by Gregg Olsen
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 be
amed.
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.
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.