Sex. Murder. Mystery. Read online

  Among the lessons of good living, Morris Douglas showed his middle daughter that the rules could be bent just a little. Whenever they’d go into town to the hardware or feed store, he’d buy little Sharon a Coke, which contained caffeine, something forbidden by the church.

  “Better throw the bottle out before we get home, so your mother doesn’t find out,” he told her after many such trips.

  And if Morris did bend the rules, it was never to the complete breaking point.

  One time, when they were school-age, Judy and Sharon found a stack of girlie magazines stashed in their father’s toolbox up in the attic. The discovery knocked the wind out of them. Not their daddy. Someone else’s father—the whiskey-breathed men outside of their faith looked at that sort of material. Not him. How could it be? It seemed as though their father lived in two worlds: the church and the real world.

  And though it was as wrong as wrong could be, the girls could not stay away from the magazines.

  “We’d sneak up there and look at them. Our daddy didn’t do things like that.”

  When Sharon was in grade-school, she learned for the first time that despite what they preached, many other adults broke the rules to devastating and far-reaching consequence. She was a beautiful little girl then, with gorgeous eyes and thick, curly hair. She was also a target.

  Two incidents took place before she was ten.

  Sharon had no reason to feel anything but safe sitting in the backseat of the car while a group of Seventh-Day Adventists went out to raise money for the support of the church. As they went from house to house, eight-year-old Sharon sat sandwiched between two men. One of the men put his hand on her lap.

  “I’m tired,” the church member said. “And my hands are very cold.”

  Sharon felt his fingers slide up under her skirt and pull at her panties. She pulled her legs tighter together. She yanked at his arm, but said nothing. She didn’t want the other man to know what was going on.

  A couple of years later, it happened again. This time, the abuser Was an elderly employee at the academy. Sharon had heard stories from other girls that the man’s hands wandered, but she thought she was safe. She was good friends with the family. She was wrong. One afternoon when she went to get some cleaning supplies from the storage closet, the old man pushed her inside and grabbed her crotch and fondled her.

  Years later when Sharon recalled how she told her mother about the fondling by the janitor, she said the old woman insisted she had never heard of the incident. One thing Josephine was certain about, however, was if her middle daughter had been a little older at the time of the alleged abuse, she’d have been less compliant.

  “You’d have given him what for, because you were so much like your daddy,” Josephine said.

  Sharon shook her head and disagreed.

  “It wouldn’t have mattered what age I was. I don’t think I’d have said anything.”

  Chapter 5

  NEITHER OF THE THORNTON POLICE DETECTIVES said they were tired or that they wanted to go to the motel back in Trinidad. But it was getting late. It was also obvious that while Sharon Nelson Harrelson professed no knowledge of who might have harmed her third husband, Glen, it was clear she was not being entirely forthcoming. She talked around certain subjects, refusing to address much with any real deal of directness. The emotions stirred by what had happened had clouded her thinking, she said. Although she made sobbing noises into a crinkly tissue, an action that seemed more fake than a half-price antique, and dabbed at her eyes, no tears were evident.

  “Where were you when your husband was killed?” Thornton detective Glen Trainor asked with steady, unblinking blue eyes.

  “I was here at home,” Sharon hastily replied.

  Her speed to answer and her response was startling. Both Glen Trainor and partner Elaine Tygart knew that by all rights the woman with the crumbled Kleenex had no way of knowing when the murder had occurred. How was it that she was so certain she had been at home? Even the investigators still didn’t know exactly when the fireman died.

  Trainor’ s heart jumped in his chest. He exchanged a quick glance with his partner. This was clearly more than a death notification. This was bigger.

  “Out of everybody that you know,” the young detective asked, “who would be more likely to kill your husband?”

  Sharon shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone.”

  Again, her words triggered suspicion. The investigators knew from on-the-job experience an innocent person often can conjure a short list of enemies when it comes to the murder of a loved one. It can be an ex-spouse, a neighbor whose dog barked, a person involved in a failed business venture. There is always someone.

