Sex. Murder. Mystery. Page 8

  “Nothing is happening, I assure you,” he said.

  By the end of the hour, the Wheelers were embarrassed they had even brought it up. They knew what they had seen and heard, but there was no convincing their minister that his wife had betrayed him with another man.

  Karl Wheeler later remembered how Mike Fuller took the news.

  “He was upset that we’d even think of such a thing. He got rather huffy with us.”

  That night, Blanche and Karl reexamined Pastor Fuller’s response. How could they have handled it better? They had not told the man their suspicions in order to hurt him, but rather to spare him the humiliation of a scandal. Rocky Ford and La Junta were small towns. Word was guaranteed to rip through both places like a flash flood.

  Then it hit them. The Wheelers felt Mike Fuller hadn’t been surprised by the revelations about his wife. It was almost as though his denials were an attempt to cover up for Sharon. Maybe, they wondered, he had been in that spot before?

  The preacher was red-faced and angry when he got home. No one could blame him, of course. If he had hoped Colorado would be different, there was no doubt he had been mistaken. He’d left the Wheelers with the realization that not only was Sharon sleeping around again, she was carrying on without one bit of discretion. All of his congregation probably knew by the time the Wheelers confronted him.

  “We can’t be anywhere, without you sleeping with somebody!” he declared when he saw Sharon and told her what Blanche and Karl had said.

  She was backed into a corner, but Sharon was not one to give up a fight—even when there seemed no hope she could win.

  “You don’t know I’ve done a damn thing! Nobody saw me do a damn thing! You’re taking that bitch’s word that something is going on… and if you sat in the lobby and listened, you’d hear Perry call ninety-year-old women doll or sweetie!”

  Mike threw up his hands. He had been that route before. In Ohio, in North Carolina, and now Colorado. If Sharon was making excuses that night in an effort to placate him, Mike wasn’t buying anything she had to offer.

  Still, Sharon held her ground, insisting her husband was wrong and the women in the office were conniving liars, jealous of her friendship with Perry Nelson.

  Rocky Ford was the land of in-home sales parties. It was a world beyond Tupperware. Everything from candles to beauty aids to children’s toys were pushed over the kitchen table or in the paneled confines of a rec room. Some ladies hosted several such “parties” each year. The gatherings were a chance to make a little cash, share some gossip and get to know each other better. On the night of September 27, 1976, Julie Nelson went to a friend’s home to learn the wonders of a new face cream. Sharon Fuller, who had also been expected, was a no-show.

  When Julie returned home about 10:30 that evening, she was confronted by a shaken figure on the front steps. It was Mike Fuller. The frazzled minister told Julie his wife had left him for her husband. He had been driving around all evening, trying to find where they had gone. He wondered if Julie knew. She had no idea.

  Mike proceeded to admit he had been through this before with Sharon. She’d had several affairs in Ohio and North Carolina. He also admitted Rochelle wasn’t his daughter, but the offspring of one of Sharon’s many lovers. But Denise, born in North Carolina in 1974 during a period of marital stability, was his biological daughter. He told Julie they had come to Rocky Ford for a new start, and sadly for him and his daughters, it clearly wasn’t working.

  Julie suggested calling her husband’s secretary.

  “Maybe she knows something,” she said, reaching for the kitchen phone.

  Barbara Ruscetti rubbed the sleep from her eyes and reached for the ringing telephone in her neat-as-can-be Trinidad home.

  “Barbara, can you tell me where Perry is?” Julie asked.

  “Perry?”

  “Yes,” the doctor’s wife said. “He’s not home yet.”

  Barb would have been deaf not to hear the worry that had seized Julie.

  “He left the office at five o’clock with Sharon,” she said, trying to calm her.

  “Sharon?”

  “Sharon Fuller.”

  “Do you know where they went?”

  “No, I don’t. How would I know where they are?”

  “Well, all right, he’s not home and it’s eleven o’clock and I’m quite concerned.”

