The Westing Game

a subject and a verb; you should never write fragments, but then of course you shouldn’t write sentences that run on too long, THEM’S THE RULES—but that was the day I started to realize that if language had rules, then maybe English was a great big game, and a sentence was an arena where a writer could play), and it’s no exaggeration to say that reading The Westing Game in grade school was one of four or five major milestones in my development as a writer, so much so that many years later, as an adult and professional author of books for children (including a series of mysteries), I made a pilgrimage to Ellen Raskin’s house in New York City, which I knew I would recognize because she made it the setting of another of her long books, and when I stood on the sidewalk in front of her house I was overwhelmed, and felt compelled (this is a little weird) to take a peek through a window (in New York City, houses’ windows are often right on the sidewalk, so yes, this is weird, but not as weird as it sounds), and even though I was almost completely, 100 percent certain I wouldn’t find Ellen Raskin looking back out the window at me (after all, she’d been dead for some time), I was flabbergasted by what was inside, which was . . . nothing—no rooms, no ceiling, and most importantly, no floor, just a hollow house shell over a giant gaping hole in the ground, which was like something out of an Ellen Raskin novel; and standing there on a cloudless afternoon with my hands cupped on the window of this mysterious, hilarious, sad, absurd house, the first thought that popped into my brain was a sentence, a single sentence I’d read twenty years earlier, a sentence that, in more ways than one, was why I was there—a perfect second sentence that changed my whole life, because it was only one word long.
Mac Barnett

Contents
1   Sunset Towers
2   Ghosts or Worse
3   Tenants In and Out
4   The Corpse Found
5   Sixteen Heirs
6   The Westing Will
7   The Westing Game
8   The Paired Heirs
9   Lost and Found
10   The Long Party
11   The Meeting
12   The First Bomb
13   The Second Bomb
14   Pairs Repaired
15   Fact and Gossip
16   The Third Bomb
17   Some Solutions
18   The Trackers
19   Odd Relatives
20   Confessions
21   The Fourth Bomb
22   Losers, Winners
23   Strange Answers
24   Wrong All Wrong
25   Westing’s Wake
26   Turtle’s Trial
27   A Happy Fourth
28   And Then . . .
29   Five Years Pass
30   The End?


1 Sunset Towers
THE SUN SETS in the west (just about everyone knows that), but Sunset Towers faced east. Strange!
Sunset Towers faced east and had no towers. This glittery, glassy apartment house stood alone on the Lake Michigan shore five stories high. Five empty stories high.
Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed Barney Northrup.
The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northrup.
Dear Lucky One:
Here it is—the apartment you’ve always dreamed of, at a rent you can afford, in the newest, most luxurious building on Lake Michigan:
SUNSET TOWERS
Picture windows in every room
Uniformed doorman, maid service
Central air conditioning, hi-speed elevator
Exclusive neighborhood, near excellent schools
Etc., etc.
You have to see it to believe it. But these unbelievably elegant apartments will be shown by appointment only. So hurry, there are only a few left!!! Call me now at 276-7474 for this once-in-a-lifetime offer.
Your servant,
Barney Northrup
P.S. I am also renting ideal space for:
Doctor’s office in lobby
Coffee shop with entrance from parking lot
Hi-class restaurant on entire top floor
SIX LETTERS WERE delivered, just six. Six appointments were made, and one by one, family by family, talk, talk, talk, Barney Northrup led the tours around and about Sunset Towers.
“Take a look at all that glass. One-way glass,” Barney Northrup said. “You can see out, nobody can see in.”
Looking up, the Wexlers (the first appointment of the day) were blinded by the blast of morning sun that flashed off the face of the building.
“See those chandeliers? Crystal!” Barney Northrup said, slicking his black moustache and straightening his hand-painted tie in the lobby’s mirrored wall. “How about this carpeting? Three inches thick!”
“Gorgeous,” Mrs. Wexler replied, clutching her husband’s arm as her high heels wobbled in the deep plush pile. She, too, managed an approving glance in the mirror before the elevator door opened.
“You’re really in luck,” Barney Northrup said. “There’s only one apartment left, but you’ll love it. It was meant for you.” He flung open the door to 3D. “Now, is that breathtaking, or is that breathtaking?”
Mrs. Wexler gasped; it was breathtaking, all right. Two walls of the living room were floor-to-ceiling glass. Following Barney Northrup’s lead, she ooh-ed and aah-ed her joyous way through the entire apartment.
Her trailing husband was less enthusiastic. “What’s this, a bedroom or a closet?” Jake Wexler asked, peering into the last room.
“It’s a bedroom, of course,” his wife replied.
“It looks like a closet.”
“Oh Jake, this apartment is perfect for us, just perfect,” Grace Wexler argued in a whining coo. The third bedroom was a trifle small, but it would do just fine for Turtle. “And think what it means having your office in the lobby, Jake; no more driving to and from work, no more mowing the lawn or shoveling snow.”
“Let me remind you,” Barney Northrup said, “the rent here is cheaper than what your old house costs in upkeep.”
How would he know that, Jake wondered.
Grace stood before the front window where, beyond the road, beyond the trees, Lake Michigan lay calm and glistening. A lake view! Just wait until those so-called friends of hers with their classy houses see this place. The furniture would have to be reupholstered; no,