worry about the security system. I’m heading out this very minute. The back door will lock behind you. You’ll turn right and follow the path past the pool house. We have a guest staying there, but he’s not home at the moment, so don’t worry. You’ll see a gate beside the bougainvillea, and you can go through that, along the side of the house and back here to your van.”
Wanda followed the directions as closely as she could and nodded as Mrs. Statler spoke.
Mrs. Statler finished up. “I left your check on the counter, so you won’t need to go to the trouble of billing me, and the kitchen is that way.” She pointed toward the back of the house. For the first time she seemed to see Janya. “You are too pretty to believe. The world is not fair.” Then she lifted her hand in a wave, gave another taut smile and moved past them to a gray Lincoln parked not far from the van.
“She’s a trusting soul, isn’t she?” Wanda asked, once she and Janya were alone.
“Perhaps she has so much, she isn’t afraid to lose some of it.”
“More likely she just knows where to find us to get it back. And even if the alarm is off, there have to be security cameras everywhere. Not that they’ll see us doing anything we shouldn’t.”
“It’s a very grand house.”
“A little overdone, even for my fancy tastes. Wouldn’t you feel like you had to be dressed up every minute or the house might just boot you out and lock the door behind you? Let’s go find the kitchen and take care of business.”
They passed through several rooms, some of which Wanda could not identify by name. Everywhere she looked, the wood was heavy, dark and highly polished. The whisper-soft Oriental carpets under their feet hadn’t come from Taiwan.
“The place sure has been florified,” Wanda said. “The florist must have spent the whole morning just carrying in arrangements and fondling his bankroll. I never saw such displays.”
The formal dining room, which looked as if it could easily seat twenty at a Windsor Castle–worthy table, had already been set up with crystal and small china plates, as if this was the place where guests might first be channeled. Wanda made a wrong turn into a butler’s pantry, retraced her steps with Janya right behind her and found the kitchen just a short hallway from the dining room. Once there, Wanda was surprised they had missed it the first time, since it looked to be responsible for half the square footage of the house.
“Have you ever seen anything like this?” She stopped in the doorway. Stainless steel appliances worthy of Manhattan’s finest restaurants adorned every wall. A massive granite island bisected the room, and over it a skylight brought in natural light and bathed a suspended glass shelf of potted herbs. The sleek cabinets were unadorned except for the grandeur of the wood itself, a rainforest exotic that was nearly black.
“I’m not leaving,” Wanda said. “I’m going to stay right here and bake pies until I drop dead of exhaustion.” She crossed the room to a marble counter, clearly designed for rolling pastry. She ran one finger along it reverently. “I want this. I’m going to pry it right out and take it back to the shop. You’re going to help.”
Janya was busy examining the eight-burner stove with a built-in grill. “Do you think that anyone ever cooks in here? Everything looks new.”
Wanda sighed and, with one last swipe of her finger against marble, joined her. “It’s doubtful.”
“Is that not a waste? Shouldn’t this kitchen belong to a mother with many children to feed, one who spends all day on her feet cooking for them?”
“People like the Statlers are too busy making money and spending it to have a flock of children. And if they did, some poor woman with her own brood at home would be their cook. I always figure when we all get to heaven, there won’t be any streets of gold. There’ll just be a little rearranging of resources. People who don’t need a kitchen won’t get one. People who do, will get a beaut, like this. Everybody’ll be happy.”
“It seems as if, with a little thought and energy, that might happen now, on earth.”
“No, that’s communism, unless it’s managed from on high. Until we’re glorified, we just have to suck it up.”
“I am always interested in the way you think.”
Wanda liked the sound of that. Educating Janya was