  A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was Perry. He told Julie that all the minister had told her was true. He was, in fact, leaving her for good to make a life with Sharon. He wasn’t sorry, not when such a wonderful love was at stake.

  “I’ve never loved anybody like the way I love her,” he said.

  Julie cried into the phone. “What makes you think you can trust each other with your histories?” she asked.

  Mike Fuller looked on and nodded, as if to urge Julie on.

  “I’d hate to be her and trust you. How are you going to trust her?” Julie asked once more.

  “We love each other,” Perry said.

  Julie Nelson cradled the receiver against her breast, before sliding it back into the phone. She stopped her tears and let out a sigh. She would never deny that her husband’s words and actions had hurt her deeply. Even as the truth of Perry’s affair with the minister’s wife came to undeniable reality, a strange feeling swept over her. It was relief. The other shoe had finally dropped. Maybe it was for the best?

  Maybe she’d get on with her life, too.

  The next day, Tuesday, first thing in the morning, Barb Ruscetti picked up the first line at the Trinidad office. It was Perry telling her to cancel his appointments for the day, and reschedule all for Thursday or Friday. Barb said she would. The optometry office stayed quiet that morning; Barb worked the phones and did a few frame repairs. She was a little ticked at the doctor for dropping his workload on to her lap. Sure she was paid to do whatever he asked, but she knew that patients kept their appointments and Dr. Nelson should keep his.

  Just before lunchtime, Barb looked up from her desk to see Julie Nelson with a man she had not yet met.

  The secretary smiled, but her friendliness was not returned.

  “Barb,” Julie began, “we’re looking for Perry and Sharon. Do you have any idea where they are?”

  Barb Ruscetti felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She knew instantly the reason for the visit. Without an introduction she knew that the handsome man with the broad shoulders and a touch of prematurely gray hair was Mike Fuller. Preacher Fuller.

  Barb stood to face the pair. “No, Julie. I swear to you I don’t know where they’re at!”

  “You know they haven’t come home,” Julie said. “We haven’t seen them.”

  Barb shook her head. She conceded that she had talked with Perry that morning, but she had no idea he wasn’t calling from Rocky Ford. She had no idea what was going on. Not until now, anyway.

  She studied the man for a moment.

  God, Barb thought, this minister is good-looking. What does Sharon see in Perry if she’s married to this guy?

  Finally, the minister spoke. He indicated in low, careful tones that something “drastic” had happened back in Rocky Ford.

  “Sharon left a note saying she was leaving me and coming to Trinidad to live with Perry.”

  ”I don’t know a thing about that,” Barb sputtered. ”I don’t know anything. I don’t know where they are.”

  When Julie and Mike left, they took a piece of Barb Ruscetti’ s heart right out the door. It was such a terrible mess. She felt sorry for the jilted spouses.

  “So they drove around Trinidad and dumb fools, Sharon and Perry, had parked down at Prospect Plaza and taken a motel room there,” she told a friend about it later. “So what Julie and Mike did was they just went and got the sheriff and they had the sheriff open the door and they found Perry and Sharon in bed together and so Julie said, ‘We’re getting a divorce. I’m going to nail you to the wall.’ And eventually she did,” Barb said later.

  Julie Nelson rem
embered the encounter between the minister, herself and the adulterers a bit differently, though no less dramatically than Barb. The spurned pair—Julie and Mike—had gone to the Trinidad police to get seven-year-old Rochelle away from an entirely inappropriate situation. The little girl was trapped inside her mother’s motel love nest and Mike wanted her home with him and her little sister, Denise. Though Rochelle was not his blood, she was never anything less than his daughter.

  “The police went in with Mike and he told Sharon that he was there to get Rochelle and take her home so she could go back to school,” Julie recalled. “Perry was taking a shower at the time and Mike walked into the bathroom and ripped open the shower curtain and just stood there. I don’t know what he said. I don’t know if he said anything. He just wanted Perry to know that he knew he had taken his wife from him and his girls.”

