The Westing Game (15 page)

Westing connection:
?

 

“We don’t have any medical reports on her muscular ailment,” Sandy reported. “The nurse at Schultz Sausages said she was in perfect health when she left on vacation.”

“Strange,” the judge remarked. A suspicious malady, no apparent Westing connection, somehow Sydelle Pulaski did not seem to fit in.

 

 

Sydelle Pulaski clasped the translated notes to her bosom. “My little secret, mustn’t peek,” she said coyly, but the doctors had come to see Angela.

The plastic surgeon loosed the tape from her check and peered under the gauze. “One graft should do it, but we can’t operate until the tissue heals,” he said to the intern, then spoke to the patient. “Call my secretary for an appointment in two months.” He strode out of the room, leaving Denton Deere to replace the bandage.

“I don’t want plastic surgery,” Angela mumbled. It still hurt to talk.

“Nothing to be frightened of. He’s the best when it comes to facial repairs, that’s why I brought him in.”

“We’ll have to postpone the wedding.”

“We can have a small informal wedding.”

“Mother wouldn’t like that.”

“How about you, Angela, what do you want?” He knew her unspoken answer was “I don’t know.”

The door flew open and slammed against the adjacent wall. “Where do you think you’re going?” Denton pulled Turtle to a halt by one of the streaming ribbons twisted in her braid. “The sign says No Visitors.”

“I’m not a visitor, I’m a sister. And get your germy hands off my hair.”

Denton Deere hurried to seek first aid for his bleeding shin and sent the biggest male nurse on the floor to take care of Turtle, the same male nurse who chased Otis Amber out of the hospital for sneaking up on a nurse’s aide carrying a specimen tray and shouting, “Boom!”

Turtle had time for one question. “Angela, what did you sign on the receipt this time after ‘position’?”

“I changed mine to
victim,
” Sydelle said.

Turtle paid no attention to the victim. She was more interested in the two men entering the room: the burly male nurse and that creep of a lawyer, Plum. “I gotta go. Don’t say anything to anybody about anything, Angela, no matter what happens. Not even to a lawyer. You know nothing, you hear? Nothing!” She skirted Ed Plum, ducked under the outstretched hairy hands of the male nurse, slid down the hall, scampered down the stairs and out of the hospital.

“Hi, how are you?” Ed Plum smiled at Angela, ignoring the patient in the other bed. He didn’t recognize Ms. Pulaski without her painted crutch. “I’m sorry to hear about your accident. Otis Amber told me about it. Just thought I’d drop in for a chat.” The young lawyer, who had admired the pretty heiress from the minute he first laid eyes on her, did not have a chance to chat.

Grace Wexler entered the room, saw the answer to the clues: Ed Purple-fruit, the murderer, standing over her daughter, and uttered a blood-curdling shriek.

 

 

Three visitors in one day! The first was Otis Amber with a letter and another receipt to sign. Chris had pretended to be scared by the “Boom!” but he wasn’t really. He had twitched because he was excited about going to the Westing house again, even if he hadn’t figured out the clues.

Then Flora Baumbach came to see him. He wasn’t nervous at all with that nice lady. She smiles that funny smile because she’s sad inside. She once had a daughter named Rosalie. She told him how Rosalie would sit in the shop and say hello to the customers, and how she would feel the fabrics. Mrs. Baumbach made wedding dresses, which are mostly white, so she bought samples of materials with bright colors and patterns because Rosalie loved colors best. Rosalie had 573 different swatches in her collection before she died. Mrs. Baumbach said her daughter might have been an artist if things had turned out differently.

What would I have been if things had turned out differently?

The third visitor entered. Limping! His partner was limping! Too much excitement, his stupid body was jerking all over the place.

Denton Deere sat down next to the wheelchair. “Take it easy, Chris. Calm down, kid, I’m not the creature from the black lagoon, you know.”

His partner, a doctor, watched horror movies on television, too. Slowly arms untangled, legs unsnarled. Slowly Chris stuttered out his news: Flora Baumbach felt so guilty about seeing their dropped clue that she told him one of her clues:
mountain.
“But we m-mus-n t-tell T-Turtle.”

