Sex. Murder. Mystery(82)

She’ll be good,

I’ll be good, too.

“I think that she did it just to get me out of her hair because I was bugging her so much,” Tara commented later. “She didn’t care about the Camaro, not as much as my father did.”

Sharon, of course, had been down that route before with Perry's daughter, Lorri. How it was that she would find men with teenage daughters was beyond her. She had buddied up cajoled, sucked up and lied to her lovers’ and husbands’ kid to get them out of the way. She had done so with the kind o: finesse that's born of practice.





Chapter 23

DIVORCE HADN’T NULLIFIED THE RESIDUAL feelings of closeness and affection Glen and Andy Harrelson had shared during their two-plus decades of marriage. When Glen told his former wife that he was out of his personal funk and involved with a wonderful woman named Sharon Nelson, Andy was delighted. And as time went on, it quickly became obvious this Sharon was more than a fling. Glen wasn’t the type to engage in serial dating. He wanted to settle down. He was in search of his second chance.

“There's one problem,” he told his ex-wife over the phone during one of their almost daily conversations. “She doesn’t know if she wants to get married again.”

He explained how his new love's first marriage to a preacher had ended in divorce and her second husband had died in a terrible auto accident.

“She feels like it's bad luck to be married to her,” Glen said. “Like there's a black cloud hanging over her.”

Andy Harrelson didn’t say anything, but the words bothered her. She felt like the woman's comments were a manipulation of a lonely hearted man. She was pulling back, to make Glen want her more.

Andy concluded Glen's new sweetheart was an operator.

It was very peculiar. Whenever Andy Harrelson showed up to pick up the kids or return something she had borrowed, Sharon would disappear into the back bedroom before introductions were made. And she stayed there.

Glen would make some excuse, but the fact of the matter was clear to Andy. Sharon simply did not want to meet her face-to-face. Andy wondered if Sharon was embarrassed about sleeping with her ex-husband. Maybe she was just plain ashamed. She had been a Seventh-Day Adventist minister's wife, after all. “Living in sin” was definitely not Adventist-approved.

The odd aspect of her back bedroom disappearing act was that Sharon was always very pleasant on the telephone whenever Andy called. She was warm, chatty and very accommodating. It was so strange that Glen's new love was able to talk to on the phone without any apprehensions, but could not face her in person.

Maybe Sharon is shy, Andy thought.

It was late at night when the bedside phone woke her from slumber. Andy Harrelson's heart thumped, as most are prone to do, when the startling ring comes in the dark hours. The voice was familiar, though somehow different. It was Glen, but he sounded very weak.

“Could you get me and take me to the hospital?” he asked in a near whisper.

Andy knew Glen had mononucleosis and had been languishing with the debilitating illness for several days. Andy got up and dressed in record time to go after him. All the while, she worried about her former husband and wondered about his girlfriend.

Where was this new love of his life, Sharon?

Her answer came mid-morning when Sharon finally showed up at the Denver hospital where Glen was on medication and bed rest.

“I met an old friend, “Sharon announced to her boyfriend while he lay within the stainless steel rails of a hospital bed as IV tubes provided precious liquid to his depleted system.

“It's okay if we go out with other people, isn’t it?” she asked.

Glen's dry lips barely moved. And really, what could he say? When Andy Harrelson thought about it later, she considered Sher's comment to her laid-up boyfriend very strange. Very cruel.

“Of course, Glen wanted the relationship exclusive… I guess it was a manipulation to make him hold on tighter,” Andy told a friend.

Outside of Rick Philippi and Mikki Rector—soon-to-be Baker, having fallen in love with Porter Memorial Hospital orderly Steve Baker—none of Glen's friends met Sharon Nelson. Glen talked about Sharon effusively. She was the most wonderful woman that had ever landed in Colorado. She was a great cook. She was a sharp lady. And while he never went into the details—he was too much of a gentleman for that—he told a few buddies Sharon was a fantastic lover. Even though just two had met the mystery woman, most of Glen's other pals saw her influence.

None more so than fire department dispatcher Dean Hastings.

Dean had known Glen for almost ten years, having worked alongside him both in dispatch and at the firehouse. Not long after Glen told him of his new girlfriend—whom he said he met through church—he came into work one day without wearing his toupee.