1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery

by Edward Trimnell

  The shovel was too long for her car’s trunk, so Jennifer placed it catty-corner inside the vehicle, the blade in the footwell of the rear driver’s-side seat, the handle extending into the front passenger’s seat.

  Jennifer drove home feeling slightly ridiculous, both for her paranoia, and for the task she was about to perform. But she knew that when the actual digging began, those lesser emotions would be replaced by feelings of dread.

  Josie Taylor might be down there. Probability, in fact, was on the side of her being down there, based on everything Jennifer had learned about the dysfunctional Vennekamps so far, and Deborah’s slip of the tongue in the parking lot of the Sunoco station.

  Once home, she opened the garage door with the automatic opener and wedged the shovel out of the car. Despite her foreboding, she found herself suddenly in a hurry. She passed through the door that connected the garage to the kitchen and the rest of the house. She did not notice that she had forgotten to close the garage door behind her.

  Jennifer walked down the stairs to the basement with two items: the shovel, and a 9-volt battery-powered lantern. She placed the lantern on the dirt floor at the edge of the little storage room and assessed the clutter before her. It would be necessary to move several of the empty pallets out of the way before beginning.

  Grabbing the rough wood with her bare hands, she bent and easily lifted one end of each pallet, dragging them one by one to the far edge of the room. She placed each pallet on end so that they took up the minimal amount of space, leaning in a stack of three against the wall.

  Now there was nothing to do but dig.

  Jennifer brushed what felt like a cobweb from her hair and placed the tip of the shovel against the basement floor. It occurred to her that digging with a shovel was yet another thing that she had never done; but how hard could it be? Positioning one foot on one square surface of the blade, she pushed downward with all her might.

  The ground yielded with surprising ease. And now she was sure—or reasonably sure: The floor of this little room had been disturbed before. She was not the first one to dig here.

  Jennifer turned over the shovelful of earth and tossed it aside. Then another shovelful came free, and another. Soon she had a hole that was nearly a foot deep. It was easy digging, really. Whoever had previously dug here (and there was no longer any doubt about that fact) had failed to adequately tamp down the ground.

  For twenty years, Jennifer thought, this hole—this grave—has been here, and no one has known about it. No one but Deborah Vennekamp, that is.

  She experienced an instant of doubt: Perhaps it would be better to quit now: She could call Roy Dennison, and the Mydale Police Department could do the rest of the digging.

  But what if she were wrong, yet again? That would only make her the bigger fool, and make her position all the more untenable.

  When the tip of the shovel struck something hard, Jennifer nearly cried aloud. It’s a finger bone, she thought. I’ve just found one of Josie Taylor’s fingers.

  She had no intention of touching the object, but she wanted to have a look at it. Jennifer scooped the uppermost layer of loose dirt in the shovel, using the blade like a gold miner panning for nuggets. She shook the blade gently from side to side, until the foreign object revealed itself.

  It wasn't a finger bone. It was a piece of jewelry—a ring.

  Jennifer laid down the shovel and plucked the ring from the remaining dirt. She used her fingertips to remove the dirt that was encrusted on the surface of the ring.

  In the dim light, the stone of the ring appeared to reflect back the color purple. It was a purple stone, then—probably a sapphire or an amethyst.

  “You won’t find her in there,” Deborah Vennekamp’s voice suddenly said. The room went instantly dark as unseen hands swept Jennifer’s lantern away.

  Jennifer’s feral instincts took over: She lunged for her shovel, intending to use it as a weapon. Her arms were stopped by a tight grip, a strong resistance that was distinctly masculine.

  Now there were two sets of hands upon her. Jennifer tried to wriggle free, but the masculine set of hands briefly applied a chokehold.

  “Don’t fight,” huffed a semi-familiar male voice. “That will only make it harder on you.”

  Someone kicked her in the ribs—probably Deborah Vennekamp. Jennifer lost her breath and her balance. She fell from her crouching position to the dirt floor of the basement.

