Sex. Murder. Mystery.

by Gregg Olsen

  “You have an hour to tell me who this is or I’ll throw you out of the house and you’ll never see your baby again.” His words were flat, cold. “She doesn’t need a slut for a mother.”

  As the clock ticked away the hour of the ultimatum, Sharon finally gave up her lover’s name.

  “Where does he live?” Mike asked, his voice still calm.

  “All you said I had to do was give you a name! You find out where he lives!”

  The preacher made a beeline for the telephone book to retrieve the man’s address. Inside of two minutes, he was gone on his way to do battle with the man his wife claimed was the father of his firstborn daughter.

  Sharon frantically dialed the number of a mutual friend and begged the man to stop her husband from instigating a dangerous confrontation. A fight would cause a scandal that would taint the ministry. Mike might do something foolish; something dangerous. The friend, a man from the church who knew her secret, agreed. When he arrived at Sharon’s lover’s address, he talked the irate pastor into leaving without incident.

  For the good of everyone involved.

  As if her bitterness had not been lessened by the years, Sharon seethed with defiance in her recollection of that terrible night in Ohio. She was trying to liberate herself from the oppression of a husband and a religion. Moreover, she was attempting to free herself from her own guilt. Her own lies. Mike Fuller was a perfect target.

  “It was basically… like all right, I’ve had enough of you. You have given me enough digs. You have put me down long enough. This is going to be the ultimate blow, buddy. She’s not even yours.”

  Chapter 3

  ONE LOOK AND IT WAS SELF-EVIDENT. SHARON Lynn Fuller was more a bouquet of long-stemmed roses than a shrinking violet. She was one of those women who left an unforgettable impression wherever she turned up. At the grocery, the filling station and especially at the church office, she was a lady who could not easily be ignored. Certainly none of the Coloradans who met her could say she wasn’t friendly. None could say she was introverted or too shy for the role of minister’s wife. Far from it. She was helpful and polite, warm and eager to please. Nonetheless she didn’t quite fit in. Most figured her sense of style was some kind of a big-city look from back east. And while they tried not to judge her for how she looked, it wasn’t always easy.

  Sharon’s dresses were often skintight. Her figure was striking and every bit of it showed. Her tops were fitted in such a way that the shape and size of her breasts were not left to anyone’s imagination. Often the movement beneath the fabric and the pencil poke points of her nipples revealed the absence of a bra. In a religion that did not condone adornment, makeup, jewelry or overt sexuality, Sharon managed to push her wardrobe to the very edge of propriety. This particular minister’s wife broke the mold with a sledgehammer.

  During the heat of the afternoon, Sharon donned short-shorts and paraded about town like a woman who knew she had something to show. And so she did. Ever so slightly, but always close enough to assert the need for a double take, the round globes of each cheek of her butt peeked from below the crisp hem of her shorts. Make no mistake, for La Junta, Rocky Ford and even five-times-larger Trinidad, Sharon Lynn Fuller was an eye-popper.

  Dentist’s wife Blanche Wheeler had her own perspective on Sharon’s choice of attire. As the daughter of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister herself, Blanche knew that whatever Sharon wore was something she’d never be caught dead in. No decent woman would. Blanche winced at some of the get-ups the new minister’s wife sprayed onto her shapely thighs each morning. Given the conservative nature of her faith and her own personal background, Blanche tried to set it aside. Maybe she was too harsh in her assessment? Times had changed. Sharon was younger. When Blanche grew up, pants were considered inappropriate for women.

  “Unless you were out working in the field, you didn’t put slacks on,” she later said.

  Sharon Fuller, evidently, didn’t see it that way.

  Jovial Bob Goodhead thought the world of Perry Nelson. They shared a common history, having been close since optometry school back in Memphis. For many, keeping a friendship viable and strong over two decades is not always possible. People change. Circumstances shift. But Bob and Perry remained close. The two even toyed with the idea of opening a joint practice in Oklahoma City where Bob, his wife Donna, and their growing family made their home. Over the years, the Nelsons and the Goodheads included stops at each other’s homes whenever travel brought them within reasonable driving distance.

