“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 start 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 were 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 ‘till 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.


30


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