Sex. Murder. Mystery(49)

“They got Perry real drunk and pushed him in the pool, and from what Sharon says, they thought Perry was drowning. They went in the house. They just left him floating in the water facedown. A few minutes later, Perry comes knocking on the door. He couldn’t remember what happened. He thought he fell in,” Gary remembered.

Sharon needed a man who would get it done—right.

“I want him out of my life,” she said. “I want to be free.”

A small group of eye doctors, all Seventh-Day Adventists with a bond of friendship forged over several decades, gathered together after a professional meeting in Denver. It was usually a group of jokers, all vying to top the other as they laughed about their lives and the absurdity of the world. One of the men wasn’t laughing. It was Perry Nelson. He was talking about his troubles with Sharon.

Tears rolled down his face and his breath heaved, heavy with booze and remorse.

“I ruined my life,” he said. “I have lost everything: my girls, my wife, I have lost my church. I have lost everything. Look what I did to Julie. Look at the mess I have made of my life.”

The men tried to console their friend, telling him that, above all, he still could have the church. He could still come back to God.

Perry continued to cry and stare down at the floor.

“I wish I could,” he said. “I really do.”

When the friends finally calmed Perry, they were full of anguish themselves. None had seen a man break down as Dr. Nelson had. None had seen such sorrow.

Booze was his buddy. Before his marriage to Sharon, Perry Nelson seldom drank socially—and never in a bar. As an Adventist, alcohol was verboten, and if he dared slam down a beer with the boys, it was behind closed doors. Never where he could be judged so harshly. But once Sharon had her hooks in him, everything taboo was accepted. When it came to bar-hopping, it was surprising how quickly Perry adapted.

Or how unhappy the tall, salt-and-pepper-bearded man had become.

Friends from out of town came calling not long after Sharon and Perry had fallen on hard financial times. The visitors could not believe how much the former churchgoing doctor had changed. He drank to get drunk. He partied to get drunk. He had forsaken everything he once considered important.

Sharon was another matter.

“She was in her element,” said a friend who had accompanied the two of them out dancing at a Trinidad bar where Perry guzzled drinks and Sharon took to the dance floor. “She would twist and wiggle and hang on everyone she could. I just never felt comfortable going out with Perry and Sharon. I could never feel comfortable around her.”

He was an eye doctor, for Heaven's sake. How come he didn’t see so well? Kay Mitchell, the chiropractor's wife, felt sorry for Perry Nelson. He was being destroyed by hanging on to the woman that he had chosen as his wife. Sharon had done everything she could to ruin him. She had drained his business, trashed his reputation, embarrassed him at every turn. And no matter what Sharon did before or after she left Round House, he said he still couldn’t get over her. He didn’t want a divorce.

“You just have to get mad about this whole thing and get over it,” Kay told Perry in the office one morning.

Perry said nothing. He just listened.

“If you can get mad at her, you can get over her. She's done some bad things, you have, too. But no one deserves to be treated like this. Get mad and get over her.”

Perry promised to try.

Kay Mitchell doubted he’d be successful. There was something strange about Sharon's grip on her husband. No matter what she did, he still wanted her.

“Sharon was a typical gold digger,” she said later. “She was out for whatever she could get. She had used Perry for all he had and then moved on. If I were him, I’d have won-dered about what it was that he had that would make her come back. She was a complete user.”

About that same time, Gary was working on a roofing job up in Denver and the two lovers had to keep in contact by telephone. He called Sharon on a Thursday just after she got the new Eagle. She was dying to show it off and suggested they meet at the Denny's in Pueblo.

“To make sure everything is all right,” she said. “Don’t want any mistakes.”

While sipping iced tea at the Denny's, Sharon bragged that if everything went according to plan she would be a wealthy woman. She’d have the insurance money and the car paid off.

“Free and clear,” she asserted. “And if it's done right, I won’t even have to make a regular payment on it.”





Chapter 14

GARY ADAMS WAS NOT ALONE THAT BALMY June night in 1983. He and another man, a friend from way back, waited at the rest stop on 1-25, just outside of Castle Rock. The two smoked cigarettes down to their fibery filters as they passed the time in the cab of Gary's Datsun pickup talking about Sharon and how she had been beaten and abused and ignored by her doctor husband.