  During one of the Goodheads’ visits to Rocky Ford, Perry asked if they’d like to attend church with his family. Bob wanted to go. He wasn’t interested in converting to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, but he was curious. Donna, on the other hand, didn’t want to go at all. But what could she say?

  Entering the church, Donna noticed a woman in a white dress sitting with two little girls. The pretty young mother seemed to monitor Perry Nelson’s every move. She even winked at him. Her behavior seemed inappropriate, even as it related to her own children. She was loudly playing with the little girls while the minister delivered his sermon from the pulpit.

  Not one of my six kids would carry on like that, like she’s letting them! Donna thought.

  After the service, Perry ushered Bob and Donna aside. Julie Nelson was out of earshot.

  “What did you think of Sharon Fuller?”

  “Who’s that?” Dr. Goodhead asked.

  Perry pointed out the lady in white who had carried on with her two daughters during the service.

  An annoyed Donna acknowledged the woman.

  Perry smiled broadly. “She’s the preacher’s wife. Isn’t she great?”

  “For a preacher’s wife, her kids were sure misbehaving,” Donna said, ending the conversation.

  It was a secretary with the slight Slavic accent of her parents who was among the first with an inkling something was going on with the eye doctor for whom she worked and the new minister’s wife.

  A feisty woman with a pinned-up hairdo resembling a lightly golden cinnamon bun, Barbara Ruscetti was a woman who never had it easy. She worked hard for everything she had. Tragically widowed at only thirty-four when her coal-miner husband contracted an unidentified virus that killed almost a dozen, Barb wasn’t the type to scramble for a new meal ticket. She didn’t set her sights on a new man, though she could have found one easily enough. She was smart, attractive and, as anyone who sat at her dinner table could vouch with unflagging enthusiasm, a great cook.

  When her children were young, the mother of four got by on $305 a month—the combined income from Social Security and what passed for a veteran’s pension. She supplemented the money by knitting sweaters, baby booties and afghans. She never went on welfare. She never sought a handout. When her youngest was eleven and the financial pressure of college tuition for her older children loomed, she went looking for a job.

  On November 11, 1965, Mrs. Ruscetti started employment with a Trinidad optometrist she would come to adore, a man who treated her children with the warmth of a favorite uncle. That man, of course, was Perry Nelson. Over the course of their years together, the two forged a close and enduring friendship. She always called him “Doctor” unless she was angry at him; only then would she use his first name.

  Tuesdays and Thursdays were Trinidad office days for Perry Nelson, with the remainder of the work week spent at the office in Rocky Ford. When he was away from Trinidad, Barb Ruscetti ran the office, booking appointments, ordering lenses and repairing eyeglass frames. In time, Nelson’s business doubled, tripled and doubled again. At its peak, the Trinidad practice alone was raking in more than $150,000 annually.

  Despite his success, outside of his part-ownership in a private airplane, Dr. Nelson was not one to flaunt his wealth. To look at him was to see a fellow who dressed neat and clean, ran two nice offices and went about his business without the gold-chained, diamond-dripping accouterments so many small town docs consider de rigueur. Mercedes? Forget it
. BMW? Out of the question. Dr. Nelson had several old cars he was always tinkering with on his days off. In time, one of his favorites would be an old, black VW bug.

  No one in Rocky Ford could deny that Perry Nelson didn’t dote on his three daughters and that none of them went without. It was true that he cried “poor” whenever Julie took the girls shopping for clothes, but after a fashion show, he’d give in. Dr. Nelson also took his family on trips, often tied to optical conventions. Los Angeles, St. Louis and Las Vegas were but a few of the cities they visited.

  Not long before Mike and Sharon Fuller arrived on the scene, the Nelsons purchased a Champion motor home, which made their weekend camping trips as comfortable as staying in a motel.

  At various times, Perry also took the family flying in one of three airplanes he owned or co-owned over the years.

  When late summer 1976 came, it brought hot days and cool nights. The crisp morning air hinted at fall. Hillsides blazed with the yellow fire of turning aspen. Huckleberry leaves morphed from green to crimson almost overnight. Trinidad had seen another summer tourist season come to a close; another season that had not met the expectations of a town desperate to turn from a mining center to tourism magnet. Maybe when ski season arrived?

