by Ellen Raskin
“Naw,” Otis Amber, the old delivery boy, answered. “Nobody’s seen him for years. Supposed to be living on a private island in the South Seas, he is; but most folks say he’s dead. Long-gone dead. They say his corpse is still up there in that big old house. They say his body is sprawled out on a fancy Oriental rug, and his flesh is rotting off those mean bones, and maggots are creeping in his eye sockets and crawling out his nose holes.” The delivery boy added a high-pitched he-he-he to the gruesome details.
Now someone shivered. It was Turtle.
“Serves him right,” Sandy said. At other times a cheery fellow, the doorman often complained bitterly about having been fired from his job of twenty years in the Westing paper mill. “But somebody must be up there. Somebody alive, that is.” He pushed back the gold-braided cap and squinted at the house through his steel-framed glasses as if expecting the curling smoke to write the answer in the autumn air. “Maybe it’s those kids again. No, it couldn’t be.”
“What kids?” the three kids wanted to know.
“Why, those two unfortunate fellas from Westingtown.”
“What unfortunate fellas?” The three heads twisted from the doorman to the delivery boy. Doug Hoo ducked Turtle’s whizzing braid. Touch her precious pigtail, even by accident, and she’ll kick you in the shins, the brat. He couldn’t chance an injury to his legs, not with the big meet coming. The track star began to jog in place.
“Horrible, it was horrible,” Otis Amber said with a shudder that sent the loose straps of his leather aviator’s helmet swinging about his long, thin face. “Come to think of it, it happened exactly one year ago tonight. On Halloween.”
“What happened?” Theo Theodorakis asked impatiently. He was late for work in the coffee shop.
“Tell them, Otis,” Sandy urged.
The delivery boy stroked the gray stubble on his pointed chin. “Seems it all started with a bet; somebody bet them a dollar they couldn’t stay in that spooky house five minutes. One measly buck! The poor kids hardly got through those French doors on this side of the Westing house when they came tearing out like they was being chased by a ghost. Chased by a ghost—or worse.”
Or worse? Turtle forgot her throbbing toothache. Theo Theodorakis and Doug Hoo, older and more worldly-wise, exchanged winks but stayed to hear the rest of the story.
“One fella ran out crazy-like, screaming his head off. He never stopped screaming ’til he hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. The other fella hasn’t said but two words since. Something about purple.”
Sandy helped him out. “Purple waves.”
Otis Amber nodded sadly. “Yep, that poor fella just sits in the state asylum saying, ‘Purple waves, purple waves’ over and over again, and his scared eyes keep staring at his hands. You see, when he came running out of the Westing house, his hands was dripping with warm, red blood.”
Now all three shivered.
“Poor kid,” the doorman said. “All that pain and suffering for a dollar bet.”
“Make it two dollars for each minute I stay in there, and you’re on,” Turtle said.
Someone was spying on the group in the driveway.
From the front window of apartment 2D, fifteen-year-old Chris Theodorakis watched his brother Theo shake hands (it must be a bet) with the skinny, one-pigtailed girl and rush into the lobby. The family coffee shop would be busy now; his brother should have been working the counter half an hour ago. Chris checked the wall clock. Two more hours before Theo would bring up his dinner. Then he would tell him about the limper.
Earlier that afternoon Chris had followed the flight of a pur ple martin (Progne subis) across the field of brambles, through the oaks, up to the red maple on the hill. The bird flew off, but something else caught his eye. Someone (he could not tell if the person was a man or a woman) came out of the shadows on the lawn, unlocked the French doors, and disappeared into the Westing house. Someone with a limp. Minutes later smoke began to rise from the chimney.
Once again Chris turned toward the side window and scanned the house on the cliff. The French doors were closed; heavy drapes hung full against the seventeen windows he had counted so many times.
They didn’t need drapes on the special glass windows here in Sunset Towers. He could see out, but nobody could see in. Then why did he sometimes feel that someone was watching him? Who could be watching him? God? If God was watching, then why was he like this?
The binoculars fell to the boy’s lap. His head jerked, his body coiled, lashed by violent spasms. Relax, Theo will come soon. Relax, soon the geese will be flying south in a V. Canada goose (Branta canadensis). Relax. Relax and watch the wind tangle the smoke and blow it toward Westingtown.
