1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery

by Edward Trimnell

  Was it really possible that David Vennekamp had completely abstained from searching for Josephine Taylor?Jennifer didn’t think so, given his obvious, ongoing preoccupation with the missing goth girl.

  It was time to leave. Jennifer stood up. “Thank you so much for your time, David. And I’m sorry to have come out here under false pretenses.”

  “That’s quite all right. I know how my mother can be. And if you do ever need any handyman work done, I know that I’m the first person you’ll think of, right?”

  “Of course!” Jennifer said, a little too quickly and eagerly.

  “Because I am no way near as crazy as my mother. That was a joke, by the way.”

  “Your mother’s not crazy. She’s—disturbed, is a better word, I think.”

  “No. Trust me: My mother’s crazy.”

  “Say, I was wondering: Would you do me one more favor?”

  “Shoot.”

  “For the sake of being thorough, I wanted to talk to your sister, too. If it wouldn't be too much of an imposition, that is.”

  Thorough, Jennifer thought. Yes, she wanted to talk to Marcia Vennekamp. But she lacked a clear grasp of the benefits that she intended to gain from that meeting.

  Maybe this has become something more than a defensive strategy, Jennifer thought. Maybe I’m developing a Deborah Vennekamp-like vindictiveness of my own: Deborah has been pursuing me—and now I am turning the tables on her. The pursuer becomes the pursued.

  If only I could do the same to Angela and Jim at work…

  “Oh, I don't think it would be much of an imposition at all. And you needn’t pay her a house call,” David said. “My sister is a cashier at the Wendy’s in Mydale. I’m sure you’ve figured out where that is by now. Most days she works the afternoon shift. If you hurry, you could probably catch her before she gets off work.”

  “Thank you so much!” Jennifer said. Then she felt suddenly like a heel: While Deborah Vennekamp’s shenanigans had tormented her in recent weeks, the woman’s behavior had apparently been the defining obstacle of this man’s life. She was being callous—especially considering that she had imposed herself on David Vennekamp in various ways.

  “But David, I do want to say that I’m sorry—for what you went through. That must have been a tough situation.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” David said, trailing her as she walked toward the front door. “And if you do have any more questions, you’ve got my number.”

  “Thank you—but I don't think that will be necessary.”

  Standing close to her now, he gave off a distinct odor of perspiration, oil, and something else that she could not identify.

  “And about my ‘situation’: I’ve long since come to terms with what my mother is—and what I am.”

  This last comment struck Jennifer as more than a little strange. It could be interpreted in any number of ways, of course.

  Or maybe she was over-analyzing. Formative years spent with Deborah Vennekamp would likely tilt anyone’s personality, at least a little. Vennekamp was probably acknowledging nothing more than that. She wondered if Vennekamp had ever undergone any kind of counseling, though she wasn't about to recommend it.

  “But please,” he said. “If you do contact me again, please don’t bring up the subject of Josie Taylor. I really don't want to talk about her.”

  27

  As she drove back down Stony Creek Road toward town, Jennifer admitted to herself that David Vennekamp gave her the creeps.

  This was not exactly reasonable on her part. She had barged into his home with less than an hour’s notice under false pretenses. Not only had David Vennekamp not rebuked her—he had also gone out of his way to answer her questions helpfully.

  And he certainly hadn’t tried to come on to her—quite the opposite, in fact.

  Maybe one of your problems, Jennifer, is that you're a poor judge of people. You were so taken in by Jim Lindsay’s smarmy, superficial charm that night, because he told you what you wanted to hear; and now that situation has practically ruined your professional life.

  On the other hand, David Vennekamp tries to help you, asks for nothing in return, and you get the ‘creeps’, like some temperamental adolescent.

  She was almost certainly wrong about David Vennekamp, but she couldn't help the way she felt. There would be no more trips up Stony Creek Road.

