The Westing Game (18 page)

“Poor Grace,” Mr. Hoo said. “One daughter almost killed, the other one a bomber. Smart-aleck kid, first she blows up my kitchen, then she advertises my cuisine. Win the inheritance—ha! Maybe I’m lucky my son is a dumb jock.”

“Boom,” Madame Hoo said happily. She knew where they were going. Always on the day when Doug ate six eggs for breakfast, he ran around and around a big track and people clapped and gave him a shiny medal. Doug was so proud of his medals. She would never take them, not even the gold one, not even if it took her two more years to pay to go back to China. No, she would never take Doug’s medals, and she would never sell that wonderful clock with the mouse who wears gloves and points to the time.

 

 

“You must be out of your mind, Jake Wexler. Go to a track meet with all those people pointing at me, snickering, saying: ‘Look, there she is, the mother of Cain and Abel.’ I’m not even sure I have the nerve to show my face at the Westing house tonight.”

“Come on, Grace, it’ll do you good.” The podiatrist urged his reluctant wife down the third-floor hall. “Stop thinking about yourself for a change, think how poor Turtle must feel.”

“Don’t ever mention that child to me again, not after what she did to Angela. I never told you this, Jake, but I’ve always had a sinking sensation that the hospital mixed up the babies when Turtle was born.”

“It’s no wonder she wanted to blow us all up.”

Grace’s despair exploded in anger. “Oh, I get it, you’re putting the blame on me. If you had given her a good talking to about kicking people when I asked, she might not have ended up a common criminal.”

“Whatever became of that fun-loving woman I married, what was her name—Gracie Windkloppel?”

Grace quickly looked around to see if anyone had overheard that ugly name, but they were in the elevator, alone. “Oh, I know what people think,” she complained. “Poor Jake Wexler, good guy, everybody’s friend, married to that uppity would-be decorator. Well, Angela’s not going to have to scrimp and save to make ends meet; she’s going to marry a real doctor. I’ll see to that.”

“Sure you will, Grace, you’ll see that Angela doesn’t marry a loser like her father.” A real doctor, she says. A podiatrist is a “real” doctor—well, it is these days, but when he went to school it was different. He could have gone back, taken more courses, but he was married by then, a father—oh, who’s he kidding. Gracie’s right, he is a loser. Next she’ll mention having to give up her family because she married a Jew—no, she never brings that up, Grace with all her faults would never do that.

The elevator door opened to the lobby. Grace turned to her silent, sad-eyed husband, the loser. “Oh, Jake, what’s happening to us? What’s happening to me? Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not a nice person.”

Jake pressed the CLOSE DOOR button and took his sobbing wife into his arms. “It’s all right, Gracie, we’re going home.”

The doors opened on the second floor. “Mom! What’s the matter with her, Daddy, she’s crying? Gee, Mom, I’m sorry, it was just a few fireworks.” If her mother ever found out who the real bomber was, she’d really go to pieces.

Turtle looked even more like a turtle today with her sad little face peering out of the kerchief tied under her small chin. “Let go of the door, Turtle,” Jake said. “And have a good time at the track meet. You, too, Mrs. Baumbach.”

Track meet? They weren’t going to a track meet. And they sure were not going to have a good time.

Grace was still sobbing on Jake’s shoulder as he led her into their apartment.

“Mother, what’s the matter? What’s wrong with her, Dad?”

“Nothing, Angela, your mother’s just having a good cry. Why don’t you and Ms. Pulaski leave us alone for a while.”

“Come, Angela,” Sydelle said, prodding her with the tip of one of her mismatched crutches. “We have some painting to do.”

Angela looked back at the embracing couple; her father’s face was buried in her weeping mother’s tousled hair. They had not asked how she got home from the hospital (by taxi), they had not asked if she was still in pain (not much), they had not even peeked under the bandage to see if a scar was forming on her cheek (there was). Angela was on her own. Well, that’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? Yes, yes it was! She uttered a short laugh, and her hand flew up to the pain in her face.

“Do I look funny or something?”

“No, I wasn’t laughing at you, Sydelle, I’d never laugh at you. It’s just that suddenly everything seemed all right.”

“It’s all right, all right,” her partner replied, unlocking the four locks on her apartment door. “Tonight’s the night we’re going to win it all.”

