Dancing in the Dark (11 page)

Ten minutes later Diane and Matthew were escorted to a table in the
open-air courtyard of the Starving Artist.

“You don’t have a table inside by any chance, do you?” Matthew asked
the host.

“Sorry. Everything inside is taken. Everybody wants the
air-conditioning.”

They ordered two iced teas right away and scanned the restaurant
offerings.

“There are lots of things I love on this menu, but I’m too hot to
eat them,” Diane said. “I guess I’ll go with the tuna salad platter.”

“It’s a double Italian-style hot dog and fries for me.” Matthew
closed the menu. “I’m never too hot to eat.”

After placing their orders, he laid out what they had so far. “Okay,
we’ve got the police presser and a picture of the second missing girl.
We also have pictures of Leslie Patterson and the search for her
earlier this week.”

“Where did you get those?” Diane asked. “We weren’t here.”

“Well, I don’t actually have them in my hands, but I called the WKEY
local desk, and they are going to dub off what they have and bring it
over to the
Weekend Evening Headlines
studio.
Since we didn’t bring editing gear with us, we’ll feed our material
back to the Broadcast Center, and they’ll edit the piece up there.”

“When will the satellite truck get here?” Diane asked.

“About four o’clock. We’ll want to feed at five.”

She looked at her watch. “Okay, so we’ve got about four hours to see
what other elements we can gather and then write the piece.” She
continued, “Of course, one of the best things we could get is still an
interview with Leslie Peterson.”

“Her mother wasn’t biting, huh?”

“No. But that was before Carly Neath was declared missing. That
changes the landscape considerably. Now it looks like Leslie Patterson
could be telling the truth.”

Shawn walked into Nagle’s and took his usual place at the counter.
It was too late for breakfast, so he ordered a close approximation as
his first food of the day.

“Egg salad on toasted rye and a cup of coffee,” he instructed the
thin, brown-haired waitress behind the counter. Shawn knew Anna because
he and Carly had given her a ride to a doctor’s appointment one night
last week when Anna’s old car was in the shop. She was staring at him
now as if she had something she wanted to say. Shawn looked across the
counter at her expectantly.

“Have you heard about Carly?”

“Heard what?” asked Shawn.

“Carly didn’t come home last night. Her parents are frantic, and the
police are out looking for her.” Anna looked at him with some
compassion. “She was supposed to come home after her babysitting job,
but she didn’t. No one knows where she is. I’m going to have to do a
double shift to cover for her.”

Shawn slid off the counter stool. “Cancel my order, will you, Anna?”

He escaped outdoors but didn’t feel the scorching rays of the sun or
the hot, still air. Shawn’s mind raced. He should go talk to the police
before the police came to talk to him. It was just a matter of time
before they found out that he had been with Carly last night at the
Stone Pony. If the Nagle’s waitress recognized him as Carly’s
boyfriend, there were others who would as well.

If he told the police the truth, it was going to look bad. He had
fought with Carly, just as he had fought with Leslie right before she
disappeared. He was the obvious common denominator between the two
women.

Shawn knew from the questioning he’d gone through when Leslie
disappeared that the police had looked at him as a prime suspect. He
knew from the course he’d taken on family violence that women were most
often attacked not by strangers but by people
they knew—disgruntled boyfriends or husbands leading the pack.

Closing his eyes and running his nail-bitten fingers back through
his hair in desperation, Shawn knew that he had to think of something.
The police were going to think he was responsible for Carly’s
disappearance, and they’d go back and try to pin Leslie’s on him, too.

“Do you believe me now?”

Audrey jumped as her daughter spoke from behind her.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that, Leslie. You scared me to death.”
She turned around but continued sorting through a box of scented
candles. “I didn’t hear the bell at the front door ring when you came
in. I guess my mind is on other things,”

Seeing the look of resignation on her mother’s face, Leslie asked,
“You haven’t heard yet, have you?”

“What?”

“There’s another girl missing.” Leslie’s brown eyes were bright with
excitement.

Audrey put the box of candles on the counter and leaned against the
edge.

“Mom? Did you hear me? There’s another girl missing. The police will
believe me now. Everyone will believe me.”

“Leslie!” Audrey hissed. “Lower your voice, will you please?”

Leslie’s thin face darkened. “Well, I thought you might be happy for
me, Mom. Don’t you see? This proves I was telling the truth.”

“Of course I’m relieved that you will be vindicated, dear.” Audrey
reached out to stroke her daughter’s fine brown hair, noticing it had
lost some of its sheen. “But, honestly, it’s hard to be happy at some
other poor girl’s expense. Who is she? Do I know her?”

“I doubt it. But she’s a waitress at Nagle’s, and she’s the one
Shawn’s been going out with.”

“Dear God,” Audrey exclaimed. “Another girlfriend of Shawn’s
disappeared? The police
must
be
looking into that. Well, God help her, and God help her family,” Audrey
said softly, thinking about what she and her husband had just been
through. “I think we should do something to help them, Leslie. Maybe we
should volunteer our storeroom again as a community search
headquarters.”

Audrey could almost see the wheels spinning in her daughter’s mind
before she answered. “Yeah, I guess that would be okay. And I’ll come
in to help. I want everyone who doubted me to have a chance to tell me
how wrong they were.

Trudging up Main Avenue, Sammy Gates grumbled as he carried his
heavy camera gear over his shoulder. “Jesus, it’s hot. Remind me again
why we’re doing this.”

“Because if we can’t get Leslie Patterson, at least we might get
some reaction from her mother.” Diane tried to sound patient, but
inwardly she was in no mood for Sammy’s complaints. This was his job,
for God’s sake. “If she agrees, and we’re ready to shoot right then,
she won’t have time to change her mind.”

