Once logged on to Classmates.com, Jennifer searched to see if there were any Mydale High School yearbooks from the 1990s. She was in luck: there were several scanned MHS yearbooks from the middle of the decade, when both of the Vennekamp children would have been students.
The first yearbook she accessed was difficult to navigate through. Since it had not originally been formatted for the Web, it made a clunky online document. However, a search on “Vennekamp, David” yielded several pictures.
David Vennekamp seemed to have been one of those wallflowers who floats anonymously through high school. She found his class photo, but he didn't seem to have been involved in any school activities: no football, track, or band. He hadn’t even participated in homecoming float—the high school activity that accepts any and all comers.
She did, however, find an impromptu picture of David Vennekamp that someone on the yearbook staff had taken as filler, a little slice-of-life of Mydale High School during the early Clinton era. The black-and-white snapshot showed David Vennekamp in one of MHS’s hallways, his moppish hair hanging in his eyes, shoulders slumped within a baggy, untucked sweater that was probably tan or light brown.
David was standing against a row of lockers, and he was not alone. The petite girl in the photo with him had short dark hair. She wore a black motorcycle jacket. Jennifer thought she detected too much eye shadow—such that the makeup had obviously been overdone for effect.
David Vennekamp was leaning toward the girl, as if the two were an item, but he could not quite work up the nerve to put his arm around her for the camera. The girl herself was leaning toward the boy; her mischievous smile told Jennifer that the girl knew quite well that the boy was thoroughly smitten by her.
“David Vennekamp,” Jennifer whispered to herself. “It looks like you hooked yourself up with a wild goth girl back in high school, didn't you?”
Jennifer knew, of course, that she might have been exaggerating. The so-called goth subculture had been all the rage during the 1990s; and a clique of girls at Jennifer’s high school had gone overboard with black eye shadow, black lipstick, and black attire from head-to-toe. Jennifer, being more drawn to mainstream groups like soccer and cheerleading, had always viewed these girls (and their male counterparts) as desperately attention-seeking, but basically harmless. At the end of the 1990s, aspects of the goth subculture were loosely implicated in the Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado, giving this particular high school subgroup an even darker reputation.
The caption beneath the photo read: “David Vennekamp and Josie Taylor hang out between classes.” Painfully obvious and not very creative, but fairly typical of the verbiage found in high school yearbooks everywhere.
Jennifer searched for Josie Taylor in the same yearbook. There was another “slice of life” picture of Josie—this time Josie chatting with another girl over lunch in the school cafeteria. Jennifer also found the girl’s individual picture in the “Classes” section. This told Jennifer that her full name was Josephine Ann Taylor, and that she was part of the same class as David Vennekamp.
But that was all. Like David Vennekamp, Josephine Taylor seemed to be something of a loner, despite her good looks. No school activities.
Had Josie Taylor and David Vennekamp been connected in any significant way? The body language of the photo certainly suggested that the two of them had been an item—although Jennifer guessed that Josie Taylor had the upper hand in the relationship. Despite her “alternative” affectations, Josie Taylor had been a stunner, while David Vennekamp looked like something of a high school sad sack.
I wonder if Josie Taylor and David Vennekamp are still together—if they were ever together at all, that is? Jennifer pondered. And I wonder if that has anything to do with Deborah’s male child being “gone” in her eyes? What would the librarian have thought of the wild-looking little goth girl? Jennifer felt comfortable assuming that Deborah Vennekamp—even in happier times—would have taken an instant disliking to Josephine Taylor.
Jennifer closed all the Internet Explorer windows she had opened, and pushed her chair back from the desk. She had promised Clint she would return to bed soon.
“Josie Taylor,” Jennifer said in a low whisper. “I wonder if dear old Deborah threw any books at you.”
24
During her lunch hour the next day, Jennifer again Googled David Vennekamp. Her interest at this point was not his high school days, but his present life.
David Vennekamp lived at 2334 Stony Creek Road. Jennifer had never been down this road; but Google Maps told her that it ran just north of Mydale. The topography and lack of other roads in the area suggested that it was rural.
She also discovered that a small business called Vennekamp Handyman Services was located at the same address. This meant that Vennekamp was self-employed.
Jennifer jotted down both the address, as well as the number for Vennekamp Handyman Services, which she found in a Mydale business directory.
None of this information told her if David Vennekamp and Josie Taylor had in fact been an item back in high school, or if they were still together. That would be a long shot, of course: Few high school romances led to marriage—especially one as apparently mismatched as the shambling David Vennekamp and the lithe Josie Taylor. But Jennifer was determined to leave no stone unturned.
A full twenty minutes still remained on her lunch hour, so Jennifer decided to do a quick search on Josephine Taylor. Taylor was a common surname, of course; but Josephine was not a particularly common girl’s name. Moreover, how many Josephine Taylors could there have been in Mydale during the mid-1990s?
She Googled “Josephine Taylor, Mydale, Ohio”. As it turned out, Josephine Taylor did have an online story; but it was a story that had ended many years ago.