  There was always the hope.

  Dr. Nelson gave Barb Ruscetti a day’s warning that he was bringing a “new girl” to Trinidad for office training. He informed Barb it would be up to her to break in the gal for a part-time office assistant position that was opening in Rocky Ford. The new girl was Sharon Fuller.

  Barb, then 54, had heard Sharon’s name many, many times over the course of the summer. Too many times, she felt, to let pass without comment. Sharon this. Sharon that. A month before the doctor announced his new hire was headed for the Trinidad office, Barb asked about her.

  “Who is this Sharon you keep talking about?”

  Perry grinned from ear to ear. “Why, Barb, she’s our preacher’s wife—Sharon Fuller.”

  Barb’s eyes bulged. She was nearly dumbstruck. “Preacher’s wife? My goodness, and you’re carrying on over her like this?”

  Perry shrugged. His lips formed a wistful smile as he thought of Mrs. Fuller.

  “Oh, she’s a doll. I’d give anything to have her,” he said.

  Barb, of course, knew Dr. Nelson had strayed in his marriage in the past. She didn’t have her head buried in the gritty bottom of a sand trap. She felt Dr. Nelson’s interest in the minister’s spouse was far beyond any transgression the eye doctor had made in the past. Miles beyond. He was playing with fire in the form of a woman. Sharon Fuller was the mother of two little girls, the wife of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister.

  Years later, Barb Ruscetti would never forget her initial impression of Sharon when she arrived for the supposed training.

  “She came in and it was all lovey-dovey. There was no breaking in, let’s face it. She went into his examining room and she was supposed to take notes. Oh, they just kidded around and everything.”

  At 11 A.M. that first day, Perry told Barb that she could go to lunch.

  “You don’t have to come back at one if you don’t want to,” he added.

  Lunchtime had always been from noon to one. Perry Nelson was a stickler for keeping the office schedule. Patients counted on it. Barb was stunned by his words.

  My God, I was ten minutes late one day and he ate me up alive, she thought.

  Barb canceled appointments, one right after another, planted herself at her desk and fumed. Some help Sharon Fuller was going to be for the business! There was no breaking in this lady. There was no way to teach her a damn thing. The preacher’s wife had her own agenda and Dr. Nelson didn’t seem to mind one bit. He had his own ideas, too.

  That following Sunday, a motel manager stopped Barbara Ruscetti as she was coming out of church.

  “I met the doctor’s wife,” the man said, explaining that Perry and Julie had checked into a room at his motel.

  It surprised her. It was not like Julie to do anything like that.

  “You did? Julie?” Barb asked as they strolled outside into the brightness of the day.

  The man smiled. “Yeah, isn’t she cute?”

  Something about the motel manager’s compliment made Barb feel funny. While Julie Nelson was sweet and kind and not at all unattractive, no one would call her “cute.” Cute was not a word that went with Julie. Loyal. Motherly. Caring, yes. But not cute.

  “What does she look like?’’ Barb eventually asked, knowing full well her question would spark suspicion. She didn’t care.

  “She has auburn hair and really nice-looking blue eyes,” he said.

  That description confirmed for Barbara that the woman at the motel had not been Julie. Julie had dark brown hair. The woman the motel manager was describing was the preacher’s wife Sharon Fuller.

  What kind of woman is she? She’s coming down to Trinidad and she’s got two little kids and she’s married to a preacher. Here she is shacking up at a motel, Barb thought.

  Perry Nelson was a wonderful man, in many, many ways.

  But he was not a saint and he’d be the first one to tell someone that fact. Over the course of their years together, Barbara Ruscetti had seen the doctor put his own spin on the concept of a doctor’s bedside manner. He had a roving eye for attractive, available women. Barb couldn’t count the number of times she had seen “no charge” written on the exam cards of beautiful women, who lingered in the doctor’s office and stopped by to say hi. There were other, more concrete, signs, too. When the doctor brought his motor home from Rocky Ford under the pretext of staying the night in Trinidad to catch up on paperwork, Barb had a notion something was going on. She would never forget the time she and her son went to watch a movie and ran into the doctor and a girlfriend.

