The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [34]
Joe smelled a too-good-to-be-true set-up. “Except for . . . ,” he suggested.
She gave him a sad smile. “One single mistake, not a character flaw, and one he had good reasons for making.”
He shook his head slightly.
She understood. “I know, I know. I’ll explain.” She paused to take another large sip of wine and motioned to the waiter for a second glass, even though hers was still partly full. Joe, drinking Coke, merely took note.
“Howard Medwed was near the end of his life when this happened,” Hillstrom continued. “He was seventy-three years old, his wife had died six months earlier, and he was being pressured as never before from a group of political opponents. Also, unbeknownst to everyone except me and his son, he’d just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. So, in purely practical terms, politics notwithstanding, he felt he needed to maintain his medical benefits.”
Joe frowned. “Couldn’t he have retired and kept the coverage?”
She held up a finger. “That gets complicated, but more to the point, it misses the bigger problem—the same people who wanted him gone were also backing a candidate he knew would be a disaster. It was only Dr. Medwed staying in place that was stopping them. I won’t bore you with ancient history, but in a nutshell, if he retired too soon, this idiot was a shoo-in; if he held on for just a few months, then the idiot went away and Medwed got to name his own successor. It was thornier than that, but that’s what it came down to: timing.”
The second wine arrived. Hillstrom drained her first glass and pushed it toward the waiter, who lingered with it in his hand.
“Would you like to order?”
“I’m not hungry,” Hillstrom said shortly.
“You have any soup?” Joe asked.
The waiter recited the options, and Joe chose a bowl of split pea, causing his companion to capitulate and join him with a French onion soup and a side order of bread to share.
Joe waited for the young man to leave before asking, “What happened?”
“There was a high-level case,” Hillstrom went on. “A reported dog in the road being hit multiple times turned out to be the remains of a woman. It became front-page news when she was finally identified as the wife of a prominent local politician, who, as luck would have it, was also a major backer of Medwed’s.”
She paused again for another sip before resuming. “It was a real mess. What was she doing in the middle of the night far from home? Why had she been on a busy road, on foot, where there were no businesses or residences she might have been visiting? Had she been murdered or did she die of natural causes? It went on and on. Howard did the autopsy himself, it being a high-level case, but later I assisted him with the follow-through because of its complexity and his poor health. That much was acceptable procedure. The hitch cropped up when he discovered the woman was pregnant. That, he kept private. He told me much later that he felt it wasn’t relevant, would only hurt his friend, and that no harm would result from withholding it.”
“Was he nuts?” Joe exclaimed. “After all those years on the job, he should’ve known better.”
“I grant you that,” she agreed. “But he was sentimental, having just lost his own wife. The woman in question was fifty years old. She and her husband had always wanted kids but never could. And finally, once the cause of death was ruled a natural, he didn’t see the point. The problem was, it got out anyhow and caused a whole secondary ruckus.”
“Hold it, hold it,” Joe interrupted. “I know you don’t want to get bogged down in details, but how did it end up a natural?”
“She was a jogger,” Hillstrom said simply, “named Judy Morgenthau. She was on a new route she’d never tried before, running a little later than usual and thus in