3
TENANTS IN AND OUT
UPSTAIRS IN 3D Angela Wexler stood on a hassock as still and blank-faced pretty as a store-window dummy. Her pale blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the lake.
“Turn, dear,” said Flora Baumbach, the dressmaker, who lived and worked in a smaller apartment on the second floor.
Angela pivoted in a slow quarter turn. “Oh!”
Startled by the small cry, Flora Baumbach dropped the pin from her pudgy fingers and almost swallowed the three in her mouth.
“Please be careful, Mrs. Baumbach; my Angela has very delicate skin.” Grace Windsor Wexler was supervising the fitting of her daughter’s wedding dress from the beige velvet couch. Above her hung the two dozen framed flower prints she had selected and arranged with the greatest of taste and care. She could have been an interior decorator, a good one, too, if it wasn’t for the pressing demands of so on and so forth.
“Mrs. Baumbach didn’t prick me, Mother,” Angela said evenly. “I was just surprised to see smoke coming from the Westing house chimney.”
Crawling with slow caution on her hands and knees, Flora Baumbach paused in the search for the dropped pin to peer up through her straight gray bangs.
Mrs. Wexler set her coffee cup on the driftwood coffee table and craned her neck for a better view. “We must have new neighbors; I’ll have to drive up there with a housewarming gift; they may need some decorating advice.”
“Hey, look! There’s smoke coming from the Westing house!” Again Turtle was late with the news.
“Oh, it’s you.” Mrs. Wexler always seemed surprised to see her other daughter, so unlike golden-haired, angel-faced Angela.
Flora Baumbach, about to rise with the found pin, quickly sank down again to protect her sore shin in the shag carpeting. She had pulled Turtle’s braid in the lobby yesterday.
“Otis Amber says that old man Westing’s stinking corpse is rotting on an Oriental rug.”
“My, oh my,” Flora Baumbach exclaimed, and Mrs. Wexler clicked her tongue in an irritated “tsk.”
Turtle decided not to go on with the horror story. Not that her mother cared if she got killed or ended up a raving lunatic. “Mrs. Baumbach, could you hem my witch’s costume? I need it for tonight.”
Mrs. Wexler answered. “Can’t you see she’s busy with Angela’s wedding dress? And why must you wear a silly costume like that? Really, Turtle, I don’t know why you insist on making yourself ugly.”
“It’s no sillier than a wedding dress,” Turtle snapped back. “Besides, nobody gets married anymore, and if they do, they don’t wear silly wedding dresses.” She was close to a tantrum. “Besides, who would want to marry that stuck-up-know-it-all-marshmallow-face-doctor-denton . . . ?”
“That’s enough of your smart mouth!” Mrs. Wexler leaped up, hand ready to strike; instead she straightened a framed flower print, patted her fashionable honey-blonde hairdo, and sat down again. She had never hit Turtle, but one of these days—besides, a stranger was present. “Doctor Deere is a brilliant young man,” she explained for Flora Baumbach’s ears. The dressmaker smiled politely. “Angela will soon be Angela Deere; isn’t that a precious name?” The dressmaker nodded. “And then we’ll have two doctors in the family. Now where do you think you’re going?”
Turtle was at the front door. “Downstairs to tell daddy about the smoke coming from the Westing house.”
“Come back this instant. You know your father operates in the afternoon; why don’t you go to your room and work on stock market reports or whatever you do in there.”
“Some room, it’s even too small for a closet.”
“I’ll hem your witch’s costume, Turtle,” Angela offered.
Mrs. Wexler beamed on her perfect child draped in white. “What an angel.”
Crow’s clothes were black; her skin, dead white. She looked severe. Rigid, in fact. Rigid and righteously severe. No one could have guessed that under that stern facade her stomach was doing flip-flops as Doctor Wexler cut out a corn.
Staring down at the fine lines of pink scalp that showed through the podiatrist’s thinning light brown hair did nothing to ease her queasiness; so, softly humming a hymn, she settled her gaze on the north window. “Smoke!”
“Watch it!” Jake Wexler almost cut off her little toe along with the corn.
Unaware of the near amputation, the cleaning woman stared at the Westing house.
