Though Sharon punctuated her response with a nervous little laugh, Barb didn’t think it was a joke. Uneasiness hung in the air. Though Sharon chatted a bit more before making up a hasty excuse that she had to leave, the conversation over coffee fruitcake was over.
“She never came back to my house. She knew I knew. When she left, she said, ‘I’ll be seeing you.’ But she never came back anymore. She’d see me on the street and cross over to the other side. She knew. She was a rotten baby. You can’t believe the things she did.”
The school Christmas play had been a community tradition for as long as many could remember. Everyone in Weston halfway connected with the school attended the event that kicked off the holiday season with the joyous song of Weston's youngest children.
Sharon Nelson entered the school auditorium wrapped in fur and dressed to the nines. Audience members stopped talking and turned to watch her. And watch, they did. She wore heels and a short dress. Her makeup was done to movie-star perfection. For a minute, many stopped breathing.
All knew she had wrangled a portion of some life insurance money before there had been conclusive proof that Perry Nelson was dead. Everyone knew it was blood money that had paid for the sumptuous coat. Everyone knew she was shacked up with Gary Adams. The big question was still bantered about, however: What really happened to Perry?
While most of the women had little regard for Sharon, either because they were jealous or they felt she was a world-class husband hunter, men continued to be divided.
And yet as one local explained to an outsider, when it came to Sharon it seemed men fell into two camps.
“Those who would fall for her and those who were disgusted by her. It was as if their eyes were looking at two different women. A man who could read Sherry was a lucky man. Many were not.”
If Perry was dead, at least Sharon was left with some money. Julie Whitley's memory turned back to three weeks before Perry's car went in to the black water of Clear Creek.
Julie had stopped in to the eye clinic to pay for some glasses and made a remark to the effect that if it isn’t one thing, it is another. Money just didn’t seem to go far enough.
“I know what you mean,” Sharon said.
As they talked—Julie couldn’t recall how it came up—but the subject of life insurance was broached.
Sharon confided that she had purchased three policies on her husband's life. It was her way of ensuring her survival in the event that the unthinkable happened.
“If anything happens, I can’t make it alone. I had to forge his name,” she said.
Sharon was such a talker, such a relentless braggart, Julie Whitley wasn’t sure if she had in fact forged her husband's name, or if she was just thinking out loud.
“I wish I could get away with that,” Julie shot back. “If I could, I would. Dying is the only thing that you can count on. Might as well have someone profit from it.”
Sharon nodded.
As Julie Whitley saw her, Sharon was a woman with ambitions far beyond Trinidad. She wanted to be ensconced in the country-club set in a place where the cachet actually meant something. Trinidad wasn’t big enough, fast enough, good enough.
“In Trinidad they are either on welfare or they are wanting out. I didn’t think anything of Sharon's desire for more. I wanted out of Trinidad, too,” Julie later said.
When the rumor mill churned with the persistent gossip that Perry had fled to Mexico and was awaiting Sharon to break away to come to his side, those closest to the Nelsons almost laughed. Why would sleeping with Gary Adams be part of such a plan? Why would Perry renew his pilot's license just days before his disappearance? Why get the VW all fixed up for camping when you’ll never have a chance to use it?
Sharon continued to be a figure who invited opinions, a woman who courted rumor. Innuendo was her shadow. As her true character became more evident, the talk increased. She was a slut. A whore. Probably a killer. Even though they were the closest neighbors to the Nelson place, the Thorntons tried to stay out of the fray and kept their opinions to themselves. When
Nester Baca, a Las Animas County Sheriff's deputy, visited with Ray one afternoon at their ranch house, he started the ball rolling. His gut told him that Sharon had killed her husband. “I know it,” he said. “I just can’t prove it.” Sharon wasn’t completely out of the loop. She heard the occasional comments about her character after Perry disappeared. She knew people could be nasty with their comments. Gossip was an Olympic event in rural Colorado. But what did they know of her life? What did they know of what she had gone through before Perry died?
“I can easily understand why people would say I was greedy,” she told a friend sometime later. “I can understand that. Things, status, meant a great deal to me. They were my shell, I guess you could say. I wasn’t white trash. I loved the things Perry bought me. I loved the freedom to buy whatever I wanted without having to account for a dime. It was almost like everything Sharon wants, Sharon can have. She doesn’t have to account for it. I’d had to account for change from a quarter if I bought a dime pack of gum with Mike.”