Sex. Murder. Mystery(47)

“I’m afraid of him,” she said tearfully.

Gary felt sorry for Sharon. He wanted to put her up on a pedestal and protect her. Though he never thought Perry was a violent man, no one really knew what went on behind closed doors.

“Have you ever thought of him having an accident?” Gary asked after one of their trysts.

Sharon nodded. She had. She said she had thought of getting rid of Perry for years. She reached out and held Gary close. She was glad her mountain man had come to the rescue.

“He doesn’t have that much insurance on him,” she said, pulling Gary closer.

He kissed her, the smell of her “secret sauce” still on his mouth.

“Think about it and see what you want to do about it,” he said.

In time, their lovemaking escalated to the kind of fever-pitch reckless abandon that Sharon had always said she dreamed about. Perhaps the element of danger, the thrill of the kill was part of the ecstasy. Perhaps it was merely the combination of those two particular people?

Sharon was in love with the man.

“He had a body like I’d never seen before on anyone,” she said, once she tried to put into words her deep attraction for the man. “Not really muscular… but there was not an ounce that he didn’t know how to use. For whatever he chose to use it for. I’d never had anyone in my life who accepted me so totally, in any state, any stage. I could have been working out in the garden with sweat running down my neck, dirt between my toes… and it never detracted.”

Gary Adams liked to think locals called his place at the foot of the mountain “the Dude Ranch” because in the 1930s it had been one. Fat chance. Most called it what it was: an added-to shack, the type that in a Warner Bros, cartoon would have an outhouse with a moon cut in for ventilation. But to Gary, wife Nancy, and their youngest of two, a son nicknamed Skip, it was home, sweet, home. While Gary roofed houses up and down the Canyon and earned less than twelve thousand a year, Nancy rolled up her sleeves and went to work as a waitress or cabin maid for local motels and cafes. It wasn’t a particularly generous lifestyle—not like the Nelsons up the mountain. But Gary Adams didn’t have any bills and he figured that work was a means to pay for food and gas. Nothing more. He didn’t see the need to push himself to a better job. Things were just fine in Wet Canyon. Just fine.

A wartime baby, Gary Starr Adams was a one-year-old when his mother and carpenter father moved from Missouri to Colorado to settle in Denver. His family was small, only his parents and a brother, four years older. There was no hardship. No unstable childhood. The Adams family didn’t move around much. They ate meals together. No one drank. The Adams, by all accounts, were close.

Gary was always a standout. He was handsome, bright and more than a bit stubborn. He wanted to do things his own way. When he was a junior at Jefferson High he let his hair grow just a tad longer than what school officials considered appropriate. It wasn’t outlandish for 1960. It wasn’t even noticeable to many, but the fact was most other boys were having their hair buzzed into flattops.

“The vice principal told me either get a haircut or don’t come back… so I didn’t come back,” he once told a friend.

Instead, a few months later he joined the Marines and they shaved off all his hair.

In 1962, Gary married Nancy in California. His stint in the Marines as a tank mechanic over, the Adams family returned to Denver. Gary quickly followed in his father’s footsteps and found work with a hammer and nails as a roofer for Arrow Roofing.

By then, Gary Adams was an average Joe. He liked hunting elk and deer. He liked tipping back a few beers, shooting the breeze with his buddies and imagining his life would go pretty much as his parents’ had. And that was just fine with him. He wasn’t looking for anything better.

But that was before Sharon.

Gary was a man with odd loyalties. He was able to compartmentalize his actions to keep his guilt in check. That he was screwing Perry’s wife made no difference as far as the two men’s friendship was concerned. When Perry Nelson needed help with a project, it was more friendship than guilt that brought Gary Adams to the eye doctor’s aid. When he helped Perry pour the driveway slab for Round House, Gary was rewarded with a pair of brand-new designer sunglasses. “Real nice,” he recalled.





Chapter 13

AS HIS PRACTICE GASPED FOR SURVIVAL, PERRY Nelson was in a desperate search for ways to save money. The rent on his office space in downtown Trinidad was not outlandish, but when he saw space for rent on Country Club Drive that cost less money than what he was paying, he jumped on it. The owner of the medical building was chiropractor Terry Mitchell. The space was nice, albeit smaller than what he had been used to over the years. It also needed to be remodeled and finished up, but Perry said he’d take it. The reason? The rent was a paltry $35 a month.