CHAPTER 18: The Trackers

Summary

Flora Baumbach now braids Turtle's hair regularly while Turtle reads The Wall Street Journal. She reads aloud a news piece that Julian R. Eastman, the newly elected chairman of the Westing Paper Products Corporation, has announced from London that earnings are expected to double next quarter. Turtle decides to sell all their stocks and put all the money into Westing. Turtle tells Flora she likes when she calls her Alice but that Turtle needs to call Mrs. Baumbach something different after the bomb scare. Turtle suggests Mrs. Baba and Flora shortens it to Baba. Turtle asks Baba about her daughter Rosalie but this only makes her angry.

In apartment 4D, Sandy is writing notes on Flora Baumbach: about the death of her retarded daughter Rosalie last year which prompted her to sell her bridal shop, and how her Westing connection was as Violet Westing's wedding dressmaker. He then looks at the data the private investigator has on Otis Amber and starts laughing. On the way to school, Theo Theodorakis stops Doug Hoo and asks who lives in the apartment next to his; Doug says it's Crow. Theo doesn't tell Doug about what happened with Crow last night, nor of the letter she gave him but which was only a Westing Paper Hankie in his bathrobe pocket this morning. Theo does tell his partner that their clues led to the answer ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in fertilizers, explosives, and rocket propellants. He then tells Doug to follow Otis Amber.

At the stockbroker, Flora Baumbach watches as shares of Westing Paper Products leap in value. After classes, Doug Hoo follows Otis Amber on foot, though Otis travels by bicycle and then bus. Doug follows Otis to the lawyer E.J. Plum, then to the hospital, a stockbroker's office, the high school, and then back to Sunset Towers. Exhausted, Doug is surprised when Otis Amber pounces on him, delivering a letter from Plum. There will be a second meeting of the heirs at the Westing house on Saturday night.

Judge Ford and Sandy go over their notes together as time runs short. The file on Otis Amber ties the delivery boy to Westing as he's the one who delivered the letters from Plum both times. The medical intern Denton Deere's connection to Westing seems to be that he's engaged to marry Violet Westing look-alike Angela Wexler. Sydelle Pulaski has no known tie to Westing and her supposed muscular ailment only happened after she started her vacation from Schultz Sausages, where she works. Judge Ford muses on how Sydelle does not seem to fit.

At the hospital, Angela tells the plastic surgeon she doesn't want the scar on her face removed. Denton protests, leading to a discussion of whether Angela wants to be married. Turtle arrives, asks Angela what she wrote under position when she signed for her newest letter, then leaves as a male nurse and E.J. Plum enters the room. As Plum talks to Angela, interested in her romantically, Grace Wexler enters the room and screams, as her clues led her to believe the attorney is the murderer.

Three people come to visit Chris Theodorakis that day. First is Otis Amber, who delivers the letter. Next is Flora Baumbach, who talks about her daughter Rosalie and, feeling guilty about seeing one of Chris' clues, tells him one of her own, MOUNTAIN. Last is Denton, who takes Chris to the hospital so he can be seen by a neurologist who has a new medicine that may help his condition. Chris says he will sign the check but Denton is no longer concerned about that. As they leave Sunset Towers together, Chris delights in the possibility that he's being kidnapped.

Notes

Flora's braiding of Turtle's hair shows she has completely supplanted Grace Wexler as a maternal figure. We have the first mention of Julian Eastman in a news piece - the same means by which news of Sam Westing's death was made public, and thus controlled by Sam Westing as part of his master plan. Turtle reciprocates her fondness for Flora by giving her a pet name - thus, the two have names for each other that no one else knows. However, the same problem she faces in her actual family - a rivalry with a "sister", in this case the dead Rosalie - troubles her.

Theo's encounter with Crow from the previous night is made stranger by the disappearance of the letter she gave him; we learn in the next chapter that Chris found it and assumed that the name on the front meant it was a love letter from Theo to Angela, not a gift from Crow to Angela. Doug following Otis becomes a game of tag at the end, as Otis pounces on Doug by surprise; that Otis was aware of Doug is a hint that he's not as idiotic as he seems, foreshadowing the revelation that he's actually a private investigator. Angela's decision not to repair her scar serves several related functions: a kind of punishment and reminder for her sins as the bomber; an assertion of her independence as a person; and a refusal to be defined by surface beauty.

Again, we see the odd dynamic between Denton Deere and Chris Theodorakis. Denton is still concerned about his identity as a doctor, but is now using it to help Chris - something he initially denied he could do. This is so important that he doesn't even care about the check, which was his initial concern - a foreshadowing of how he re-prioritizes his life when he eventually abandons plastic surgery to become a neurologist. Meanwhile, Chris is oblivious to the help Denton is offering, instead thinking about another unlikely adventure happening to him.