  Her attackers were whispering among themselves. She felt herself being dragged from the storage room.

  She flailed and kicked, and then someone kicked her again.

  “Be still!” the male voice said. Now she felt his hands around both of her ankles. He gave her a final yank, and pulled her from the storage room and into the main area of the basement.

  Jennifer was lying on her back, and the first thing she became aware of was the bare light bulb directly above her. She squinted. Although the light was still dim by daylight standards, it was bright compared to the near absolute darkness of the storage room.

  Then she became aware of Deborah Vennekamp moving into her field of vision. The expression on Deborah’s face was oddly sympathetic, almost as if the two of them were commiserating over some event that was both tragic and inevitable.

  “You should have left well enough alone,” Deborah said. “We warned you, didn't we?”

  “We—?”

  “Cut the crap, Mrs. Huber,” David Vennekamp said. Jennifer tried to sit up, but the sole of David’s work boot shoved her back into place. David was pointing a gun directly at her face. Some kind of a revolver.

  “And don’t think that I won’t use it,” David said. “Because I absolutely will if you give us any trouble.”

  Once again David spoke in the first-person plural, and the larger picture became clear to Jennifer.

  The figure on her lawn, the one who looked like a minotaur. It had seemed to Jennifer at the time that the burly person behind the disguise was not Deborah; and sure enough, it hadn’t been. That must have been David.

  The harassment campaign had been a family affair from the beginning, or at least a collaboration between mother and son. David had shown no outward signs of special attachment to this house. But he was his mother’s accomplice, nonetheless.

  David passed the gun to his mother, who immediately trained it on Jennifer.

  “Don’t move or my mom will put a hole in you right here and now,” David promised. Then to Deborah: “Hold on; she found something in there. I want to see what it is. But I think I already have an idea.”

  Jennifer laid there on her back while Deborah held the gun on her, adopting now a posture that was oddly superior and condescending.

  “Now just look at all the trouble you’ve caused—not just for us, but for you, too,” Deborah said.

  Jennifer started to reply, wondering if there was even a point in talking to this madwoman, but wondering even more what would come next.

  For the moment, Jennifer didn't want to consider the full implications of this obscene intrusion—what amounted to a home invasion. The Vennekamps had now discarded any semblance of ambiguity or plausible deniability.

  And that would probably mean that they would not allow their captive to live.

  Before Jennifer could think of a response, David Vennekamp emerged from the storage room. He was holding the amethyst ring up in the air between one thumb and forefinger.

  “You’ve found it,” he told Jennifer. He might have been congratulating her. “After all these years, you’ve found it.”

  “And you never should have removed it from that girl’s finger in the first place,” Deborah chided him.

  Jennifer looked at Deborah, then at David.

  “You killed her,” Jennifer said to David Vennekamp. “Or maybe you both killed her, and then you covered it up.”

  A sudden scowl distorted David Vennekamp’s features. He knelt abruptly and slapped Jennifer’s face. Slapped her hard. The impact momentarily tossed Jennif
er’s head to one side. When she looked up again, seeing stars before her field of vision, David was still scowling at her.

  “Don’t say that,” David said. “I loved Josie. I didn't kill her. Furthermore, you’re wrong on both counts: My mother didn't kill her, either.” He glared at Deborah. “Of course, my mother does have a big mouth, though, doesn't she?”

  “Hush, David,” said Deborah, exasperated. “You knew this was inevitable all along. This meddlesome little shitbird was running all over Mydale and Cincinnati, talking to everyone she could find, snooping around.” Then to Jennifer: “Weren’t you?”

  Jennifer did not answer Deborah, but she now understood: Deborah realized that she had inadvertently revealed too much during their encounter at the Sunoco station. Her remark about a girl deserving to end up in a basement could only have one meaning: that Josie Taylor was buried in the basement of this house.

  But David was insisting that neither he nor Deborah had killed Josie Taylor.

