Clint determined that he would need to check them all—and check them in person. He would visit each of the Vennekamps’ residences, and let them know that his wife was missing. If they had had any part in her disappearance, their faces would betray their guilt, Clint was convinced.
And then what?
Clint knew that he had no answer to that question. He would figure it all out as he went along.
His only task right now was to find Jennifer. Hopefully his worry was all for naught. Before he left, he would leave a note on the kitchen table. In a best-case scenario, Jennifer would wander home soon, call him, and he would end his search.
But his intuition told him that the ending wouldn't be that clean and easy.
61
It made sense to drive out to Stony Creek Road first.
There had been no conflict with David Vennekamp as yet. But if his mother and sister were up to something truly criminal, he might be involved.
Clint could not imagine Deborah Vennekamp kidnapping Jennifer without male assistance; and her son would be the likely source of that assistance.
Probably. I’m flying blind here, Clint thought. I have no idea what I’m doing.
Clint was not a gun owner. He had no ideological opposition to firearms. (Ralph Huber owned several, in fact.) But he had never had cause to either purchase one or to brandish one.
A gun would have been a good backup to have—just in case.
That deficiency couldn't be remedied at this late hour. Still, maybe there was some way that he could add to his strength a bit. What he had in mind was a long shot, but long shots were all he had at the moment.
Clint picked up the printout that contained Chris Whitaker’s telephone number and tapped the number into his cell phone. The guitarist answered quickly, but he sounded groggy, as if he were just struggling awake now, in the late afternoon.
“Huh-hullo?”
“Mr. Whitaker? It’s Clint Huber. Jennifer Huber’s husband.”
“Okay…” he answered cautiously. The musician was instantly on-guard. Did the whole world now perceive Clint as a jealous husband?
“I know this is unusual, Mr. Whitaker—me calling you out of the blue.”
“Chris. Call me Chris.”
“Chris. Anyway, let me explain.”
Clint ran through an account of the afternoon’s events. He didn't see any need to tell Whitaker about the marital quarrel, though.
“Do you think the Vennekamps might have anything to do with Jennifer not being here?” Clint asked.
“Aw, man. I couldn't say. It’s been a long time since I had anything to do with that family. I just want to avoid them.”
“Please, Chris. My wife may be in trouble, and I’d like your input. Don’t hold back on me.”
“I think that anything is possible with that twisted bunch. That’s what I think.”
“Would you be willing to accompany me out to David Vennekamp’s farmhouse right now? I could use another man to back me up…just in case.”
“Aw, dude. I don’t know.”
Clint struggled to restrain his frustration. He had been reduced to begging for help from a nearly forty-year-old man who used the word “dude” with considerable frequency.
“Please,” Clint pleaded.
“I’m sorry,” Chris said. “I just—I just don’t want to get involved. Why don't you call the police?”
“I told you: I called the police, and they told me to get back to them in two or three hours. My wife may not have that long.”
“Dude, I’m sorry. Good luck, though.”
“Thanks,” Clint said grudgingly. Whitaker, after all, was under no obligation to assist.
“Yep.”
Another call ended, and Clint decided that he could delay no further. He gathered up the printouts he would need, left a just-in-case note for Jennifer, and walked outside and climbed into the minivan.
Before he put the minivan in reverse, he closed the overhead garage door, leaving behind the question marks of Jennifer’s car, purse, and cell phone.
62
Jennifer now found herself in yet another basement: the basement of 2334 Stony Creek Road. This one, perhaps coincidentally—perhaps not—also had a dirt floor.
They had manhandled her from the Vennekamp Handyman Services van to the front door of the farmhouse. When she saw the farmhouse, she realized that this could only be a torture chamber or a death chamber.
She called out for help, but there was no one to hear her this far out in the country. Marcia slapped her hard across the face as David and Deborah pulled her up the porch and then into the house. It wasn't much of a contest, really, not with the three of them all pushing, pulling, and prodding her. If only her hands had not been bound.
One of her loafers had come off in the driveway. She now sat on the floor of the farmhouse basement with one shoe on, and the other foot bare but for her sock.
Marcia had threatened to throw her down the basement stairs. Jennifer looked at David, and David said simply, “Don't make this any worse for yourself. That would be a painful way to go.” And so once again, she had reluctantly decided to cooperate with her abductors in order to gain a temporary advantage. But she knew that her time was running out.
The basement of the farmhouse was far dingier than the basement of her home. This was a much older house, for one thing. The basement walls were fieldstone; the stones were discolored with old water stains and lichen. The grouting was chipped and coming apart in places.
The basement was cluttered with the usual assortment of junk that one would expect to find in any basement in a rural home. Jennifer saw tattered cardboard boxes filled with long obsolete clothing and household items. There was a workbench topped with old glass jars. Inside the jars were jumbles of screws and nails, many of them rusted. Saws, hammers, and other miscellaneous tools hung on a decaying pegboard behind the workbench.
Jennifer noticed two items propped against the nearby wall, both of which looked out of place: a fireplace poker, and a shovel. The shovel, unlike the other utilitarian items in the basement, appeared to be brand new. It might have been purchased this afternoon, when Jennifer purchased her shovel.