The first item was a scanned copy of a newspaper clipping that was two decades old. The title read: “Still no clues in the disappearance of Mydale teenager.”
The twenty minutes remaining in her lunch hour had seemed like an ample amount of time only a few seconds ago. Now Jennifer realized that she had not nearly enough time; she had struck the tip of a very large iceberg.
Jennifer skimmed the article, and two others. They were all brief; and Google listed them in reverse chronological order.
Josephine Taylor, it seemed, had disappeared during her senior year in high school. The Mydale police had conducted an investigation; but no one had been charged in her disappearance.
Finally, the authorities concluded that Josephine Taylor, who was then only weeks from her eighteenth birthday, had run away.
Of course, Jennifer thought. She looks like a girl who would have tested the boundaries—the sort of girl who would attract a rough crowd. Rough boys, especially. Those are the girls who run away and sometimes find themselves living on the streets—or sometimes meet an even worse end.
She also realized that Josephine Taylor’s story could be nothing more than a tragic, but fundamentally unrelated issue. She did not know for certain how deep was the connection between the dark-haired girl and David Vennekamp. She was extrapolating, she knew; she had no real evidence that the two had even been close. So the girl’s disappearance might have absolutely no relation to her troubles with Deborah Vennekamp—even though it was a compelling mystery.
“Oh, Jen.” Angela’s voice startled her from her reverie.
Jennifer looked up. Angela was standing behind her own desk; the team leader had just returned from lunch. Jennifer’s nemesis was smiling almost sweetly. That could only mean trouble.
“Yes?” Jennifer closed the Internet windows containing the information about Josephine Taylor. There was nothing to hide, really; she was still technically on her lunch hour. But Angela would seize on absolutely anything that she might use as a weapon.
“After lunch Jim and I would like to go over your biannual performance review. Is your schedule clear at one?”
This was highly unusual. Although it was performance review season, the review meet
ings were usually scheduled in advance, so that the subordinates—as well as the bosses—would have time to prepare. By springing it on her suddenly like this, Angela (and probably Jim, too) were attempting to add tension to an already anxiety-prone process.
Jennifer paused before answering. She would be within her rights to ask for a reasonable amount of time to prepare. But then Angela would simply pick a new angle. Perhaps it would be easier to go along this time. Anyway, her recent problems at home had temporarily made her work-related problems seem less weighty by comparison.
“Sure,” Jennifer said. “One o’clock will be fine.”
25
The centerpiece of the biannual performance review was the review document, which the team leaders prepared and the managers approved, the latter sometimes making some minor suggestions and revisions. In the quiet of one of Ohio Excel Logistics’ meeting rooms, Jennifer read through the document that Angela had crafted, it seemed, with the sole purpose of skewering her. She noted Jim Lindsay’s signature at the bottom of the document, right beneath that of Angela Bauer’s.
“All right, then,” Angela said, nodding first to Jim and then to her subordinate. “Let’s start at the top.”
The established company protocol was that the team leader would review the document aloud while the employee listened, and the departmental manager observed. While Angela droned on, Jennifer was reading ahead.
Angela had marked her “unsatisfactory” or “does not meet expectations” in nearly every category. Under her previous team leader and manager, she had scored either “good” or “excellent” in every one of these categories. Now she was an employee who seemed destined for the scrap heap.
As Angela spoke, Jennifer began to see the game: Her team leader described her performance in negative terms that could neither be proven nor disproven.
Jennifer could gain very little by arguing the unprovable. The benefit of the doubt in these situations always defaulted to the person who was higher on the company org chart.
“I really think you need to be more proactive,” Angela said at one point, careful not to define what she meant by “proactive”.
There were also instances where Angela had arbitrarily moved certain goalposts, as in the case of the recent change regarding the trucking schedules for Honda. The nature of their work permitted an almost endless shuffling and addition of new work standards and requirements. If Angela changed the rules without notifying Jennifer, then Jennifer would instantly become guilty of retroactive errors. It was an elaborate game, in which Angela could rearrange the pieces at will to make a subordinate look bad.
“But wait,” Jennifer interrupted, when Angela came to an especially flagrant example. “You’ve written here that my ‘customer relations’ need improvement. But I’ve always gotten high marks in this category. Have any of our customer contacts complained about me?”
Inadvertently, she glanced at Jim, and Angela pounced.
“Don’t think you can go over my head by appealing to Jim!” Angela blurted out. “That isn’t the way things work around here—no matter—no matter what.”
Angela turned to Jim, the expression on her face saying: Do something.
Jim gave the two women his best manager’s diplomatic smile.
“Jennifer,” Jim said with an air of practiced patience. “You realize that Ohio Excel Logistics affords each of its team leaders and managers a substantial degree of autonomy. Angela is in her position because the company trusts her. As her manager—as your manager—I can’t second-guess Angela without very convincing evidence to the contrary.”
Angela was about to speak again, but Jennifer preempted her.
“That’s not—not what I was trying to get you to do,” Jennifer said.
“Well, that is kind of how it seemed.”
