Whatever Sharon was searching for, Dr. Nelson's former secretary doubted the younger widow would ever find it. Not in North Carolina, not in Colorado. Not anywhere.
Up and down the wobbly little mountain roads to houses clinging like toadstools on hillsides, gas man Louis Volturo was a welcome sight for everyone in Wet Canyon. Everyone, it seemed, but Gary Adams and Sharon Nelson. Holed up once again in their mountaintop love nest, they didn’t seem to take kindly to visitors. In fact, they were downright hostile.
Volturo felt a sharp poke in his ribs as he was filling the Nelsons’ butane tank. It was Gary Adams with a revolver.
“What the hell are you doing up here?”
“Just putting gas in for Mrs. Nelson,” Volturo said, nervously.
“You put in the gas and get the hell out of this place right now. I don’t want you looking around or anything. Get the hell out of here!”
Later, Louis told his friend Barb Ruscetti about his encounter with the widow Nelson's omnipresent boyfriend.
“I was scared,” he said. “I told my boss that if you want to deliver gas up there, you take it yourself. I won’t take it.”
Barb agreed.
“I wouldn’t go up there, either,” she said.
Sharon's sister Judy had been through the mill when it came to men. She had her abusive marriage and no-good boyfriends. Over time, her sense of smell became acute when it came to men: Judy could smell a rat.
There was something about Gary Adams that gnawed at her sensibilities. He had a kind of innocuous handsome country-boy look, but underneath the aw-shucks facade was something unsettling. She could never put her finger on it. Instead of forcing the issue and analyzing the man, she tried to back off a bit. Gary Adams was a little scary.
One weekend visit at Round House ended abruptly for Judy and her children. Gary was fussing at one of Sharon's children, and Judy jokingly flipped him the bird. In an instant, Gary turned his ire from the child to her.
“This is my house!” he raged. “I’ll do anything and treat anyone any damn way I please. This is my place and no one is going to tell me what to do!”
Judy became frightened. Sharon tried to intervene, albeit halfheartedly. Judy didn’t care what Sharon said. She knew Gary meant every word he was saying. Yet this wasn’t his house. It was Sharon and Perry's house. Judy decided to leave. She was not going to spend one more minute, let alone another night, there. It was the last time she ever visited Sharon at her home in Wet Canyon.
In a way, Judy Douglas needn’t have worried too much about her sister. Sharon's old ways kept her from forging permanent relationships with any man, good or bad. Sharon's backup boyfriend Buzz stayed in the picture whenever Gary Adams was shoved aside. Every couple of weeks, it seemed Sharon would tire of Buzz and return to the mountain house. Back there, she’d summon Gary to her bedroom. Over and over. Back and forth. Sharon was the one holding all the cards; she ruled the world.
Barbara Ruscetti knew the address the instant she pulled the envelope from her thick stack of holiday mail. She knew the handwriting on the envelope belonged to Sharon. It was a greeting card sent by the woman she was certain was behind a terrible murder five months earlier.
Under the cheery holiday salutation was a note: Barb, I miss you very much… could we still be friends? Could I come by and see you?
Even though there were times when she despised Sharon, Barb couldn’t help but be moved by the pathetic little note. She addressed a little card for Sharon and indicated that she would be happy to see her.
Forty-eight hours later, Sharon was in Barb's holiday-decorated and Christmas tree-scented living room, drinking fresh-perked coffee and eating fruitcake. As the buxom widow with the new winter outfit and the cinnamon-twist headed former secretary sat across from each other, there was no denying the tension. Even the muted strains of Christmas carols could do little to mitigate the awkwardness and antagonism.
If Sharon had wanted to be friends, if Barb had thought by inviting her over she was doing the right thing, both were wrong.
Barb had a question that she had wanted to lay on Sharon since that Monday morning when her neighbor had called across the street with the news Dr. Nelson was missing.
“I have something to ask you,” Barb began, her chest heaving slightly with stifled consternation.
Sharon smiled sweetly and looked up from her steaming cup.
“What?” she asked.
Barb let out her breath and blurted the question.
“Did you kill Perry?” she asked.
Sharon set her cup on the table. She turned pale and shook her head with great vehemence. Her fingers brushed her lips.
“No,” she said, “but I sure wish I had.”