The Westing Game

said with a shudder that sent the loose straps of his leather aviator’s helmet swinging about his long, thin face. “Come to think of it, it happened exactly one year ago tonight. On Halloween.”
“What happened?” Theo Theodorakis asked impatiently. He was late for work in the coffee shop.
“Tell them, Otis,” Sandy urged.
The delivery boy stroked the gray stubble on his pointed chin. “Seems it all started with a bet; somebody bet them a dollar they couldn’t stay in that spooky house five minutes. One measly buck! The poor kids hardly got through those French doors on this side of the Westing house when they came tearing out like they was being chased by a ghost. Chased by a ghost—or worse.”
Or worse? Turtle forgot her throbbing toothache. Theo Theodorakis and Doug Hoo, older and more worldly-wise, exchanged winks but stayed to hear the rest of the story.
“One fella ran out crazy-like, screaming his head off. He never stopped screaming ’til he hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. The other fella hasn’t said but two words since. Something about purple.”
Sandy helped him out. “Purple waves.”
Otis Amber nodded sadly. “Yep, that poor fella just sits in the state asylum saying, ‘Purple waves, purple waves’ over and over again, and his scared eyes keep staring at his hands. You see, when he came running out of the Westing house, his hands was dripping with warm, red blood.”
Now all three shivered.
“Poor kid,” the doorman said. “All that pain and suffering for a dollar bet.”
“Make it two dollars for each minute I stay in there, and you’re on,” Turtle said.
SOMEONE WAS SPYING on the group in the driveway.
From the front window of apartment 2D, fifteen-year-old Chris Theodorakis watched his brother Theo shake hands (it must be a bet) with the skinny, one-pigtailed girl and rush into the lobby. The family coffee shop would be busy now; his brother should have been working the counter half an hour ago. Chris checked the wall clock. Two more hours before Theo would bring up his dinner. Then he would tell him about the limper.
Earlier that afternoon Chris had followed the flight of a purple martin (Progne subis) across the field of brambles, through the oaks, up to the red maple on the hill. The bird flew off, but something else caught his eye. Someone (he could not tell if the person was a man or a woman) came out of the shadows on the lawn, unlocked the French doors, and disappeared into the Westing house. Someone with a limp. Minutes later smoke began to rise from the chimney.
Once again Chris turned toward the side window and scanned the house on the cliff. The French doors were closed; heavy drapes hung full against the seventeen windows he had counted so many times.
They didn’t need drapes on the special glass windows here in Sunset Towers. He could see out, but nobody could see in. Then why did he sometimes feel that someone was watching him? Who could be watching him? God? If God was watching, then why was he like this?
The binoculars fell to the boy’s lap. His head jerked, his body coiled, lashed by violent spasms. Relax, Theo will come soon. Relax, soon the geese will be flying south in a V. Canada goose (Branta canadensis). Relax. Relax and watch the wind tangle the smoke and blow it toward Westingtown.
3 Tenants In and Out
UPSTAIRS IN 3D Angela Wexler stood on a hassock as still and blank-faced pretty as a store-window dummy. Her pale blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the lake.
“Turn, dear,” said Flora Baumbach, the dressmaker, who lived and worked in a smaller apartment on the second floor.
Angela pivoted in a slow quarter turn. “Oh!”
Startled by the small cry, Flora Baumbach dropped the pin from her pudgy fingers and almost swallowed the three in her mouth.
“Please be careful, Mrs. Baumbach; my Angela has very deli-cate skin.” Grace Windsor Wexler was supervising the fitting of her daughter’s wedding dress from the beige velvet couch. Above her hung the two dozen framed flower prints she had selected and arranged with the greatest of taste and care. She could have been an interior decorator, a good one, too, if it wasn’t for the pressing demands of so on and so forth.
“Mrs. Baumbach didn’t prick me, Mother,” Angela said evenly. “I was just surprised to see smoke coming from the Westing house chimney.”
Crawling with slow caution on her hands and knees, Flora Baumbach paused in the search for the dropped pin to peer up through her straight gray bangs.
Mrs. Wexler set her coffee cup on the driftwood coffee table and craned her neck for a better view. “We must have new neighbors; I’ll have to drive up there with a housewarming gift; they may need some decorating advice.”
“Hey, look! There’s smoke coming from the Westing house!” Again Turtle was late with the news.
“Oh, it’s you.” Mrs. Wexler always seemed surprised to see her other daughter, so unlike golden-haired, angel-faced Angela.
Flora Baumbach, about to rise with the found pin, quickly sank down again to protect her sore shin in the shag carpeting. She had pulled Turtle’s braid in the lobby yesterday.
“Otis Amber says that old man Westing’s stinking corpse is rotting on an Oriental rug.”
“My, oh my,” Flora Baumbach exclaimed, and Mrs. Wexler clicked her tongue in an irritated “tsk.”
Turtle decided not to go on with the horror story. Not that her mother cared if she got killed or ended up a raving lunatic. “Mrs. Baumbach, could you hem my witch’s costume? I need it for tonight.”
Mrs. Wexler answered. “Can’t you see she’s busy with Angela’s wedding dress? And why must you wear a silly costume like that? Really, Turtle, I don’t know why you insist on making yourself ugly.”
“It’s no sillier than a wedding dress,” Turtle snapped back. “Besides, nobody gets married anymore, and if they do, they don’t wear silly wedding dresses.” She was close to a tantrum. “Besides, who would want to marry that