“If you will just sit back,” Jake began, but his patient did not hear him. She must have been a handsome woman at one time, but life had used her harshly. Her faded hair, knotted in a tight bun on the nape of her gaunt neck, glinted gold-red in the light. Her profile was fine, marred only by the jut of her clenched jaw. Well, let’s get on with it, Friday was his busy day, he had phone calls to make. “Please sit back, Mrs. Crow. I’m almost finished.”
“What?”
Jake gently replaced her foot on the chair’s pedestal. “I see you’ve hurt your shin.”
“What?” For an instant their eyes met; then she looked away. A shy creature (or a guilty one), Crow averted her face when she spoke. “Your daughter Turtle kicked me,” she muttered, staring once again at the Westing house. “That’s what happens when there is no religion in the home. Sandy says Westing’s corpse is up there, rotting away on an Oriental rug, but I don’t believe it. If he’s truly dead, then he’s roasting in hell. We are sinners, all.”
“What do you mean his corpse is rotting on an Oriental rug, some kind of Persian rug, maybe a Chinese rug.” Mr. Hoo joined his son at the glass sidewall of the fifth-floor restaurant. “And why were you wasting precious time listening to an overaged delivery boy with an overactive imagination when you should have been studying.” It was not a question; Doug’s father never asked questions. “Don’t shrug at me, go study.”
“Sure, Dad.” Doug jogged off through the kitchen; it was no use arguing that there was no school tomorrow, just track practice. He jogged down the back stairs; no matter what excuse he gave, “Go study,” his father would say, “go study.” He jogged into the Hoos’ rear apartment, stretched out on the bare floor and repeated “Go study” to twenty sit-ups.
Only two customers were expected for the dinner hour (Shin Hoo’s Restaurant could seat one hundred). Mr. Hoo slammed the reservations book shut, pressed a hand against the pain in his ample stomach, unwrapped a chocolate bar, and devoured it quickly before acid etched another ulcer. Back home again, is he. Well, Westing won’t get off so easy this time, not on his life.
A small, delicate woman in a long white apron stood in silence before the restaurant’s east window. She stared longingly into the boundless gray distance as if far, far on the other side of Lake Michigan lay China.
Sandy McSouthers saluted as the maroon Mercedes swung around the curved driveway and came to a stop at the entrance. He opened the car door with a ceremony reserved only for Judge J. J. Ford. “Look up there, Judge. There’s smoke coming from the Westing house.”
A tall black woman in a tailored suit, her short-clipped hair touched with gray, slipped out from behind the wheel, handed the car keys to the doorman, and cast a disinterested glance at the house on the hill.
“They say nobody’s up there, just the corpse of old man Westing rotting away on an Oriental rug,” Sandy reported as he hoisted a full briefcase from the trunk of the car. “Do you believe in ghosts, Judge?”
“There is certain to be a more rational explanation.”
“You’re right, of course, Judge.” Sandy opened the heavy glass door and followed on the judge’s heels through the lobby. “I was just repeating what Otis Amber said.”
“Otis Amber is a stupid man, if not downright mad.” J. J. Ford hurried into the elevator. She should not have said that, not her, not the first black, the first woman, to have been elected to a judgeship in the state. She was tired after a trying day, that was it. Or was it? So Sam Westing has come home at last. Well, she could sell the car, take out a bank loan, pay him back—in cash. But would he take it? “Please don’t repeat what I said about Otis Amber, Mr. McSouthers.”
“Don’t worry, Judge.” The doorman escorted her to the door of apartment 4D. “What you tell me is strictly confidential.” And it was. J. J. Ford was the biggest tipper in Sunset Towers.
“I saw someb-b-b . . .” Chris Theodorakis was too excited to stutter out the news to his brother. One arm shot out and twisted up over his head. Dumb arm.
Theo squatted next to the wheelchair. “Listen, Chris, I’ll tell you about that haunted castle on the hill.” His voice was soothing and hushed in mystery. “Somebody is up there, Chris, but nobody is there, just rich Mr. Westing, and he’s dead. Dead as a squashed June bug and rotting away on a moth-eaten Oriental rug.”
Chris relaxed as he always did when his brother told him a story. Theo was good at making up stories.
“And the worms are crawling in and out of the dead man’s skull, in and out of his ear holes, his nose holes, his mouth holes, in and out of all his holes.”
Chris laughed, then quickly composed his face. He was supposed to look scared.