  The Wendy’s where Marcia Vennekamp reportedly worked was in far more familiar territory. The restaurant was located in the middle of the community’s newest strip mall—The Mydale Shopping Plaza. Jennifer found a parking space near the front entrance and walked in. As she approached the cash register, she looked around for anyone in a Wendy’s uniform who vaguely resembled an older version of the plain-faced girl she had seen in the Vennekamp family portrait.

  The cashier was an older woman who could not possibly be Marcia Vennekamp. Back in the food preparation area, a teenaged boy loaded raw French fries into one of the fryers. A heavyset young woman manned the drive-through window.

  Perhaps this was going to be more complicated than she thought…

  “Can I help you?” The older cashier asked.

  For a moment Jennifer contemplated an undercover approach: She could order a hamburger and a Coke, then sit in the dining room and hope that Marcia Vennekamp would wander out of the storeroom, or a back area of the kitchen.

  But that struck her as a little too elaborate—too 007-ish. Perhaps a more straightforward approach would be better.

  “Actually, I was hoping that I might speak briefly with Marcia Vennekamp, if it’s not too much of an interruption. I—well, I’m an old acquaintance of hers.”

  A lie, needless to say; but she could hardly tell the cashier the truth.

  “You just missed her,” the cashier said. “She got off the clock only ten minutes ago. Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. Mmm—thank you for your trouble.”

  Jennifer turned and walked out. She had a plan B. According to the online database she had accessed earlier, Marcia lived in a nearby apartment complex. If she had just left work, then Jennifer might be able to catch her in the complex’s parking lot. How many women would be out and about wearing Wendy’s uniforms, after all?

  The name of the apartment complex was Tandy Lakes. It was located in an older section of Mydale, the end of the town that had been developed when the community had no pretensions of gentrification. Jennifer pulled into the Tandy Lakes driveway, absently noting that the eponymous lakes were really little more than muddy, algae-covered ponds that were extremely low in the dry September weather. A barefoot little boy—perhaps five years old—was gathering stones to throw on one of the pond’s muddy banks. An overweight young woman—presumably the boy’s mother—sat and smoked a cigarette on a beach towel not far from the boy and the water.

  As Jennifer drove by, the woman removed her cigarette from her mouth and barked at the boy: “Get your ass back from the water!” The boy complied, stepping back out of the mud and onto the grass.

  Although it was only a few miles from the Mydale where Jennifer lived, this Tandy Lakes was a different world—a low-income apartment complex that Chief Roy Dennison probably had to visit with some frequency, for the purpose of defusing domestic disturbances, or serving deadbeat parents with court orders to pay child support. The cars in the parking lot were almost all older. Some were not well maintained.

  Marcia lived at 784 Tandy Lane. The building was immediately on Jennifer’s right. She signaled and pulled into the parking lot for 784, and saw that today her timing was unusually good: A woman with shoulder-length dark brown hair was stepping out of an old Ford Festiva—a car that the Ford Motor Company had not manufactured for more than ten years. The woman was wearing the distinctive uniform of the Wendy’s restaurant chain, including the cap. There could be no mistake: this woman was Marcia Vennekamp.

  Jennifer pulled her own car in beside the Festiva, on the passenger side. Marcia was now walking toward the main entranc
e of her apartment building. As she walked, she withdrew a pack of cigarettes from her pants pocket, removed a single cigarette, and inserted it into her mouth. With the practiced dexterity of a longtime smoker, she lit the cigarette with a lighter taken from another pocket, and returned both the lighter and the pack to their original places.

  It would be better to address Marcia out here, in the open. If she slipped inside before Jennifer could make contact with her, she would have to attempt to establish an initial rapport via the building’s intercom system. That might be difficult.

  Jennifer hurriedly stepped out of her car.

  “Excuse me,” she called out. Marcia Vennekamp stopped in her tracks. She seemed to have no doubt that she was the one being addressed, almost as if she had been expecting it, despite her apparent disregard of Jennifer thus far.

  Marcia turned around. There was a brief but unmistakable flicker of recognition in her eyes.

  “I know you,” she said, drawing in on her cigarette. “You’re that woman who bought my parents’ old house.”

