“Jim was out of the office yesterday afternoon, too.”
“Really?” Jennifer was already aware of this fact, of course.
“That’s a coincidence, isn’t it? First you leave with a stomachache, then Jim leaves. I wonder if stomach troubles are going around.”
Nothing that Angela ever said was free of context. Now Jennifer saw the most recent angle: Angela suspected that she had been lying about being sick yesterday; but she suspected her of spending the last few hours of the workday holed up in a love nest with their boss.
“I wouldn't know.”
Angela snorted and shook her head. The accusation had clearly been made, but with all the plausible deniability that would protect Angela should Jennifer complain to human resources.
Her team leader stood up with her coffee cup, and Jennifer was relieved when she walked away, although she realized that Angela would return shortly.
Why does she hate me so much? Jennifer wondered. Even if Angela did believe that she was sleeping with Jim, it obviously wasn't gaining her any professional advantage: Jim Lindsay had never overridden one of Angela’s negative evaluations of her. Jennifer had been stuck at the staff professional level since joining the company. So if Angela believed that she was sleeping her way to the top, then she would also have to conclude that she was doing a horrible job of it.
Or maybe it was something else. Then she understood—and she couldn't believe that she hadn’t grasped this connection earlier.
Angela visibly fluttered every time she was in Jim’s presence, didn't she? Jennifer had always taken this for gender-neutral toadying; but maybe it was something more.
Yes—that had to be it. Angela wanted Jim for herself.
The two of them were single, after all; and reasonably close in rank. Nothing was standing in their way.
Except a logistics planner named Jennifer Huber—or so Angela believed. She can see that I’m not using my body to climb the company ladder, but she thinks I’m her competition for Jim.
Perhaps this hypothesis could be validated through discreet observation. Without being too obvious (she hoped) Jennifer watched Angela walking back from the coffee room. The team leader dropped by Jim’s office, knocked on the door, and walked inside. Angela stood before Jim’s desk, smiling like a high school girl talking to the captain of the football team. Then she began to twirl her hair.
Jim regarded her neutrally. He probably wanted to roll his eyes at Angela—the manager didn't seem to reciprocate her attraction at all.
Why had I never noticed that before? Jennifer thought. Now I can see why Angela hates me.
31
In the middle of the morning, the phone on her desk rang. Jennifer had been expecting a work-related call, or possibly a call from Clint (though he usually called her on her cell phone).
She had not been anticipating a call from Tom Jarvis, of all people.
“I just thought I’d call to see how the new house is working out for you,” the realtor said.
“We love the house.”
“But I hear you’re having problems.”
Jennifer paused, wondering how much Jarvis knew, and from whom he had obtained his information.
“I’m a realtor,” Jarvis explained, as if reading her mind. “Part of my job is to keep my ear to the ground in the community. That’s how I find out about real estate opportunities early on, and beat out my competitors at Coldwell Banker and Century 21. I haven’t been spying on you, but I do hear things. Again, that’s a part of my job.”
Jennifer cupped her hand around the phone and lowered her voice. Luckily, Angela was away from her desk.
“So you’ve heard about our problems with Deborah Vennekamp?”
“Yes, I’ve heard about your problems with Deborah Vennekamp. I know this sounds sexist, but I would ordinarily conduct this sort of conversation with the man of the house. However, it seems that you’re the one taking the lead here, for whatever reason.”
“Clint’s involved, too,” she said, a trifle defensively. “But he’s been on the road a lot for work.”
“That’s fine,” Jarvis replied. “We can pull Clint in for a later conversation if we need to. What I was thinking, though, is that you might be able to use a little advice.”
“Definitely. I’m at a loss here.” She thought about telling Jarvis how the Vennekamp woman had been running circles around her. But then she thought: He probably already knows.
“What time do you break for lunch? Can I pick you up at noon? You could probably go for a burger and fries on the Jarvis Realty expense account. It’ll be tax deductible for me, after all, since you’re a recent client.”
