The Westing Game

the intern shouted, as one clue wafted to the floor.
Flora Baumbach leaped from her chair at the next table, picked up the square of paper, and set it face down before the trembling youngster. “I didn’t see it,” she announced loudly. “I really didn’t see it,” she repeated under the questioning gaze of her partner, Turtle Wexler, witch.
The word she had seen was plain.
The players protected their clues more carefully now. Hunched over the tables, they moved the paper squares this way and that way, mumbling and grumbling. The murderer’s name must be there, somewhere.
Only one pair had not yet seen their clues. At table eight Sydelle Pulaski placed one hand on the envelope, raised a finger to her lips, and tilted her head toward the other heirs. Just watch and listen, she meant.
She may be odd, but she’s smart, Angela thought. Since each pair had a different set of clues, they would watch and listen for clues to their clues.
“HE-HE-HE.” THE DELIVERY boy slapped his partner on the back. “That’s us, old pal: Queen Crow and King Amber.”
“What’s this: on or no?” Doug Hoo turned a clue upside down, then right side up again.
Theo jabbed an elbow in his ribs and turned to see if anyone had heard. Angela lowered her eyes in time.
J. J. Ford crumpled the clues in her fist and rose in anger. “I’m sorry, Mr. McSouthers. Playing a pawn in this foolish game is one thing, but to be insulted with minstrel show dialect . . .”
“Please, Judge, please don’t quit on me,” Sandy pleaded. “I’d have to give back all that money; it would break my wife’s heart. And my poor kids. . . .”
Judge Ford regarded the desperate doorman without pity. So many had begged before her bench.
“Please, Judge. I lost my job, my pension. I can’t fight no more. Don’t quit just because of some nonsensical words.”
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me, she had chanted as a child. Words did hurt, but she was no longer a child. Nor a hanging judge. And there was always the chance . . . “All right, Mr. McSouthers, I’ll stay.” J. J. Ford sat down, her eyes sparking with wickedness. “And we’ll play the game just as Sam Westing would have played it. Mean!”
Flora Baumbach squeezed her eyes together and screwed up her face. She was concentrating.
“Haven’t you memorized them yet?” Turtle didn’t like the way Otis Amber’s scrawny neck was swiveling high out of his collar. And what was Angela staring at?
“Yes, I think so,” the dressmaker replied, “but I can’t make heads or tails of them.”
“They make perfect sense to me,” Turtle said. One by one she put the clues in her mouth, chewed, and swallowed them.
“GIBBERISH,” MR. HOO muttered.
Grace Windsor Wexler agreed. “Excuse me, Mr. Plum, but what are these clues clues to? I mean, exactly what are we supposed to find?”
“Purple waves,” Sandy joked with a wink at Turtle.
Mrs. Wexler uttered a cry of recognition and changed the order of two of her clues.
“It’s still gibberish,” Mr. Hoo complained.
Other players pressed the lawyer for more information. Ed Plum only shrugged.
“Then could you please give us copies of the will?”
“A copy will be on file . . .” Judge Ford began.
“I’m afraid not, Your Honor,” the lawyer said. “The will not, I mean the will will will . . .” He paused and tried again. “The will will not be filed until the first of the year. My instructions specifically state that no heir is allowed to see any of the documents until the game is over.”
No copy? That’s not fair. But wait, they did have a copy. A shorthand copy!
Sydelle Pulaski had plenty of attention now. She smiled back at the friendly faces, revealing a lipstick stain on her front teeth.
“Isn’t there some sort of a last statement?” Sandy asked Plum. “I mean, like the intern says, nothing makes any sense.”
ELEVENTH • Senseless, you say? Death is senseless yet makes way for the living. Life, too, is senseless unless you know who you are, what you want, and which way the wind blows.
So on with the game. The solution is simple if you know whom you are looking for. But heirs, beware! Be aware!
Some are not who they say they are, and some are not who they seem to be. Whoever you are, it’s time to go home.
God bless you all and remember this:
Buy Westing Paper Products!
8 The Paired Heirs
DURING THE NIGHT Flora Baumbach’s itsy-bitsy snowflings raged into a blizzard. The tenants of Sunset Towers awoke from clue-chasing, blood-dripping dreams, bound in twisted sheets and imprisoned by fifteen-foot snowdrifts.
No telephones. No electricity.
Snowbound with a murderer!
The slow procession looked like some ancient, mysterious rite as partner sought out partner on the windowless stairs, and silent pairs threaded through the corridors in the flickering light of crooked, color-striped candles (the product of Turtle’s stint at summer camp).
“These handmade candles are both practical and romantic,” she said, peddling her wares from apartment door to apartment door to frightened tenants at seven in the morning. (Oh, it’s only Turtle.) “And the colored stripes tell time, which is very handy if your electric clock stopped. Each stripe burns exactly one-half hour, more or less. Twelve stripes, six hours.”
“How much?”
“Not wishing to take advantage of this emergency, I’ve reduced the price to only five dollars each.”
Outrageous. Even more so when the electricity came on two hours after her last sale. “Sorry, no refunds,” Turtle said.
No matter. What was five dollars to heirs of an estate worth two hundred million? Clues, they had to work on those clues. Behind closed doors. Whisper, someone may be listening.
Not all the heirs were huddled in plotting, puzzle-solving pairs. Jake Wexler had retreated to his office after a long and loud argument with his wife. He sure could have used half of that ten thousand dollars, but he wouldn’t admit it, not to her. The forfeited money upset her more than the murder of her uncle, if he was her uncle.
Five floors