Sex. Murder. Mystery(50)

Perry didn’t love her.

Perry didn’t treat her right.

Perry was a mean old bastard.

When a familiar little black VW putted by, Gary and his buddy laid a patch of smoldering rubber to catch up. Perry smiled and laughed out loud when Gary pulled his truck alongside and waved him to follow. They pulled over at a tavern in Castle Rock for a few beers. Gary introduced his friend and told Perry he was heading up to Denver, too.

“Sure was a coincidence that we’d meet on the way up,” Gary said.

After downing a few rounds, the three men decided to go to a strip club on the outskirts of Denver. By then, Gary's plan had fully fermented. It was simple and sweet. While he and Perry were in the bathroom, Gary instructed his pal to slip some knockout drops in the doctor's beer. They’d walk the doc out of the place and finish him off.

It was a simple, a good plan. It was a plan all for Sharon.

Back at the table, Perry put the glass to his lips and drank.

After a couple of gulps, he smacked the glass down. He looked disgusted.

“That doesn’t taste good at all,” he said. “Real flat tasting.”

Gary said his beer tasted just fine, but Perry didn’t want any more.

Perry Nelson held his liquor that night. He didn’t get sloppy. He didn’t make it easy for Gary to do what he had come there to do. The music blared and the mix of over-the-hill dancers with makeup-covered stretch marks and younger strippers who were working for enough money for implants slid across the stage. As the hours grew later, eyelids became heavy and it was time to go.

“Where do you want to stay?” Perry called out over the club's obnoxiously loud sound system.

Gary had no idea. He had no preference. Neither did his buddy.

“Why don’t we just pull over to the side of the road?” he suggested.

With what they all had spent drinking, saving a few bucks on a motel seemed like a good idea. Neither Gary nor his friend knew the doctor had about as much money as they had. Sharon had been reupholstering the VW so he could sleep in it to save on a motel, anyway.

“Perry,” Gary said, “don’t tell Nancy you saw me up here. I don’t want her to know I went to a strip joint.”

Perry laughed.

“Don’t you tell Sharon, either.”

“Promise.”

The water of Clear Creek ran through the chasm with the rushing sound that lulls weary travelers to sleep when nightfall comes and they cannot drive a mile further. It was after 2:00 A.M. and the sky was pockmarked with stars poking through pinholes in the blackness when the two vehicles pulled over along the highway in Jefferson County. They were just outside of Golden, west of Denver. Perry popped his seat back and stretched out in the VW, while Gary and his buddy tried to get comfortable in the cramped cab of the pickup.

Even though Perry had let him down by holding his booze with impressive fortitude, Gary Adams still wanted to do the job. But he was tired. His friend was beat. The idea of hitting Perry Nelson over the head with a tire iron sounded like too much work.

“To hell with it, ” he said to his co-conspirator. “Let's just let it go.”

The next morning the three ate breakfast at a Golden cafe, chatted as if they were the best of friends, and waved good-bye.

Gary scratched his head years after, wondering why it was that the plan didn’t work that night. It would have been just perfect.

Damn it anyway, he thought.

Hours later in the quiet solitude of Round House, Sharon got the shock of her life: Her husband came home. He was supposed to be dead. She was stunned and mad.

Gary Adams recalled what happened:

“Sharon was positive that Perry was not coming back. So when Perry came back she turned white as a ghost. She wasn’t expecting it. She had it in her mind how she was going to tell the cops. How she was going to be the grieving widow. She said she was shaking, turned white as a sheet, you know, scared.”

And very disappointed.

Thursday, a week after the fiasco with the dud knockout drops, Gary left Denver in his rearview mirror and returned to Wet Canyon. He had heard he could scrounge up some construction work in Trinidad, though that was not the real reason he came back. He had to see the woman he had disappointed. But before he made his way to Dr. Nelson's office on Country Club Drive, he ran into Sharon and a car salesman in downtown Trinidad.

“What happened?” She whispered her hot breath into his ear. “What happened?”

It was neither the right time nor the right place to talk. Sharon told Gary they’d have to meet another time.

“Perry's in town today,” she said. What she meant: Do not come to the office. Do not.

“Maybe we could meet next week?” she said softly, out of earshot of the car salesman. “At the lake.”