Dancing in the Dark (3 page)

She had no other choice. With their father in jail, she was all they
had.

Helen Richey stood on the front porch, sweeping away the sand from
the wooden planks. She found the swishing sound of the broom
comforting. It reminded her of the summers of her childhood, when her
parents would bring her and her three sisters to spend their vacation
here in Ocean Grove. From the weekend after school got out until Labor
Day, Helen and her family had lived in one of the tents on the grounds
of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association.

Each structure was made up of a wooden porch, an eleven-by-fourteen-foot
tent, and a roofed cottage at the rear. Each tent came with
electricity, running water, a tiny but complete kitchen, a toilet, and
a shower. It was up to the “tenters” to supply everything else:
furniture, carpeting, linens, dinnerware, wall hangings, even air
conditioners. Some residents brought radios and television sets.
Helen’s parents hadn’t, though. They’d insisted their girls get away
from the boob tube, as her father called it, for the summer.

After children’s Bible study class in the morning and an early lunch
in their tent, the days continued by walking the two blocks to the
Atlantic Ocean with their towels and plastic beach toys in tow. Mom
would set up a sand chair, attach a portable umbrella to its aluminum
arm, and settle in to read her magazines and paperback novels in
between shouting cautionary directions to her daughters as they played
in the surf. Some days there were lots of waves; some days it was
relatively calm. Always there was the fun of digging in the sand,
building castles and moats, and choosing a Creamsicle or Dixie cup from
the ice cream man.

That was the kind of summer Helen wanted for Sarah and Hannah.
Simple, idyllic weeks spent reveling in the sunshine, fresh air, and
the glory of the Atlantic Ocean, along with learning some lessons about
God and what it meant to be a caring member of a community. She
believed childhood summers as part of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting were
time well spent. They helped lay a firm foundation for the adult years.
She wished she could make Jonathan understand that.

Her husband couldn’t stand Ocean Grove—or “Ocean Grave,” as he
called it—because if you were looking for excitement, you had to go
elsewhere. But Helen knew the town wasn’t what Jonathan really
detested. It was tent living. He said the primitive and claustrophobic
conditions made his skin crawl. He dreamed of a house or condo in
another part of town, a place not associated with the religious “tent
community.”

All summer long he’d managed to come down from their home in Paramus
only on weekends. But today Jonathan was going
to leave work early and brave the Friday traffic of the Garden State
Parkway to spend a full week with his wife and two children in their
tent on Bath Avenue. As much as Helen was looking forward to all of
them being together, she was apprehensive as well.

The tents were so close together that sometimes, if a resident of
one of them sneezed, a neighbor answered “God bless you.” The tents had
ears. If Jonathan lost his temper and voiced his opinions in any but
the softest voice, the other tenters would know all about his
discontent. More than once Helen and Jonathan had been forced to
retreat to their car to air their disagreements.

Finished with her sweeping, Helen walked off the porch to inspect
the flowers she had carefully planted when the kids and she had arrived
in June. Red geraniums, white impatiens, and purple ageratum formed a
patriotic border around the base of the tent platform. They
complemented the American flag that hung from the wooden post
supporting the striped canvas awning covering the porch. The heat was
doing a real job on the impatiens, and the little white flowers were
wilting and closed. As Helen was about to go fill her watering can at
the kitchen sink, she heard the creaking screen door of the neighboring
tent.

“Hello, dear,” said the frail old woman who stood just feet away.

“Good morning, Mrs. Wilcox. How are you today?”

“Oh, pretty good.” Her high-pitched voice cracked. “A little stiff,
but other than that, I’m fine.”

“Did you sleep well?” Helen asked, gathering her honey-colored hair
and twisting it up off her neck.

“Not really. It was too hot.”

“When are you going to get an air conditioner, Mrs. Wilcox?” Helen
didn’t wait for a reply. “Jonathan is coming down later. He could pick
one up and install it for you this weekend.” The moment she made the
offer, she worried about how her husband would react.