“Some might disagree,” David Vennekamp began, “but I believe that you deserve a full explanation, even after everything that has occurred—even after—” the chubby man was apparently at a loss for words “—even after what is going to happen next.”
“And what is going to happen next?” Jennifer asked, her voice trembling.
Wasn't it obvious, though? Why else do you abduct someone and take her to a basement in a remote farmhouse?
David ignored the question. “Mother came home from work just as we were trying to bury Josie that day. Yes, Marcia and I did more or less exactly what you gathered: We drug Josie into that little room, and we started digging.”
He gave Jennifer a lopsided smile that you might give when recounting a distant, foolish indiscretion of youth. “But it was a fool’s errand. We had no idea what we were doing. When Mother found us, she said we were idiots. She kept screaming, ‘What have you done? ‘What have you done?’”
“You were idiots,” Deborah said. “Perfect little idiots. And no, I couldn't believe what you had done. You’d endangered our family over petty jealousies.”
“Ah,” Marcia countered, “and I suppose that what you did to Chris’s cat was completely different.”
“Of course it was different. It was an entirely different level of risk. And I was trying to protect one of my children from a bad influence. You did what you did because you caught that little tramp with your no-good boyfriend.”
Deborah turned to David, and then back to Marcia. “You should have just let her go, then both problems would have been solved.”
“So anyway,” David continued to Jennifer. “Mother was understandably frantic. I had changed my mind again. I wanted to go to the police, and tell them everything. After all, Marcia was the one who had killed Josie—not
me.”
“My protective older brother!” Marcia said. “How gallant of you!”
David ignored the remark and continued. “But Mother said that no, we couldn't do that to Marcia; she had her whole life ahead of her, and Josie wasn't worth that sacrifice. She also said that I would go to jail, too. By helping to bury the girl, I had made myself an accessory to murder.”
Vennekamp paused, thinking. “I don’t know if that was even true; but my eighteen-year-old boy self believed it. Then Mother had the cockamamie idea of bringing Josie’s body out here to bury. My grandfather had only recently passed away, and he’d left the house to us.”
David laughed ruefully. “Can you believe that, Jennifer? My mother’s grand idea was simply to bury Josie in another basement.”
“It’s not as if I had much time to think it out,” Deborah shot back. “We had to act quickly, you fool.”
“Yes,” David allowed. “Yes we did. So we loaded Josie’s body in my mother’s minivan—an old Ford Aerostar, it was. We backed the vehicle into the garage so none of the neighbors would see, of course. Then we drove her out here. She’s buried in this basement.”
David looked around the floor impatiently. “I’m not sure exactly where, though. We were in such a rush that day. Dad was out of town on a big job in Dayton; but he was due home that evening. Mom kept saying, ‘We can’t let your father find out—ever.’ And he never did find out, did he?”
“No,” Deborah said. “That was the one bright spot in this whole sordid business. We were able to leave your father out of this.”
“Anyway,” David resumed, “on the way home, we drove into Cincinnati, and threw Josie’s backpack into a random dumpster. To the best of my knowledge, the police never found the backpack.”
“And that’s the story of how Josie Taylor disappeared!” Marcia said brightly. She clapped her hands together twice.
“Within a few hours, it was done,” David said. “The only snafu, I suppose, was that I wanted Josie’s ring as a keepsake—of what we had together.”
Marcia snorted derisively. David glared at her. Then he went on.
“I pulled the ring off her finger before we moved her—she was still warm, you know. And we were filling in the hole in our basement at the same time. But I dropped the ring somewhere along the way. I never knew where it went. I’d thought about digging in the basement again—our basement, I mean—but Mother made me promise not to. And I eventually decided that it was just as well. I still have the photograph of Josie and me, the one you saw on that day you came here, Jennifer.”
Somewhat involuntarily, Jennifer nodded. She could see the situation more clearly now, as twisted as it was. She could see how Deborah’s dark sentimentalism had mixed with paranoia over the murder that had taken place in the basement. Deborah had always believed, on some level, that her children had left evidence behind; and it turned out that Deborah had been right.
Jennifer could also see how David had spent the last twenty years in a pathetic limbo, lost in a fantasy of an adolescent relationship that had never really existed outside his own head. He had lived all these years in this farmhouse, with Josephine Taylor buried in the basement. Meanwhile, fear of his eventual capture had made David edgy, and easily manipulated by his mother. He would have sensed that he, Deborah, and Marcia needed to band together in order to survive.
And most of all Jennifer could see how Marcia—probably the most intelligent of the three—had reacted to her reprieve from a murder charge. Marcia had gone underground, figuratively if not literally. Any plans of leaving Mydale for college had been scuttled. Like her brother and her mother, she had been hesitant to venture too far from the scene of her crime. Marcia, no less than David and Deborah, had remained tethered to Josie Taylor’s corpse.
Marcia had taken on a veneer of dullness as she grew older. No one would suspect a simple woman who worked at a fast food restaurant of being a murderess. If Josie’s body ever were discovered, no one would believe that Marcia could possess such violent initiative, much less the guile needed to cover up the crime.
