Peter was holding an expensive-looking camera with a neck strap. He held up the camera and pointed the lens at David and Josie.
“This is for one of the yearbook’s candid shots!” Fran announced. “Don’t pose too much. Just try to look natural!”
Josie sighed and gave the pair a smile, which Peter instantly and conspicuously warmed to. She leaned back against the row of lockers.
“Make me look hot!” Josie said, teasing, as Peter raised the camera.
David edged toward Josie. Should I put my arm around her shoulder, he wondered. Should I do it?
For a few seconds David weighed the pros and cons of doing so. On one hand, it might mean opening himself to another, even more direct form of rejection. On the other hand, if she acquiesced, even warmed to the idea of him publicly touching her, then it would mean that she really did like him—that she really didn't want to go to a dance she disdained, and her aversion wasn't to going to the dance with him.
But in the end he didn't put his arm around Josie, and he was almost relieved when Peter’s camera clicked and he lowered the device. David sensed that he had barely dodged yet another catastrophe.
“Thanks!” Peter said. “You’ll see it in the yearbook next September. I guarantee it.”
“Of course, we’ll all be graduated by then,” Fran said. “The four of us here all will.” Fran paused, as if trying to draw a deeper insight from this realization. Finally she said. “Thanks again!” Then she walked away, Peter Goldsmith in tow.
“The yearbook,” Josie scoffed, once the pair was out of earshot. “As if I care about the yearbook.”
“You certainly did seem to enjoy posing for the picture,” David said. He was a little angry now about homecoming, in spite of his attempt to feel more neutral about the matter.
Josie shrugged. “Aw, they were only being nice, and besides, what’s the harm? I was only faking it.”
What else are you faking, David thought. And what else are you lying about?
“Anyway,” Josie said. David hoped she was going to reconsider his homecoming invitation, but it was immediately clear that the dance was now the furthest thing from her mind. “I hate to ask you again, David, but I’m a little short this week, you know? I was wondering, if maybe you could spot me a five or a ten. Only a loan. I’ll try and pay you back next week. My mom gets her paycheck then. She usually gives me a little something at the end of the month, for lunch and whatnot.”
David nodded wearily and reached for his wallet. This was another habit of Josie’s. Several times a week she would ask him for money. She never requested a large amount—usually only five or ten bucks. Once she had asked for twenty, pleading a special financial hardship—the details of which were unclear, and which David had quickly forgotten, anyway.
Josie always framed these requests as “loans” or “advances”—as if David were a savings and loan or a bank. But in all the time he had been giving her money (which was, more or less, since the beginning of their friendship) a repayment had yet to materialize.
“How much do you need?” David asked, trying not to sound aggravated.
He made the mistake of opening his wallet. There was a twenty-dollar bill in the front, a picture of Andrew Jackson staring at Josie.
“Actually,” she said, already reaching for the twenty, “if you don’t mind—”
“You can have the twenty,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you so much!” Josie snatched the twenty-dollar bill from David’s wallet. She palmed it with the speed of a skilled pickpocket, he thought. “David, you are absolutely the best friend I have.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway, gotta run. See you later?”
“Sure.”
He watched Josie disappear into the throng of students around them, looking supremely confident and buoyant.
At root she wasn't that much different from Brittany Spurlock, was she? Josie was simply a more working-class, opportunistic breed of the same species.
A sudden, unbidden thought materialized in his head: I hate her. I pretend otherwise, but I hate her, because of the way she pretends around me.
Just before Josie disappeared around a bend in the hall, David saw her react to a tall, lanky boy named Chuck Tanner. Chuck wasn't a jock, but a lot of the girls considered him to be “cool” and “cute” nonetheless. He and another guy named Chris Whitaker played in a rock band; and they enjoyed a minor celebrity status around the school that was a tier below the status afforded to the athletes and the cheerleaders.
Josie leaned into Chuck with a warm smile and the two commenced walking together, beyond David’s field of vision.
What the hell did that mean? Or did it have to mean anything? Of course it meant something: In all the time Josie hung out with David, she had never given him a smile like that, never leaned into him like that.
Was Josie going to homecoming with Chuck? Or was something else going on between them?
Without fully knowing what he was doing, David kicked the concrete lip of floor just below his locker. Pain shot up through his toes and feet, but he was oblivious to it.
Josie was a liar. He had long accepted that. But maybe someday there would be a price for her to pay. The payback for all those lies.
Just like the French Revolution: Off with their heads. Off with her head.
36
When Clint arrived home, Jennifer told him about her lunch with Tom Jarvis, about the research she had done on the Internet earlier. And about her (admittedly silly) fears regarding the room in the corner of the basement.
“What?” Clint said. “You mean that Tom Jarvis called you up and asked you out to lunch—completely out-of-the-blue?”
“We only went to Wendy’s,” Jennifer protested. “A crowded Wendy’s, I might add, in the middle of the weekday lunch hour. Nothing happened.”
“Jeez, Jen—I know nothing happened. I’m only saying, it wasn't really an appropriate thing for him to do. If he wanted to talk to you about the house over lunch, he should have waited until I could attend, or he should have invited me, at the very least.”
