CHAPTER 21: The Fourth Bomb

Summary

Flora Baumbach and Turtle Wexler are counting their money in 2C when Theo Theodorakis bursts in, desperate to borrow Turtle's bicycle. He tells her that he didn't tell the bomb squad anything when they talked to him today. He was implying that he wouldn't reveal Turtle as the bomber, but Turtle thinks that he knows the truth --that it's Angela - when he mentions seeing her in the hospital. Turtle throws him the key to her padlock; she then calls her sister's hospital room but it's not accepting calls. Confused and scared, Turtle tells Baba that she's not feeling good and going to bed. Using Turtle's bicycle, Theo follows Crow and Otis to Skid Row, where he watches them work at the Good Salvation Soup Kitchen. Returning to Sunset Towers, Theo feels dirty for spying on them and taking part in Sam Westing's game.

Judge Ford believes she and Sandy McSouthers were done with researching the heirs, but Sandy reminds her that they haven't looked at themselves yet. Sandy goes over his own background, an immigrant from Scotland with an eighth grade education who worked at the Westing Paper mill for twenty years and was fired by Sam Westing for trying to organize a union. As for Josie-Jo Ford, her mother was a servant for the Westings and her father worked for the railroad and was a gardener for the Westings on his day off. Josie-Jo grew up in the Westing house, saw little of Violet and Mrs. Westing, but often played chess with Sam Westing himself. She was sent to boarding school at twelve and only returned to the Westing house two weeks ago, at the reading of the will. Sam Westing paid for her education, which includes Columbia University and a law degree in Harvard. She believes Sam Westing wanted a judge that was in his debt and so she recused herself from any Westingrelated cases. She has yet to repay her debt to Westing.

Theo is at Sunset Towers waiting for the elevator, still mad at himself about spying on Crow and Otis. As the elevator door opens, fireworks explode out of it. When the bomb squad arrives and checks on the elevator on the third floor, they see Turtle crying and Grace reprimanding her for doing so. In the elevator the police find a sign on the wall THE BOMBER STRIKES AGAIN!!! On the other side of the paper is an essay by Turtle. Grace demands to know if Turtle's really the bomber and Turtle asks for a lawyer.

The bomb squad hand Turtle over to Judge Ford, who realizes Turtle prefers to kick shins over setting bombs. She thinks Turtle is trying to protect the real culprit behind the first three bombs and grills the child on who it could be. She's surprised when her first, least likely guess, sister Angela Wexler, receives such a vehement protest from Turtle. However, it does make sense as Judge Ford thinks about it. She makes Turtle promise to never play with fireworks again. Turtle then confesses to being in the Westing house on the night that Mr. Westing died. She explains the story and how Sam Westing didn't look murdered but rather like a wax dummy. Turtle then asks for some bourbon on a piece of cotton to kill the pain for a cavity. Judge Ford sends Turtle home, which to Turtle means Flora Baumbach. Sandy runs into Turtle and doesn't appear at all disappointed in her despite the news that she's the bomber. Instead, he wants to buy one of Turtle's striped candles as a gift for his wife's birthday the next day. She has only one left and agrees to sell it to him for five dollars.

Back at the hospital, Angela Wexler and Sydelle Pulaski keep reading and re-reading the clues they've assembled, re-arranging the words to make sense of them. Sydelle now really needs her crutches and so has difficulty walking around. The pair had switched off the phones and put up a No Visitors sign to get their privacy. Nevertheless, Denton Deere slides a note under the door: he says he understands her need to think things over, then provides a clue that Chris Theodorakis wanted to pass along to her, PLAIN. With that word, Sydelle figures out the solution to the clues, that they're all words of the song "America the Beautiful".

Notes

Again, misinterpretation of information is crucial: Theo hints that he "knows" Turtle is the bomber but Turtle thinks he is threatening to expose Angela. Thus, Turtle sets off a fourth bomb to place blame squarely on herself for all the bombings - and ironically proves correct Theo's wrong-headed hunch about the bomber's identity. Sandy seems to forgive Turtle for being the bomber, when we discover at novel's end that he knew it was really Angela. The endgame of the Westing game is also in sight: he asks for a striped candle for his wife's birthday --which is a true but typically incomplete account, as he lights it on Crow's birthday to burn down the Westing house. Tellingly, Turtle's notion of going home is the comfort of Baba, not her parents.

Theo's disgust at himself is due to his misunderstanding of Otis Amber: he thinks a man who works at a soup kitchen cannot possibly be the murderer and is in fact of a higher moral fiber than Theo himself. However, this again turns out to be only part of the truth, since Otis is himself an expert of deception as a private investigator. Sandy's personal history playfully hints at the truth: Sam Westing was indeed an immigrant, we find out, had little education and worked at the factory. Readers also discover Judge Ford played chess with Sam Westing as a child, which helps to reveal with whom Theo played chess at the Westing house.