“Noon would be fine,” she said. “You know where I work, right? At Ohio Excel Logistics in Cincinnati.”
“I know the place,” Jarvis said. “I’ll pick you up outside the main entrance at noon.”
As promised, Tom Jarvis was parked just outside the main entrance at 11:57 a.m. It was nice to be taken out for lunch. But as she climbed into the realtor’s Lexus, she imagined Angela Bauer watching her from the unseen shadows of the Ohio Excel Logistics building. Here she was, climbing into a car with a man who was not her husband. While Jarvis was not a member of the company’s management team, Angela would doubtless interpret her actions in the worst possible light.
Well, Angela Bauer can go to hell, she thought defiantly, closing the passenger side door and saying hello to Jarvis.
She had only an hour for lunch, so they opted for fast food—another Wendy’s, coincidentally. The restaurant was located just far enough away to provide a reasonable assurance that they would not have to eat alongside other Ohio Excel Logistics employees.
“The Vennekamps are an odd family,” Jarvis said without preamble, as they were sitting down with their trays.
“You think?”
The realtor smiled and unwrapped his burger. “It’s good that you’re able to maintain your sense of humor—in light of the hassle that this has been. I feel responsible, in a way; I should have done more to dissuade you and Clint from leaping into that house.”
Jennifer finished a bite of grilled chicken salad and said: “No, Tom, we love the house. And we shouldn’t have let one neurotic woman scare us away from a property that had to be sold, that was on the open market. The Vennekamps had no choice but to sell the house, given the situation; and some family would have ended up with it, one way or another, so someone was bound to be harassed by Deborah Vennekamp.”
“I suppose you’re right. But still—”
“Tell, me, Tom: Do you think that Deborah Vennekamp is truly dangerous? I mean, after all—she has committed some acts that are truly over the top.”
Jarvis paused, in apparent consideration of the question.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t think that Deborah Vennekamp is truly dangerous, in the sense that she might do you or your family bodily harm.”
“Notwithstanding the book she threw at me, that is.”
“I’m sorry about your head; and again—I wish that I could have talked you and Clint into another house. I don’t entirely agree that the sale of the house was inevitable. That’s what Richard Vennekamp wanted; but Deborah might have prevailed on him in the end, if not—”
“If not for Clint and I coming along and making an offer on the house, is what you mean to say.”
Jarvis chuckled diplomatically. “Well, I suppose there is an element of truth in that assessment. But again, if you’re at fault—then I’m at fault, too.”
Jennifer stopped eating. “Wait a minute. What are you saying? The only person who is morally responsible here is Deborah Vennekamp. She’s the one who left those dead animals in my hall closet, she’s the one who vandalized my house twice in the middle of the night—first with a dead cat and then with a bottle of blood; and she’s the one who’s been completely unreasonable throughout all of this.”
Jarvis shook his head. “I wish that you and Clint would have called me about the condi
tion of the house. I would have gotten that taken care of for you. And just to be fair: It is my understanding that Deborah Vennekamp had a verified alibi for the two nights on which your house was…vandalized.”
Where is Jarvis getting his information? she wondered. From Roy Dennison? From Marx, the younger deputy?
Then she dismissed the question. Jarvis had acknowledged his abilities for amateur sleuthing. And she had been doing some amateur sleuthing herself, of late.
But she couldn't let slide the realtor’s apparent lack of moral outrage.
“I’m sorry to say this, Tom—particularly when you’ve just bought me lunch; but it almost seems that you’re taking Deborah Vennekamp’s side.”
“Jennifer,” Jarvis replied gently. “There is a difference between morally responsible and practically responsible. Deborah Vennekamp may, in fact, be crazy—as you’ve speculated. And she’s undeniably behaved inappropriately. But sometimes you have to pick your battles. You have to ask: Do I fight this out, tooth and nail, or do I simply walk away?”
“What do you mean by that? Do you think that we should vacate the house? Sell it back to her?”
