Stealing Heaven (2 page)

"It really is awful, isn't it?" She laughs. "Oh
hell, this sugar bowl is a replacement piece. Look--" She breaks off,
glances at me. "You okay?"

"It must be nice to be able to say something's yours, you
know? To be able to--"

"Baby, no one wants to call anything like this crap theirs.
That's why it's in here." Mom puts the sugar bowl down, reaches out, and
wraps her arms around me. "We'll be somewhere nice real soon, I promise.
And when we are, you'll be able to look around and know everything there is
ours for as long as we want it to be. How many people get that? I'll tell you.
Not many. Instead they get stuck with"--she points at the sofa--"for
their whole lives. We can go where we want whenever we want. We're lucky, baby.
You know that, right?"

"I know," I say, and when she smiles at me I find myself
thinking about Dad.

Dad introduced Mom to all of this. What we do,

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I mean. She was. a high-school dropout working as a waitress and
shoplifting on the side when they met. He told her how stupid shoplifting was,
pointed out that stores are always eager to make an example out of someone. He
said he knew she could do better and introduced her to the fine art of
burglary.

When I came along, Dad worked by himself until Mom got bored. Then
they started bringing me with them. Babysitters were out of the question,
obviously, and I was a quiet kid, the kind who could be left outside a house
and who would stare, mesmerized, at a carpet. Mom says that's because this life
was made for me, but I think it's just that this is all I've ever known.

Dad got arrested when I was five. We'd split up after hitting a
series of houses right outside Princeton, Dad to stash the jewels--the rich
like having woods around their houses, which has always worked to our
advantage--and Mom and me to head back to the car and drive down to Trenton,
where we'd meet up with Dad. Only it didn't work out that way because Dad never
showed. I fell asleep waiting for him and the next thing I knew, Mom was
carrying me out to the car and we were leaving town.

Dad got arrested walking out of the woods, and

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that was it. Nothing we could do, nothing he could do, nothing his
fancy lawyer could do. The police never found the jewels but they found all his
gear and got a partial heel print from one of his shoes, and that was enough to
send him to prison. That was the last I heard from him till I was nine, and by
then he'd been out of prison for two years.

I suppose "out of prison" makes it sound like he was
released, and that isn't technically true. He actually broke out of jail when I
was seven and lives in-- well, I don't know anymore. It used to be right
outside Kansas City but now ... he could be anywhere.

I never really got to know him. I saw him some when I was younger,
when Mom took on a tough job. Back then, a getaway was easier without me
around, and Dad owed her for--well, for making it so it was just her and me. He
always sent me back to her as soon as he could, and when I did see him we spent
most of our time sitting around his condo, which was pretty much as dull as it
sounds. He got the jewelry from Princeton, of course, and it was enough for him
to live on. I complained once, when I was eleven, about how we never went
anywhere, and he said he wasn't going back to prison for anyone, even me. He

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was nice enough about it, but I got the message.

The last time I saw him he said all this stuff about knowing I
could take care of myself, talked and talked and looked right through me, and
the next time I tried to get in touch with him he was gone. Mom was silent for
a long time and then she put her arms around me and asked how I was. She said I
should be mad. I said I was, but the truth is I wasn't. I just wished he'd said
good-bye. I wished he'd loved me enough to say that one word. I wished he'd
thought I was worth it.

Mom and I are back on the road less than four hours later, heading
north again. We stop in a suburb outside DC to spend the night, and the next
day we rent another car and then visit a couple of places to read the
Pennsylvania papers. Well, I read the papers. Mom reads magazines. She never cares
about the news unless there's a mention of how daring we are or there's a hint
the police might have some idea who they're looking for.

I only find two articles: a short one, just a few sentences about
what was stolen, and a slightly longer one where Mrs. Henderson says that
things would have been different if the family's beloved attack dogs

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hadn't been at the vet's for the day. I laugh about that until Mom
gives me a look. I'm not supposed to do anything that will call attention to
myself unless we need a distraction.

Not that I'm very good at making them. Distractions, I mean. Mom
is, but that's because she's gorgeous. She's got really dark hair that always
looks perfect and she has lots of curves. I'm like a very pale copy of her, my
hair not as dark or as shiny, my curves a lot less curvy.

I look over at her. We're back in the car now because she's
decided we're going shopping. She's singing along with the radio as we drive
through a mall parking lot. I wonder what she looked like when she was eighteen.
She probably caused car wrecks.

"What did you look like when you were my age?"

"What?" she says, distracted as she waves to someone who
is--of course--letting her take his parking space.

"Nothing," I mutter. "I just wish I was
pretty."

"Oh baby," Mom says. "You are pretty."

"No, I'm not."

"You are." Mom pulls into the parking space, turns off
the car.

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"I'm not."

"Danielle," Mom says, and I can tell she's angry. She
never uses my name unless she's angry. "Will you please ask yourself if
this is what we want to be doing right now?"

"It's what I want to do right now."

"Fine," Mom says, and looks at me. "Are you pretty
right now? No, because what you are right now is a pain in the ass."

"Thanks a lot."

"Look, we're here to go shopping. There are things we need to
get." She reaches over and gently nudges my arm. "New clothes for
someone ..."

"So I'll be a pain in the ass in new clothes."

"Baby, quit it. We're gonna go in there"--she points at
the mall--"and you're gonna be able to get whatever you want. What's
better than that?" She opens her car door. "Come on. Anything you
want."

