Sex. Murder. Mystery(58)
After Sharon departed, Iona and Blanche Wheeler marveled over her grief-ridden performance.
“I doubt those tears were genuine,” Iona said.
Blanche agreed with Iona's blunt assessment.
Sharon seldom returned to Rocky Ford after that particular visit.
If Perry Nelson were dead, he wasn’t even cold by the time Sher put his Trinidad practice on the sale block. If Dr. Nelson were alive, she surely must have known he wasn’t coming back. She had waited only a matter of a few days after his car was yanked from Clear Creek. As she had always done, Sher Nelson surprised everyone.
Later, she tried to explain her actions.
“The reason I put the practice up for sale so soon is—it took over two years to find a buyer for the RF [Rocky Ford] practice and I knew also that a practice without a doctor doesn’t sell very well, and I want his practice to continue with a new doctor—and according to the president of the Colorado Optometric Association the sooner a practice is listed after death, the better chance a doctor will be willing to take it over. That's why.”
Not long after Sharon put it up for sale, Jim Whitley talked with one doctor who had been mulling over buying Dr. Nelson's Trinidad practice.
“I'm looking into it,” the other doctor said. “Sharon Nelson is going to continue on, keeping the books—”
Jim cut the man short.
“You don’t want her. Buy the equipment. Buy the business. But leave her alone. Can’t trust her for anything, especially bookkeeper.”
Jim recalled an incident several months before when he needed a new pair of glasses and Sharon told him that she’d make him a deal if he’d pay her directly instead of through the regular billing procedure. She’d get the cash and he’d save a few bucks. Barb Ruscetti overheard the conversation and made a beeline for the back room to tell Dr. Nelson.
Sharon just grinned and rolled her eyes.
Ooops, caught again!
As she sold off assets, Sharon continued to keep office hours at Country Club Drive. She continued to fill prescriptions and order glasses for the few customers who straggled in. She continued to bewilder Dr. Mitchell. He knew that the Nelsons had no money and the business was a mere shell.
“How are you going to pay for this?” he asked one afternoon when Sharon placed another lens order.
“I'm not. I need the money and it's too bad for them. I’ve got kids to support. Perry's left a big mess behind.”
She had no compunction about sticking the optical labs for more money. She seemed to be able to justify anything.
With Sharon so oddly calm, the Mitchells and the Whitleys began to wonder if the accident had been some kind of a setup. The Nelsons had been so desperate for money, they figured, Perry and Sharon might have cooked up the scheme to fake his death for insurance money. It wasn’t an original idea. All had heard cases where the husband took off for a few years and his wife had him declared dead to collect a fat insurance settlement. Many recalled an episode of TV's Unsolved Mysteries that could have been a blueprint for what Sharon and Perry might have carried out.
Terry Mitchell wouldn’t put it past either of the Nelsons. Perry was in a world of financial hurt and was damn near suicidal. Sharon, he thought, had no conscience and would do whatever she could to get her hands on a wad of cash. He was sure that when it came to her questionable character, he had seen only the tip of the iceberg. Fraud and deception were a way of life for her.
Dr. Mitchell ran his suspicions past his wife.
“She didn’t seem worried. She wasn’t hysterical. She didn’t even cry. When we wanted to go to the airport to hand out his picture, she said no. She didn’t want to be bothered. She knows something.”
Kay Mitchell agreed.
“And in the car there were no papers, no briefcase. He took everything out and just left his sleeping bag,” she said.
“Yeah, because he wasn’t in the car when it went into the river. Just watch, she's going to have him declared dead for the money.”
Back in Oklahoma City, the Goodheads were still haunted by their visit to Round House the day after Perry disappeared from the face of the earth.
“I don’t know what happened,” Bob Goodhead told his wife Donna. “But one thing I'm positive about is that woman is a liar.”
Donna thought the same thing. She decided to call AT&T and cancel their phone card.
“Bob,” she said, reaching to dial the phone company, “I don’t trust Sharon at all.”
In rural areas like Wet Canyon, gossip is the number-one mode of communication. That had more to do with human nature than the fact there were few phone lines in the remote reaches of Colorado. When Gary Adams moved in with Sharon a few days after Perry disappeared, just about everyone knew it. Some even suspected the affair before the doc drove off to oblivion. Sharon had even complained her husband was cold to her.