“I don’t know, dear. I’ve always disapproved of having
air-conditioning down here. The ocean breeze has always been good
enough for Herbert and me. But this year is different. In the
thirty-nine years we’ve been coming down, this summer is the hottest I
can ever remember.” She nodded back toward the tent. “In fact,
Herbert’s inside now, trying to take a little nap. He couldn’t sleep
either, so he got up early and walked over to Main Avenue to get the
paper. Herbert said everyone at Nagle’s was talking about the Patterson
girl.”

At the old woman’s words, Helen had a sinking feeling in her chest.
Fearing the worst, she managed to ask, “Has she turned up? Is she all
right?”

Mrs. Wilcox shook her silver head. “She’s turned up all right. But
the police think she wasn’t kidnapped at all. They think she staged the
whole thing to get attention.”

“Oh, that’s terrible, Mrs. Wilcox. Terrible and so very sad.”

Everyone in town had been following the story of the missing young
woman, an Ocean Grove native who lived in the community all year round.
Leslie Patterson lived with her parents over on Webb Avenue, and just
last night Helen had walked with the children to light a candle in
front of their pretty Victorian house. After they added their votive to
the scores of others on the sidewalk, Helen had used the opportunity to
remind the children about the dangers of talking to strangers.

Despite the suffocating heat, Helen felt a momentary chill on her
bare arms. Even though she had had the benefit of being raised in a
town Helen considered to be just about heaven on earth, Leslie
Patterson was one troubled girl. The idea scared Helen as she thought
about her five-and six-year-old daughters, who were probably singing
“Jesus Wants Me for a Rainbow” in children’s Bible study class about
now. No matter how carefully you raised your children, no matter how
you tried to take care of them and shield them from danger, sometimes
they just didn’t grow up right.

Trying to keep her face expressionless, Diane held her head high as
she left the executive producer’s office, but inside she was seething.
She resented feeling she had no choice but to take the assignment in
Ocean Grove, resented the fact that Joel had the power to decide her
fate. Another correspondent might have told the executive producer to
go to hell, but she wasn’t that brave, just as she wasn’t that stupid.

She needed to have her contract renewed. In a tough economy and an
industry that was becoming ever more technologically advanced, jobs at
every level were getting harder to come by. Fewer people were needed to
get a broadcast on the air. Gone were the days when an experienced
television news correspondent could write his or her own ticket,
hopping from one network to another.

It would be nice to have the economic security she’d once had. With
a husband bringing home a major salary, Diane’s slightly lower income
had been icing on the cake. The Mayfield family
had enjoyed their lives. The spacious co-op in Manhattan, the smaller
but well-located cottage in Amagansett, the private schools for the
kids. But that was before Philip was indicted. That was before their
world fell apart.

Sometimes it still didn’t seem possible how quickly things had
changed. It had been just four years since Philip landed his dream job
as chief financial officer for BeamStar, knowing of the plans to take
the cutting-edge telecommunications company public. Diane still seethed
at Philip’s stupidity, but she was heartbroken at his dishonesty. He
had overstated BeamStar’s profitability in the papers filed in
connection with the public offering. The fact that her husband had done
it at the urging of his bosses only angered her more.

When BeamStar tanked, its investors were crazed. The government
investigated, and Philip was taken down along with his greedy bosses.
Though he cooperated with the investigation, he was sentenced to a year
and a day in prison. But with good behavior, he could be out in October.

In the months since Philip had gone to serve his sentence at the
federal correctional institution at Fort Dix, Diane had signed the
closing papers on their mortgaged beach cottage and taken the profits
to pay off some of the fines that had accompanied her husband’s prison
sentence. She could manage the co-op payments and school tuitions, but
there was precious little left over. It constantly amazed her how
quickly living in Manhattan ate up what most people in the rest of the
country would consider a major-league salary.