Were they? The will said look for a name. They had a song, not a name.

“‘O beautiful for spacious skies,’” Sydelle began to sing, “‘For purple waves of grain.’”

“Not purple,” Angela corrected her, “amber. ‘For amber waves of grain.’”

Amber!

 

 

Judge Ford paced the floor. Tonight Sam Westing would wreak his revenge unless she could prevent it. If she was right, the person in danger was the former Mrs. Westing. And if Turtle was right about the wax dummy, Sam Westing himself might be there to watch the fun.

There was a knock on her door. The judge was surprised to see Denton Deere, even more surprised when he wheeled Chris Theodorakis into her apartment. “Hello, Judge. Everybody else in the building is going to the track meet, it seems. I passed Sandy on the way out and he said you wouldn’t mind having Chris for part of the afternoon. I’ve got to get back to the hospital.”

“Hello, Judge F-Ford.” Chris held out a steady hand which the judge shook.

“You’re looking well, Chris.”

“The m-medicine helped a lot.”

“It’s a big step forward,” the intern said. Wrong word, the kid may never leave that wheelchair. “An even more effective medication is now in the developmental stage.” That really sounded pompous. “Well, so long, Chris. See you tonight. Thanks, Judge.”

“He knows lots of b-big words,” Chris said.

“Yes, he certainly does,” Judge Ford replied. What was she going to do with this boy here? She had so much to think about, so much to plan.

“You c-can work. I’ll birdwatch,” Chris offered, wheeling to the window, his binoculars banging against his thin chest.

“Good idea.” The judge returned to her desk to study the newspaper clippings. Mrs. Westing: a tall, thin woman. She may no longer be thin, but she would still be tall. About sixty years old. If Sam Westing’s former wife was one of the heirs, she had to be Crow.

“Look!” Chris shouted, startling the judge into dropping her files to the floor. She rushed to his side, thinking he needed help. “Look up there, Judge. Isn’t it b-beautiful?”

High in the fall sky a V of geese was flying south. Yes, it was a beautiful sight. “Those are geese,” the judge explained.

“C-canada goose (
Branta c-canadensis
),” Chris replied.

The judge was impressed, but she had work to do. Stooping to gather the dropped clippings, she was confronted by the face of Sam Westing. The photograph had been taken fifteen years ago. Those piercing eyes, the Vandyke beard, that short beaked nose (like a turtle’s). The wax dummy in the coffin had been molded in the former image of Sam Westing as he had looked fifteen years ago—not as he looked now. She searched the folder. No recent photographs, no hospital records, no death certificate, just the accident report from the state highway police: Dr. Sidney Sikes suffered a crushed leg and Samuel W. Westing had severe facial injuries. Facial injuries! It was the face that had disappeared fifteen years ago, not the man. Westing had a different face, a face remodeled by plastic surgery. A different face and a different name.

Now what? Her gaze rested on her charge at the window. Feeling her eyes, Chris turned around. The boy has a nice smile.

 

 

“I hope you are better at filling cavities than making false teeth,” Turtle said, gripping the arms of the dentist’s chair. In a glass cabinet against the wall three rows of dentures grinned at her with crooked teeth, overlapping teeth, notched teeth.

“Those faults are what makes the dentures look real,” the dentist explained. “Nothing in nature is quite perfect, you know. Now, open your mouth wide. Wider.”

“Ow!” Turtle screamed before the probe touched tooth.

“Just relax, young lady, I’ll tell you when to say ‘Ow!’”

Turtle tried to think about other things. False teeth, buckteeth—that rotten bucktoothed Barney Northrup stopped by this morning to tell the Wexlers they would have to pay for all the damage done by the bombs. Barney Northrup had called her parents “irresponsible” and had called her something worse, much worse. He sure was surprised by that kick; it was her hardest one ever.

“Now you can say ‘Ow!’ ” The dentist unclipped the towel from her shoulder.

Turtle passed her tongue over the drilled tooth. She had not felt a thing, but the real pain was yet to come. Flora Baumbach was taking her to the beauty parlor to have her singed hair cut off.

 

 

College teams from five states competed in the first indoor track meet of the season, but the big event, the mile run, was won by a high-school senior.

“That’s my boy, that’s my Doug,” Mr. Hoo shouted, one voice among thousands cheering the youngster on his victory lap.