Jennifer was somewhat startled by her husband’s reaction. He wasn't accusing her of anything—not at all. But he didn't like the idea of her spending time alone with a man, even during the middle of the afternoon in a very public place.
What would he think, then, of her decision to accept a ride home from Jim Lindsay after spending the entire evening dancing with him? How would Clint react to the news that she had willingly accompanied Jim into his house late at night?
Based on his reaction here, he wouldn't be as understanding as she might have hoped. She had always assumed that Clint, secure in his masculinity, was above the petty jealousies that drove so many men. He had never seemed overly suspicious about her comings and goings. To the best of her knowledge, he had never attempted to read her emails or the text messages on her phone.
But in this regard, perhaps Clint was more ordinary than she had thought. Were he ever to see Jim Lindsay’s video clip—he probably wouldn't pause to consider the mitigating factors. He wouldn't recall that she had practically begged him to attend that holiday party with her. And he might not believe that she had accompanied Jim Lindsay inside his house for the sole purpose of gaining an advance, secret glimpse of an organizational chart that would have a significant impact on her job.
He would see only one thing: a video clip of his wife being kissed by another man—inside that same man’s house.
The revelation might mean the end of her marriage. Jim Lindsay was more than simply a lustful, obnoxious buffoon. Jim really did possess the ability to destroy her life with a few keystrokes on his computer.
“All I’m saying,” Clint went on, “is that men see things differently than women do.”
“Really, Clint? Imagine that.”
“You know what I mean. A woman proceeds into most situations with purely platonic intentions, but men are programmed to look for sexual opportunities w
herever they can find them.”
“Including you?”
“No—of course not. I’m happily married to you. But Tom Jarvis is single. And the guy seems like an opportunist, if you know what I mean.”
Jennifer nodded. “I guess so.” She recalled having that same impression of Jarvis on the day they had first toured the house. She remembered how Jarvis had furtively glanced at her body as he held the door for her.
Clint had remarked on this too, at the time—and he had basically found it amusing. Jarvis was a somewhat older man who might look on Jennifer longingly, but he posed no threat from afar.
But if Jennifer was spending time alone with him, that was something else, apparently.
She imagined Clint opening his email account at work, finding an anonymous email with a video clip attached. She pictured him playing the clip—
Then she pushed those thoughts out of her mind.
“You can rest assured that this was a one-time thing,” Jennifer said. “And you can also rest assured that nothing happened—or tried to happen. Tom was a complete gentleman. But he did tell me some interesting things—about the Vennekamps, and about himself, even.”
She told him the rest—including her darkest suspicions about what might have happened to Josie Taylor.
“You think that this girl’s body is buried in the storage room in the corner of our basement? The place where Richard Vennekamp kept his miscellaneous building supplies?”
“No. I guess not,” she wavered. When he put it like that, it did sound foolish. But so much of what had happened to them since moving into the house was so bizarre.
Clint gave her a small smile, as if he was trying to be simultaneously resolute and indulgent.
“I guess the way I saw things was that this problem was kind of going away. Yes—I’m still working on the security system. And I intend to have a follow-up conversation with Roy Dennison maybe next week sometime. But we haven’t had any incidents in a number of nights, have we?”
“No,” she allowed.
“So it might be exactly as Tom Jarvis said: Deborah Vennekamp has moved on. Maybe we should, too.”
They all wanted her to move on, to more or less forget the violations of her home. Didn't they realize that there could be no moving on, not knowing when Deborah Vennekamp would strike next, or what she was capable of?
“Let’s put it like this, Clint. We live in the former home of a woman who has done some very strange things, and we’ve been her target on several occasions. I’ve been her target on several occasions. There is some evidence—even if it’s only circumstantial—that Deborah Vennekamp may have been involved in the disappearance of that girl—Josie Taylor. Maybe she didn't kill her. Maybe she threatened her, scared her so badly that she went away and stayed away.”
“For twenty years? All because of something that Deborah Vennekamp did or said?”
“We don’t know, do we? But here we are, in that woman’s house, not knowing the full story.”
“Jen, I’m not sure that we need to know the full story. Whatever happened to that girl—and I hope it was nothing bad—it occurred long before we ever even thought about living here. We were barely in high school ourselves then. But I can see that this is important to you. So if you want to look into it, I’ll help—because—”
“Because you don't want me going to lunch with Tom Jarvis?”
“No. I don't care about Tom Jarvis. But if you feel that you have to do this, I want to help you—as long as we don’t violate what Roy Dennison told us. We’re staying clear of Deborah Vennekamp.”
Listening to Clint’s apparent change of heart, she wondered what the catalyst had been. Did Clint remember that there were times in the past when he had been less than supportive of her—those days when he had gone out every weekend with his old college buddies? Or was he trying to keep an eye on her? Had her lunch with Tom Jarvis disturbed him even more than he had let on?
There was no way to tell for sure, and there was no way to ask without presenting it as an accusation, really; so she said simply: “Thanks, Clint. It would make me feel better if I knew the full story.”