As Diane walked into her own office, it occurred to her that maybe
she should look on the bright side. Perhaps it was for the best that
she was being forced to cancel the trip out west. It cost more than
they could afford now, but Philip had insisted they go without him. He
felt strongly that she and the kids should take the family trip they
had been talking about for years to celebrate Anthony’s tenth birthday.
Diane had held out for a while but finally reluctantly agreed when her
younger sister, Emily, announced she wanted to stay with them for the
summer after she graduated from Providence College. Having her sister
along as they took in the sights would somehow make it less sad. Even
though Emily was closer in age to Michelle and Anthony than she was to
Diane, she was a good companion and another adult to fill the void
where Philip should have been.

Diane reached for the phone on her desk. She would get her sister on
her side before breaking the news to the kids. She might even ask Emily
to tell them. Diane didn’t want to relay the news to them over the
phone, and it was going to be hours before she got home. Instead of
packing hiking boots and backpacks, they needed to pack bathing suits
and beach towels, and fast. Joel wanted her in Ocean Grove in the
morning.

“Knock. Knock.”

Matthew Voigt towered in the doorway.

“I can’t believe this,” Diane groaned. “Come on in and shut the
door, will you?”

Matthew took a few steps into the office, closing the door behind
him. “So I gather you talked to Joel?” Intense brown eyes sparkled
mischievously beneath his dark eyebrows.

“Yeah. He told me.”

“I’m sorry about your vacation, Diane,” he said as he took a seat in
the chair across from her desk.

“It’s not your fault. Our fearless leader is a ruthless tyrant.”

“Still, it’s a bitter pill, huh?”

“I’ve swallowed worse.”

Matthew’s mouth formed a wry smile. “Yeah, I guess you have.”

Diane sighed heavily, accepting the inevitable and turning to the
task at hand. “At least I have you as my producer. That’s one good
thing.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Matthew bowed his head and raised his hand to his
forehead as if tipping a hat.

Diane pulled a Sharpie from the cup on her desk. “What do you know
so far?” she asked, poising the pen above a reporter’s notebook.

Matthew reached out and passed a piece of paper to her. “This
write-through gives most of the details up to this point. I’ve talked
to tile Neptune police. Apparently, this girl has a psychiatric
history, and she pulled a runaway stunt when she was in high school.
Turned out she was hiding in a storeroom off the school gymnasium. With
this rash of fake kidnappings across the country, the police think the
girl’s just copycatting.”

Matthew waited while Diane sat back in her chair and read the
information. Leslie Patterson was twenty-two years old. Her parents had
reported her missing when they found her bed unslept in Tuesday
morning. Police and Ocean Grove residents had combed the town for three
days. Finally, three nights after her disappearance, a security guard
found her, blindfolded, bound, and gagged, on the grounds of the Ocean
Grove Camp Meeting Association.

“What’s the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association?” Diane asked,
continuing to train her eyes on the wire copy.

“It’s some sort of religious retreat. I did a little web research,
and it seems the Methodists founded it after the Civil War as a seaside
place for worship. Today you don’t have to be Methodist to belong, but
you do have to uphold the association rules. And get this. The people
live in tents.”

Diane looked up. “As in canvas?”

“Yep. There are a hundred and fourteen of them. There’s a waiting
list of a decade or more to get one, and rental rights can be passed
down from generation to generation.”

“Does Leslie live in a tent?” Diane asked, biting the end of her pen.

“No. A house. She’s a year-round resident. The tent people are only
there in the summertime.”

Diane finished reading the Associated Press account. An unnamed
police source had told the AP reporter the investigation uncovered that
Leslie had been treated off and on for anorexia, “cutting,” and other
impulsive behavior. The source said the police were convinced that
she’d faked her own abduction as a cry for help.

“Poor kid, huh?” Matthew remarked as she lay down the paper.

“Poor parents, too.” Diane shrugged her shoulders and exaggerated a
shiver. “Anorexia and cutting. Two of a parent’s worst nightmares.”

“Yeah,” Matthew agreed. “But horrible or not, it’s perfect for
Hourglass
.”

As soon as Matthew left her office, Diane picked up the telephone
and dialed her home number.