  It was nearly midnight; an hour and a half had passed and it was time to leave. A basic foundation of the woman’s background had been laid. She had offered an alibi of watching videos the night before at the home of a neighbor. Best of all, she agreed to come into the police station in Trinidad the next morning to make a final statement that would tie up the loose ends.

  “I have funeral arrangements to make,” she said, “but I guess I can make it down there.”

  She explained that she’d have to make provisions for the care of her two small children, but provided that could be reasonably worked out, she’d be back for more first thing in the morning.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if they had been to a dinner party and not an inquisition.

  Elaine Tygart left with the feeling Sharon hadn’t had a direct hand in the death of her firefighter husband, but she knew more about what had happened at Columbine Court than she let on.

  Glen Trainor put it simply: “She killed him or she had him killed.”

  They got back in the car and headed down the mountain toward Trinidad and their motel.

  “You guys didn’t let her breathe in there,” said the Las Animas County sheriff’s sergeant who had accompanied them. “You were firing those questions at her one after another.”

  The young man who had led them to the house piped up.

  “That woman’s guilty as sin,” he said.

  No one disagreed. No one said anything about how people handle grief in different ways. No one said she was innocent of anything.

  “We just have to prove it,” Trainor said.

  The Thornton detectives were on an unmercifully tight budget which left them little in the way of expense money. Meals were not going to be shared at the best places in town, if indeed outpost Trinidad had such an establishment. And insofar as hotel accommodations were concerned, that first night the two shared a double room. The fact they were good friends made the discomfort of the situation easier to bear. That they were on the case of their lives didn’t hurt, either. As they organized things for the following morning, they lamented over the fact they had not been able to bring Sharon the news of her husband’s death. It seemed Glen Harrelson’s mother in Iowa had already been notified and she passed along the shocking news to her son’s wife.

  Catching her off guard had been their great hope. Unfortunately, Sharon had ample time to frame a story, shore up an alibi and play the tragic widow.

  Times two.

  Elaine Tygart did not mince words.

  “She’s as guilty as shit,” she said as the two cops discussed their interview strategy for the next morning. “She knows more.” They began to write down everything the widow had said in the kitchen that night. They began to sequence each part of her statement. Further scrutiny would come in the morning when they had her face-to-face once more.

  And, almost immediately upon their return, their motel room phone rang. It was the Las Animas County sheriff calling, with a name worth checking into.

  “Gary Starr Adams,” he said.

  As he listened, Trainor searched his memory. He said the name out loud, communicating the possible lead to Elaine Tygart. She also drew a blank. It was not a name Sharon had mentioned in her interview. Yet according to what the sheriff was saying, the man was a key indivi
dual in the new widow’s life.

  “Right after her doctor husband disappeared, Adams was living with Mrs. Nelson and driving a brand-new pickup.”

  The more the investigator and the sheriff talked, the darker the picture of this woman—a former preacher’s wife, of all things—grew. It seemed that suspicions around her second husband’s disappearance and death had run like a brushfire over a mesa. Everyone voiced an opinion. And all the opinions were the same: Sharon and Gary had conspired to kill Perry Nelson.

  “Nobody came forward with information that could prove Dr. Nelson was murdered by Sharon and Gary,” the sheriff explained. “But lots of people thought so.”

  Chapter 6

  AS THE SUMMER OF1976 WENT ON, SO DID THE GOS-sip and innuendo. The affair Perry Nelson and Sharon Fuller had vehemently denied was the worst-kept secret in southeastern Colorado. Julie Nelson tried to keep her husband on a shorter leash and Mike Fuller did what he could to see that his wife stayed closer to his side. It was clear, however, that none of that would work. There was no stopping those two.

  Sharon, in particular, invited gossip wherever she went.

  When she helped out at a Seventh-Day Adventist Bible school, rumors once more wound their way through the canyons.

  An upset Sharon was nearly in tears when she told her husband and others how a bunch of hormone-charged teenage boys had attempted to proposition her for sex at the school.