"All right." I sigh and get out of the car. Mom grins at
me and loops her arm through mine as we walk.

When we're done at the mall we hit the road again, the latest and
greatest from the magazines Mom read earlier stashed in the trunk. Traffic is
awful, and I

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look out the window, watch as we slowly pass a convenience store
and a strip mall. An apartment complex is next, then a church of some kind. It
has a sign that asks, what do you believe in?

Mom snorts at that. "Anything I can hold in my hands. No,
better yet, anything I can sell." It's what she always says when we pass
signs like this. I look over at her and she winks at me.

I wink back and she smiles, pats my knee. "So how do you feel
about the beach?"

My mother tells people she's sorry all the time. She never means
it, of course. But this, this hint of what's to come--I know what it means.
It's a little gift from her to me, a way to make up for calling me a pain in
the ass before, and I smile back at her.

"It sounds good," I tell her. "It sounds
great."

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Now I know people think that thieves, when they hear the word
"beach," head straight for Long Island or Cape Cod of Newport, but
the thing is, those places are where the police expect you to go and so--well,
it's obvious, right?

Plus the rich--the real rich, the rich that have had money for so
long they'd probably bleed gold if you cut them--they have other places by the
sea. Out of the way places. Places like Heaven.

I laugh when Mom passes me a map and taps a finger against it
because places called Heaven are usually filled with boarded-up houses or worse,
dippy types who own bed-and-breakfasts adored by other dips.

"I know," she says with a smile, "but trust me.
This place will live up to its name. I can feel it."

She always can.

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We pass through a tiny town called West Hill and then reach the
beach. It's much smaller than I thought it would be: one public beach, a couple
of private ones, and a one-street tourist strip filled with local places. There
isn't even one chain restaurant. I've never seen anything like it. I'm used to
beach towns full of sprawl and noise and places to hide.

I look over at Mom. She's grinning. "Hard to believe places
like this are still around. And just wait, it'll get better."

I sure hope so because the beach houses we've passed are very
small and obviously rentals. We drive down a bunch of narrow roads --a good
sign-- pass a few more tiny houses and a volunteer fire department, and then
turn a corner. The second we do, I hear Mom suck in a breath.

In front of us is a wide, green, and very well-kept lawn, the
gentle slope of a hill. At the top of the hill, hidden by landscaped boulders
and trees, is a house. An old house. A huge house. Our kind of house.

There's lots more of them. We pass a country club with a very
small and tasteful sign, the kind of place that is definitely never open to the
public, and then there are homes everywhere, all very old and very well
preserved.

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Every single one is worth a second look, and then we are winding
our way down into another town.

Heaven, a cutesy but not tacky sign proclaims, and though there's
another tourist strip--even smaller than the first one we passed, and
definitely more moneyed--the main attraction is the houses. We must pass a
dozen, each one larger and older than the one before, and all of them
practically screaming, "Money! Lots of money!"

"Wow," I say, and Mom laughs, smacks the steering wheel
with one hand.

"This is even better than I thought it would be. It's
..." She pauses, stares at a huge house perched on a cliff right by the
ocean. "This is perfect. Hell, we won't even have to run title searches.
These places..." She slows down as we drive by another home.

It's three stories, probably at least twenty-five rooms, and sits
just waiting for us, the security gate propped open with a brick. A brick! On
the lawn three blond children run around shrieking while a tired-looking Asian
woman sits in the grass watching them. Two older kids climb into a huge sports
utility vehicle and barely miss a group of cleaning people as they drive off.

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And what are the cleaning people doing outside? Standing around a
table that's clearly been set up for a party. And they're polishing silver. A
whole tableful of it.

"Oh baby," Mom says. "We're going to be very happy
here."

There's an inn in Heaven, but it's smack in the middle of the tiny
tourist strip and way too obvious. We drive back to West Hill and Mom finds two
real estate offices. She picks the second one because it's a little
shabby-looking, the kind of place where they're more than happy to take your
money without asking many questions.

I take a walk while she's doing her thing and she finds me as I'm
heading back to the car. "This town really is small," she says with a
slight frown, and I nod. It is, and that's a definite downside to being here because
if Mom asks me to meet anyone, avoiding them when it's time to drop out of
sight could be a problem.

"Still, there's lots of summer people here," she says,
"so that'll be a help. New faces around all the time and everything. Plus,
we're all set to move in."

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She waves a set of keys at me.

The house she's gotten us is outside West Hill, on the edge of a
much poorer town. This is the kind of place I know well, the kind of place
where people keep to themselves and keep their mouths shut.

The house is okay, I guess. It's furnished, but everything is old
and crappy-looking. And the bathrooms are awful: one is bright green, and the
other is, for some bizarre reason, dark pink.

"Ugh," I say, and close the pink bathroom door.

"We'll move somewhere nicer soon," Mom says. "But
for now, while we're getting a feel for the place, this is good. Plus I got a
great deal."

"How great?"

Mom grins and tells me about Sharon, the person she talked to at
the real estate office. Sharon was desperate, an overworked woman with three
kids, two divorces, and a--Mom makes a drinking motion.

"Didn't even look at the paperwork I filled out," she
says. "I don't think she noticed much of anything other than the fact I
was willing to pay a month's advance rent plus a security deposit in
cash." She chuckles. "Plus she kept grousing about this other place,
one that's got 'all the good beach rentals.' So