The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [50]
He nodded several times. “I realize that. I’m hoping the passage of time will make some of those issues moot.”
She’d gone back to fixing the coffee, pouring hot water into the mugs. “Either that or make me the most useless interview you’ve had in a long time. Go ahead. Shoot.”
“Do you remember someone named Beverly Hillstrom?”
To his relief, her face lit up. “Beverly? Good Lord, yes. Such a serious young woman, but one of the truly decent souls. I never saw such focus, before or since.” Her expression darkened. “Is she all right?”
“Fine, fine. At least physically. I’m actually trying to help her through some political trouble.”
Bedell looked relieved. “I had to ask. All those years hanging around the dead. It kind of gets under the skin—makes you morbid.”
She handed him his coffee, squeezed by again, and led the way through a perfectly appointed, if child-size, living room and out into a backyard just a little larger than a Ping-Pong table. They sat around a white-painted wrought-iron table and admired a carefully nurtured array of flowers and plants.
Bedell took a sip before resuming. “I always worried a little about Beverly. She never took half measures and never let herself off the hook. Actually, to be honest, I’m not surprised she’s in some political trouble. What’s she doing nowadays?”
“She heads up the OCME in Vermont.”
“Really? Good for her. I’m not surprised. Not surprised she’s a chief, and not surprised it’s in a little place like that. No offense.”
“None taken.” It was very good coffee. “How did she get along with Howard Medwed?”
“That was your classic master-student relationship. I sometimes felt that had it been with anyone else, it might have ended up wrong, but Medwed had no idea what power he held over her. He just duffed around, doing his thing, being a brilliant mess and letting us clean up after him.”
“I think that’s why I’m here, to be honest.”
“One of Medwed’s screwups? Which one?”
Gunther laughed at her attitude. “Flat-footed” was one word for it. He wondered if Medwed had ever fully appreciated her.
“I think it was actually a pretty big deal, at least locally. Hillstrom told me people got all worked up over it.”
Bedell’s eyes had grown big. “You’re not talking about the Morgenthau case, are you?”
“That’s it.”
“Good golly. Talk about an old ghost. That was a big deal. Almost got Medwed fired, and it did force Beverly out the door. I guess you already know that.”
“But not much more, I don’t. That’s what I’m looking for—the gory details.”
She laughed. “You would use that word.”
He shook his head apologetically. “Oh, right—sorry . . .”
“No, no,” she interrupted. “If I’m used to anything, it’s stuff like that. We got so good sounding respectful outside the office, while we were so completely not that way behind closed doors . . .” She waved it off. “Brings back memories, that’s all. Good ones, I might add. Okay, what did you want to know?”
“It’s not that difficult,” he admitted, “but a lot hangs on it: I need to know when Medwed found out Morgenthau was pregnant.”
“Right off the bat,” Susan said immediately. “He’s the one who did the autopsy. I was there when he made the discovery.” She saw the question forming on his face and answered, “And no, Beverly wasn’t in the room. I have an absolute memory of it, not only because of how it all ended up, but because I kept a daily journal and I put it all down.”
Joe couldn’t believe his luck. “You still have that?”
She smiled at him. “God knows why, but that’s what we diarists do—like we were Eudora Welty or somebody. I don’t even have kids to pass them on to. No,” she added after a brief pause, “Medwed and I were alone. I saw him straighten suddenly as he reached Judy’s lower abdomen, and he said something like ‘Oh, my dear,’ with real sadness, which was unusual for him. He was pretty much all business when he was working. And that’s when he told me.”
“She wasn’t far along, from what I hear,” Joe commented.
“Eight to ten weeks. You know she was fifty years old, right?