  Years later, Blanche Wheeler shook her head at the memory.

  “Some women with the school felt it was probably the other way around,” she said.

  Back at the medical building in Rocky Ford, front-desk assistant Iona Hamilton did her best to avoid Sharon whenever the hot-to-trot preacher’s wife was “helping out” in Rocky Ford instead of at Dr. Nelson’s Trinidad practice. Though Iona wasn’t even a member of the conservative Adventist church, she knew damn well the difference between right and wrong.

  Some of the other, the younger, women in the office seemed oblivious to Sharon’s actions, and when Iona was unable to bite her tongue, they chided her for being “mean” to misunderstood Sher.

  “You just don’t like her, because you know Julie,” a young clerk said one afternoon.

  “No,” Iona shot back, no longer able to hold herself in complete check. “I feel there’s an evil streak in the woman.”

  The clerk pooh-poohed Iona’s remark, but the strong-minded front-desk assistant stood her ground.

  “Someday, you’ll see,” she said. “She’s not the person she pretends to be. She wants everyone to like her, too much. I think there’s an ulterior motive here.”

  And so it went on. Lovers as wrapped up as Perry and Sharon were thought they could keep their rendezvous hush-hush. Some secret. Just about everybody in town knew the two of them were carrying on. The looks. The unnecessary running into each other. They even had a hiding place at the Watkins Medical Arts building in which they squirreled away notes to one another.

  Perry showed Barb Ruscetti several of the lovesick missives Sharon had left for him.

  “Look what my doll left for me today,” he said.

  Barb regarded the love note. It was akin to the kind of little message a teenager would write to another to pass the lagging minutes in geometry class. What was this man thinking?

  “Oh, Doctor,” Barb pleaded, “you ought to let this go. It’s ruining your life.”

  Perry folded up the paper and slipped it back into the pocket of his trousers. Barb just didn’t understand. He would never give up the preacher’s wife.

  “I don’t want to live without her. I’m going to marry her, Barb.”

  Barb didn’t know what to say. Doctor’s spellbound, he-witched by a big-boobed siren, she thought. God help him. God help Julie.

  Mike Fuller was not his sister-in-law Judy’s favorite person. He was controlling, selfish and demanding. There was a distance that she could not overcome, even if she had wanted to become closer. He was the preacher, and that alone, given the Douglas sisters’ growing-up years, was a black mark against him. In all fairness, Judy Douglas would later concede much of what she knew of Mike Fuller’s character and temperament was from her sister’s less-than-glowing accounts of their marriage. Even so, Judy felt guilty, and later a little used when Sharon would drive up to her house in Colorado Springs to rendezvous with Dr. Nelson.

  “I knew Sharon played around in her marriage to Mike. Everyone probably knew. I knew that she told Mike that she was coming up to see one of my children who had been very ill with spinal meningitis. It was usually on a Saturday after church. I didn’t know the details of Sharon’s relationship with Perry. She’d come over, say hello and they’d go off to a motel.”

  It was no wonder the home owned by Karl and Blanche Wheeler was a beehive of activity in September 1976. Blanche double-checked and triple-checked the foot-long list she kept detailing all that needed to be done for their daughter’s September 5th wedding. As if there wasn’t enough to do. Blanche pushed up her eyeglasses and let out a sigh, tempered with a smile. Running a dental business and taking care of the responsibilities associated with the forty-acre ranch southeast of Rocky Ford was never easy.

  Calves in the summertime, melons and corn to harvest and a wedding, too.

  The preparations for the nuptials, Blanche never once had to remind herself, were a labor of love. The other stuff life brought was just work.

  When Sharon Fuller called to inquire if she could come to the Wheeler place to practice a song she was going to sing at the next Sabbath, Blanche told the younger woman to come over despite a house full of relatives and her list of things to do. That same day, Julie Nelson expected her husband to bring his RV over so the Wheelers could use it to put up some of their out-of-town relatives for the weekend. Julie telephoned that morning to let the Wheelers know Perry had left and was bringing along a crate of peaches.