  How would she have been able to recognize me? Jennifer wondered. But then she thought: The real estate transaction had been a matter of public record. Jennifer—who was a moderately active Facebooker—was far more searchable on the Internet than either David or Marcia Vennekamp.

  “Yes, I am,” Jennifer said. “My name is Jennifer Huber. And you’re right. My husband, Clint, and I purchased your parents’ home last month. Did your brother call you and say that I was coming to see you?”

  Marcia took another drag on her cigarette and looked up at one of the adjacent apartment balconies, where someone was drying beach towels on the wooden railing. She blew smoke toward the balcony; the breeze blew the smoke up and over her head.

  “My brother never calls me,” she said.

  Jennifer strongly suspected that this statement was less than truthful; but it was not immediately pertinent to her business here. Her only real problem was Deborah Vennekamp. Deborah had obviously damaged her children in various ways. David had said little about his relationship with Marcia; but if there was estrangement or tension between the two siblings, that would be no great surprise.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Jennifer said. “You’re busy, aren’t you? I can see that you just got off work.”

  “I work at Wendy’s,” Marcia said, as if such an explanation was not superfluous, given her attire.

  “Do you like it?”

  Marcia shrugged. “Sometimes it isn’t bad. Other times it’s not so great. But you know: It pays my bills.” She gave Jennifer a very small smile. “Some of ‘em, anyway.”

  “Everyone dislikes their job from time to time. I know I do.”

  “Oh really? You, too? You don't look like the sort of person who would work in a crummy fast food restaurant. You look like a—what do you say—a college-educated professional.”

  Jennifer smiled back at Marcia, choosing to completely ignore the subtle dig. “Guilty as charged,” she said. “But my job can be unpleasant sometimes, too.” Fresh memories of her earlier meeting with Jim and Angela threatened to intrude on her immediate thoughts. She pushed them to the background.

  “Do tell. Well, anyway—Jennifer. It was nice meeting you and all; but I’d really like to go inside now and kick my feet up. Maybe heat up a pizza, too. Like you said, I just got off work.”

  Jennifer had to make her pitch now—or lose this source of information, possibly forever.

  “I was wondering, Marcia. If you would be willing to grant me a few minutes of your time.”

  “Isn’t that what I just did?”

  “I mean a few minutes so we can talk—in private. You see, I’m having some troubles with your mother. Maybe you’ve heard.”

  Marcia put her cigarette in her mouth and took another puff. Then she shook her head slowly. “Nope. I haven’t.”

  “Well, I have. And I’m kind of at a loss as to how I should handle Deborah—your mother. The situation is causing me to lose sleep.”

  From Marcia, a knowing smile. “I’m not surprised. Mom can be like that.”

  “I’ll come clean with you: I spoke to your brother not an hour ago. But I’d also like to get your—insights—into the situation. I find it impossible to talk to your mother directly, you see. Your brother was very helpful. But we women sometimes see things that men miss.”

  Marcia smirked, as if to indicate that Jennifer’s attempt to appeal to a universal sisterhood among women was both transparent and disingenuous. But she relented, nonetheless.

  “Sure. I’ll talk to you about my mom for a little while, if you think it will help. But I’m warning you—my apartment is a mess.”

  Jennifer recalled the clutter and neglect of David Vennekamp’s home. She would have guessed the hyper-controlling Deborah Vennekamp to be a neat freak. But she had apparently not passed on that personality trait to her children.

  “Don’t worry about that. And I’ll only need a few minutes of your time, I promise.”

  Marcia gestured toward the front entrance of 784 Tandy Lane. “Okay, follow me.”

  Marcia Vennekamp led Jennifer into the lobby of the apartment building. Entry into the building was controlled by a security keycard, which Marcia kept on a small lanyard looped around her belt.

  The lobby was barren, its floor covered by red threadbare carpet. The space was lit mostly by the sunlight that streamed in through dust-covered windowpanes.

