The Westing Game

“Listen, Chris, I’ll tell you about that haunted castle on the hill.” His voice was soothing and hushed in mystery. “Somebody is up there, Chris, but nobody is there, just rich Mr. Westing, and he’s dead. Dead as a squashed June bug and rotting away on a moth-eaten Oriental rug.”
Chris relaxed as he always did when his brother told him a story. Theo was good at making up stories.
“And the worms are crawling in and out of the dead man’s skull, in and out of his ear holes, his nose holes, his mouth holes, in and out of all his holes.”
Chris laughed, then quickly composed his face. He was supposed to look scared.
Theo leaned closer. “And high above the putrid corpse a crystal chandelier is tinkling. It tinkles and twinkles, but not one breath of air stirs in that gloomy tomb of a room.”
Gloomy tomb of a room—Theo will make a good writer someday, Chris thought. He wouldn’t spoil this wonderful, spooky Halloween story by telling him about the real person up there, the one with the limp.
So Chris sat quietly, his body at ease, and heard about ghosts and ghouls and purple waves, and smiled at his brother with pure delight.
“A smile that could break your heart,” Sydelle Pulaski, the tenant in 3C, always said. But no one paid any attention to Sydelle Pulaski.
SYDELLE PULASKI STRUGGLED out of the taxi, large end first. She was not a heavy woman, just wide-hipped from years of secretarial sitting. If only there was a ladylike way to get out of a cab. Her green rhinestone-studded glasses slipped down her fleshy nose as she grappled with a tall triangular package and a stuffed shopping bag. If only that lazy driver would lend her a hand.
Not for a nickel tip, he wouldn’t. The cabbie slammed the back door and sped around the curved driveway, narrowly missing the Mercedes that Sandy was driving to the parking lot.
At least the never-there-when-you-need-him doorman had propped open the front door. Not that he ever helped her, or noticed her, for that matter.
No one ever noticed. Sydelle Pulaski limped through the lobby. She could be carrying a high-powered rifle in that package and no one would notice. She had moved to Sunset Towers hoping to meet elegant people, but no one had invited her in for so much as a cup of tea. No one paid any attention to her, except that poor crippled boy whose smile could break your heart, and that bratty kid with the braid—she’ll be sorry she kicked her in the shin.
Juggling her load, earrings jingling and charm bracelet jangling, Sydelle Pulaski unlocked the several locks to apartment 3C and bolted the door behind her. There’d be fewer burglaries around here if people listened to her about putting in dead-bolt locks. But nobody listened. Nobody cared.
On the plastic-covered dining table she set out the contents of the shopping bag: six cans of enamel, paint thinner, and brushes. She unwrapped the long package and leaned four wooden crutches against the wall. The sun was setting over the parking lot, but Sydelle Pulaski did not look out her back window. From the side window smoke could be seen rising from the Westing house, but Sydelle Pulaski did not notice.
“No one ever notices Sydelle Pulaski,” she muttered, “but now they will. Now they will.”
4 The Corpse Found
THE HALLOWEEN MOON was full. Except for her receding chin Turtle Wexler looked every inch the witch, her dark unbraided hair streaming wild in the wind from under her peaked hat, a putty wart pasted on her small beaked nose. If only she could fly to the Westing house on a broomstick instead of scrambling over rocks on all fours, what with all she had to carry. Under the long black cape the pockets of her jeans bulged with necessities for the night’s dangerous vigil.
Doug Hoo had already reached the top of the cliff and taken his station behind the maple on the lawn. (The track star was chosen timekeeper because he could run faster than anyone in the state of Wisconsin.) Here she comes, it’s about time. Shivering knee-deep in damp leaves that couldn’t do his leg muscles much good, he readied his thumb on the button of the stopwatch.
Turtle squinted into the blackness that lay within the open French doors. Open, as though someone or some Thing was expecting her. There’s no such thing as a ghost; besides, all you had to do was speak friendly-like to them. (Ghosts, like dogs, know when a person’s scared.) Ghosts or worse, Otis Amber had said. Well, not even the “worse” could hurt Turtle Wexler. She was pure of heart and deed; she only kicked shins in self-defense, so that couldn’t count against her. She wasn’t scared; she was not scared.
“Hurry up!” That was Doug from behind the tree.
At two dollars a minute, twenty-five minutes would pay for a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. She could stay all night. She was prepared. Turtle checked her pockets: two sandwiches, Sandy’s flask filled with orange pop, a flashlight, her mother’s silver cross to ward off vampires. The putty wart on her nose (soaked in Angela’s perfume in the event she was locked up with the stinking corpse) was clogging her nostrils with sticky sweetness. Turtle took a deep breath of chill night air and flinched with pain. She was afraid of dentists, not ghosts or . . . don’t think about purple waves, think about two dollars a minute. Now, one—two—three—three and a half—GO!
Doug checked his stopwatch. Nine minutes.
Ten minutes.
Eleven minutes.
Suddenly a terrified scream—a young girl’s scream—pierced the night. Should he go in, or was this one of the brat’s tricks? Another scream, closer.
“E-E-E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!” Clutching the bunched cape around her waist, Turtle came hurtling out of the Westing house. “E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!”
TURTLE HAD SEEN the corpse in the Westing house, but it was not rotting and it was not sprawled on an Oriental rug. The dead man was tucked in a four-poster