“I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt for now,” David said. “But if I get proof…If I get proof then she’s going to be sorry. All of them are going to be sorry.”
45
Clint was driving home from Columbus, thinking about the mysterious text message he had received earlier in the afternoon.
The text message had come in on his work cell phone—not his personal number.
The work cell phone number, he knew, could be found on the Glutz Machinery website by anyone who was willing to do a bit of digging. It would be only a matter of knowing that he was employed by Glutz. Then his information would be easily locatable in the company’s online directory.
The message read:
“Do you know what your wife is up to, Clint? You should really keep a closer eye on her.”
The number was a 613 area code—one that Clint did not recognize. A quick Internet search had told him that 613 was an area code assigned to Ontario, Canada. Clint did not know a soul in Canada—did not believe that he ever had, in fact.
Then he researched the number. It was a number assigned to a so-called “burner service”. These were companies that generated temporary phone numbers. Such a number could serve as a dual line on any cell phone.
Burner numbers were frequently used by women engaged in online dating, who might not want to give out their real cell phone numbers to men they met on Match.com or OkCupid. Burner services were also known to be popular among drug dealers, and men who patronized prostitutes.
They were called “burners”, because a temporarily assigned number could be instantly deleted from the phone of whoever was using it. The number would then be recycled and reassigned to another subscriber of the burner service.
This level of secrecy could be penetrated by the NSA or another law enforcement agency, of course, but not by a private citizen. Clint had no way of proving who had sent the cryptic message, but he was pretty sure that it was Deborah Vennekamp. After all, Deborah had called Jennifer on at least one occasion; why would she balk at pestering him by phone as well? The more the merrier, right?
And that suited Clint just fine. He had told Jennifer that Deborah Vennekamp would eventually go away—just like the police chief had said. Clint still believed that she would, but she might allow herself a few final parting gestures.
Having reached a straightaway section of I-71, Clint held the steering wheel with one hand and removed his work cell phone from his pocket with the other. He opened the messaging application and found the anonymous message. Why had he held on to it for this long? What would that do, other than give Deborah Vennekamp more power?
Clint deleted the message. Damn Deborah Vennekamp, he thought.
Then he immediately felt guilty for this sentiment—which he knew to be uncharacteristic of him. Deborah might be vindictive—and she almost certainly had some low-grade but clinical psychological problem. But she was also a sad case. Her husband was dying, and she had been displaced from a house to which she obviously had an unusually strong sentimental attachment.
Clint returned the cell phone to his pocket, remarking at the powerlessness of a person who would take satisfaction from such a petty act of harassment.
Poor, pathetic Deborah Vennekamp, Clint reflected. How would he react if his own life were turned upside down—if something bad were to happen to Jennifer?
The mere thought made him shudder.
46
Clint arrived home around nine o’clock that night. Jennifer hastened to tell him about her latest “investigations”—which seemed to be expanding in scope by the day, even as their Deborah Vennekamp problem was receding.
Jennifer met him in the doorway, barely greeting him. She was talking rapidly, the words spilling out so quickly that Clint could barely keep up.
“Who is Mindy North?” he asked.
“She was a friend of Josie Taylor,” Jennifer explained. “I saw a picture of the two of them in the online yearbook from the 1990s, and I put two and two together.”
“And you found her where?”
“In the Osgood House,” Jennifer said. Then she went on to recount the visit with the North woman at the drug rehab center.
Clint determined that no matter what, he was not going to let his irritation show.
“Why did you do that?” he asked in a carefully measured tone. “I thought our problem is Deborah Vennekamp. Or—” he added, “was Deborah Vennekamp. Honey, I really think that woman is done with us. No, we should not have had to put up with all that crap, but maybe we could just let it go now.”
Jennifer gave him a momentary flash of something that looked like annoyance. Then she rushed to say, “But there’s more, there’s a connection between Josie Taylor and Tom Jarvis. Do you remember me telling you that he used to be a teacher at Mydale High School? Well, there’s a connection between him and Josie Taylor—and you won’t believe what it is.”
They were seated in the living room now. Jennifer had handed him a warmed-over plate of leftovers—meatloaf, corn, and mashed potatoes—and a cold bottle of Miller Lite.
Clint ate while Jennifer told him what Mindy North had revealed about the long-ago affair between the missing girl and Tom Jarvis. Then Jennifer told him about how she had gone to Tom Jarvis’s office, and how the realtor had admitted to the inappropriate relationship.
“Let me get this straight,” Clint said. “You barged into Tom Jarvis’s office and confronted him about something that he did twenty years ago? Or something that he supposedly did, according to the word of a woman in a drug rehab center?”
“He admitted it,” Jennifer retorted. “But when we went to lunch the other day, he denied even knowing the girl during his teaching days.”
“And you’re surprised? Look, Jen, I think that was a lousy thing that Tom did, sleeping with that girl. But that was twenty years ago. We were teenagers ourselves then. What business is it of ours?”
