“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
