“Most people discounted her complaints,” one neighbor said. “I never got the feeling Perry didn’t love Sharon. I don’t think he had a clue about what kind of woman she really was.”
And yet, Gary Adams seemed to be taken in by the woman as well. How else could anyone explain how it was that he up and left his wife at the Dude Ranch and moved in with his lover?
And the question was asked: Where was the doctor? People pondered it in the coffee shop, at the mill and at the church. People who barely knew Perry Nelson were among the most mystified, while those closer to the Nelsons’ situation understood he had tax problems. But to the casual optical customer or the neighbor down the road, he was just a nice fellow who up and disappeared.
Where was his body? People around Wet Canyon had their theories. Some thought he could be dead in the river, the battered victim of a car crash. Others thought he had met a more unseemly fate.
None of that crossed neighbor Ray Thornton's mind. He gave more credence to the possibility Dr. Nelson had fled the country to avoid the steep taxes that he had dodged.
“One of these days I'm going to give it all up and escape to the Cayman Islands,” Perry had said. “A man can live there tax free. One day I’ll be gone!”
Ray also recalled the signs Perry had posted on the perimeter of his property to ward off greedy emissaries of Uncle Sam:
NO TRESPASSING! ESPECIALLY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS!
The searches had turned up nothing. A plane with infrared equipment flew over the creek and its rocky shoreline, looking for the glowing blotch of red that would indicate the heat of a decomposing body.
Nothing was found.
But in Trinidad, some were beginning to wonder if the authorities ought to look closer to home. They wondered if the battered VW had been a ruse, a setup. Perhaps Perry Nelson had never left the mountain house in the first place. Perhaps his body was somewhere on Cougar Ridge.
One theory expressed by many suggested Perry had, in fact, been murdered. His corpse hadn’t turned up because he had been buried somewhere on the acreage around Round House.
Sharon's fork hit her plate with a clatter loud enough to turn heads, though thankfully no one in the little restaurant in Westcliffe paid her any mind. Her hands shook so violently she set them in her lap to steady them. But she said nothing. Gary looked up from his breakfast and asked if she was all right.
It had been a month since Dr. Nelson's disappearance.
Sharon, now silently crying, said nothing. She raised her hand and pointed toward a man ten feet away.
Instantly, with no words uttered, Gary knew what she was thinking. The man, who had his back to them, was the same height and build as Perry. His thinning hair was longish and swirled in the technique many men—including Perry—employed to conceal the fact they were balding.
“Get me out of here,” she coughed out. “Now!”
Gary felt his heart sink, and his stomach turn. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be Perry. He walked over and casually looked at the man's face. It wasn’t Perry. He didn’t look any-thing like him.
Perry was dead.
Sharon almost lost it as they sped away from the cafe. Her tears came in convulsions. Again and again. Gary reached over to comfort her, but she would have none of it. She was scared. Despite the fact the man in the cafe had not been Perry, Sharon had been shaken to the core. Gary checked them into a motel to give her some time to pull herself together. She needed it badly.
It wasn’t Perry. Perry Nelson was dead.
Sharon wrote to Lorri a few weeks after Perry disappeared. It was the only letter she would send to Perry's youngest daughter by his first wife. Lorri wanted to come to Colorado to help in the search for her father's remains. Sharon wrote the letter to discourage her. And if the letter had meant to comfort Lorri, it only pointed out Sharon's own misery. It was, as always, about Sharon. She wrote:
This is such unusual circumstances that even the friends in Rocky Ford have a difficult time knowing what to do or say… at the point where his body does surface, people will be able to see the reality of the nightmare I’ve experienced for the last month.
Lorri, I want him found more than anyone, but I also know, I couldn’t handle being the one to find him at this point. Your dad lives in my heart, wherever his body is another person will be the best one to find him, for no one who loves him would be able to emotionally handle the situation.
Three weeks after the first search for the doc, more than a dozen of Perry's friends gathered along the banks of Clear Creek to look for the missing man. Leading the group was Sharon and her good pal and helpful neighbor, Gary Adams. All had come with the hope that they would make the grisly discovery. The searchers went with heavy hearts, saddened by the tragic circumstances which had brought them together. All knew Perry Nelson. Their hearts ached for Sharon and her children.