1120 Dunham Drive: A Clint & Jennifer Huber Mystery

by Edward Trimnell

  It was sickening—difficult for David to look at. But he had to look.

  David knelt on the dusty floor. He laid his fingers against the still warm skin of Josie’s neck, in the area that he believed to be her carotid artery.

  “You—you’ve killed her!”

  Marcia let the fireplace poker fall onto the floor. Yet another nauseating thud.

  “You have to help me take care of this, David!”

  Tears in his eyes now, David looked up at his sister. “I will not!”

  “Yes, brother, yes you will. If you don't, then I’m going to tell everyone that you’re the one who did it.”

  “But you—the fireplace poker is in your hands. Your fingerprints!”

  “Are you going to tell me that your fingerprints won’t be on it, too?”

  David shook his head in disgust and defeat—and beneath that, rising panic.

  Of course the poker would have his fingerprints. It would probably carry the fingerprints of everyone in the house.

  “And who do you think everyone will believe, David? Another girl? Or the weird guy who followed Josie around everywhere?”

  “I didn't follow her around!”

  “David, you’re wasting time. And why are you crying now? Aren’t you the one who was talking about shooting her not all that long ago? Let me tell you what I know about Josie Taylor.”

  “And so I told David about catching Josie with Chris,” Marcia explained to Jennifer. Although Jennifer was still unaware of the van’s exact location, it had just turned onto a country road. She could feel the uneven pavement.

  “We had a brilliant plan,” Marcia went on, “we were going to bury her in the basement.”

  From the front seat, Deborah exhaled loudly, in exasperation.

  “Marcia, that was the second dumbest thing you ever did, after killing that girl in the first place, that is.”

  “Okay, Mother,” Marcia conceded. “Maybe not so brilliant. But we were kids, after all, and—”

  “Stop this ‘we’ stuff,” David said. “You were the one who killed her, and you were the one who had the bright idea of where to bury her.”

  “Yeah; but you seemed a lot less broken up about it after I told you about her and Chris, didn't you? You already knew, I think, about her and that teacher—the one who’s the realtor, now—but you were able to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “So you killed her for me, Marcia? For my sake? Is that it?”

  “No,” Marcia admitted. “Of course not. But I did bring you out of your illusions about Josie. I opened your eyes.”

  “Josie was playing me for the fool,” David conceded. “She deserved something bad. But not that. Probably not that. Oh….dammit!”

  He smacked the steering wheel of his van with the open palm of one hand, visibly distressed at the old memory.

  Then he turned around and glared at the bound Jennifer. “Why did you have to dredge all this stuff up? We were forgetting. Everyone was forgetting about it. Life was moving on.”

  These people are absolutely disconnected from reality, Jennifer thought. The idea brought her no sense of smugness or superiority. Crazy though the Vennekamps might be, they were in complete control of her at the moment.

  60

  Clint sped down the highway toward Cincinnati. He had tried to reach his wife by cell phone just a few minutes ago. There had been no answer.

  He tried again. On his first attempt he had left no message. He decided to leave one this time.

  “Jen. Hey. Sorry I was—sorry I was the way I was last night. I mean, we need to talk about this, but I should have—well, anyway. Call me when you get this message.”

  Clint had cancelled his remaining sales calls—the one that he had this afternoon, and the two that he had planned for tomorrow morning, pleading a family emergency.

  This was an emergency, wasn't it? He and Jennifer had encountered a great test: Another person had tried to intervene in their marriage, to sully it with his own agenda. Jennifer had told Clint that the other man had taken advantage of a momentary lapse in her attention, and nothing more.

  She had assured Clint that she loved him, that she had no intention of ever being with Jim Lindsay or any other man but him. She had acknowledged her mistake in keeping the event a secret for so long, practically bowing down in obeisance before her husband’s feet.

  And he had shut her out, turned her away—all because he could not get past the image of another man touching his wife, even in a manner that was fleeting and done without her consent.

  She shouldn't have accepted that ride home with Jim Lindsay. And she definitely shouldn't have entered his house with him. (Any woman would have been able to see the ulterior motive behind such an invitation, Clint believed—and certainly any man.)

  But then again, he should have been with her that night. Had he been with his wife (instead of out drinking beer with his college buddies) Jim Lindsay would never have gotten more than a polite hello from Jennifer.

  Clint activated the minivan’s left turn signal and pulled into the passing lane to drive around a lumbering truck. Was he telling himself, then, that it was perfectly permissible for a woman to go home with another man because her husband didn't attend a company holiday party with her?

  No, he wasn't proposing that at all—and neither had Jennifer said that. He was acknowledging that there were gray areas here, places where she was at fault and places where he was at fault. It was up to them to work through the gray areas, for the good of their marriage, for the good of their son.

  What an idiot he had been. Jennifer had been trying to work the situation out, admitting fault of her own. He had acted like a damned inquisitor with his wife.

  The truck behind him now, Clint picked up his cell phone and speed-dialed Jennifer again. Five rings and then to voice mail.

  Was it possible that she was deliberately not answering his calls? To punish him, perhaps?

  He didn't think so; but anything was possible right now, wasn't it?