“Don’t worry,” the intern said, displaying a bruised shin.

Chris laughed, then stopped. “I s-sorry.”

“
Mountain,
hmmm.” Denton Deere thought about the new clue. “If a treasure is hidden in a grain shed on a mountain plain, I sure don’t have time to look for it. Do you?”

“N-n-n.”

“Let’s forget the clues, I have something more important to tell you. Don’t get excited, okay?”

Chris nodded. His partner was going to ask for the money.

Denton Deere stood. “I’ll get your toothbrush and pajamas, then we’ll go to the hospital. Don’t get excited.”

Chris got excited. How could he explain that what he wanted from his partner was companionship, not more probing, pricking doctors with their bad news that made his mother cry?

“Listen, Chris, can you hear me? Just overnight. I found a neurologist, a nerve doctor, who works on problems like yours.”

“Op-p-pra-shn?”

“No operation. Did you hear me, Chris? No operation. The doctor thinks a new medicine may help, but he has to examine you, make some tests. I have your parents’ permission, but no one will touch you unless we talk it over first, you and me, together. I promise.”

Chris grimaced trying to smile. His partner said talk it over, the two of them, together. They were really partners now. “You c-c-cn have m-money.”

“What? Oh, the money. Later. Here, let me take those, you won’t need them in the hospital.” Chris clung to his binoculars. “Well, I guess you do need them. Ready? Here we go!”

All of a sudden he was leaving Sunset Towers, pushed by his limping partner. Maybe Doctor Deere is not who and what he says he is. Maybe he is being kidnapped for ransom. Maybe he’s being held hostage. Oh boy, he hasn’t had so much fun in years.

THURSDAY WAS Asunny day, a glorious day; the autumn air was crisp and clear. None of the heirs noticed.

WPP crossed the tape at $44 . . . $44½ . . . $46. Forty-six dollars a share! Oh my! (“Don’t sell until I give the word, Baba,” Alice-Turtle had said.) Baba. The dressmaker smiled at her new name and eased back in the chair, but not for long. WPP $48¼. Oh my, oh my! Flora Baumbach bit her thumbnail to the quick. If only the child was here.

The child was being examined by the school nurse, having been caught again with a radio plugged in her ear. Turtle blamed her misbehavior on a toothache. “The only thing that soothes the horrendous pain is listening to music.”

“You should see a dentist,” the nurse said.

“I have an appointment next week,” Turtle lied. “Can I go home now? The pain is truly unbearable.”

“No.” The nurse packed the tooth with foul-tasting cotton and sent her back to class. So every half hour Turtle had to ask permission to go to the lavatory in order to keep up with the latest stock market reports. “Bladder infection,” she explained.

 

 

Crow polished Mrs. Wexler’s silver teapot with a Westing Disposable Diaper for the third time. Two more days, the day after next. It was too painful, going back to that house, but Otis said she must, to collect her due. It was her penance to go back, not her due. Blessed is he who expects nothing.

“Boom! Just a warning to keep doors locked,” the delivery boy said, dumping a carton of Westing Paper Products on the kitchen floor. “You know, Crow old pal, I think I figured out who the bomber is.”

Crow stiffened as she stared at her distorted reflection in the shining silver. “Who?”

“That’s right,” Otis Amber said. “James Shin Hoo. He wanted to put the coffee shop out of business, right? Then he had to bomb his own restaurant so nobody would suspect him, right? And he catered the Wexler party. Nobody would notice if the caterer brought in an extra box along with the food, right?”

James Shin Hoo was the bomber. Crow’s hands trembled, her face blotched with hate. That beautiful, innocent angel reborn; Sandy said her face will be scarred for life. James Shin Hoo, beware! Vengeance shall be mine.

 

 

The judge rearranged her docket in order to have these last days free. (Leave it to Sam Westing to interfere with her work.)

Sandy turned to his next entry. “It’s an interesting one.”

