“Around six, I left there and came back to the city. But I didn’t go home, I drove by Allison’s place. She lives in one of those new buildings on the river. There’s no doorman, so I just went inside and looked at mailboxes until I found her number. She’s on the fourth floor, overlooking Jefferson. The view sucks.
“She didn’t let me in right away. I lied to her and told her I was having an affair with Mrs. Cooper. Later I told her it wasn’t true, and she said she didn’t believe me in the first place.
“We saw each other every night after that. Mr. Cooper would go home, and I’d pull into his parking spot. Then, Saturday night I went to the Cooper’s, but his car was there. He wasn’t with Allison, so I went back to the city and went to her place. I stayed there all night. We had sex until the sun came up.
“We made plans to meet at the coffee shop in the afternoon. She said she was meeting Mrs. Cooper there to apologize for screwing her husband. That’s when I told her the truth, that I cared a lot for Mrs. Cooper, but that she refused to get involved with me.
“Mrs. Cooper treats me better than anyone ever did, and it upset me seeing her so sad.”
Bowing his head, he began to cry again.
“What happened after you left Allison’s house Sunday morning?”
“My mom was waiting by my car. She was crying and screaming at me, and told me to get home.
“I went right home because I was scared. My mom was pissed off. She hit me in the head. That’s her MO, my ma. She likes to slap people around, my dad included. He winces when she comes at him, it makes me sick seeing him act like a pussy.”
“What did they say about you staying out all night?”
“My dad said to go to my room, but my mom was on the warpath. She said she called the cops about me being with an older woman, but they said because I was eighteen; they couldn’t do anything about me bein’ with Allison. She was so mad, she called Allison a whore.”
Albert glanced at Jill.
“What kind of car does your mother drive?” Jill asked.
“An Oldsmobile,” he said.
Slouching over, his hands dangled in between his knees. Every so often he’d start crying, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Jill got up to retrieve something for him to use and came back with a roll of paper toweling.
“What happened behind the donut shop?” Jill asked softly.
Shaking his head, his despair was intense. “We made love. It was real making love,” he said. “Before that, we’d talked on the phone every day, planning how when I graduated in June we’d move into together. Or I’d move in with her while I went to college. My mom listened in and had a fit, embarrassing me.
“‘You’re not going to college,’ my mother said, laughing. ‘You’ll be lucky if you graduate high school.’ Allison hung up, sending me a text that she was sorry if she got me in trouble. My mother was furious.”
Reaching around to his back, he pulled his shirt out of his jeans and up to his neck in back. “She beat me.”
Standing up to get a better look, Jill nodded her head. “We’ll get pictures of this, Chris. She’s not allowed to do this to another human being, let alone her own son.”
“What happened next?” Albert asked.
“She followed me to the donut shop. I didn’t see her, so she must have waited for us to go around back. She followed us with her lights off so I didn’t even see her until later.” Sobbing again, he moaned in anguish.
“I told Allison to run, but she wouldn’t. ‘I want to meet your mom,’ she said. My mother was like a crazy person. She jumped out of the car, but I ran toward her, trying to stop her. As soon as I was in front of her, she slugged me in the face. Allison tried to get between us, but my mom shoved her away.
“My mom screamed for me to get out of there, and I just did as she said. I never looked at her, at Allison, again. But I know my ma was the one to kill her.”
Chapter 7
Morning rush hour traffic in progress downtown, Jill patiently sat bumper to bumper without putting the flashers on to get by, too tired to risk getting in an accident trying to squeeze around cars. Driving through the alley to get to her father’s grocery store, she pulled up to the rear door, and shut the engine off. Putting her head back, she closed her eyes for what felt like a full minute, but it was closer to fifteen.
The door opening startled her. “You going to sleep in the alley, or come inside for breakfast?” Gus Zannos asked in Greek.
“Papa, can’t I do both?” Jill asked, moaning. “I’m so tired.”
“Did you work all night?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “Don’t I look it?”
“You look very nice,” he said. “Come in, come in.”
Shutting the car door, he waited by the entrance to the back of the grocery while she forced herself to step out of the car.
“I saw your young woman on TV,” he said. “Her family is heartbroken, begging for anyone with information to come forward.”
“The case is pretty much settled, Papa,” she said. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”
“Wow, that was fast! Who did it?”
“A jealous mother, I think. We still have a little work to do. All I want right now is coffee and toast.”
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, leading her inside to a cluster of small tables surrounded by chairs situated in the rear of the store.
Collapsing into a chair, she’d sit there as long as it took to drink two cups of coffee and eat a plate of buttered, toasted Greek bread with olive oil, tomato, and feta. When she finished it, he brought her two pieces of baklava, the honey so fresh she swore she could hear bees buzzing. The familiar surroundings, a place where she spent most of her childhood and a good portion of her adult life, the comfort of the grocery store helped clarify the most muddled thoughts.
Although she’d never been to Greece, or had the desire to even leave Detroit, the store was Greece, Greek people, their food, language and culture, all rolled into one, slightly shabby place.
“The moment I step over that threshold, I feel like I can solve any problem,” she said, pointing to the back door. “Nothing is insurmountable.”
“That’s nice,” Gus answered, hovering over her with the pot of coffee. “It has the same effect on me.”