“And now,” David said, lifting the shovel that was leant against the wall. “Now I need to start digging.” He surveyed the basement floor again, obviously nervous. “I just wish that I could remember exactly where we put Josie. Too many years, you know, and we never left a marker.”
“What?” Marcia asked. “You mean you wouldn't want to see her again? Say hello for old times?”
“That’s a sick joke, Marcia,” David said primly. He sighed and placed the tip of the shovel in a spot on the floor directly in front of him. Then he thought better of it, and placed the shovel in another spot, approximately eighteen inches over.
“Too much of the basement floor is rocky and tightly packed,” David explained. “Otherwise, we’d dig Jennifer’s hole on the other side of the room.”
“Just dig,” Marcia said. “If Miss Josie pops up, we’ll deal with her. She’s been dead for twenty years, after all.”
Jennifer felt the blood rush from her head. David had just referred to this new hole as her hole. Despite his outward solicitude, David Vennekamp had every intention of killing her.
63
On his way out of the neighborhood, Clint had a change of mind: Maybe he should approach Deborah Vennekamp first. After all, she had been the chief source of their troubles. Clint firmly believed that if Deborah were behind Jennifer’s disappearance, then her son (and perhaps her daughter) were also involved. But it would all begin with Deborah, wouldn't it?
Deborah was staying at a Mydale retirement community called Three Roses. The logo of the place was a trio of yellow roses.
Clint stopped by the patio home that was assigned to Richard and Deborah Vennekamp. He recalled how Deborah Vennekamp had turned the harassment issue around on Jennifer and him.
She had enlisted the unwitting aid of Chief Dennison, too. Mydale’s top law enforcement officer had even threatened them with a restraining order.
Well, Clint thought, as he prepared to ring the doorbell, let Dennison come and get me. I don’t really care about any restraining orders at the moment.
Clint noticed that there was a wreath propped against the door. And behind that was a small bouquet of flowers in a vase, with an FTD tag.
“Excuse me,” someone said from behind him.
Clint turned to see a thin, white-haired woman carrying a clipboard out in the street. She was older, but she looked a little too spry to be a member of this community. The woman rather looked like an employee of the community. Clint also saw that she was wearing a name tag: “Mary”.
“Excuse me,” the woman repeated. “Are you a relative of the Vennekamps?
“Uh, no,” Clint said. “A friend.” This lie seemed as serviceable as any other.
“Well, Mrs. Vennekamp may not be in just now. She has a lot going on, with planning the funeral and all.”
“Funeral?”
“You haven’t heard?” Mary inquired. This omission in Clint’s knowledge apparently cast doubt regarding how good a friend he actually was. “Richard passed away. Yesterday, I believe.”
“I—I see,” Clint replied, taken aback. “I’ll—I’ll give Deborah a call when things settle down.” He looked down at the wreath and the flowers. “I should send some condolences, too.” He felt vaguely idiotic now.
Mary nodded. “That would be a good idea. Well, goodbye.”
Mary walked off, apparently having bought Clint’s story.
This item of news could mean one of two things: On one hand, perhaps Deborah Vennekamp had been completely devastated by Richard’s death, such that her feud with the new owners of 1120 Dunham Drive no longer mattered to her. Perhaps she had even forgotten her bizarre obsession with the house.
On the other hand, though, the death of her husband might have ratcheted up her desperation even higher. Deborah Vennekamp, crazy with grief and rage, might now believe that she had nothing to lose.
Clint’s life had been fai
rly sheltered thus far, in the big scheme of things. But he knew that a person who had nothing to lose could be dangerous—even deadly.
He walked quickly back to his vehicle and set out for the farmhouse occupied by David Vennekamp.
64
David managed to dig the hole—to his great relief—without coming across the twenty-year-old corpse of Josephine Taylor. The hole was roughly six feet long and about three feet deep.
“You can’t seriously be planning to do this, can you?” Jennifer pleaded, addressing David. She figured that she would get no quarter from either Marcia or Deborah; but David had seemed to have a soft spot for her—starting with their first meeting.
“What do you think?” Marcia asked. “Were you under the impression that this was some kind of a drill?”
“I’m sorry, Jennifer,” David said, with all apparent sincerity. “Believe me when I say: I wish that it had not come to this. It would have been much better for everyone if it had never come to this.”
He gave her a pleading facial expression, as if he were somehow the one who were being wronged.
“Why couldn’t you have backed off, huh? Mother would have found a way to buy the house back from you, you know.” He shook his head. “You remember that night when I dressed up like the minotaur? That part was all my idea. I was doing it for your own good, really. I knew that if you and your family didn't leave, something truly tragic would happen. And look at where we are now.”
“David,” Jennifer said. “You can still step back from this. You broke into my house. You’ve abducted me; but you haven’t done anything yet that we can’t undo.”
“That’s where you’re wrong!” David shot back. “Twenty years ago, I became an ‘accessory to murder’. I helped bury poor Josie’s body. There is no ‘stepping back’ from that. Can’t you see that the two of you are connected now—you and Josie?”
“Don’t listen to her!” Deborah said. “She’ll only try to talk you out of what needs to be done.”
1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery Page 36