Sex. Murder. Mystery(78)

Tygart could see where Gary Adams fit into the whole crazy scenario. He was the bad boy to Sharon's good-girl image. Gary was the biker-greaser a preacher's daughter runs away with in her senior year. The Thornton detective could see that Perry Nelson was the bridge to another life, one of money and power. But what of Glen? Sharon insisted there were no insurance policies, no great wealth for her to make claim to in the event of his death. Elaine was left to wonder: Maybe Sharon liked Glen, she might even have loved the firefighter.

To hear the woman sacked out on the Best Western Motel bed, her love for her most recently murdered husband was deep and mutual.

“What's wrong? Don’t I make you happy?” Sharon claimed to have asked Glen one night, when it was evident something was eating at him. The conversation took place early in their living-together arrangement.

“No,” he said, “it's not you. Sharon, I couldn’t ask for anybody who was better suited for me. It's just that I'm having a hard time with your kids. It's my problem, not yours.” Sharon asked Glen if he wanted her to pack up and get out. “No,” he answered. “I want you and the kids to stay here. This is my problem and I should be the one to go.”

No woman knew a more chivalrous man. Even for a woman used to getting her way, Sharon was nonplussed. Glen was some kind of nice guy; perfect for what she had in mind.

There was something familiar about Sharon Nelson Harrelson. Elaine sensed it, but couldn’t come up with any reason why she might know the woman who had confessed to setting up two husbands to die. What was it about her? In time, a memory came back. First foggy, then clear and indisputable. Frighteningly so. And though some might wonder how it could have eluded her, Elaine Tygart's brush with Sharon had been months before in the most unlikely of places.

Sharon Lynn Harrelson had been to the detective's home in Thornton that summer… so had her second victim, her husband Glen.

Elaine Tygart's motorcycle had to go. It wasn’t that she didn’t love the exhilarating feeling she got when she rode with her husband; she loved the thrill of the speed, the air rushing by, the sense of freedom all riders enjoy. Elaine simply loved her husband much more. He had been injured in a motorcycle accident and Elaine had decided that she could no longer enjoy her Yamaha 750. Her riding days were over.

So Elaine Tygart ran an advertisement in the local paper in July 1988.

Todd Harrelson answered the ad. He was a nice kid, a senior at Thornton High. He told the detective he would bring his father over to take a look at it. It was to be a graduation present.

Todd introduced Glen and Sharon to the detective a week later. Sharon burbled about how proud she was of her son, and how excited she was that he might be getting the motorcycle.

“It's cheaper than a car,” she said.

Elaine invited Sharon inside while father and son talked about the merits of the Yamaha. She talked about her husband's job as a fireman and how her son worked at Checker Auto. She was friendly and pleasant. When a beaming Todd came back, it was definite: The motorcycle was going to be his.

Sharon got out her purse and wrote out a check. They’d go to the credit union   for the rest of the money.

When the recollection of that earlier encounter came flooding back, Elaine worried Sharon might remember her, too. She wondered what the odds were for a murderer, the victim, and the arresting police detective to have met before the crime.

“It made me think how ordinary a killer can be. A person responsible for killing two people… can kill your neighbor, your husband. A murderer was in my home.”

Everything had been where the Black Widow said it would be: the wedding ring in the bedroom, the note in the mailbox. Sharon Lynn Nelson had been an investigator's dream come true. She had laid it all out and had the evidence to back up what happened.

The only thing missing was the key to the burned-out house on Columbine Court. Sharon had put it back on the key ring that held her car keys; that set of keys had been given to Rochelle when the kids went to stay with her after the first interrogation at Trinidad's police station.

It was left to Det. Tygart to tell Rochelle Mason her mother was never coming back to Trinidad to take care of Danny and Misty. It was more than likely she would never be coming back, period.

“You’ll need to make arrangements,” the detective said to the unblinking nineteen-year-old. “Your mom told us she had a part in Glen and Perry's deaths.”

Rochelle nodded. The grown daughter of the minister and the murderer did not cry. She seemed to take it all in stride.

The detective said Sharon was on her way to Pueblo for booking and would be formally charged in Adams County. She also told Rochelle she could not go up to Round House. Detectives were conducting a search there.