With a worried look on his face, Bart pressed the receiver into wife Rochelle's outstretched palm.
Mrs. Harrelson was distraught and nearly out of breath. There was no room for the pleasantries that usually accompany the start of a phone conversation.
“Rochelle, how far do you live from your mom's house?”
“About thirty minutes,” Sharon's eldest daughter answered.
“You’ve got to go up there and be with your mother.”
“We’re going up there anyway. Why the sudden need?”
Mrs. Harrelson's fragile composure began to slip further and she let the words rush from her lips. “You’ve got to go tell your mom Glen died this morning in a fire at the house.”
Rochelle was overwhelmed. She could barely think of a response. “What house?”
But Mrs. Harrelson was gone. The line was dead.
Rochelle and Bart made it to Round House in record time, probably less than fifteen minutes, though they didn’t time the drive.
Danny and Misty were in the front room playing when Rochelle and Bart went inside.
“Bart and Rochelle are here!”
“I'm so glad you’re here,” Sharon said. “Come and sit down. We’ll eat supper and watch a movie.”
“Mom, I think you better sit down,” Rochelle said, tears running from her eyes.
“What's wrong?” Sharon asked.
“Mom, Glen's mom just called… Glen died this morning in a fire at the house.”
Sharon stood perfectly still for a moment and started to cry, before words came to her lips.
“Oh my God, how did this happen?” she finally asked.
Rochelle held her mother, feeling her shuddering body convulsing with grief.
“How did this happen…”
She collected herself enough to tell the children the terrible news that their new stepfather was dead.
Danny Nelson stood in the front room, his eyes wide open and his mouth agape.
“Mommy,” the nine-year-old boy said, “why do all our daddies have to die?”
Something snapped. Her crying shut off like a tap run dry.
“Oh,” she said, as she fumbled with her shoelaces, tears obscuring her vision. “I’ve got to make a phone call. I’ve got to find out what's going on.”
Bart, who stayed out of most of the conversation, told his young wife to take her mother down the mountain to the pay telephone at Robinson's Mill. He would stay at the house with the little kids. It was all he could think to do. Everyone had been so shaken by this tragedy. Imagine the poor guy dying in a terrible fire like that. What could be worse?
Way up north, near the scene of the crime, Thornton Detective Glen Trainor was called out to the crime scene at the fireman's house. A bit later, Elaine Tygart also received news of the suspicious death. Within a few hours, the two would be heading for Trinidad. Driving down the freeway to solve not one murder, but two.
Chapter 28
SNOW WAS THREATENING, TURNING THE SKY OVER Brighton, Colorado, into a leaden lid. Lorri Nelson Hustwaite's knotted stomach rolled inside her and her knees nearly buckled as she walked the long corridor to the visiting area of the Adams County Jail. She was there to see Sharon Lynn, the woman who had been arrested following the Pizza Hut confession of her involvement in the murder of Perry Nelson. Lorri, pale and wan from the trip and the anxiety of the pending confrontation, had arrived from Montana to ask the question to which everyone had sought an answer.
Directed over to a seat separating visitors from prisoners by a wall of glass, Lorri spotted Sharon before her former stepmother saw her. As she moved closer, the woman who killed her father stretched forward as a delighted smile rushed over her face.
“Lorri,” Sharon called out with the kind of exaggerated excitement one uses to demonstrate to a long-lost friend a sense of joy for a reunion .
Lorri did not return the look. She did not match Sharon's smile, nor was her greeting given with any semblance of friendliness.
“I want to know one thing,” she said. “Why did you kill my father?”
The happy look long gone, Sharon shook her head sadly. “I never meant for it to happen,” she said. “I can’t possibly explain it all. It is far too complicated. My feelings. My feelings were all mixed up.”
As Lorri listened, Sharon trashed her father's memory. Sharon shifted blame and said Perry had cheated on her. He had an affair with another woman and it broke her heart.
“You don’t know what I was going through with his affair. It hurt.”
“You’ve had many, many affairs,” Lorri snapped. “And you’re not dead.”
Perry Nelson's favorite youngest daughter fought her tears and tried to keep her composure while Sharon went on about how no one could understand her. No one could understand the pain Perry had caused her by his betrayal.