Sex. Murder. Mystery(9)
During the heat of the afternoon, Sharon donned short-shorts and paraded about town like a woman who knew she had something to show. And so she did. Ever so slightly, but always close enough to assert the need for a double take, the round globes of each cheek of her butt peeked from below the crisp hem of her shorts. Make no mistake, for La Junta, Rocky Ford and even five-times-larger Trinidad, Sharon Lynn Fuller was an eye-popper.
Dentist’s wife Blanche Wheeler had her own perspective on Sharon’s choice of attire. As the daughter of a Seventh-Day Adventist minister herself, Blanche knew that whatever Sharon wore was something she’d never be caught dead in. No decent woman would. Blanche winced at some of the get-ups the new minister’s wife sprayed onto her shapely thighs each morning. Given the conservative nature of her faith and her own personal background, Blanche tried to set it aside. Maybe she was too harsh in her assessment? Times had changed. Sharon was younger. When Blanche grew up, pants were considered inappropriate for women.
“Unless you were out working in the field, you didn’t put slacks on,” she later said.
Sharon Fuller, evidently, didn’t see it that way.
Jovial Bob Goodhead thought the world of Perry Nelson. They shared a common history, having been close since optometry school back in Memphis. For many, keeping a friendship viable and strong over two decades is not always possible. People change. Circumstances shift. But Bob and Perry remained close. The two even toyed with the idea of opening a joint practice in Oklahoma City where Bob, his wife Donna, and their growing family made their home. Over the years, the Nelsons and the Goodheads included stops at each other’s homes whenever travel brought them within reasonable driving distance.
During one of the Goodheads’ visits to Rocky Ford, Perry asked if they’d like to attend church with his family. Bob wanted to go. He wasn’t interested in converting to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, but he was curious. Donna, on the other hand, didn’t want to go at all. But what could she say?
Entering the church, Donna noticed a woman in a white dress sitting with two little girls. The pretty young mother seemed to monitor Perry Nelson’s every move. She even winked at him. Her behavior seemed inappropriate, even as it related to her own children. She was loudly playing with the little girls while the minister delivered his sermon from the pulpit.
Not one of my six kids would carry on like that, like she’s letting them! Donna thought.
After the service, Perry ushered Bob and Donna aside. Julie Nelson was out of earshot.
“What did you think of Sharon Fuller?”
“Who’s that?” Dr. Goodhead asked.
Perry pointed out the lady in white who had carried on with her two daughters during the service.
An annoyed Donna acknowledged the woman.
Perry smiled broadly. “She’s the preacher’s wife. Isn’t she great?”
“For a preacher’s wife, her kids were sure misbehaving,” Donna said, ending the conversation.
It was a secretary with the slight Slavic accent of her parents who was among the first with an inkling something was going on with the eye doctor for whom she worked and the new minister’s wife.
A feisty woman with a pinned-up hairdo resembling a lightly golden cinnamon bun, Barbara Ruscetti was a woman who never had it easy. She worked hard for everything she had. Tragically widowed at only thirty-four when her coal-miner husband contracted an unidentified virus that killed almost a dozen, Barb wasn’t the type to scramble for a new meal ticket. She didn’t set her sights on a new man, though she could have found one easily enough. She was smart, attractive and, as anyone who sat at her dinner table could vouch with unflagging enthusiasm, a great cook.
When her children were young, the mother of four got by on $305 a month—the combined income from Social Security and what passed for a veteran’s pension. She supplemented the money by knitting sweaters, baby booties and afghans. She never went on welfare. She never sought a handout. When her youngest was eleven and the financial pressure of college tuition for her older children loomed, she went looking for a job.
On November 11, 1965, Mrs. Ruscetti started employment with a Trinidad optometrist she would come to adore, a man who treated her children with the warmth of a favorite uncle. That man, of course, was Perry Nelson. Over the course of their years together, the two forged a close and enduring friendship. She always called him “Doctor” unless she was angry at him; only then would she use his first name.
Tuesdays and Thursdays were Trinidad office days for Perry Nelson, with the remainder of the work week spent at the office in Rocky Ford. When he was away from Trinidad, Barb Ruscetti ran the office, booking appointments, ordering lenses and repairing eyeglass frames. In time, Nelson’s business doubled, tripled and doubled again. At its peak, the Trinidad practice alone was raking in more than $150,000 annually.