Jarvis shook his head. “We both know that isn’t a practical or reasonable option at this point. Here’s what I do recommend: Let the Mydale Police Department take responsibility for protecting your home. You might also consider a home security system.”
“You sound like Clint.” She told him about Clint’s plan to purchase a state-of-the-art security setup for the house.
“I think that’s a good idea. I know it's a bit of extra money that you wouldn't have spent otherwise; but the Vennekamps’ house, quite frankly, was priced below its real market value. So you’ll still come out ahead.”
Jennifer was once again puzzled by the realtor’s insistence on moral ambiguity. Whose side is he on? she wondered.
But seeing this as an interminable and unproductive line of argument, she went ahead and told Jarvis about the results of her recent “investigation”—as she now liked to think of it. Throughout her explanation, Jarvis said little, though his demeanor vaguely suggested that she had made a mistake.
She could not resist prodding Jarvis about the missing girl. Did he even know about Josephine Taylor?
It was clear, though, that the name Josephine Taylor was quite familiar to Tom Jarvis.
“Josephine Taylor was—misguided,” Jarvis said. “She came from a broken home. She lived with her mother—a woman named Maxine Taylor—on the old end of Mydale, not far from those apartments you visited yesterday. Josephine Taylor was what they called a ‘wild child’, back in the day.”
“Yes; and Deborah Vennekamp apparently hated the idea of her hanging out with her son. And then Josephine Taylor turns up missing.”
As soon as the words escaped her mouth, Jennifer grasped that she had finally voiced the suspicion that had formed in her mind almost as soon as she had learned about the missing teenager: The suspicion that Josephine Taylor had not been a runaway, as the police concluded, but had been the victim of Deborah Vennekamp, a deranged woman who clearly hated the girl.
But Jarvis did not appear to share Jennifer’s hunch.
“No, no,” he stopped her. “Don't let your imagination get carried away. The police interviewed everyone who might possibly have had a reason to do away with Josephine Taylor. That included David Vennekamp—and his parents, too, I think.”
“Let me guess: Deborah Vennekamp had a convenient alibi, just like she did following the vandalism of our house. She’s apparently good at manufacturing alibis. So what? You know how controlling that woman can be. And she didn't like the idea that her son was so tight with that girl. Imagine if the two of them had eloped after high school—or maybe moved in together.”
This last idea struck Jennifer with particular irony. Deborah Vennekamp had had no qualms about filling her closet with dead animals; but she would probably have blanched at the idea of her son—her son—living in sin with the likes of Josephine Taylor.
The realtor was smiling again, shaking his head slowly. “That wasn't going to happen. Josephine had what you might call a ‘wandering eye’. Oh, she might have had a thing for David—to a certain degree—but if you ask me, she never regarded him as anything more than a temporary diversion, a curiosity. You ask me, she was playing him for something—I’m just not sure what her game was, with David Vennekamp, at least.
“No, Josie had a thing for the gangster types. And she likely ran off with one of them. Josie was never very happy in Mydale. She didn't fit in here, for one thing. She was too edgy, even in the mid-1990s.”
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Jennifer said, “how do you know so much about these matters? You talk almost as if you were there.”
“I’ve lived in Mydale since I was a kid, Jennifer.”
“You might have lived in Mydale then, but you would have been—”
The realtor laughed. “Too old?”
“Well, yes,” she admitted. “I suppose you would have graduated from high school about a decade before either David or Marcia Vennekamp.”
“You’re right,” Jarvis said. “I did graduate from Mydale High School—in the class of 1983. But in the early 1990s I was a young teacher at MHS. I taught civics, social studies, and history.”
Jennifer nearly choked on her grilled chicken salad. The realtor’s revelation was completely unexpected.
But how to interpret it?
Jarvis had represented himself as one thing—a distant, neutral outsider relative to the twisted family history of the Vennekamps. Now it was clear that Jarvis had been a direct observer of the story—essentially from its very beginning.