  “Then, why—”

  “Shut up!” David said. He grabbed Jennifer by her shoulders and pulled her upward. “Get on your feet.”

  Jennifer stood up. Vennekamp pushed her roughly backward, though she kept her balance. Theoretically, she could have bolted for the staircase. But Deborah Vennekamp still had the gun trained on her.

  David dug into his front pants pocket and pulled something out. Jennifer could see that he had a length of white nylon rope in his hand. He intended to tie her up.

  “No,” she protested. “I’m not going to let you do that.”

  “Then we shoot you right here and now,” Deborah said, “and your husband can find you when he comes home.”

  The muzzle of the gun was less than two feet away. Deborah was holding the weapon aloft, tilting it slowly from side to side, as if trying to reach a decision. Based on everything that had just happened, there was no reason to believe that the Vennekamps wouldn't kill her, was there? Maybe it would be better to go along with them for the time being, and try to buy as much time as she could.

  “Okay,” Jennifer finally said. She held her hands out, submitting.

  “Good girl,” David said. “Smart girl, too.”

  Instead of tying her hands in front, David pulled both of Jennifer’s hands behind her back, where he bound her wrists together. Jennifer didn't know how expert David was at tying knots, but her binds felt secure. She would never be able to free herself, especially not with the Vennekamps both watching her.

  “Upstairs,” David said. He turned her around until she faced the staircase. “Go!”

  As Jennifer walked up the stairs, she felt David’s grip on her binds, preventing any chance of a break for freedom once she reached the ground floor. The basement stairway opened into the kitchen. The Vennekamps had left the door ajar.

  The first floor of the house was flooded with afternoon sunlight. It brought back a brief impression that all was sane, logical, and ordered in the world. But of course, it wasn’t. What did these two have planned for her?

  Jennifer pushed through the partly open door and stepped into the kitchen. There was yet another Vennekamp seated at the kitchen table.

  “Jennifer Huber,” Marcia Vennekamp said. “I was thinking about using your oven to heat myself up a frozen pizza, but I don’t think any of us have enough time for that.”

  “Help me,” Jennifer pleaded. Despite Chris Whitaker’s stories about the Marcia of twenty years ago, despite her habitual lying, Marcia Vennekamp seemed to be the sanest living member of the clan at the moment.

  Marcia stood up from the table, pushed her chair back and walked over to Jennifer. Without warning, she slapped Jennifer across the face.

  “Shut up! Shame on you! Shame on you for—humiliating me!”

  “Humiliating you?” Jennifer asked at length, her cheek stinging from the blow. “How did I—?”

  “You think we’re all stupid, don’t you? And you especially think that I’m stupid. Do you think that I don’t know you’ve been talking to Chris?”

  Jennifer stared blankly back at Marcia. The Vennekamps had been keeping a watch over her, indeed.

  “It’s been twenty years since all that trouble,” Marcia said. “And Chris would have forgotten about all those old misunderstandings. I’ve been watching him, you know. And that means that I’ve been watching you, too, sometimes. You’ve been talking to Chris, no doubt forcing him to remember our little problems, those old misunderstandings that have been keeping us apart all these years.”

  “Chris Whitaker was no good for you then, and he’s no good for you now,” Deborah interjected.

  “Quiet, mother,” Marcia shot back. “Let’s not go there. Haven’t we worn that topic to death, already?”

  “You and Chris are never getting back together,” Deborah said. “Isn’t that right?” Deborah looked at David, who was still behind Jennifer, holding her bound wrists.

  “Leave me out of this,” David said. “You know that I never liked Whitaker, though I never cared who Marcia dated. I had my own reasons for hating him.”

  “But now it’s never going to happen,” Marcia said, bringing her face to within an inch of Jennifer’s. Jennifer could smell the onions that the other woman had consumed in her most recent meal.

  Chris loathes you, Jennifer wanted to say. He loathes you and fears you because you’re a crazy bitch. All of you are crazy.

