The Westing Game

above, Jake’s partner stood before the restaurant’s front window staring at the froth on the angry lake, and beyond. No one had bothered to tell Madame Hoo about the Westing game.
Other players were snowbound elsewhere: Denton Deere in the hospital, Sandy at home. No one gave a thought to where Otis Amber or Crow might be.
But Sydelle Pulaski was there, thumping her crutch against the baseboards as she limped through the carpeted halls on the arm of her pretty partner. Not one, but seven tenants had invited her to morning coffee or afternoon tea (murderer or not, they had to see Pulaski’s copy of that will).
“Three lumps, please. Angela drinks it black.” Your health? “Thank the lord I’m still able to hobble about.” Your job? “I was private secretary to the president of Schultz Sausages. Poor Mr. Schultz, I don’t know how he’ll manage without me.” Your shorthand notes? “Thank you for the refreshments. I must hurry back for my medication. Come, Angela.”
ONE HEIR HAD not invited them in, but that didn’t stop Sydelle Pulaski from barging into apartment 2D. “Hi, Chris. Just thought we’d pop in to see how you’re doing. Don’t be scared. I’m not the murderer, Angela is not the murderer, and we don’t think you are the murderer. Mind if I sit down?” The secretary toppled into a chair next to the invalid before he could reply. “Here, I stole a macaroon for you. It’s so sticky you’ll be tasting it all day; I must have six strands of coconut between my upper molars.” Chris took the cookie. “Just look at that smile, it could break your heart.”
Angela wished her partner had not said that; it seemed so insensitive, so crude. But at least Sydelle was talking to him, which was more than she was able to do. Angela, the fortunate one, standing like a dummy. “Um, I know Denton wants to work on the clues with you. He’s snowbound, too.”
“You ver-r pred-dy.” How did “pretty” come out? He meant to say “nice.” Chris bent his curly head over the geography book in his lap. She wasn’t laughing at him. It was all right to ask her because she was going to marry his partner. “Wha ar-r g-gra-annz?”
Angela did not understand.
Chris fanned the pages of the book to a picture of a wheat field. “G-gra-annz.”
“Oh, grains. You want to know the names of some grains. Let’s see, there’s wheat, rye, corn, barley, oats.”
“O-ohss!” Angela thought the boy was going into a fit, but he was only repeating her last word: oats.
Sydelle was puffing her warm breath on the window and wiping a frosted area clean with her sleeve. “There, now you’ll be able to watch the birds again. Anything else we can do for you, young man?”
Chris nodded. “Read m-me short-han n-noos.”
The pretty lady and the funny lady moved quickly out the door. One limped, but it was a pretended limp (he could tell), not like the limper on the Westing house lawn.
Oats. Chris closed his eyes to picture the clues:
FOR   PLAIN   GRAIN   SHED
Grain = oats = Otis Amber. For + d (from shed) = Ford. But neither the delivery boy nor the judge limped, and he still hadn’t figured out she or plain. He’d have to wait for Denton Deere; Denton Deere was smart; he was a doctor.
Chris raised his binoculars to the cliff. Windblown drifts buttressed the house—something moved on the second floor—a hand holding back the edge of a drape. Slowly the heavy drape fell back against the window. The Westing house was snowbound, too, and somebody was snowbound in it.
ONLY ONE OF the players thought the clues told how the ten-thousand-dollar check was to be spent. Take stock in America, the will said. Go for broke, the will said.
“In the stock market,” Turtle said. “And whoever makes the most money wins it all, the whole two hundred million dollars.” Their clues:
SEA    MOUNTAIN   AM   O
stood for symbols of three corporations listed on the stock exchange: SEA, MT (the abbreviation for mountain), AMO.
“But am and o are separate clues,” Flora Baumbach said.
“To confuse us.”
“But what about the murderer? I thought we were supposed to find the name of the murderer?”
“To put us off the track.” If the police suspected murder, she’d be in jail by now. Her fingerprints were over everything in the Westing house, including the corpse. “You don’t really think one of us could have killed a living, breathing human being in cold blood, do you, Mrs. Baumbach? Do you?” Turtle did, but the dressmaker was a cream puff.
“Don’t you look at me like that, Turtle Wexler! You know very well I could never think such a thing. I must have misunderstood. Oh my, I just wish Miss Pulaski had shown us her copy of the will.”
Turtle returned to her calculations, multiplying numbers of shares times price, adding a broker’s commission, trying to total the sums to the ten thousand dollars they had to spend.
Flora Baumbach may have been wrong about the murder, but she was not convinced of Turtle’s plan. “What about Buy Westing Paper Products? I’m sure that was in the will.”
“Great!” Turtle exclaimed. “We’ll do just that, we’ll add WPP to the list of stocks we’re going to buy.”
Flora Baumbach had watched enough television commercials to know that Buy Westing Paper Products meant that as soon as she could get to market, she’d buy all the Westing products on the shelf. Still, it felt good having a child around again. She’d play along, gladly. “You know, Turtle, you may be right about putting our money in the stock market. I remember the will said May God thy gold refine. That must be from the Bible.”
“Shakespeare,” Turtle replied. All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare.
MR. HOO MOVED aside a full ashtray with a show of distaste and rearranged the clues. “Purple fruited makes more sense.”
Grace Wexler looked across the restaurant to the lone figure at the window. “Are you sure