BERTHE ERICA CROW.
Age: 57. Mother died at childbirth, raised by father (deceased). Education: 1 year of high school. Married at 16, divorced at 40. Ex-husband’s name: Windy Windkloppel. Hospital records: problems related to chronic alcoholism. Police record: 3 arrests for vagrancy. Gave up drinking when she took up religion. Started the Good Salvation Soup Kitchen on Skid Row. Works as cleaning woman in Sunset Towers, lives in maid’s apartment on fourth floor.
Westing connection:
?

 

 

“Yes, it is interesting,” Judge Ford replied, “but it hardly tells us what we want to know.”

“You’ve got a customer.” Jake Wexler pointed a sparerib at the black-clad figure standing at the restaurant door.

“Must be a bill collector,” Hoo said, frowning over his account book.

Grace looked up, saw it was only the cleaning woman, and returned to the sports photographs she was sorting. A dozen or more superstars would be framed and hung on one wall of Hoo’s On First.

“Come on over and join us,” Jake shouted.

Limping to their table, Crow heard Mrs. Wexler click her tongue. Sinful woman, she’ll go to hell with her pride and her covetousness, and take that foot-butcher of a husband with her. And that one, the fat one, the glutton, the bomber, the mutilator of innocent children.

Maybe she is a customer, Hoo thought, recognizing the face clenched in righteous anger as that of a diner not being served fast enough. He rose and pulled out a chair for Crow. “My wife will be serving a Chinese tea lunch shortly.”

Madame Hoo placed a variety of dumplings on the table, giggled at Jake, and ran back to the kitchen.

That tittering Madame Hoo was a beautiful woman. And quite young. Grace, casting a suspicious eye on her husband, was suddenly seized by a surge of gnawing jealousy (maybe it was just the fried dumpling).

Madame Hoo returned to pour the tea. Jake patted her hand. Good, Grace noticed, she’s clutching her stomach, about time she felt jealous. The podiatrist turned his smile to Crow. “Nothing wrong with your appetite, I’m happy to see.”

“Nothing is wrong with my mouth,” the cleaning woman replied, looking down at her plate, “it’s my feet that hurt. That corn you cut out didn’t heal yet, I got a callus on the sole of my left foot, and my ingrown toenail is growing in again.”

Grace clasped a hand over her mouth and ran out of the restaurant. Mr. Hoo headed for the kitchen.

“Your trouble comes from years of wearing the wrong kind of shoes,” Jake lectured.

Crow wasn’t listening. James Shin Hoo, the bomber, was coming back. He had something in his hand.

“Here, Crow, try these. I invented them myself. Paper innersoles. They’ll make you feel like you’re floating on air. It’s tough standing on your feet all day. Here, take them.”

Crow examined the two pads of spongy folded paper. “How much?”

“Nothing, compliments of the house.”

Still suspicious, Crow slipped the innersoles into her shoes and tried walking. What a blessed relief. Otis Amber was wrong. James Shin Hoo was a charitable man, he couldn’t be the bomber. Crow floated out of the restaurant without paying for her lunch.

 

 

“Oh no, not another victim,” Sydelle Pulaski cried, stuffing her notes under the mattress.

The nurse wheeled Chris next to Angela’s bed and explained that the boy was being tested for a new medication. “Are you all right?” she asked, bending over the squirming patient.

Chris was trying to remove a blank, sealed envelope from his bathrobe pocket. He knew his brother had a crush on Angela. He figured Theo must have sneaked upstairs in the wrong bathrobe to slip this letter under Angela’s door, then remembered she was in the hospital and was too shy to give it to her in person.

“Look at that smile,” Sydelle exclaimed.

“F-from Theo,” he said. Chris hoped to watch Angela read the love letter, but the nurse insisted he return to his room.

“Bye-bye, good luck,” Sydelle called. Angela waved a bandaged hand.

“
M-moun-t-tain,
” Chris replied. “From T-turtle.” Serves her right for kicking his partner.

Mountain,
Angela thought. Turtle’s MT stood for
mountain,
not
empty.
And the letter was not from Theo.

Again two clues were taped at the bottom:

“Crow and Otis Amber’s clues are not
king
and
queen,
” she told Sydelle. “They are
with thy beautiful majesties.
”

 

 

Sandy and the judge were still at work on the heirs.