  “Urn…uh…uh…Just met here… so we happened to sit together… ”

  The next morning, Barb arrived at the office in time to catch the doctor and the same lady friend climbing out of the motor home.

  But Barb could forgive all of that. Though she knew it was wrong, she didn’t tell Julie Nelson about her husband’s dalliances. She didn’t think it was her place to do so. She also didn’t think Perry Nelson meant anything by it. Barb never doubted the man loved his wife and three daughters. She never doubted that when the day was done, he’d always return to his family. Barb didn’t want to make waves.

  Perry Nelson was a man who earned such loyalty effortlessly. He was revered by many in the community. He was trusted. Little old ladies lined up for eye exams with the charming doctor who good-naturedly gibed them. When Barb’s daughter wanted a typewriter—an electric typewriter, no less—it was Perry who came through with one for a Christmas present.

  He handed out more donations to the needy than the local Salvation Army. Until Barb started screening them out, drunks from the Lone Star down the street staggered over for a quick ten bucks and a short lecture on the evils of drinking. Perry Nelson had a heart of gold. He would do anything for anyone. While it was true some of the more desperate took advantage of that generosity, Perry didn’t seem to care. He didn’t judge. All people were good. Most were trying the best that they knew how.

  But the woman from Rocky Ford was a different animal. From the day of their first meeting at the office, Barb Ruscetti could feel it in her bones.

  “She’s a bitch on wheels,” Dr. Nelson’s secretary told a friend over coffee one day, after meeting Sharon in the flesh. “She’s not nice. You know what I mean? Not nice.”

  Some old-timers winced at the reality that Trinidad’s most famous citizen was Dr. Stanley Biber, a man who’d performed more sex-change operations than anyone on earth. Those who lived there before television and the tabloids discovered Dr. Biber’ s eccentric, but thriving, practice, wanted the town to be known for Bat Masterson, Tom Mix and its Old West flavor.

  It seemed everyone knew one of the transsexuals who had decided that the place where they lost their penis was the place they’d call home.
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  Dr. Biber’s downtown office was on the floor above Dr. Nelson’s practice in the First National Bank building. Barb Ruscetti would often ride the elevator with prospective patients, leaving her to wonder exactly what they had left under their skirts.

  But she didn’t care. She had worries far greater than Annie the Tranny or any of the others.

  At least they were honest about who they were.

  It wasn’t easy, but Barb Ruscetti tried to like Sharon. Barb tried to take Sharon under her wing and show a kindness that she hoped would rub off onto the younger woman. She tried to go along with what she knew was a bad situation. Since everyone but a fool and a hermit had a citizens band radio in the remote canyons around Trinidad, when it came time to give Sharon a handle, Barb (“Spec Lady”) dubbed Sharon “Doctor’s Doll.” Dr. Nelson was “Spec Man.”

  Sharon always talked of money and how she didn’t have any on a preacher’s salary. She talked of what she would buy if she was rich. Once Barb offered Sharon a dress that had been hanging in the back of her closet far too long. It certainly wasn’t the flashy younger woman’s style, but Barb asked if she thought her mother might like it.

  “She’d be thrilled to death,” Sharon said, smoothing out the fabric of the garment as Barb presented it to her. “All my mother wears is cotton dresses.”

  Barb asked her why that was so.

  Sharon turned away. She was embarrassed about something.

  “Because I come from a very poor family,” she said finally, as though being poor meant she should have been ashamed.

  Barb was left to wonder if Sharon’s money grabbing ways had more to do with her childhood than being married to a stingy-fisted preacher.

  Julie Nelson was not completely blind. She knew her husband was slipping away once more. The good Lord knew she had been through it so many times that it had almost become a way of life. She had left her husband only once when she could not take it anymore. But after three months of Perry’s pleading and the reality of a broken home for her daughters, Julie returned to Rocky Ford. Julie was tired of putting on the happy public face when everyone in town knew her husband was a womanizer. Whenever he found a new woman to romance, Perry would fling compliments around the room. It was as if by building some other woman up, he’d be able to hurt Julie even more.