“But don’t you get it?” Jennifer shot back—and Clint was almost certain that he detected both annoyance and condescension in her voice. “It’s all interconnected.”
“What’s all interconnected?”
Jennifer shook her head, clearly implying that Clint was failing to see the obvious. “All of it, Clint: Deborah Vennekamp, Josie Taylor, and Tom Jarvis. Somehow they’re all connected. I’m just not sure how yet.”
Clint took another bite of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, chewed and swallowed, then said, “Jen, I understand that what happened—those acts of vandalism—upset you. I also understand that Deborah Vennekamp was harassing you at an individual, personal level for a while. But we need to put this behind us.”
“And what if Deborah Vennekamp doesn't let us do that?”
“Jen: We haven’t heard from Deborah for quite some time. Yeah, she’s kind of spooky, and she had us rattled with her little pranks. But she’s a lone woman who’s probably pushing sixty, with a dying husband and no practical way of hurting us. It’s not like the Hells Angels are after us. Let’s not let an old woman with personal problems psych us out.”
Jennifer opened her mouth to speak, but Clint cut her off.
“The new security system will be installed next week. Monday, in fact. And we don’t need to worry what it will cost, because things have been going better for me at work. I’m telling you Jen—if everything goes as planned, I’ll increase my take-home pay by fifteen, twenty percent this year.”
Clint had, indeed, taken on some new accounts. He was making sales. He had been looking forward to sharing the news with Jennifer.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you about, Jen. But you don't seem to want to talk about anything but Deborah Vennekamp, and now this missing girl.”
Jennifer paused, then said: “Okay, tell me about your job.”
She was humoring him, wasn't she? For the past few years, she had made few efforts to hide her disappointment when he wasn't doing the Mr. Career thing. And now he had turned over a new leaf, but Jennifer wasn't interested in
talking about jobs, salaries, and promotions anymore. All she wanted to talk about was this damned business with these people who weren’t even part of their lives.
“Never mind,” he said. “I can tell that you’d rather talk about Tom Jarvis screwing high school girls in the 1990s.”
He could tell from her face that his reaction had taken her aback. Throughout their relationship—ever since they were dating, really—Clint had seldom spoken to her in such a way. But there had been no provocation for such talk in the early days; there had been no real conflicts between them.
Then in the last few years, Clint had felt that he was somehow behind his wife. She obsessed about the grownup things—corporate politics and her career track—while he carefully did no more than was necessary to get by at Glutz Machinery.
But things were changing now. He was changing—or trying to. She might be the daughter of an attorney; but she was no longer married to a slacker.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Tell me about your day.”
“Never mind,” he repeated.
“No, I really want to hear.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to humor me.”
“Who said anything about humoring you? It’s just that well—this is important to me. Don’t you get that?”
“No,” Clint said honestly. “I mean, I understand why you wanted Mrs. Vennekamp to stop bothering us. Sure, that much makes sense. But now you’re taking this all to a completely different level.”
He saw the hurt and defiance in her eyes, but he decided to forge ahead, nonetheless.
“What I’m saying, Jen, is that this is taking on a life of its own. It seems to me that we should have one objective, and only one objective: We want Deborah Vennekamp to stay away from us. We don’t need to go digging into the past, talking to strange women in drug rehab centers, and interrogating Tom Jarvis about what he might have done with a student when Bill Clinton was president. What I’m saying, Jen, is that we really need to move on.”
“All right,” she said quietly. “If that’s the way you feel about it, then I won’t talk about it with you anymore.”
“But you aren’t going to stop thinking about it—aren’t going to stop talking to these people? Is that what you mean?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Are you ordering me to stop?”
“Come on, Jen: You know I don’t operate that way. I just—I just don’t get it, that’s all.”
“Daddy?”
They both turned and saw Connor standing on the staircase that led up to the second floor. He was dressed in his pajamas. He stifled a yawn.
“Yes, it’s Daddy!” Clint said. He placed his now empty plate on the coffee table. He stood and walked over to his son, sweeping the little boy into his arms. Connor nuzzled against him, giggling. “I hope you’ve been minding Mommy!” Clint said.
He had intended the admonition as an olive branch of sorts—not for Connor (who almost always minded his mother, at least by normal six-year-old boy standards). Clint had intended the remark as a signal to Jennifer: They might disagree about some things. They were changing, growing as people—sometimes even in different directions, but they were still united at the end of the day.
This was the message that Clint had intended to convey to his wife. When he turned around, though, Jennifer was no longer in the living room. He heard her running water in the kitchen.
“Daddy?” Connor said, apparently sensing that something was wrong.
“Hey, Con-O, what say I take you back to bed, okay?” Clint bounced his son in his arms.
As he carried Connor to his bedroom, Clint decided to delay further discussion about Jennifer’s amateur sleuthing. Tomorrow he would go out of town again, after all—to Cleveland this time.
This wasn't a serious argument, but he didn't like the idea of going away with her mad.
And truth be told, he was a little irked himself.
