Dancing in the Dark (29 page)

“Where is
there
,
Ms.
Mayfield?”

“We think it’s in the old Casino at the end of the boardwalk.”

“I’m sorry, I really am, but as you can imagine, I have absolutely
no idea how that would have gotten there.”

“All right, Mr. Belcaro. Thank you for your time, and again, I’m
sorry for disturbing you at home.”

But as Diane snapped her cell phone closed, she realized that she
had no guarantee Belcaro had been talking to her from his home. He’d
said he was on his cell phone. He could have been anywhere.

In front of them, the Casino loomed large and forbidding against the
night sky.

“You ready to go inside?” Matthew asked, pulling a flashlight from
the glove compartment.

“Yes,” said Diane. “Please, God, let him be in there.” She opened
the car door and stepped out. Together they made their way around the
building, looking for a way inside. They paid no attention to the
danger and no trespassing signs on the rickety fence blocking the
entrance. Once they were inside the cavernous auditorium, the yellow
beam of the flashlight shot out over the cement floor pockmarked with
puddles of stagnant rainwater. Matthew directed the light up at the
billboard that announced they were in what
was once the Casino Skating Palace.

“Anthony,” Diane called out. “Anthony, are you here?”

On the other side of the wall, Anthony heard his mother calling him.
But the gag in his mouth kept him from answering her.

“Anthony,” Diane called out yet another time.

“Let’s face it, Diane. There’s nobody here,” said Matthew as his
flashlight swept the space. “And maybe we’re wrong. Maybe this isn’t
the place Anthony took those pictures.”

“I guess you’re right,” Diane said as they walked across the
debris-strewn floor to the exit. “But where is Anthony? I’m sorry,
Matthew, I don’t care if there is another young woman missing tonight. The police should be looking
for my son. Why haven’t they come yet?”

“I don’t know, Diane. When we get outside, I’ll call them again.”

As Matthew pulled out his cell, Diane walked toward the ocean and
watched the waves rolling in, her mind wandering to places she did not
want it to go.
Anthony wouldn’t have gone out
to the beach by himself for a swim, would he? There’s no chance he
could be out there under the water somewhere, is there
?

Stop it
,
she told herself.
That does no good. Stop thinking like a
distraught mother and start thinking of where Anthony could have gone
.
But try as she might, her mind wouldn’t stop spinning. Diane
thought of the parents of the girl who had gone missing tonight and how
frantic they must be. She thought of poor Carly’s parents and the grief
they were enduring. And she thought of Audrey Patterson and how she
must have ached for her daughter’s safe return.

Diane willed herself not to panic. Things had turned out happily for
the Pattersons. Leslie had been returned unharmed. Tomorrow, she told
herself, she would be sitting beside Anthony, just the way she had sat
and talked to Leslie Patterson the day after she had been released from
her three-day ordeal.

That afternoon seemed like such a long time ago. Diane recalled that
she had found it remarkable how resilient human beings
can be. One day you could be in mortal danger, the next you were
planning how to jump-start your career.

Leslie Patterson had said she was going to study for her real estate
license. She wanted more out of her job than filing, answering phones,
and ordering supplies.

With a start, it came to Diane. The magazine in Anthony’s picture
had Larry Belcaro’s office address on the mailing label, not his home
address. Leslie Patterson could have ordered the magazines that came to
the Surfside Realty office.

She spun around and took hold of Matthew’s arm, interrupting his
phone conversation. “Matthew,” she said, “get the Pattersons’ number
and see if Leslie’s home.”

Diane grabbed his flashlight and ran back inside the Casino, knowing
she had to find the place Anthony had captured in his pictures. She had
to look harder.

They had already searched the huge, high-ceilinged room, and Diane
was satisfied that there was no one there. But from the outside, the
Casino appeared a good deal larger than this space. She walked to the
wall closest to the ocean, realizing there had to be another part of
the building behind it. She trained the flashlight on the wall’s
surface, looking for a way to get to the other side. Pacing the length
of the room, she came upon a loosE
wooden plank propped against the wall. When she pulled it back, she
found the wood was covering a hole. As she stepped forward, her foot
bumped into something soft.

Her pulse pounded in her ears as the flashlight lit a worn brown
teddy bear dressed in taffeta and pearls—an older, bedraggled version
of the bears Diane remembered seeing in Lavender & Lace. Audrey
Patterson had said her daughter had had one of the bears for years.

Diane leaned into the dark opening. “Anthony, if you’re in there,
answer me.” And then, she called out even louder, “Leslie, are you in
there?”

She heard nothing but the sound of the ocean’s rumble.

“Leslie? Leslie, it’s Diane Mayfield. Please don’t hurt my little
boy.”

“Don’t come any closer” came the muffled response from the other
side.

Diane jumped as she felt a hand on her shoulder, but she let out a
sigh of relief as she realized it was Matthew.

“Leslie? Leslie Patterson is in there?” he whispered.

