Sex. Murder. Mystery(48)
Dr. Mitchell liked Perry from the first day they first met to discuss the rental. He was outgoing, friendly and enthusiastic. He had plans for the office space. If he was down on his luck, he didn’t complain about it much. When he consummated a deal, which culminated in the sale of what was left of his Rocky Ford practice, Dr. Mitchell loaned Perry a truck to move his equipment to Trinidad.
From the beginning it was clear the Nelson finances were in shambles. Dr. Nelson was late on his rent and apologized profusely for requiring a couple of extra days to come up with what in better days would have been pocket change.
It wasn’t hard to see why Nelson was in financial quicksand. Dr. Mitchell and his wife Kay, who worked in his office, could see the reasons for all the problems. It was Sharon. Sharon. Sharon.
“She got him in over his head with the house, with the cars, with everything she wanted. Perry, for some reason, kept right on going along with her. Perry was the nicest, sweetest guy in the world. He never had a bad word for anyone. What he saw in that wife of his… poor old Perry,” Terry Mitchell said later.
Trinidad was a town with more than its share of country bumpkins. Guys worked hard on the ranch or in the mines four days a week, getting so drunk on the fifth day they needed a long weekend to sleep it off. Their wives got together and talked about how many kids they had, how many more they wanted and what they could get from the shopper's catalog if their men had just worked a little harder. Sharon wasn’t like that. She arrived on the scene with a different attitude; different interests. She came in and showed everything she had. She was the Vargas pinup for the rough-and-tumble Hee Haw set.
Terry Mitchell, for one, couldn’t stand her tarted-up attire and sleazier-than-thou attitude. The chiropractor scratched his head as he figured out what it was that attracted a normal, nice guy like Perry to a woman like Sharon. That something had to be sex. It sure wasn’t her personality. Her sparkling conversation. Her brains. Sharon showed everything she had to offer.
“She was the type of woman who would flash all the sexual stuff she had. She had the big boobs and round butt and she was swishing everything she had all over town.”
In time, Dr. Mitchell's patients remarked about the woman they saw flitting about the adjoining office. All had a tale to tell. They had seen her putting the make on a buddy. One woman said they had gone to a dance out in the country and Sharon had practically forced herself on another woman's unsuspecting husband.
“Right on the dance floor rubbing that guy's dick!”
Another told of driving up to Sharon's house and catching her outside sunbathing in the nude. Dr. Mitchell heard a story of how Sharon had supposedly gone hitchhiking across country, picking up different guys, screwing them in the cabs of the semis before moving on.
If it had been any other woman, the chiropractor would have discounted the cruel remarks. With Sharon Nelson, however, it just seemed so plausible. It just seemed likely that she’d get into that kind of behavior. She had no limits.
Dr. Mitchell always saw his colleague's wife for what she was. In high-school days, she’d most certainly been called a tart, a slut. No doubt about it, the way the chiropractor saw her, Sharon had a mighty big problem: she believed sex was the cure.
Terry Mitchell often applied an old saying to Sharon Nelson: “If she had as many dicks sticking out of her as had been stuck in her, she’d look like a porcupine.”
Whatever she wanted, she got. At least, it seemed so to the people on the fringes of Sharon Nelson's life. When she spotted a pretty ring in the local jeweler's case it was as good as already on her finger. Even when their bank account was starving, money was no object. Not for Sharon. One afternoon, she waltzed into the medical office brandishing a set of car keys for a brand new Jeep Eagle 4x4 from Hadad Motors.
“Look what I bought for me,” she said.
Perry took a moment to say something, though the look on his face of utter amazement and disbelief was swift.
“Who's going to pay for it?” he asked.
Sharon spun around the office, letting the keys dangle against each other like a shiny charm bracelet.
The sound of a new car… the smell of a new car. All hers.
“You worry too much,” she finally said with the smile of a woman who knew more than those looking at her. “It’ll be paid for before too long.”
Terry Mitchell was also surprised and a little pissed off when he got wind of the Nelsons’ new car. Perry owed him back rent for the office and his wife kept spending money they simply didn’t have.
After sex with Gary during one of their little rendezvous, Sharon insisted her only way out of her dismal life was to get rid of Perry. On one of those occasions, Sharon told Gary she and another of her Rocky Ford lovers had tried to kill Perry during the Nelsons’ estrangement the previous year.