  Later, when Mike sought a restraining order against Perry and Sharon prohibiting unsupervised contact with his girls, he told Julie it was because Perry was shameless and Sharon was a neglectful mother.

  “I asked Rochelle if Mommy slept with Perry and she said she did. Right there in the motel,” the minister said.

  No matter his or her age, it was a child’s most terrible nightmare. It came to thirteen-year-old Lorri Nelson one night and it grabbed her like the bogeyman. She woke up with a start, her eyes wide, imprinted with what she had seen in her sleep. Her dad was not smiling. Her mom was sputtering cries and tears in the way that people do when nothing can soothe them. Outside the door of her dad’s dressing room were a pair of packed suitcases. Her mother said nothing as he gathered his belongings… it was over. All over. In the instant that her father would step from the house, the girl knew that the family would never be the same. Lorri stood in the hall, the scene frozen in her memory.

  Later, when she was at a girlfriend’s house, the phone rang. It was her mother telling her to come home right away. There were no questions asked. No pleading to stay fifteen minutes longer. Lorri went home knowing what she was about to face.

  Her bad dream had come true.

  “My parents told me Dad was leaving… my dad told me that I’d always be his ‘favorite youngest’ daughter. He was crying, my mom was crying, we were all crying. We gathered to pray. My father knelt down and asked God for His protection. ‘Please help our family through this,’ he said.”

  Then he left. Sharon’s name had never been uttered, yet her shadow had been cast over everyone at the house on the corner of Pine and 12th. The cheery white dwelling with the green shutters was no longer a safe haven, no longer a happy home. The family inside had been shattered.

  A few felt sorry for Sharon Fuller, though most knew her misery was self-inflicted. Sharon had her new man, had scored the husband-hunter’s brass ring—a doctor. Sharon had youth and beauty. She had a nice body. She had money and, at least she hoped, all that comes with that. She had everything but what many women hold the most dear. Sharon no longer had her children. Her daughters were with her estranged husband.

  When Mike Fuller came over to commiserate with Julie Nelson over the whole sordid mess, he said he doubted Sharon really loved her kids. His wayward wife loved to sew and she never seemed to make anything for her girls.

  “It was all for her, all of the time,” he said.

  Before he mentioned it, Julie had never given it a thought. But it was true. It had to be. Whenever she saw Sharon traipsing around town she was wearing some snug-fitting jumpsuit that she had made herself. Her daughters never had anything new.

  Barb Ruscetti was another who could not imagine a mother leaving two little girls behind. What kind of woman could leave her children? The pain Sharon must be feeling had to be devastating, Barb thought.

  Sharon told her of seeing Mike drive the girls past the Watkins Medical building to the baby-sitter’s house three doors down. Sometimes she would see them walking by, skipping along. Even laughing and having a good time. Two little girls without their mother. Two little girls without Sharon. She was unable to talk to them or hold them.

  “I just can’t handle it,” she said. “It’s tearing me up.”

  The strain on Sharon was evident. The source of it, however, was not fully clear to Barb or anyone. By then, most had heard Sharon had had extramarital affairs in the past, and that had been the reason for her husband’s transfer. Others had heard Mike Fuller had suspected the affair between his wife and Dr. Nelson for months, and had, in fact, caught them in bed together long before the Wheelers voiced their concerns.

  It was not her husband who wore her down, though Mike did try to get his wife to come home, despite all that had transpired. It was not her own sense of what was right and moral. It was Rochelle and Denise.

  Sharon said she couldn’t give them up.

  Not long after the affair became public, Sharon began to waffle on her decision to ditch her husband and children. Guilt had taken hold. Sharon called a family friend, a counselor, in Fort Worth. She thought she was slipping off the edge of sanity. It hadn’t turned out as she thought. Everyone else was fine, while she was a victim of viciousness. It was unfair. It was unjust. Julie was still billing out insurance and helping out at the office. Mike was seen as a saint. Sharon, however, was talked about all over town as the tramp who wrecked two marriages.