“Really?” she said. “I never knew that.”
“No, I suppose you didn't—and there’s no reason why you should have. It wasn't something that I was hiding, mind you; it simply wasn't a fact worth mentioning. It wasn't relevant.
“Practically all real estate agents have former careers, you know. There aren’t that many people who start out in residential realty right out of college, unless they have a close family connection to the business. Most of us are professional refugees. A disproportionate percentage of real estate agents are ex-teachers, I’ve found; but I’ve also met agents who were originally engineers, accountants, and salespeople.”
“So what do you think happened to Josephine Taylor, then?”
“As I might have mentioned, I think that she ran off with some guy, probably some guy who was a few years older, who had access to drugs and money. That is, by the way, the prevailing theory around Mydale, the one that the police accepted. Did you know that Josephine Taylor was only a few months away from her eighteenth birthday?”
Jennifer nodded. She did recall reading as much.
“Okay, then. That means that Josephine Taylor was almost an adult, and adults voluntarily disappear all the time. But let me caution you, Jennifer: I wouldn’t go around accusing Deborah Vennekamp of murdering her son’s girlfriend—which Josie really wasn't, anyway. Mrs. Vennekamp was very upset at the time that the police would even think such a thing. You throw accusations like that around, you’ll stir up Deborah even more. And she’s stirred up enough as it is, wouldn't you agree?”
They were done with their lunches, and it was time to return, if Jennifer was going to be back at her desk by 1:00 p.m.
When they were in the car, Jarvis acknowledged that the meeting might have been somewhat less than she had expected.
“I hope I didn't disappoint you,” he said. “If you were looking for a magic bullet, I’m afraid I don't have that.”
“Well, I wasn't expecting a miracle from you, and it was nice of you to ask.”
“My advice, I’ll reiterate, is to hold tight. Do your best to stay away from the Vennekamps—all of the Vennekamps. Let the Mydale police protect you, as is their job. In the meantime, Deborah Vennekamp will find other things to concern herself with. Richard is in a bad way, you know. Very unfortunate.”
S
he nodded, feeling oddly guilty. Surely Richard Vennecamp was suffering worse than she was. But what was she supposed to do? Put up with endless threats and abuse, because the husband of her tormentor was afflicted with cancer?
As Jarvis dropped her off at Ohio Excel Logistics, she asked him a question that had been on her mind since the realtor had first revealed that he had been a teacher at Mydale High School. This was a very relevant piece of information, but Jarvis had volunteered nothing thus far, one way or the other.
“Was Josie Taylor ever one of your students, back when you were a teacher?” she asked.
Jarvis was wearing sunglasses, so she could not see his eyes. She did notice that he turned away from her before answering, then said very deliberately:
“No. I was only a teacher for a few years, and only taught a few courses. Josie Taylor and I never crossed paths.”
Jennifer thanked Jarvis for lunch and stepped out of the Lexus. Once again, she imagined Angela Bauer watching from inside the building, ready to brand her with her own personal scarlet letter.
It was a simple thing, really. Even if Jarvis had been one of Josephine Taylor’s teachers, he would have been a very small and very peripheral part of her life. There is a huge gulf between most high school students and their teachers.
Nevertheless, she sensed that the realtor was holding something back—and that he had a specific reason for doing so.
She had a distinct impression that the realtor was lying to her, in fact.
32
October 1993
David Vennekamp thought: I would like to kill Tom Jarvis.
There were various reasons why he would have liked to kill the teacher.
First of all, even though Tom Jarvis was supposed to be a teacher, he exuded the arrogance and bluster of a member of the football team.
Most members of the Mydale football team simply ignored David—especially in this, his senior year. There were a few, however, who weren’t above calling him fatso. (He wasn't fat, not really; he just hadn’t grown into his body yet, as the old-timers sometimes said.) There were other little slights as well—the looks, the sniggers, the interminable subtle put-downs that had thus far comprised his high school career.
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