“Daddy?” Conner said, wriggling in his arms. The boy was looking up into his face. “Are you okay, Daddy?”
“I’m fine, Con-O,” Clint forced himself to say, “Everything is going to be just fine.”
47
The next morning, Jim Lindsay called Jennifer into his office for a private discussion.
“Angela’s not happy with your performance,” he began. Then he looked at her pointedly. “And to tell you the truth, neither am I.”
Jennifer squirmed in the seat before Jim’s desk. She was thinking about her semi-argument with Clint the previous night. Clint had come to bed late last night, after spending an hour on his laptop.
This alone was almost suspicious. Clint had never worked at home in the evenings.
But then, he had clearly been exerting more effort at his job at Glutz Machinery, hadn’t he? And wasn't it equally clear that she had failed to notice, failed to acknowledge his attempt to “meet her expectations” as a responsible, grown-up husband and provider?
The truth, she realized, was that Deborah Vennekamp, Josie Taylor, and their possible intersection had become an obsession for her, over and above her initial reaction to the acts of vandalism and harassment, which (as everyone had been telling her) had declined in frequency of late.
Not to mention Tom Jarvis’s involvement. How could the realtor have done what he did?
Jim cleared his throat, obviously annoyed that she had taken so long to respond to him. Jim Lindsay expected subservience from his underlings, and he usually got it. In all likelihood, only she had resisted his will. First she had refused to sleep with him; and now she was taking her time in providing him with a response.
“I’ve been meeting all of my deadlines,” Jennifer said. “And there haven’t been any problems with my work.”
This was true. Just yesterday, Angela had accusingly asked her for a work assignment, as if concluding that it must be late. Jennifer had done her best to maintain a meek tone as she informed Angela that the assignment in question had been in her desktop inbox since the previous morning.
In response to this information, Angela nodded curtly, then made a show out of digging Jennifer’s paper-clipped sheets from the pile of papers inside her inbox. Angela ruffled the papers loudly, before sitting down to inspect them.
Angela had a difficult time hiding her disappointment when—after nearly thirty minutes—she was unable to find a single mistake that she could plausibly call out.
“Sometimes attitude problems take a while to show up in actual work results,” Jim said cryptically. “But Angela is unsatisfied with your attitude. And frankly—so am I.”
“So fire me,” Jennifer shot back.
“So long as you’re okay with the consequences that come with that.”
Her face must have revealed her feelings, as Jim returned a smug smile. Jim’s threat of sending the video to Clint had not lost its power to disturb her, to get her all riled up as if she was considering the prospect for the first time.
“No,” Jim said. “I didn't think you’d be okay with that. So why don’t you just be a team player, and give Angela what she wants—which is more than simply a subordinate who obeys her. What she wants is a subordinate who makes her feel important—because we both know that Angela has precious little to feel important about outside of this job.”
Jennifer was surprised at Jim’s frankness, even though they had long since abandoned the pretense of interacting in a professional manner. Jim disdained Angela, Jennifer now saw, even though Angela took every opportunity to curry favor with him.
“But more importantly,” Jim said. “Why don't you give me what I want?”
Sitting there before Jim’s desk, she cursed herself for her cowardice. All she had to do was stand up, walk out of Jim’s little glass enclosure, and head directly for the company’s human resources department. As a preliminary step, they would carry out an emergency transfer before the end of the morning. She could be free of Jim—and free of Angela, for that matter.
But if she did that, Jim would no doubt follow
through on his threats. After all, he would have nothing to lose at that point.
“Have it your way,” Jim said. “Don’t forget, though, the time might come when I lose my patience, when I decide that chasing after you simply isn’t worth it anymore.”
She was about to reply when he abruptly changed the subject.
“Besides, you seem to be on a really erratic path of late. You’ve been driving all over town after work and on your lunch hour, asking a lot of people a lot of strange questions.” He gave her a broad grin, happy to have shocked her once again.
“Oh, yes, Little Miss Cockteaser. I know all about your secret activities.”
Jennifer had to consciously steady herself to prevent her body from shaking. She had known for some time that Jim was spying on her—but how far did this spying extend? He had tracked her to Marcia Vennekamp’s apartment complex that day. Did he also know about her recent visit to Tom Jarvis’s office?
And that night Jim had run into her and Clint at Zelo’s. That hadn’t been a coincidence at all, had it?
Jennifer was about to stammer out a reply when Jim said, “You can go back to your desk now. Please don’t give Angela any further cause to complain about you, though. Your boss can be rather tiresome when she gets in a snit, you know.”
When Jennifer returned to her desk, the first thing she noticed was Angela glaring at her.
The second thing she noticed was the bouquet that had been placed atop her desk while she was in Jim’s office. The bouquet was an arrangement consisting of red roses, baby’s breath, and daisies, all inserted into a little blue vase.
There was a card attached to the vase. It read:
“Jen:
I just wanted to let you know that I’m thinking of you. Let’s talk when I get home.
Love you, Clint.”
1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery Page 27