“Sounds half-baked to me.” Sammy sneered as he turned to his
partner. “What do you think, Gary?”

“It makes no difference.” Gary shrugged. “I’m on the clock, and
whatever they want while they’re paying the freight is fine by me.” Gary Bing was as sweet and agreeable
as Sammy Gates was ornery and argumentative. Diane thought Gary was a
saint for working with Sammy. While most KEY News staffers avoided
Sammy as much as possible, poor Gary was stuck with the curmudgeon day
after day.

Sammy didn’t take the cue his partner offered. Instead, he continued
with his litany of complaints. “And the accommodations here leave a lot
to be desired. I like a television set in my room, and I’m not into
hooked rugs and sharing a bathroom at the end of the hall.”

“Matthew told me the Dancing Dunes Inn is much nicer than the place
you were originally going to stay in,” said Diane, still a bit
resentful that her family had been forced to give up one of their rooms
to make Sammy happy. “It’s tired, but it’s clean and really charming in
places.”

“Charming, schmarming. It’s a dump too. Give me a Marriott any day.
Room service and a minibar, that’s for me.”

Diane held her hand up, cutting Sammy’s complaints short. “Look. I
think that’s Leslie Patterson.”

Across the street, a very thin figure was stepping from the curb in
front of Lavender & Lace. “Get ready, you guys,” she ordered as she
scooted between cars cruising on the main street. “Leslie? Leslie
Patterson?” she called to the young female, who backed up again onto
the sidewalk.

As Diane got closer, she took a deep breath. Though she knew that
Leslie was eight years older than her own daughter, the young woman
didn’t look it. It was almost as if she was stuck in adolescence. The
legs that poked out from her denim shorts had none of the feminine
curves associated with a little meat on one’s bones, and she had hardly
any chest at all.

“I know who you are,” Leslie said proudly. “You’re Diane Mayfield
from KEY News.”

Diane held out her hand. “Nice to meet you, Leslie.”

“My mother told me you called yesterday about interviewing me.”

“That’s right,” Diane said. “And I can certainly understand why she
didn’t agree to it yesterday, or even this morning when I went to see
her. But now, with the other girl’s disappearance, I was hoping you and
your mother might reconsider.”

“I don’t need my mother’s permission, Diane,” Leslie said. “I’m an
adult.”

“That’s true enough,” agreed Diane. “But under the circumstances, it
might be best to consult her.” She knew it was the mother in her offering the counsel. She hoped if, God forbid,
Michelle were ever in a situation like Leslie’s, her daughter would
turn to her for maternal advice.

“I don’t have to talk to my mother about it,” Leslie said as she
looked over Diane’s shoulder and eyed the camera crew.

What was she going to do? Insist that Leslie get her mother’s
approval? Leslie was legally an adult. If the young woman agreed to the
interview, Diane would be a fool not to ask the questions.

“All right,” she said, turning to Gary. “Mike her up, will you? We
can do it right here on the sidewalk.”

Leslie was one step ahead of her and, Diane realized at that moment,
extremely media savvy. “Why don’t we go over to the Beersheba Well,
where the security guard found me? It’s just a couple of blocks from
here. We could do the interview there.”

Sammy set up his tripod. Gary clipped a little microphone to the
collar of Leslie’s sleeveless blouse and handed her a small black
battery pack. “Here. Slide the wire from the mike under your shirt, and
clip the power pack to the back of your shorts.”

Leslie obeyed. “Don’t I get a makeup woman or something?”

Diane smiled. “Sorry. If we were in the studio in New York, yes. But
out here in the field, it’s every woman for herself.” She pulled out a
makeup case and hand mirror from her bag. “Would you like a little
blush?”

Leslie nodded.

Diane selected the most youthful colors from the collection of
cosmetics she kept with her virtually all the time. A peachy lipstick
and blush and a dark brown mascara would work best with Leslie’s
coloring.

While reapplying her own lipstick, powdering her face, brushing her
hair, and hitting it with some hair spray, Diane made small talk,
asking Leslie what she was planning to do now that she was free again.

“I’m going back to work on Monday, but this whole thing I has made me realize I want to do more with
my life. I hope I can go a bit further than the office job I have at
Surfside Realty.”

“What are your duties now?” Diane asked politely.

“You know… answering phones and sending faxes, going I through the
mail, ordering things for the office.”

Diane saw the crew had finished setting up. “Leslie, why I don’t you
and I stand over here beside the gazebo?” she suggested.

Leslie tentatively took her place beside Diane. “It’s strange being
back here now, when it was just two nights ago that they found me here.”

Diane reached out to pat Leslie’s arm. “Don’t worry. It’s going to
be all right.” She turned to the crew. “All set, you guys?”

“Go,” Sammy ordered.

“All set, Leslie?” Diane asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Diane turned to her and began. “We’re here, sitting together on the
spot where you were found very early Friday morning after having been
missing for three days. Tell me what happened to you, Leslie.”

Leslie sighed heavily before answering. “I was walking on the
boardwalk late Monday night when someone came up behind me and knocked
me out. When I came to, I was blindfolded and bound, and there was some
sort of rag tied around my mouth so I couldn’t call for help. I didn’t
know where I was.” She rubbed her bare arms, as if trying to get warm.

“That must have been terrifying.”

Leslie nodded but said nothing.

“What happened then?” Diane urged.

“Well, he—I’m guessing it was ‘he’ because whoever it was never
spoke to me—he just left me lying there, wherever ‘there’ was. He would
come back once in a while to bring me something to eat, but I ate very
little. And each time he came back, he would pull me up and want me to
dance with him.”