Theo leaned closer. “And high above the putrid corpse a crystal chandelier is tinkling. It tinkles and twinkles, but not one breath of air stirs in that gloomy tomb of a room.”
Gloomy tomb of a room—Theo will make a good writer someday, Chris thought. He wouldn’t spoil this wonderful, spooky Halloween story by telling him about the real person up there, the one with the limp.
So Chris sat quietly, his body at ease, and heard about ghosts and ghouls and purple waves, and smiled at his brother with pure delight.
“A smile that could break your heart,” Sydelle Pulaski, the tenant in 3C, always said. But no one paid any attention to Sydelle Pulaski.
Sydelle Pulaski struggled out of the taxi, large end first. She was not a heavy woman, just wide-hipped from years of secretarial sitting. If only there was a ladylike way to get out of a cab. Her green rhinestone-studded glasses slipped down her fleshy nose as she grappled with a tall triangular package and a stuffed shopping bag. If only that lazy driver would lend her a hand.
Not for a nickel tip, he wouldn’t. The cabbie slammed the back door and sped around the curved driveway, narrowly missing the Mercedes that Sandy was driving to the parking lot.
At least the never-there-when-you-need-him doorman had propped open the front door. Not that he ever helped her, or noticed her, for that matter.
No one ever noticed. Sydelle Pulaski limped through the lobby. She could be carrying a high-powered rifle in that package and no one would notice. She had moved to Sunset Towers hoping to meet elegant people, but no one had invited her in for so much as a cup of tea. No one paid any attention to her, except that poor crippled boy whose smile could break your heart, and that bratty kid with the braid—she’ll be sorry she kicked her in the shin.
Juggling her load, earrings jingling and charm bracelet jangling, Sydelle Pulaski unlocked the several locks to apartment 3C and bolted the door behind her. There’d be fewer burglaries around here if people listened to her about putting in dead-bolt locks. But nobody listened. Nobody cared.
On the plastic-covered dining table she set out the contents of the shopping bag: six cans of enamel, paint thinner, and brushes. She unwrapped the long package and le
aned four wooden crutches against the wall. The sun was setting over the parking lot, but Sydelle Pulaski did not look out her back window. From the side window smoke could be seen rising from the Westing house, but Sydelle Pulaski did not notice.
“No one ever notices Sydelle Pulaski,” she muttered, “but now they will. Now they will.”
4
THE CORPSE FOUND
THE HALLOWEEN MOON was full. Except for her receding chin Turtle Wexler looked every inch the witch, her dark unbraided hair streaming wild in the wind from under her peaked hat, a putty wart pasted on her small beaked nose. If only she could fly to the Westing house on a broomstick instead of scrambling over rocks on all fours, what with all she had to carry. Under the long black cape the pockets of her jeans bulged with necessities for the night’s dangerous vigil.
Doug Hoo had already reached the top of the cliff and taken his station behind the maple on the lawn. (The track star was chosen timekeeper because he could run faster than anyone in the state of Wisconsin.) Here she comes, it’s about time. Shivering knee-deep in damp leaves that couldn’t do his leg muscles much good, he readied his thumb on the button of the stopwatch.
Turtle squinted into the blackness that lay within the open French doors. Open, as though someone or some Thing was expecting her. There’s no such thing as a ghost; besides, all you had to do was speak friendly-like to them. (Ghosts, like dogs, know when a person’s scared.) Ghosts or worse, Otis Amber had said. Well, not even the “worse” could hurt Turtle Wexler. She was pure of heart and deed; she only kicked shins in self-defense, so that couldn’t count against her. She wasn’t scared; she was not scared.
“Hurry up!” That was Doug from behind the tree.
At two dollars a minute, twenty-five minutes would pay for a subscription to The Wall Street Journal. She could stay all night. She was prepared. Turtle checked her pockets: two sandwiches, Sandy’s flask filled with orange pop, a flashlight, her mother’s silver cross to ward off vampires. The putty wart on her nose (soaked in Angela’s perfume in the event she was locked up with the stinking corpse) was clogging her nostrils with sticky sweetness. Turtle took a deep breath of chill night air and flinched with pain. She was afraid of dentists, not ghosts or . . . don’t think about purple waves, think about two dollars a minute. Now, one—two—three—three and a half—GO!