property they had purchased to bail him out of some serious financial problems. Bob Goodhead had it in his mind that he would build a cabin and retire in Wet Canyon. He and his optometry school buddy would shoot the breeze and pal around until they were old and gray.

Donna Goodhead wasn’t so keen on the idea. She didn’t like the idea of spending any time—especially not her final years—with Sharon Nelson. Bob pressed on with his dream. He frequently remarked to folks back in Oklahoma that his Colorado acreage was so dam beautiful that if it had been in Tulsa, it would have been a city park. Few would argue the point when they saw the pictures.

It was not a surprise visit. Bob called over the Fourth of July holiday and spoke with Perry. Both men were going to take courses offered by the Mountain States Congress of Optometry at the rambling Denver Tech Center. Perry was not going to attend the convention, per se. Instead, he signed up for a pharmacology course that would garner him the certification allowing him to prescribe medicine. Since the two eye docs would not be together in Denver, plans were made to visit before and after in Weston.

Going to see Sharon and Perry was not atop Donna Good-head's Summertime Must-Do List. She understood her husband's friendship included Sharon by default. She’d have to put up with the woman. Donna didn’t like going to Round House, either. She dreaded ending up in a place like that— Bob's retirement dream or not. Donna considered Round House too isolated. It scared her. It was like dropping off the face of the earth just to get up the Nelsons’ godforsaken driveway.

Once Donna talked with Perry about that isolation.

“Perry, what if you need medical attention? What if something happens to you out here? You’ll kill yourself getting out of here. What if you cut your arm chopping wood?”

“We don’t think about that. We like the freedom of living in nature.”

I’ll bet,
Donna thought.
More like au naturel, than nature
.

As they climbed the dusty, rocky driveway, the Goodheads noticed the topaz gleam of the new Jeep Eagle parked outside.

“I just can’t fathom how they can afford a new car,” Donna said. “Bob, they don’t even have groceries half the time.”

Bob didn’t disagree with Donna's sentiments. As much as he liked the man, there was no mistaking Perry was mixed-up when it came to money. Maybe, he hoped, things were better now.

While the Goodheads continued to chew over the subject of the Nelson finances, Sharon appeared at the doorway. A neon sign of makeup flashed across her features. Her top dropped so low it looked more like an addition to her shorts than a separate garment. Even at 38, it was Sharon as she had always been: a hot tomato in sling-backs.

“Perry is really looking forward to seeing you guys,” she said. Smoke curling from her lips, she smiled and waved Donna and Bob into her beautifully furnished living room. She exited to get some cold drinks.

“He’ll be home in just a little while,” she said.

So much had changed. The modest home in Rocky Ford. And the wife. The wife was so far from the first Mrs. Nelson they could not have been married to the same man. Bob Good-head pondered memories of Julie Nelson. She was a plain Jane, a matronly woman who focused her attentions on the children and the church. Sharon was the complete opposite. She was wild. She was a rebel. She was a sexual animal. She smoked. She ate meat. She dressed like a slut. When Sharon's kids ran amok, she paid them no mind. She was enjoying her own life.

And as usual, once Sharon began to blather, everything was fantastic.

“Perry and I had the best sex—the most wonderful sex— the night before he left,” she said as she ushered them inside.

The comment was typical Sharon. So much of what she said was about sex and about how wonderful, how desirable she was.

While the kids ran around the house, the adults continued to make conversation in the living room. Sharon, of course, never needed any help in that regard. She could carry on a complete conversation by herself. Sometimes it seemed as though that was exactly what she did. As the clock swept away the time, it brought more worry and anxiety that Perry had not yet returned. Sharon started mixing more drinks and consumed one after another.

“Wonder what's keeping him?” Bob asked.

“He’ll be home soon enough,” Sharon said. She switched on the news and waited for the weather report.

Another hour elapsed.

When the TV weatherman reported Denver had experienced heavy rains, Sharon snapped up his words. She suggested her husband had been delayed by the storm, perhaps even in a car accident related to the nasty weather. Maybe he had car trouble and stopped at Sharon's sister's place in Colorado Springs?

As Sharon prattled on, she casually dropped a bomb.

“Bob, I don’t believe you’ll ever see your friend Perry again.”

The statement brought the room to silence. The television was clicked on “Mute.”

“What do you mean?” Bob asked.

Sharon played with her drink, and looked into the glass. Ice cubes clinked.

“It's just a feeling, I don’t know,” she said.

Donna continued to wish they’d never come to Weston. She had not wanted to visit in the first place. She wanted to go to Denver. Even in small doses, Sharon bugged her. Perry's wife seemed to be solely fixed on sex and men. Whenever they went to town, she’d sashay and wink at men in the grocery store or the gas station.