“Well, that’s assuming that you can even find it out. The police looked for Josie Taylor, you’ll recall. They couldn't find her.”
“And maybe they weren’t looking that hard. They assumed that she was just another runaway. But I don't need to find out exactly what happened to Josie Taylor. I only need to convince myself—”
“That she isn’t buried in our basement?”
“Yes. I suppose that’s it.”
Clint sighed. “Let me guess: You want to go see the band guy next. What’s his name?”
“Chris Whitaker.”
“Right. And where would we be able to find this Chris Whitaker?”
Before leaving the computer Jennifer had checked the performance schedule of Phenomenal Rush. The band played every Friday at a well-known bar that stood, more or less, on the border between Mydale and Cincinnati.
“I already researched that,” she said. “I know exactly where to find him.”
“You know,” Clint replied. “I rather thought you might say that.”
37
October 1993
Marcia Vennekamp stood before the full-length mirror in her bedroom—the one attached to the back of her door. She was wearing only her bra and panties, giving herself a full and unadorned look at her figure.
She wasn't what you would call fat—not like her brother David, at least. No, she wasn't fat at all. It would be more accurate to say that her figure didn't achieve the ideal proportions. Her hips were a tad too wide, her breasts a bit too small.
She turned sideways so she could examine her profile. Not bad, really—unless she compared herself to the Brittany Spurlocks of the world. Blonde, long-legged, and impossibly toned, Brittany seemed to have sprung from the pages of a fitness magazine and then entered the halls of Mydale High School. Brittany and her friends, and girls like them—they got all the attention.
Was some form of ultra-fitness the ticket, then? Marcia once again faced the mirror and appraised her soft body: She could always work out. She could jog after school, maybe even buy a membership to the Mydale YMCA. Surely her parents would spring for that if she was committed to using it. Although David showed no interest in improving his physique, she might even be able to use the argument that both she and her brother could use the Y. They could buy a family membership.
But how long would it take her, running laps around a track or straining her muscles on Nautilus machines, to transform herself into Brittany Spurlock? And even if she did reduce her body fat down to athletic levels, her boobs would still be too small. She would never be able to match the high cheekbones, delicate nose, and long, lustrous hair of someone like Brittany Spurlock.
Physical beauty was more than one single attribute, she now gathered. It was a composite, what her English teacher would call a gestalt.
Marcia sighed, and knelt down to gather up the clothes she had shed for this body assessment. Her mother was nosy; and if she started knocking on the door and Marcia didn't answer, there would be four or five suspicious questions.
What were you doing? Are you hiding something?
Blah, blah, blah.
Her mother. How clueless she was. Deborah Vennekamp not only watched her children’s grades like a hawk, she also agonized over their social lives.
But their mother seemed to have resigned herself to the fact that David was a stereotypical adolescent misfit. Once, at the dinner table, Deborah had asked David if he planned to get a girlfriend before graduating from high school. David’s response had been a defensive overreaction that finally got him ejected from the dinner table.
After that, Deborah had given up. Only rarely nowadays was David on the receiving end of pointed questions about friends and dates.
Mydale was a tight-knit community, and her mother was aware of some of the big names at the high school, the kids who were so popular t
hat even the adults sucked up to them, or the athletes whose demonstrated prowess made them shoo-ins for all-city awards and college scholarships. That made things worse at home. Her life (not to mention her brother’s) would have been far easier if Deborah had been completely clueless about who was who at Mydale High School.
“Maybe that Justin Kessler will ask you out,” her mother had suggested one evening at the dinner table. “He seems like a nice boy.”
This had prompted a derisive snort from David (who was in turn rebuked by her father) and blotches of red embarrassment on Marcia’s own face. Marcia gently explained (in the least humiliating terms possible) that Justin Kessler was not merely a “nice boy”. He was one of the co-captains of the football team, as good-looking as a fashion model, and sought by every girl in the high school. He was currently hooked in deep with one of Brittany Spurlock’s friends.
“Dumb,” Marcia said aloud now to the empty bedroom. She was fully dressed again, and feeling the residual embarrassment of that family dinner table exchange. “My mom is just dumb.”
But her mother wasn't dumb—even if she was prone to bouts of selective ignorance about the social prospects of her children. Her mother was crafty, in her own way; and Marcia had long suspected that Deborah had hidden things from her father. Marcia had no idea exactly what these things might be; but she detected a subterranean layer of secrecy between the two.
About ten days ago Marcia had watched from her bedroom window as her mother had pummeled to death the Schillings’ cat. Then Marcia had watched, to her even greater amazement, as Deborah calmly wrapped the slain animal’s carcass in a black garbage bag and washed the blood off the walkway.
Her mother clearly despised Janet Schilling, for reasons that Marcia couldn't precisely pinpoint, but which probably had something to do with middle-aged female jealousy. But why, pray tell, had her mother been sitting outside on the front porch with a hammer conveniently in hand? Had she been lying in wait for the animal? Had that act been her mother’s premeditated revenge against Janet Schilling for some real or imagined slight?
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