  Clint diverted half his attention from the road to contemplate his cell phone. There was no point in calling her yet again.

  Instead he speed-dialed his parents’ phone—or rather, his mother’s phone. Ralph Huber often quipped defiantly that he had never owned a cell phone. Clint’s mother did make this one concession to the twenty-first century.

  “Clint?” Gladys answered on the second ring. Clint was immediately aware of a buzz of voices in the background. Many of them sounded like children. “Jennifer said you weren’t coming home until tomorrow.”

  “That was the plan,” Clint said. “But the plans have changed. I’ve been trying to reach Jennifer, but she won’t pick up. Where are you, by the way?”

  Gladys related Jennifer’s explanation of working late tonight, and the suggestion of going to Chuck E. Cheese.

  “Have you ever had this pizza before?” Gladys asked. “It’s really not half bad, you know. Your father’s already polished off four pieces!”

  “Thanks, Mom. I’ll take that under advisement. If you hear from Jennifer, could you ask her to call me?”

  “Why, certainly. There isn’t any reason to be worried about her, is there?”

  “No,” Clint said after a slight pause. “Nothing to worry about. She’s probably just stuck in a meeting room with bad cell coverage, or she can’t answer. You know how big companies are.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, anyway, Clint, I’ll let you go. I’ll tell Jen to ring you if she calls.”

  “Thanks again.” Clint terminated the call.

  For a moment he contemplated driving to Ohio Excel Logistics, then he decided against it: Despite what Jennifer had told Gladys, Clint didn't believe that she was working late tonight.

  In his mood of the previous night, he would have accused her of taking advantage of his business trip to arrange a tryst with Jim Lindsay—or maybe even some other man. But his now cooler head told him that Jennifer had been telling the truth about her loathing for Jim Lind
say. Nor did he think that she had an assignation scheduled with another party.

  No—his instincts told him that Jennifer’s absence tonight had some relation to what had been the main stress in their lives prior to the Jim Lindsay bombshell. Maybe another one of her “investigations”.

  That night he had come home angry, after receiving the damning text message, she had been trying to tell him something about her latest discovery, hadn’t she?

  A series of what-ifs began to run through his mind: What if Deborah Vennekamp pulled another stunt on their front lawn last night? What if Chris Whitaker, or another old classmate of the now adult Vennekamp children had called her with a new bit of information?

  He wouldn’t know until he arrived home, would he? He had been driving for more than two hours now, so the Cincinnati area and the Mydale exit weren’t far ahead. He resisted the nagging urge to call Jennifer’s cell phone yet again.

  When Clint arrived in his front driveway, he was at first cautiously optimistic. The garage door was open, and Jennifer’s vehicle was parked inside the garage. Maybe she had lost her cell phone. She had done that once a few years ago, and they had had to call AT&T to have the phone remotely deactivated. There might be a perfectly plausible explanation for her failure to answer his calls, and the presence of her car in the garage was a good sign.

  Nevertheless, he could not resist calling her number again, now that he was home. He parked the minivan and speed-dialed as he walked up the driveway.

  As Clint entered the garage, he heard Jennifer’s cell phone ring twice with each individual ring: There was the simulated ringing on his own phone, and the sound of another phone ringing.

  He was in the garage now, beside her car. The sound of the second ringing phone was particularly loud. It was Jennifer’s distinct ringtone: a retro ring that sounded like an old mechanical phone.

  Clint opened the driver’s side door of the car and saw Jennifer’s purse sitting in the front passenger’s seat. The phone was ringing inside the purse. He leaned in and opened the purse just as the call went to voicemail.

  So throughout the afternoon, he had been calling Jennifer’s cell phone, and it had been ringing right here: inside her purse, which was inside her car, which was inside the garage.

  Clint willed himself not to panic. There was no reason to become seriously worried yet. But he would have to take a look inside the house.

  He tucked his cell phone into his pocket. He entered the house through the door that connected the garage and the kitchen.

  “Jen!” he called out. “Jen, are you here?”

  No answer.

  His first impulse was to go upstairs and check the bedrooms. Then he noticed that the door to the basement had been left ajar.

  Opening the door, he saw that the dim lighting had been left on down there, too.

  “Jen?” he called down into the semi-darkness.

  Clint hustled down the stairs, his feet clattering on the bare wood. At the bottom, he paused to look around, to assess the situation. He warned himself that he needed to be prepared for anything, really.

  His attention was immediately drawn to the little storage room at the far corner of the basement. Clint had been inside it no more than two or three times since moving in. It contained a hodgepodge of junk that Richard Vennekamp had left behind.

  From inside the storage room, Clint could make out the glow of a small light, possibly a flashlight that had been dropped there.

  He hurried over and looked in the doorway: He recognized the 9-volt battery-powered lantern as one that he had bought a few years ago at Walmart. The lantern had been knocked over, onto its side.

  The pallets that normally covered most of the floor in here had been pulled away and stacked against one corner of the little room. At the far corner of the enclosure, someone had done some digging.

  Clint stooped and lifted the lantern so he could examine the hole. The hole was not very deep—maybe a foot at the most.