Diane nodded, putting a finger to her lips. She then called out
again. “Leslie, please,” she pleaded, trying to think of how to engage
the girl in conversation, hoping if she kept her talking and
distracted, she wouldn’t be hurting Anthony. “Please, Leslie. Is
Anthony in there with you?”

“Don’t come any closer.” There was desperation in the voice coming
from the other side of the wall.

Matthew whispered, “Maybe we should wait for the police to get here.”

Diane answered quietly. “Who knows how long that will take? If
there’s a chance my son could be in there, I’m not waiting around.”

Jonathan had walked down the boardwalk and into Bradley Beach, where
he’d found a place to buy a beer, and then another, and another.

He couldn’t believe that Helen actually thought he’d had anything to
do with Carly Neath’s disappearance and death. How could his wife
believe him to be such a monster?

Yes, he had followed Carly that night. But it was completely
innocent. He’d followed her all the way past her house. But spotting
that old guy hiding on the porch next to Carly’s house had spooked him.
By the time she got to the boardwalk and turned toward Asbury Park,
Jonathan had made up his mind to go back.
He’d headed home by another route, just to avoid the old geezer in the
shadows.

True, when the police came to the tent the next morning to ask about
Carly he’d made them believe he’d stayed with Helen when the babysitter
left. But if he’d told the truth, that he’d followed Carly, surely the
police would have looked at him as a suspect.

Now, as Jonathan continued his walk home, he hiccupped and turned
onto Bath Avenue.
Damn it
.
He
was going to have to tell Helen everything.

“I’m turning off the flashlight,” whispered Diane. “We don’t want to
alert her that we’re coming.”

They crouched down as they passed through the opening in the wall.
Finding their way in the dark was next to impossible. Matthew, who was
leading, stumbled over a ragged chunk of concrete and fell.

“I can hear you,” called Leslie. “Don’t come any farther, or… or
I’ll… I’ll hurt somebody.”

“Leslie, do you have Anthony in there with you? Do you have my son?”

“Stop right where you are.” There was desperation in Leslie’s voice.
“Please stop.”

Matthew righted himself, and he and Diane felt their way forward,
soon being led by the glow of Leslie’s flashlight. As they peeked
around a massive concrete stanchion, the scene brought them up short.

Leslie was kneeling on the floor, sitting back on her haunches.
Another figure was sprawled in front of her, hands and feet bound,
blindfolded, and with a gag across the mouth. Leslie was cradling the
figure’s head and shoulder in her left arm, the overall impression that
of a depraved version of Michelangelo’s
Pieta
.
Despite the heat, Leslie was wearing a ski jacket and leather
gloves, and her right hand was holding something at her prisoner’s neck.

Diane was convinced that her son must be there as well. She turned
on the flashlight. “Stealth be damned,” she whispered to herself. As
the light spread around the space, she was terrified to learn the
truth, but she had to know. “Where’s my son, Leslie? Have you hurt my
little boy?”

Before Leslie had a chance to respond, Diane screamed, “Oh, my God.”
The beam from her flashlight fell on another figure lying a few yards
away, bound and gagged in the same fashion as the first. Diane
recognized the sneakers that Anthony had begged her to buy.

“Anthony!” She lunged forward.

“Don’t take another step,” Leslie snarled, “or I’ll hurt Anna. I
swear I will. I’ll slit her throat just like she slit her precious Mr.
Velvet’s.”

Diane’s chest tightened. She ached to run to her son, but she didn’t
want to provoke Leslie into doing something unspeakable.

“How did you know it was me?” Leslie asked, shifting her focus. “How
did you know I was in here?”

Diane tried to keep her voice calm. “Look around for a magazine
there, Leslie,” she said, pointing to the cooler and blanket. “Do you
see it?”

“Yeah. What of it?”

“It has your boss’s name on it, but Larry didn’t order that
magazine. You did, didn’t you?”

“You figured it out from that?”

“No, but it made me suspicious,” said Diane as she tried
imperceptibly to inch forward. “There was something else that had been
bothering me. When we talked on the boardwalk, you said Carly was
already dead when she was dragged to the gazebo. Only the murderer
would know that for sure. If the police knew from Carly’s autopsy, they
certainly haven’t released that information.”

Diane waited for a response. Getting none, she continued. “That was
a mistake, wasn’t it, Leslie? You wanted it to look like Carly was
treated the same way you were, and the only difference was that you
lived and Carly didn’t.”

“Even though I hated that Carly had stolen Shawn away from me, she wasn’t supposed to die,” Leslie
whimpered. “No one was supposed to die. I wanted to keep Carly for
three days, just like I had been gone for three days, to convince the
police to believe me. I wore this ski jacket to bulk me up so Carly
wouldn’t feel how thin I am. And I wore these gloves so she wouldn’t
feel my bony fingers. I made up the story that I’d been danced with, so
I had to make sure Carly would say the same thing when she was
released. But when I came back to the Casino to dance with her again,
Carly wouldn’t move.”