It suddenly occurred to Jennifer that any protest or self-defense strategy would be a waste of time and energy. The outcome here was preordained. She would score no points here with either of them; the best course of action would be to simply do her best to get through this meeting.
“Please,” Angela said, with an air of being very much put upon, “please don't try to drive a wedge between Jim and me. You work for both of us. But you work directly under me.”
Jim nodded. “That’s right, Jennifer. That’s an important point to remember.”
Jennifer said no more. The absurdity of her situation was almost tragicomic: Angela falsely believed that she was sleeping with Jim Lindsay, and would therefore attempt to seek unfair favor with their manager. Jim Lindsay, on the other hand, wanted to turn the screws on her because she wasn't, in fact, sleeping with him.
It took another fifteen minutes for Angela to finish her spiel.
“Well,” she concluded. “Since you need improvement in so many areas, I think that the best step would be to put you on a formal improvement plan. Jennifer, why don’t you draw that up, and submit it to me for approval. Then I’ll route it to Jim.”
Angela cued Jim with her stare.
“Yes,” Jim said, nodding. “I think that’s a good idea.”
Jennifer groaned inwardly but remained silent. The so-called “improvement plan” was often little more than a way for the company to cover its legal bases before jettisoning an unwanted employee. It was a thoroughly humiliating process, in which Jennifer would be required to articulate her failings in writing, then outline the steps by which she would “improve”.
Angela wasn’t done with her yet.
When Jennifer returned to her desk, she noticed an envelope in her desktop inbox. The envelope had not been there before; it must have arrived via the company mail system while she was in the meeting with Jim and Angela.
The envelope didn't fit the usual pattern of mail she received here at work. Almost everything that arrived for her here bore the letterhead of a vendor or a customer. This envelope, however, was plain and white. Her name and the company’s address were written in the addressee space in plain block letters. Blue ink. There was no return address.
At the bottom of the envelope, in the same block letters and blue ink, someone had written: PERSONAL.
She did not believe that some old school chum had located her on the Internet and decided to send her a snail mail letter addressed to her office. Clint had sent her birthday and Valentine’s Day flowers at work on several occasions, but he wouldn't send her anything like this, in an anonymous standard-sized envelope.
Nor did she think that Jim Lindsay was behind the envelope. As much as he liked to needle and manipulate her, Jim was too smart to leave such a blatant piece of evidence.
That left one likely possibility. Her first impulse was to simply throw the letter away unopened. But then she reconsidered. The envelope obviously didn't contain any dead animals—nor any animal blood. And she doubted that Deborah Vennekamp was resourceful enough to acquire anthrax, like the domestic terrorist who had mailed all those spore-filled letters to politicians and media personalities in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
She tore the envelope open. A single sheet of paper was inside.
It was the torn-out title page of the first volume of Shelby Foote’s A History of the Civil War: A Narrative. This was, almost certainly, from the book that Deborah Vennekamp had thrown at her that day in the library.
And it was equally certain that this page would prove nothing against the librarian. Having successfully covered her tracks this far, Deborah would know better than to leave any fingerprints on either the envelope or the page.
Jennifer had a mental image of Deborah Vennekamp wearing surgical gloves—available at any drug store—as she placed the paper in the envelope. Then she would seal the letter with plain tap water daubed onto the band of glue, so that her saliva could not be extracted for DNA evidence. Deborah might even have acquired a cheap used copy of the book, to avoid any possible link with the Mydale Public Library, and therefore, herself.
Deborah would have carefully considered all those details.
&
nbsp; This was a message. Deborah had no way of knowing about Clint’s plans to purchase an elaborate security system, of course. But the idea conveyed in this paper, mailed to her workplace was: I can reach out and touch you anywhere.
Clint’s plan, well-intentioned though it was, would do nothing to protect them in the long run. They would have to discover the real reason why Deborah Vennekamp was so opposed to their living at 1120 Dunham Drive.
Jennifer no longer accepted the most superficial explanation: That Deborah was simply a tragedy-struck woman who had a neurotically sentimental attachment to her home. There had to be another explanation.
It was clear that Deborah Vennekamp could no longer be approached directly. But what about David Vennekamp? Jennifer had a feeling that the shy-looking boy in that old high school photo—although a man now—would be far less inscrutable than his mother. Deborah’s remarks of the previous day, meanwhile, had strongly suggested a rift between mother and son. Perhaps David Vennekamp would be more than willing to talk with her and Clint.
The rudiments of an approach began to form in her mind: David Vennekamp ran a small business that forced him to be accessible to the public. She and Clint could initially contact him on the pretense of needing his handyman’s services…
Then she recalled Clint’s predisposition toward conflict avoidance. Would her husband willingly accompany her on such a mission?
Jennifer stared down at the torn-out title page, thankful that Angela, at least, had gone directly from the review meeting to another conference. This afforded her a few minutes alone, to gather her thoughts.
She didn’t like the idea of doing anything behind her husband’s back—especially after her great debacle that night of the holiday party.
But Clint was clearly committed to a purely defensive strategy where Deborah Vennekamp was concerned. Such a strategy was unlikely to protect them.
1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery Page 14