Cameras flashed as Doug posed, smiling broadly, index fingers high in the air. “I owe it all to my dad,” he told reporters, and cameras flashed again as Doug flung an arm around the proud Mr. Hoo. Just wait until the next Olympics, the inventor thought. With Doug’s feet and my innersoles, he’ll run them all to the ground.

Later that evening Madame Hoo, chattering in unintelligible Chinese, made it known that she wanted Doug to wear his prize to the Westing house. Standing on tiptoe she placed the ribbon over his bent head and patted the shiny gold medal in place on his chest. “Good boy,” she said in English.

 

 

A saddened Sandy returned to apartment 4D. “Hi, Chris. Did you talk to him, Judge?”

“Talk to whom?”

“Barney Northrup. He was waiting at the front door when I got back from the track meet, mad as a wet cat. Said he had lots of complaints about me—never being on duty, drinking on the job—lies like that. He fired me right on the spot. I told him you wanted to see him, figuring you might put in a good word so he’d let me stay on.”

“No, Mr. McSouthers, I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen Barney Northrup since I rented this apartment.” Barney Northrup, was that Westing’s disguise: false buckteeth, slick black wig, pasted-on moustache?

“Well, it’s not the first time I got fired for no cause.” The dejected doorman blew his nose loudly in a Westing Man-Sized Hankie. “Hey Chris, bet you don’t know the Latin name of the red-headed woodpecker.”

That was a hard one. Chris had to say
Melanerpes erythrocephalus
very slowly.

“Some smart kid, hey, Judge? Chris, the judge and I have a little business to discuss. Excuse us for a minute.”

Judge Ford joined the doorman in the kitchen. “Our game plan is this, Mr. McSouthers. We give no answer. No answer at all. Our duty is to protect Westing’s ex-wife.”

“Crow?” Sandy guessed.

“That’s right.”

“There’s something else that’s been bothering me, Judge. I know it sounds crazy, but, well, I found out Otis Amber doesn’t live in the grocer’s basement, and he’s not as dumb as he pretends. He’s a snoop and a troublemaker and I don’t think he is who he says he is.”

“And who do you think Otis Amber is?” the judge asked.

“Sam Westing!”

Judge Ford leaned against the sink and pressed her head against the cabinet. If Sandy was correct, she had played right into the man’s hands—Sam Westing’s hands.

 

 

“C’mon, Crow, you always like to get there early to open the door for people.”

Crow had stopped in the middle of the steep road to stare up at the Westing house. “I’ve got a funny feeling that something evil is waiting for me up there, Otis. It’s a bad house, full of misery and sin. He’s still there, you know.”

“Sam Westing is dead and buried. Come on, if we don’t go we gotta give the money back, and we already spent it on the soup kitchen.”

“I feel his presence, Otis. He’s looking for a murderer, Violet’s murderer.”

“Stop scaring yourself with crazy notions, you sound like you’re on the bottle again.”

Crow strode ahead.

“I didn’t mean that, Crow, honest. Look up there at that moon. Isn’t it romantic?”

“Somebody’s in real danger, Otis, and I think it’s me.”

LAWYER PLUM WAS there and one pair of heirs when Otis Amber danced into the game room. “He-he-he, the Turtle’s lost its tail, I see.”

Turtle slumped low in her chair. Flora Baumbach thought the short, sleek haircut was adorable, especially the way it swept forward over her little chin, but Turtle did not want to look adorable. She wanted to look mean.

The dressmaker fumbled past the wad of money in her handbag. “Here, Alice, I thought you might like to see this.”

Turtle glanced at the old snapshot. It’s Baba, all right, except younger. Same dumb smile. Suddenly she sat upright.

“That’s my daughter, Rosalie,” Flora Baumbach said. “She must have been nine or ten when that picture was taken.”

Rosalie was squat and square and squinty, her protruding tongue was too large for her mouth, her head lolled to one side. “I think I would have liked her, Baba,” Turtle said. “Rosalie looks like she was a very happy person. She must have been nice to have around.”

Thump-thump, thump-thump. “Here come the victims,” Sydelle Pulaski announced.

Angela greeted her sister with a wave of her crimson-streaked, healing hand. Turtle had convinced her not to confess: It would mean a criminal record, it would kill their mother, and no one would believe her anyhow. “I like your haircut.”