  Later that the afternoon, Sharon arrived wearing her trademark short-shorts and planted herself in front of the piano. She said she was so grateful Blanche had let her intrude during such a frenzied time. Sharon felt a little more practice and the song, “A Hill Called Mount Calvary,” would be perfect.

  Less than a half-hour after Sharon’s arrival, Perry Nelson pulled up in the motor home. The minute he arrived, Sharon jumped up and announced it was time to take a break. She went outside to greet with Perry.

  Blanche felt used. Her blood began a slow boil. The timing of their respective arrivals was too suspect to be passed off as mere coincidence. Perry had left four hours before on a drive that even in the worst snowstorm wouldn’t have taken half that long. It wasn’t right. The Adventist dentist’s wife had put up with Sharon Fuller and her inappropriate behavior and over-the-top attire from the beginning. Blanche did so because Sharon was the minister’s wife and, regardless what she did and how she acted, she could be very likable. She could pour on the charm and make even the sourest face light up in a smile. But not this time.

  Blanche could no longer look the other way. One morning at the Watkins Medical Arts building where her husband Karl operated his successful dental practice—and where she worked as his assistant—Blanche gathered up her courage.

  She first broached the subject with front-desk assistant Iona Hamilton. Iona, an outspoken woman who knew when enough was enough, was in complete agreement. The fooling around had gone too far. Both women knew they were in extremely difficult positions. Julie Nelson worked as Dr. Ted Martin’s bookkeeper, and if she had suspected anything, she had not let on. Neither Iona nor Blanche wanted to break Julie’s heart.

  As they talked in a secluded section of the pine-paneled office, Iona recalled turning a corner in time to see Dr. Nelson and Sharon break what she suspected could have been an embrace.

  “It was obvious that they had gotten away from each other pretty fast,” she said.

  There had been other signs. Iona had seen the doctor and his assistant holding hands, and brushing ever so slightly against each other. Blanche al
so noticed times when Dr. Nelson’s hand lingered on Sharon’s shoulder. The relationship between the two—even in the office—was anything but businesslike.

  What signaled to Iona Hamilton more than anything that something inappropriate was going on was the fact that many times when she left the front desk to retrieve a patient’s record for billing, or to let Dr. Nelson know a patient had arrived, the door would be shut. That was new. In all her years at the medical office, she could not think of a time when Dr. Nelson closed his door, unless he was with a patient. Whenever the door had been shut that summer, Iona would knock and find Perry and Sharon together.

  In addition, it also troubled Iona how wherever Perry went into the office Sharon was right there with him. That wasn’t normal. No other office worker had ever done that. There was no need for it.

  “She always makes it a point to be right next to him. Have you ever noticed that?” Iona said to Blanche.

  Blanche had indeed. Even patients with the worst possible eyesight would have seen the same thing.

  Sharon Fuller, they figured, was on a manhunt.

  Blanche went to her husband with her concerns. Karl Wheeler had thought the same thing. Independently, both had agonized over their suspicions for several weeks. They worried what kind of influence the affair would have on their church and community. How to handle it? What to say?

  Finally, Blanche and Karl summoned the nerve to get in touch with Mike Fuller. It was odd, because, in the event the affair had involved someone other than his wife, Blanche likely would have called on the minister for guidance. The minister was the first person a good parishioner should seek out for help. The idea that it was the leader of their church who was being betrayed made the call excruciatingly difficult.

  No one blamed Pastor Fuller. No one thought he had been at fault. Yet when the minister arrived that evening at the Wheeler’s country home he seemed agitated and defensive. As he listened to the couple’s concerns, he did his best to dismiss each bit of evidence. They were mistaken, he said. He batted their words right back at them. Somehow they had misconstrued innocent actions. His wife was a very friendly woman. Dr. Nelson, likewise, was a man who could talk a listener’s ear off. The combination of two outgoing people made it only look as though something was going on.