  But all Jennifer could say was, “I’m sorry. I didn't know. I didn't mean any harm.”

  “It’s a little late for changing your intentions,” David said prissily. “Now, ladies, I would love to stand here in this kitchen—our kitchen until very recently, I’ll remind Mrs. Huber—talking about old days and bygones. But I need to remind you that we have a job ahead of us. And we need to get on it.”

  “David’s right,” Deborah said. “We’re wasting precious time here.”

  Marcia paused and looked around the room, in obvious contemplation. Then she snatched a handful of Jennifer’s hair and gave it a hard tug. Jennifer cried out in pain.

  “Stop it!” Deborah said. “You’re acting like a child!”

  “Come on, sis,” David interjected. “What difference does it make now, huh? Tell me that.”

  Marcia let go of Jennifer’s hair, acquiescent, though far from mollified. “If this bitch and her family would only have stayed out of our affairs! She should have minded her own business!”

  Jennifer was about to explain that she and her husband had done nothing more than purchase a house that had been placed on the market. She had responded reluctantly to the Vennekamps’ harassment, with no inkling of all these undercurrents.

  Jennifer remained silent, though; there was no percentage in trying to reason with crazy people. And these three people were clearly divorced from reality.

  “Come on,” David said, guiding her toward the garage.

  They pushed her out toward the garage, and once there she recognized the nature and enormity of her mistake. In her haste and anxiety to begin digging for Josie Taylor’s body, Jennifer had forgotten to close the overhead garage door behind her, so that this vital entryway to her house lay open and exposed.

  She and Clint had proactively changed all of the door locks weeks ago, just in case Deborah Vennekamp had held back any copies. All of that time and careful effort, and Jennifer had left the door open for them.

  A van was parked in the driveway and pulled nearly flush with the open garage door. If her hands weren’t bound, and she were able to push the open/close button now, the door would come down on the van’s short hood.

  “Watch the step,” David said, herding her through the doorway. It struck her as an oddly solicitous remark, given the larger situation.

  It was quite obvious now that their intention was to place her aboard the van. Just before they cleared the garage, David placed the muzzle of the gun against Jennifer’s temple and whispered in her ear: “I know you’re thinking about calling for help once we’re out in the driveway. Don’t even th
ink about it, or I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  Jennifer had been thinking about doing exactly that, but the Vennekamps had clearly anticipated this and weren’t going to make it easy for her. Marcia Vennekamp rushed ahead of them and opened the rear passenger side door of the van. When the door opened, Jennifer saw a portion of the stenciled logo for Vennekamp’s Handyman Services. They were abducting her in David’s business vehicle.

  David pushed her out of the garage, toward the open door. If a neighbor or a passing delivery driver were to spot the obvious foul play and call the police, it would be now or never. Once she was in the van, she was theirs, and the Vennekamps would have complete control over her.

  “I’m not going,” Jennifer said. She suddenly locked her legs.

  Marcia stood by the van, looking impatiently from the vehicle’s open door to the scene in the garage, and around the nearby street. From what Jennifer could see, there were no neighbors or cars about. This was a quiet suburb, and Dunham Drive ended in a cul-de-sac.

  David sighed. “Your choice. You can be difficult. But you should know that there really is no turning back now. If you put up too much of a fuss, we shoot you here and now. Just like that.”

  “And what will you do then?” Jennifer retorted. Her arms and wrists were aching now, as David had wrenched them to a moderately uncomfortable angle.

  “You won’t be around to worry about that, will you?” David answered slowly. “But if you must know, we’ll make a run for it.” He held up the gun before her face again. “And if we get caught, if we get cornered, we go out. Even after I shoot you, there will still be five bullets in here. That’s one for each of us with two to spare.”

  Jennifer allowed herself only a second or two to contemplate, knowing that she faced the most important decision of her life. If she struggled, they probably would shoot her. David, his sister, and his mother assessed reality by their own set of rules and standards. They would shoot her and take their chances, with a suicide pact as their final option.