  Immediately to the right were the building’s two main elevators. Jennifer followed Marcia into the nearest one. Marcia began humming to herself, and Jennifer remained silent.

  They exited on the second floor. Marcia stopped at apartment 208.

  “Yeah, my mom can be a real pill,” she said, as she opened the door of the apartment with her key. “Not too many people like her.”

  “Really? She seems to have something of a fan base at the Mydale Public Library.”

  Marcia snorted. “She just puts on an act for those people. They’re a bunch of fucking sheep.”

  Jennifer was momentarily taken aback by the unexpected vulgarity. Like her brother, Marcia had a caustic side that simmered just beneath her relatively passive surface.

  “Welcome,” Marcia said, pushing the door open. “Welcome to frigging paradise.”

  Following Marcia inside, Jennifer could at least partially sympathize with the other woman’s sarcasm. The apartment really was something of a dump—even by the standards of Jennifer’s frugal student days, fifteen years earlier.

  The first thing that caught Jennifer’s attention were the walls: Before Marcia had moved in, the building’s landlords had apparently started to apply a fresh coat of paint, but they had stopped halfway: The walls of the main living room/dining room area were two colors: eggshell and white. About half the walls were the former color, and the other half the latter. One wall was a mixture of both.

  The floor was covered by blue, pitted shag carpet straight from the 1970s. Jennifer could see the kitchen from the apartment’s foyer: The fixtures and wallpaper in there were from the same era.

  Not that Marcia’s furniture was much, either. Nothing matched. The couch, end tables and recliner were a mismatched assemblage of very old items, probably acquired from thrift stores.

  “My brother gets to live high on the hog,” Marcia said, walking into the kitchen. Jennifer waited in the foyer while Marcia—true to her earlier word—pulled a frozen pizza from the freezer space above the refrigerator. “He lives at my grandfather’s old farm.”

  “You mean the place out on Stony Creek Road?”

  “Uh-huh. That was my grandpa’s place for years. When he died, my brother got it in the will. So here I am.”

  She removed the frozen pizza from its cardboard box, and tore away the plastic covering. Then she flicked on the oven. She placed the now naked, frozen pizza on a round pizza pan that was already sitting on the stovetop. Jennifer had the feeling that Marcia Vennekamp ate a lot of frozen pizza.

  “
Come on,” Marcia said, walking back out of the kitchen. “It will take some time for the oven to preheat. When you start cooking the pizza before the oven finishes preheating, you can never get it done just right. Anyway, you and I can talk in the living room. Pick a seat—any seat.”

  Marcia was at least a better housekeeper than her brother; but both of the Vennekamp children were living in material conditions far below those that they had grown up with. It’s almost as if they wanted to get away from that woman at any cost, Jennifer thought. Based on her experiences with Deborah Vennekamp thus far, Jennifer couldn't blame either sibling for this sentiment; but for each one of them, escape had come at a steep price.

  Jennifer sat down on the living room’s threadbare sofa; Marcia took her place on the equally threadbare recliner opposite her.

  “So you were saying—you’re having problems with my mom?”

  Jennifer ran through the same story that she had run through with David. Marcia showed little emotion during the telling of the tale, and Jennifer once again had the distinct impression that David had called his sister and told her at least the main gist—even though Marcia claimed that the two had little contact.

  By the end of the story, Marcia was on her second cigarette. “Horse blood, you say? Wow—Mom must have really gone off her rocker this time.”

  “Beef blood,” Jennifer corrected, noting the minor detail. “What it must have been like for the two of you, growing up with a mother like that. I can’t imagine.”

  Marcia nodded knowingly, took a deep drag on her cigarette.

  “Believe me, you don't want to.”

  David Vennekamp had stated in no uncertain terms that he did not want to talk about Josephine Taylor. But maybe his sister would speak more openly about the matter. After all, she hadn’t been the one who was in love with the little goth girl, all those years ago.

  “I understand,” Jennifer said delicately, “that Deborah—your mother—caused the breakup of David and that girl he was seeing. What was her name? Josephine Taylor, I think.”