In the overstuffed tapestry bag, under Sydelle’s cosmetic case, Angela found a letter. It was a strange letter, written in a tense and rigid hand:
Forgive me, my daughter. God bless you, my child. Delight in your love and the devil take doctor dear. Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? The time draws near.
Taped at the bottom were two clues:
THY BEAUTIFUL
15 Fact and Gossip
FRIDAY WAS BACK to normal, if the actions of suspicious would-be heirs competing for a two-hundred-million-dollar prize could be considered normal.
At school, Theo studied, Doug Hoo ran, and Turtle was twice sent to the principal’s office for having been caught with a transistor radio plugged in her ear.
The coffee shop was full of diners.
Shin Hoo’s restaurant had reopened, too, but no one came.
J. J. Ford presided at the bench, and Sandy McSouthers presided at the front door, whistling, chatting, collecting tidbits of gossip, and adding some of his own.
Flora Baumbach, her strained eyes shielded by dark glasses, drove Turtle to school on her way to the broker’s office and picked her up in the late afternoon with a sheet of prices copied from the moving tape. They had lost $3,000 in five days.
“Paper losses,” Turtle said. “Doesn’t mean a thing. Besides, I didn’t pick these stocks. Mr. Westing did.”
Did he? The dressmaker thought of the clue Chris had dropped; no stock symbol had five letters or even resembled the word plain. But Flora Baumbach played fair and kept the secret to herself.
FOUR PEOPLE STOOD in the driveway’s melting snow, shivering as the sun dropped behind Sunset Towers. The fifth jogged in place. No smoke had risen from the chimney since that fateful Halloween; still they stared up at the Westing house, murder on their minds.
“He looked too peaceful to have been murdered,” Turtle said. She sneezed and Sandy handed her a Westing tissue.
“How would you know?” Doug replied. “How many people have you seen murdered?”
“Turtle’s right,” her friend Sandy said. “If Westing expected it, he’d have seen it coming. His face would have looked scared.”
“Maybe he didn’t see it coming,” Theo argued. “The killer was very cunning, Westing said. I read a mystery once where the victim was allergic to bee stings and the murderer let a bee in through an open window.”
“The window wasn’t open,” Turtle said, wiping her nose. “Besides, Westing would have heard the buzzing and jumped out of bed.”
Doug had an idea. “Maybe the murderer injected bee venom in his veins.”
Otis Amber flung his arms in the air. “Whoever said Sam Westing was allergic to bees?”
Doug tried again. “How about snake venom? Or poison? Doctors know lots of poisons that make it look like heart attacks.”
Turtle almost kicked Doug, track meet or not. Her father was a doctor. She would not have minded if he had said “interns.”
“I once heard about a murderer who stabbed his victim with an icicle,” the doorman said. “It melted, leaving no trace of a murder weapon.”
“That’s a good one,” Turtle exclaimed appreciatively.
Sandy had more. “Then there was a Roman who choked on a single goat hair someone put in his milk. And there was the Greek poet who was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head.”
“Maybe Westing was just sleeping until Turtle stumbled and fell on his head,” Doug suggested.
“That’s not funny, Doug Hoo.” How could she ever have had a crush on that disgusting jerk?
Doug would not let up. “And who was that suspicious person in red boots I saw opening the hoods of cars in the parking lot the other morning?” He looked at Turtle’s booted feet.
“The thief stole my boots and put them back again. They leak.”
“A likely story, Tabitha-Ruth.” Doug pulled her braid and ran into the lobby at full speed.
Sandy placed a large hand on Turtle’s shoulder, a comforting hand, and a restraining one.
Otis Amber hopped on his bike. “Can’t stand around chit-chatting about a murder that never happened. Sam Westing was a madman. Insane. Crazy as a bedbug.” He pedaled off, shouting back, “We ain’t murderers, none of us.”
Theo could not agree. If there was no murderer, there was no answer; and without an answer, no one could win. “Sandy, did anybody leave Sunset Towers on Halloween night, before Turtle and Doug?”
The doorman scratched his head under his hat, thinking. “One day seems like the next, people coming and going. I can’t remember.”
“Try.”
Sandy scratched harder. “Only ones I recall are Otis Amber and Crow. They left together about five o’clock.”
“Thanks.” Theo hurried into the building to check his clues.
Turtle had no reason to suspect Otis Amber or Crow or any of the heirs. Money was the answer. Her only problem was that dumb stock market; it didn’t want to play the game. “Sandy, tell me another story.”
“Okay, let’s see. Once, long ago in the olden days, there was this soothsayer who predicted the day of his own death. That day came, and the soothsayer waited to die and waited some more, but nothing happened. He was so surprised and so happy to be alive that he laughed and laughed. Then, at one minute to midnight, he suddenly died. He died laughing.”
“He died laughing,” Turtle repeated thoughtfully. “That’s profound, Sandy. That’s very profound.”
“WHERE’S EVERYBODY?” THE apartment was empty, as usual. Jake Wexler decided that Shin Hoo’s was going to have a paying customer.
“I’d like a table, if you’re not too crowded.”
“I think I can squeeze you in,” Hoo said, leading the podiatrist through the empty restaurant. “You must have liked those spareribs.”
“Yeah, sure.” Jake watched his wife slowly stack her papers at the reservations desk. At last, seeming to recognize him, she walked over. Jake returned his unlit cigar to his pocket (Grace hated the smell).
“I’ve already eaten,” Grace said, sitting down.
“Hello to you, too,” Jake replied.
He probably thinks that’s funny. Since when do people go around saying hello to their husbands?
“What’s new with you, Grace? Where are the
