“In a minute.” Turtle waited for the door to close. She touched her sister’s bandaged hand. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
Another snore from Sydelle.
“Just thanks. The fireworks would have gone off in my face if you hadn’t pulled the box toward you. Here, I brought your tapestry bag; I didn’t look at your notes or clues, honest.” But she had removed the incriminating evidence.
“Turtle, tell me the truth. How bad is it?”
“The doctor had to take some glass out of your hands, but no stitches. The burns will heal okay.”
“And my face?”
“Some scarring, not bad really, Angela. Besides, you always said being pretty wasn’t important, it’s who you really are that counts.”
Angela wondered about that. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe pretty was important. Maybe she was crazy, she must have been crazy.
“Don’t worry, you’ll still be pretty,” Turtle said. “But, wow, that sure was a dumb thing to do.”
Sydelle Pulaski’s eyes popped open in surprise. Quickly she squeezed them shut and uttered another loud snore. Well, what do you know? Her sweet, saintly partner was the bomber. Good for her!
17 Some Solutions
MONDAY WAS A gray, rainy day. Depressing. So was the stock market, which fell another six points. Turtle was jittery.
All the heirs were jittery. The bomb squad was called in several times to examine suspicious parcels. One turned out to be a sealed vacuum cleaner bag full of dust that Crow had set behind the incinerator door. Another was a box delivered to Mrs. Wexler. In it were bonbons (her favorite) and a note: Love and kisses, Jake.
“What do you mean, how come? Can’t I send candy to my wife without getting the third degree? I thought you were looking on the thin side, okay?”
Grace made him eat the first piece.
The next day Grace received a larger box. In it the bomb squad found one dozen long-stemmed roses and a note: For no reason at all, just love, Jake.
The bomb squad was called again when Turtle ran after her partner through the lobby shouting “Mrs. BAUM-bach, Mrs. BAUM-bach!” Someone thought she had shouted “Bomb! Bomb!”
A hollow wind wailed through damp Tuesday. In the morning the stock market rose three points. “Bullish,” said Flora Baumbach. In the afternoon the market dropped five points. “Bearish,” said Flora Baumbach. Those were the only two trading terms she had learned.
Madame Hoo, a quicker student than the dressmaker, had learned more words: partner, money, house, tree, road, pots, pans, okay, football, good, rain, spareribs. Her teacher, Jake Wexler, visited her in the kitchen before he sat down to his daily lunch in the Chinese restaurant. Today his wife and Jimmy Hoo agreed to eat with their only customer on the promise that he would help them with their clues and not take a share of the inheritance if they won.
Grace laid their five words on the table.
“These are clues?” Jake looked down on purple waves for fruited sea. He switched two squares of Westing Superstrength Towels. “Purple fruited makes more sense. How about grapes or plums?”
Grace was about to insist on purple waves, but plums reminded her of something. “Plum,” she said aloud. “Plum. Wasn’t the lawyer’s name Plum?”
“You’re right, Grace,” Mr. Hoo said excitedly. “You’re absolutely right.” He tore one of the clues in two: fruit/ed. “Ed Purple-fruit. Ed Plum!”
“We got it, we got it,” Grace cried, leaping up to embrace her partner.
“I never did trust lawyers,” Mr. Hoo shouted gleefully.
“What about the other clues: for sea waves?” Jake asked, but the happy, hugging and dancing, celebrating pair did not hear him.
“Boom!” said Madame Hoo, placing a plate of spareribs on the table. That word she had learned from Otis Amber.
SANDY WAS PROUD of the notebook he bought, with its glossy cover photograph of a bald eagle in flight (sort of appropriate, he explained to the judge; fits in with Uncle Sam and all that). In it he painstakingly entered the information culled from reports the private detective delivered each day to Judge Ford’s office: photostats of birth certificates, death notices, marriage licenses, drivers’ licenses, vehicular accident reports, criminal records, hospital records, school records. To these the doorman added the results of his own snooping.
“My investigator is having a difficult time getting into the not-so-public records of Westingtown,” the judge said. “We’ll have to put the Westings aside and begin with the heirs.”
“Since we’re feasting on chicken with water chestnuts,” Sandy said, “I’ll start off with the Hoos.” (Doug had delivered down.) He read aloud from his entry:
• HOO
JAMES SHIN HOO. Born: James Hoo in Chicago. Age: 50. Added Shin to his name when he went into the restaurant business because it sounded more Chinese. First wife died of cancer five years ago. Married again last year. Has one son: Douglas.
SUN LIN HOO. Age: 28. Born in China. Immigrated from Hong Kong two years ago. Gossip: James Hoo married her for her 100-year-old sauce.
DOUGLAS HOO. (called Doug). Age: 18. High-school track star. Is competing in Saturday’s track meet against college milers.
Westing connection: Hoo sued Sara Westing over the invention of the disposable paper diaper. Case never came to court (Westing disappeared). Settled with the company last year for $25,000. Thinks he was cheated. Latest invention: paper innersoles.
“I can take some credit for those paper innersoles,” Sandy bragged. “My feet were killing me, standing at the door all day, so I said to Jimmy: ‘Jimmy, if only somebody would invent a good innersole that didn’t take up so much room like those foam-rubber things.’ And sure enough, he did it. They’re great, I got a pair in my shoes now, wanna see?”
“No, thank you.” The judge was eating.
IT WAS PAST midnight when Theo finished his homework in the dim light of the study lamp. The wind was still howling, and something (a word? a phrase?) was still eluding him. He had been studying solutions in chemistry. Solutions—that was it! The solution is simple, the will said. He was sure of it.
By changing for and thee to the numbers four