  His foot struck a hard cylindrical object, and he bent to pick it up: It was the handle of a shovel. Clint lifted the shovel and noted the brand name, plus the fact that the shovel appeared to be new. This might be the first time it had been used.

  To the best of his knowledge, he and Jennifer did not own a shovel. He certainly could not recall having purchased this one.

  Had Jennifer been digging down here? Another possibility: Someone else had been digging down here and Jennifer had surprised them.

  Clint dropped the shovel and the lantern and bounded up the basement stairs. He called out his wife’s name two more times. No answer. Then he went upstairs and checked the bedrooms: No Jen, but nothing out of order.

  During the initial spate of trouble with Deborah Vennekamp, Police Chief Roy Dennison had given him a direct number, with the request that the Hubers use it sparingly. Standing in the kitchen now, Clint dialed the number. Dennison answered on the second ring.

  “Dennison here,” The chief’s voice was difficult to hear. There were sounds of traffic and people talking.

  “Chief Dennison. This is Clint Huber.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Huber?”

  “I think my wife is missing.” Clint ran the police chief through a more or less exhaustive account of the past few days, including a brief and sanitized version of his argument with Jennifer. Then he described the condition in which he had found the house.

  “So let me get this straight,” Dennison said. “You had a fight with your wife a few days ago. And now her car is in the garage, and her purse, too; and you have a hole in the floor of your basement. But no Mrs. Huber.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That does sound a little screwy.”

  “So what can you do to help me? As you can understand, I’m more than a little worried about Jen. This isn’t like her.”

  “Well, have you checked with any of the neighbors? She might have seen one of the neighbor women in their yard, and gone over to chat. It happens all the time.”

  “No,” Clint said impatiently. “Jen wouldn't have done that.”

  “She wouldn't have talked to one of your neighbors?” Dennison asked dubiously.

  “Listen, Chief,” Clint said, struggling to remain calm. “I really have the sense that there is something wrong here. I want to file a missing person report. I’d like to get one of your men over here.”

  Then Clint paused, recalling something that he had seen in several crime movies. “I don’t have to wait twenty-four hours to file the missing person report, do I?”

  “No, Mr. Huber, that’s a myth. They only do that on TV and in the movies.” A sharp sound of a horn could be heard in the near distance on the other end of the line. The chief abruptly asked Clint to hold on and spoke to someone on the other side of the call. When he returned, his tone was clipped. “Listen, Mr. Huber, I’d be glad to send someone over to investigate and file a missing person report. But like I said, I think you should check with all of the neighbors first.”

  “Okay,” Clint said reluctantly.

  “And we have another problem, you see: There’s a tractor trailer off the road north of Mydale, out on Route 128. The truck was carrying insecticide, the flammable kind. I’ve got every officer out here right now, rerouting and redirecting traffic.”

  “I see.”

  “But I can have someone out to you in two, three hours—if your wife doesn't show up before then, that is.”

  Dennison’s suggestion made clear that he believed Jennifer to be chatting with one of the neighbor women—or perhaps deliberately hiding from her husband, in order to strike back at him for whatever Clint had said during their marital quarrel. Meanwhile, the chief was about one minute away from hanging up on Clint; and Clint had no time to convince the chief to be more proactive and helpful.

  “Thanks for your time, Chief. I’ll look for her myself for now.”

  “All right. If you don’t have any success, call us back. Like I said, I need about two hours.”

>   Clint ended the call. In two hours Jennifer might be dead—if she hadn’t suffered grave harm already.

  I’ve got to think like an investigator, Clint thought. But I’m not an investigator. I’m a machine tool salesman who needs to find his wife.

  First, he allowed himself a moment to run through the possibilities. It was, of course, conceivable that Jennifer’s absence had nothing to do with the Vennekamps.

  Possible, but highly unlikely. Clint couldn't accept the notion that Jennifer had been the victim of a random crime unrelated to the Vennekamps. Lightning could only strike your family so many times.

  That meant that the strange circumstances of this afternoon probably did have something to do with the Vennekamps. Almost certainly, in fact.

  But how to put it all together?

  Then Clint remembered: the long hours of online research that Jennifer had been doing. She had tracked down all of them: The Vennekamps, Chris Whitaker, and several other individuals of question.

  And if Clint’s recollections were accurate, she had made printouts.

  Clint hurried up to the second floor bedroom that functioned as the family “computer room”—but mostly Jennifer’s “research room” of late. The computer desk and the surrounding floor area were covered with pages printed from their HP OfficeJet.

  Clint snatched up a handful of the sheets. Jennifer’s obsession had been so singular of late that she had virtually stopped the activities that she had used the computer for when they lived in the condo. There were no recipe printouts, nor printouts pertaining to the sundry arts and crafts that Jennifer dabbled in from time to time. Every sheet related to the Vennekamps.

  He quickly located an email printout that contained Chris Whitaker’s cell phone number, and the Google Maps printout that showed the Tandy Lakes apartment complex, where Marcia Vennekamp lived. There was also a current address listing for Deborah and Richard Vennekamp, in a local community of patio homes.

  And finally, an address for David Vennekamp, on Stony Creek Road, a rural route just beyond the city limits of Mydale.