Book
Grace Windsor Wexler is Violet Westing.
Think about it: Grace is 42 during the events of the story. Violet supposedly died twenty years before the events of the story, and she was in her twenties at the time, thus making her about the same age as Grace. Also, it's mentioned in the story that Sam Westing was an only child, meaning that he couldn't possibly have real nieces or nephews. If Grace really is biologically related to Sam, as she repeatedly claims throughout the story, she'd almost have to be one of Sam's daughters, but since it's also mentioned in the story that Sam had only one daughter, this means that Grace Wexler and Violet Westing are one and the same. Why isn't she dead, then? Simple: she faked her own death to get out of marrying that dude her parents set her up with in order to marry Jake Wexler.- Sam Westing's official history says he's an only child. That doesn't necessarily mean that Windy Windkloppel didn't have any siblings. Also, this would only work if Grace and her own parents completely failed to recognize one another, despite how both of the latter worked at Sunset Towers for months before the Game began. And we know for a fact that Sandy, at least, had watched Grace closely enough to anticipate her actions ("Sit down, Grace Windsor Wexler!").
- Leaving aside the issue of family, surely her former love George, Chris and Theo's father, would have recognised her if she was Violet.
- Although by that point he had remarried, and he appears so little in the book that for all we know, he did.
- At one point he stares at Angela, never at Grace.
The person who stole Sydelle's shorthand notebook was....
Sandy. Everyone assumed that the thief wanted those notes in order to gain an unfair advantage in the Game, but Sandy took it for precisely the opposite reason, to ensure that nobody would have such an edge. In fact, he was so concerned about it skewing the competition that he snowshoed over from the Westing Mansion and hid in Sunset Towers' utility areas until Ms. Pulaski left her notebook unguarded. It wasn't returned until later on, once the culprit was sure that Sydelle could be persuaded to share the translation with everybody equally.