  The counselor told her to get in her car and drive down to Texas. Sharon agreed. She needed help.

  The Seventh-Day Adventist Church in La Junta, Colorado, was not going to be the same. While it was true that everyone among the parishioners knew what had transpired between the elder and the wife of their minister, few spoke about it. It was there, however, underneath the surface, behind the message of every sermon. While other folks outside of the congregation gossiped about it more overtly, the Adventists kept a lid on it the best they could.

  They were strange and sad days.

  “It’s like everybody knows what’s going on, but nobody talks about it. We were so disappointed. I think disappointed that Sharon didn’t have more respect for herself and for her husband. To do something like this. Disappointed in Perry for the same reason,” Blanche Wheeler said.

  Long after it was all over, Mrs. Wheeler reiterated what had been the consensus of many who knew the sordid details of the affair.

  “When Sharon left for Texas we all hoped she would get help and do the right thing by Mike and her little girls. We hoped and we prayed.”

  Chapter 7

  JESUS, IT HURT. PERRY NELSON FELT HE HAD BEEN dumped. Sharon had gone to Texas to get her head together with some Christian counselor. It was obvious a therapist of that particular ilk was not going to condone a woman’s illicit relationship with another woman’s husband. It was, of course, adultery, for crying out loud. Adultery times two. To make matters worse, word around Rocky Ford had it that Mike Fuller had either gone after her or was planning to do so. He wasn’t going to go away easily. The preacher was mad at his wife, disgusted by her, but he still wanted her. A Christian counselor, Perry figured, would push for a mending of the broken family.

  About that time, Perry’s and Julie’s twenty-fifth high school reunion loomed. Perry told his wife he would still accompany her back to the event in Cedar Lake, Michigan. He was neither happy nor particularly interested in the reunion with his wife or their classmates. It was almost as if he had nothing better to do. The estranged couple had little to talk about on the flight to Michigan. More than once, Julie dabbed at her tears with a wadded tissue as she fought for composure.

  Her handsome, charismatic husband was stone cold whenever he bothered to speak with Julie. When he looked in Julie’s direction it was as if she was made of glass. His eyes skipped over her; looked through her. All he cared about was Sharon. Sharon this. Sharon that.

  But I’m right here, Julie thought.

  When they arrived, Julie tried to act happy around relatives and old classmates, but inside, her heart continued to crumble. Perry had nothing to do with her. He barely even pretended they were together. He di
dn’t talk to her. He didn’t even walk with her. He walked ahead, or several paces behind.

  On the return flight to Colorado, Julie sat alone and cried most of the way. It was only at one point that she saw a glimpse of compassion for her suffering.

  Perry turned around in the seat in front of her and put his hand out.

  “Don’t cry,” he said, “everything’s going to be all right.”

  By then it didn’t matter. Sharon Fuller could have him. Julie had made up her mind that she would be moving on.

  I’m out of here, she thought.

  Julie kept her distance in Rocky Ford. If Perry was merely going through the motions, then Julie would not over-compensate for his lack of love for her. She wouldn’t prepare him special meals. She certainly wouldn’t sleep with him at night. Why should she? He didn’t love her. He was with her by default. Julie spent most of her weekends in Denver with the former wife of another local doctor. As the empty days passed, she told herself she would build up her mental and emotional strength and move on.

  Sharon Fuller was falling apart. And while she confided in many, few had any sympathy for her. If ever there was a case of making your own bed and being forced to lie in it, Sharon was the perfect example. She drove to Fort Worth in a car Perry had bought for her. The fog was thick and her eyes were bloodshot from ragged emotions and sleepless nights. Sharon had left two men in Rocky Ford: a husband and a lover. She told people she didn’t know which one she should choose.

  Mike Fuller, however, couldn’t let go of his wife. Though there were times when she had tested him to the nth degree, he still wanted to keep his family together. He still told friends he loved Sharon. If only she would come home… if only they could start over.

  Maybe in another place, another town.