Sex. Murder. Mystery(45)

Sharon closed the door and moved close.

Long after it happened, the memory of the encounter brought a smile to Gary Adams. He’d never forget what happened and how surprised he was that it had.

“I thought she was going to give me a big hug and she gave me a kiss and that’s when she started really rubbing her crotch on my leg. At first her arms were around my back, and then she went down to my butt and just pulled me in tighter to her.”

After a few minutes of fooling around, a patient who needed to check on eyeglasses for his wife brought an abrupt halt to the pair’s passion. Sharon left for the front office to talk to the patient. In a few minutes, she returned.

“Why don’t you go get a motel room?” she said.

Gary called from the Trinidad Best Western around five o’clock and gave the doctor’s wife the room number. A bit annoyed, she told him that next time he should rent a room on the other side of the motel.

“Someone might see my car,” she said, the voice of experience.

A few minutes later, Sharon was surprisingly talky and nervous as she tried to get comfortable in the motel room. She had been so hot-to-trot back at the doctor’s office that if he had put as much effort into it as she had, they would have had sex right then and there. At the motel she looked around as if she was worried someone might see her or that Perry would find out from his friend and handy neighbor—Gary Starr Adams.

“Do you have some protection?” she asked.

Gary told her that he had a vasectomy. Sharon thought for a moment and frowned.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “I got pregnant from Buzz and he said he had had a vasectomy.”

When Sharon emerged she wore nothing but a black bra and black panties. Her tan was all over. No lines. No imperfections. As far as Gary Adams could see, she was a Playboy centerfold minus the staple. The woman was a knockout.

Yet something was wrong. Under the covers, no matter how beautiful she was, nothing was happening. Gary’s penis was a limp noodle and no amount of stimulation from Sharon could make it stand to attention. God, the woman tried. God, she gave it her all. But nothing. Zip. Gary grew more anxious. Impotence had never been a problem before. Never in his entire adult life.

“She was trying to get me aroused,” he recalled later, ”I just couldn’t do it. Right then, it should have been a warning… saying my body knows more than my brain. It is not right.”

The two hugged and kissed for a while under the sheets, but it was useless. Gary said how sorry, how embarrassed he was. Sharon was nice about it. She said it didn’t matter.

She even asked to see him again.

Whether he knew it at that moment or weeks later, Gary Adams could never be sure. But after that first afternoon with Sharon Nelson in the motel room, he was hooked. He was hers.

“Let me think on it,” he said.

When it came to roofing or carpentry, everyone in Wet Canyon knew that Gary Adams was an expert. He was fast, dependable and affordable, and most everyone in the community had used his services, or knew that if they needed something done, he was a good man to call.

Whenever Ray Thornton looked out at the road and saw Gary Adams drive his little blue import pickup up the hill to the Nelsons’ house, he figured the friendly carpenter was doing some work for the doctor and his wife. When the trips became more frequent—almost daily—Ray began to wonder. Perry was never home when Gary drove up to the house on Cougar Ridge.

After a while, it became obvious something was going on, though it brought little comment.

“We minded our own business and didn’t get involved,” Ray later said.

Poor Perry. The price of being the talk of the town continued to be higher than the optometrist had likely considered when he decided his lust for the minister’s wife should not be bridled. As word continued to ricochet from Trinidad to Rocky Ford and back that the eye doctor had stolen the preacher’s wife, even the most loyal remainder of Perry Nelson’s longtime customers drifted away, canceling appointments and never calling back. Sometimes the excuses were lame, but more often than not, patients were disarmingly direct. Perry begged many to reconsider, but time and time again, patients who had once been delighted by Dr. Nelson’s jokes and friendly ways would be charmed no longer.

“You don’t steal a minister’s wife and do business as usual in Trinidad.”

Even when Perry went into a restaurant or made a visit to the store, formerly friendly folks were cool. He’d go out of his way to strike up a conversation, but many chose to turn a deaf ear.

While Perry struggled to save his professional life, his wife continued to sleep with the carpenter from the bottom of the canyon. The first few times, sleep and cuddling was all they really could do. Gary Adams still couldn’t maintain an erection.