That evening, Sharon's conversation and actions bothered Donna more than usual. She was always irritating, but during one conversation in the master bedroom was particularly unsettling. Sharon sat on the edge of her bed.

“What would you do if your husband didn’t come home one day?” Sharon asked her.

Donna shook her head. “Bob wouldn’t leave.”

“But what if he did?”

The reluctant guest stared hard at her hostess.

“That could never happen,” she said firmly.

Sharon persisted and Donna finally sighed out an answer. “I’d go on and make a life for my children.”

It was almost as if Sharon didn’t hear the answer.

“Well, what would you do if Bob just disappeared?” she persisted.

Exasperated, Donna enunciated every word as clearly as possible. “I’d keep on living and make my life as good as I could for my children.”

Donna nudged her husband when Sharon got up for another drink.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” she said.

After 10 P.M., the Goodheads, still worried that Perry hadn’t made it home, left for their motel room in Trinidad.

The next morning, the Goodheads returned to find Sharon assisting Harry Russell, a six-foot-six and 350-pound Peterbilt truck of a man, with the brake lines on his old truck. It was a job, Sharon explained to the Goodheads, that Perry had promised to do.

“Where's Perry?” Bob Goodhead asked.

“He hasn’t made it home yet. He’ll be home any minute.”

“Something is wrong, Sharon,” Bob said, shaking his head with worry. “Let's go call the Denver Tech Center.”

The four of them went down to Al Robinson's mill to use the phone. No one they called knew anything of Perry Nelson's whereabouts in Denver. A doctor from Rocky Ford was certain that he hadn’t seen Perry at all. No one had seen him. Perry, as far as that man knew, had never even made it to Denver.

Bob Goodhead put his hand on Sharon's shoulder.

“Call the highway patrol,” he said.

When Sharon got off the phone she explained that the authorities had no record of a wreck involving a black VW bug.

The Goodheads gave Sharon their AT&T telephone credit card so she could continue to call from the pay phone. She seemed agitated, deeply concerned about her husband. She spoke in rapid-fire sentences, words strung together tighter than a pearl necklace. She was either crying or on the verge of it.

By dinnertime that evening, the Goodheads finally had to leave. Sharon was drunk and sputtering imbecilic statements about her husband's legion of enemies. There was nothing more they could do. They gave Sharon their telephone credit card and drove to Denver. All the way there, they studied the roadside for traces of Perry and his black VW.

When Bob Goodhead checked in for his class schedule, he inquired whether Perry Nelson had done so as well. The convention registrar indicated that, in fact, while Perry had signed up for the class on Pharmaceuticals—he had not shown up. He had not confirmed that he was there.

Bob feared the worst: Perry must have been in an auto accident.

That same evening, they shared their concerns as they drove away.

“Something isn’t right here,” Bob told Donna. “Sharon knows something. I’ve got a funny feeling about this… she knows more than she's letting on.”

Donna agreed, while her husband went on.

“I don’t think a worried wife is going to throw a drunk,” he said. “And what's all this talk about enemies? That's the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Everyone loves Perry. He's the kind of guy that if someone had a flat tire, he’d stop and fix it for them. People love that guy.”

Even in Colorado, joggers let nothing stand in the way of their great endeavor. In the snow, their feet become twin plows as they run in the ruts left by cars and trucks on the roadways. In the rain, they dodge droplets, but press on. On Sunday morning, 250 miles north of Weston, a man jogging along the raging waters of Jefferson County's picturesque Clear Creek stumbled across the mangled remains of a car. At least, it seemed that the hunk of metal had once been a car. There were no windows. No license plate. Nothing that could break off was still attached. It was four tires and a crushed and shattered hull.

The car was as battered as if it had been in a rock tumbler, which, of course, it had. It was a VW in such bad shape that the jogger might have assumed it was a junked auto that had been pushed into river.

People were always doing stuff like that, trashing the planet to save the junkyard fee.

Anyway, the jogger decided to report what he saw. He notified the nearest fire department.

The car was Perry Nelson's.

Later that morning, Sharon Lynn Nelson made her way to the Trinidad Police Department. She told friends she had been forced into going down in person. The police had told her they would be sending someone out to Round House to facilitate the filing of a missing persons report, but the deputy hadn’t showed up. She dropped her son and daughter off at a babysitter and went inside.

“I’ve got people who have eye appointments at 8 A.M. I’ve got to get this done,” she said, after an officer directed her to the missing persons section. While she was filling out the paperwork, the officer who had been told to respond to her house approached.