The Westing Game: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

On September first, the carefully chosen tenants move into Sunset Towers. Behind the north side of the building, a wire fence and a NO TRESPASSING sign have been erected, warning tenants that the property beyond is part of the Westing estate—the empty old Westing house, unoccupied for fifteen years, sits on a cliff beyond the towers to the north.

On September second, James Shin Hoo opens his Chinese eatery, Shin Hoo’s Restaurant, on the fifth floor. On the same day, George Theodorakis opens up a less-expensive coffee shop on the ground floor and finds himself flooded with orders from workers who live in nearby Westingtown and work at the Westing Paper Products plant. Though there is tension between the two restaurateurs, the larger problems to face the tenants of Sunset Towers are yet to come.

On Halloween, four people stand in the Sunset Towers driveway. Sandy McSouthers, the doorman, stands with high-school seniors Theo Theodorakis and Doug Hoo and the sixty-two-year-old delivery boy Otis Amber. Otis is pointing north, and all four can see that there is smoke coming from the chimney of the Westing house. Junior-high-schooler Turtle Wexler pedals into the driveway on her bicycle, having seen the smoke herself. She asks if old man Sam Westing has returned to the house. Otis Amber replies that no one has seen the man for years—rumor has it that he lives on a private island or that he died inside the Westing manor years ago and has been “sprawled out on a fancy Oriental rug” rotting away for a long time. Turtle shivers at the grisly image.

Sandy suggests that the smoke is the work of delinquent kids from Westingtown. Exactly one year ago, he says, a pair of kids entered the Westing house on a dare on Halloween night. Turtle whips her head around. Doug Hoo dodges Turtle’s long braid—she kicks in the shins anyone who touches it. Otis says that the kids who entered the manor came out minutes later claiming to have been chased by a ghost. One ran off the cliff at the edge of the property and died on the rocks below; the other, he says, sits locked in a state asylum, unable to say anything but “purple waves.” Sandy laments that such misfortune befell two kids playing at a juvenile bet. Turtle, however, says she’d take any bet offered to her—she’s not afraid of the Westing house at all.

Upstairs, from the window of apartment 2D, 15-year-old Chris Theodorakis watches the group clustered in the driveway. Chris, who has used a wheelchair since the recent onset of a mysterious neurological disease, spends his days birdwatching out the windows of his family’s apartment. Even though Chris knows no one can see into the apartment, he sometimes gets the distinct feeling that he is being watched. As Chris’s body succumbs to a spasm, he watches the smoke coming from the Westing house curl toward Westingtown and sees someone with a limp walk into the side door of the house.