Sex. Murder. Mystery(38)

The cops drove on.





Chapter 11

FOR ALL SHE HAD BEEN THROUGH, SHARON Nelson stayed steadfast in one regard: She didn’t give a hoot what anyone thought or said about her. Everything was someone else’s problem. So what? None of their beeswax. She left the minister. She dumped the doctor. BFD. She could have slept with half the high school football team and not batted an eye. But she didn’t do that. Instead, as her marriage to Perry crumbled, Sharon took up with a man named Buzz Reynolds and moved into his house on a gorgeous spread of Colorado ranch land. So what if she left her husband and shacked up with Buzz? She didn’t care who knew about it. Sharon was living her life as if her actions had no effect on anyone. She was a woman unfettered by convention. She was no longer the Stepford Wife that she had felt was her destiny. She told friends she wanted a divorce. As if to rub salt in Perry Nelson’s considerable and gaping wounds, Sharon had added the betrayal of a decade-old friendship to the mix. Buzz Reynolds, a self-made rancher with vast holdings, was one of Perry Nelson’s best friends. Buzz Reynolds was a friendly man with a kind word for everyone, not a home-wrecker, not a Don Juan. Ten years older than Sharon, Buzz was more pleasant-looking than handsome, and, like Perry Nelson, he was ripe for the picking.

Buzz had money.

Folks around town wondered if Sharon Nelson could have found it within herself to exercise a bit more discretion by dropping her skirt for a man her husband didn’t know so well.

Did the men who fell for Sharon’s charms take stupid pills, or what?

One morning not long after she left Perry and their kids for money and madness with Buzz, Sharon arrived at the Trinidad optometry office to pick up a check for hours she had supposedly worked at the clinic. When she asked to see her estranged husband, Barb told her to wait a minute.

“He’s busy with a patient,” she said.

A little later, the patient gone, Sharon and Perry got into a heated argument over money, their marriage and Sharon’s wandering ways. Barb could hear the two of them scream at each other. She expected everyone else in the building could, too.

A few minutes later, Sharon stomped out of the back office and went over to Barb.

“I’ll tell you what. If that son of a bitch doesn’t give me a divorce, I’ll blow his fucking head off. I’ll kill him.”

Barb tried to calm her by making a joke of the remark.

“Oh yeah?” she kidded. “What would you do with the body?”

Sharon didn’t laugh.

“I’ll stick it in the freezer. Nobody will find him there.”

And so the war went. Sharon would say this. Perry would do that. Bless his heart, Barb thought, the man was no match for his bitch-on-wheels wife. If they didn’t have the two kids, Dr. Nelson would have been a smart man to just let her go. But, of course, that was not an option. Perry was mad, but against all reason, he was still in love.

One afternoon, Barb rolled her eyes as she handed Dr. Nelson the telephone. It was another Sharon sneak attack. A Trinidad grocer was on the line asking for payment of $150 worth of groceries. Sharon, it seemed, had told the checker to bill her husband, “Dr. Perry Nelson.”

An irritated Perry balked at the charge. He wasn’t going to pay a dime to support Sharon while she flaunted her affair with Buzz. The woman had no scruples whatsoever. Perry had reached his limit. Sharon had traipsed all over town buying things and dropping his name like ticker tape in a parade.

“I’m not sleeping with her. Bill the guy who is,” he said tersely. Though the words were meant to jab, there was something in Perry’s voice that suggested the effort had been wasted. Barb could hear it: Perry still loved Sharon.

The dreaded F-word. Like most everybody else, Barbara Ruscetti had heard the word more often than she cared to. But never in almost two decades of employment had she heard Dr. Nelson utter such coarse vulgarities. When he came in the office swearing a blue streak, peppered with “F this” and “F that,” she stood her ground.

“You don’t use that word around me,” Barb said, feeling glad that despite everything, she could still tell the doc what was on her mind. “Maybe you use it around Sharon, but you don’t use it around me.”

Perry shot her a classic “who me?” look.

His disinterest in her feelings irritated Barb even more.

“Just knock it off,” she said, brushing the wisps of her cinnamon-bun hairdo from her reddened face.

“Don’t get your tits in an uproar,” Perry said, when he finally got the message the woman he had depended on for so many years was not enjoying the new and improved Dr. Nelson.

“I will. You’re not talking to me like that.” Barb shot him an uncharacteristic glare. “I’m not going to stand for it.”