“Something’s nagging me about my case. It doesn’t make any sense why the boy’s mother would have so much animosity toward the victim. There’s a piece missing. It’s obvious, but alluding me.”
Without revealing important information, she gave her father just enough to satisfy his curiosity.
“What does your partner have to say?” Gus asked.
“We haven’t talked about it yet. Albert went home to see Roger before he left for work, and I came here before I went home to shower.”
“When you see him again, ask him,” Gus replied.
“I will,” she said, looking at her watch. “The mother should be waiting for us at the station. I’m hoping when I talk to her that whatever is missing will be revealed. If her son just met the victim a week ago, that’s hardly enough time for so much animosity to build up, no matter how jealous she is.”
“An unbalanced mother, especially one who is possessive of her son, doesn’t need a motive,” Gus said. “Read Greek mythology. Aphrodite found Adonis right after he was born, and gave him to Persephone to raise. Then Persephone fell in love with him and refused to give him back. They fought over Adonis and engaged Zeus to settle the dispute. Of course, Adonis was the one to die, but you get my point.”
“That might be part of the missing piece,” Jill said, pushing her chair back. “She didn’t want anyone else to have her son. I’d better get home and get ready for work.”
They said goodbye, but not before Gus gave her a brown bag with a small Greek salad, the dressing fragrant with anchovies and garlic, and bread and butter for her lunch.
Driving to her apartment just a few blocks away, Jil
l thought of the players involved. Who so enraged Mrs. Cooper; she didn’t even have a first name yet, that she’d murder a stranger? Was it the victim? Did Allison Blumenthal make contact with Chris’s mother somehow? But what would her motive be?
Faith Cooper, who denied any wrong doing with Chris Burns, just seemed too good to be true.
Reaching the one bedroom apartment she called home, Jill sat in her car for a few minutes, looking out at the building. The danger of going inside was the call of her bed. Exhausted, she was running on raw energy of coffee and carbohydrates, aided by the fresh baklava her father served her for breakfast.
She thought back to twenty-four hours ago. The call had come in at dawn. “Jill, it’s Jan Grant, dispatch. I’ve called Albert, too. You have a body Midtown. On Peterboro, in the middle of the block.”
“Okay,” Jill said, rolling out of bed.
“Just so you know, Sam’s at an infant death. It’s Dr. Stone’s baby.”
“Oh, how awful,” Jill said, not really wanting to hear anymore, saying goodbye and then quickly hanging up.
While she sat in her car, the juxtaposition of images of the dead infant and the young woman with broken fingers hovered in her mind. The infant wasn’t her jurisdiction, thank God. That poor family.
The issue of Allison Blumenthal’s ring was still unresolved. Who took her ring? Surely Mrs. Burns didn’t stick around to take it, if what Chris said was true. They had to find the gun that was used, number one, and number two, where was that ring?
Leaving the car, the cold air hit her in the face. Running up the staircase on the side of the building to her apartment, a fleeting thought thought of Alex Kazmerek brought a smile to her face. Their relationship was comfortable. If she could, she’d leave things just the way they were forever. No entanglements, no promises, no pressure.
Their relationship was a problem for her father who, although born in Detroit after his parents emigrated from Greece, had traditional ideas about the sanctity of sex, and it definitely didn’t belong outside of marriage. Keeping her relationship with Alex secret, or at least not rubbing it in her father’s face, took a lot of energy and wasn’t always easy, but it was worth it. She never wanted Gus to feel disrespected, and most of all, she had respect for herself. Alex’s overnight visits were confined to the nights she was on call so the English bulldog they shared ownership of wouldn’t be alone if she got called out. He was at Alex’s house now, and as she pushed the door of her apartment open, she missed his greeting.
The apartment was in an old building on the edge of Greektown in a residential neighborhood. It was on the second floor, in back, and a vacant lot next door opened up the view from her living room so that she could see the lights of the city at night and a glimpse of water during the day.
Not Spartan exactly, her apartment could be described as basic, the decorating limited to a few pieces of furniture that had belonged to her grandmother, a new bedroom set, and an unused kitchen. A painted table and two chairs, a couch and coffee table and an ancient chair which had come from her father’s apartment were all she needed.
Against a wall outside of her bedroom she’d set up the only piece of furniture her grandparents brought from Greece, a narrow pine table, made of a yard long, foot wide piece of pine with four slender legs. On the table, Jill had arranged a few mementos she’d collected over the years, including gifts from loved ones, belongings of her late mother and grandmother, and things she’d found. She referred to the table as her altar in her thoughts, and it was to the altar that daily supplications were made for safety for herself and loved ones, and for help to solve cases.
Stopping before the altar, she mumbled words, picking up a postcard sized icon of Mary and Jesus. “Help me, please. Where’s the ring?”
The ring was crucial. As she prepared for the shower, she thought of the ring, how it exposed the affair when Faith Cooper searched her husband’s office for evidence after seeing his boss at the movie theater. The receipt for its purchase, the motive of Ken giving it to placate Allison when he had no intention of leaving his wife,
The ring was perhaps not the motive, but it was important. If Mrs. Burns murdered Allison, would she have even noticed the ring to remove? CSI had collected guns from all the players with ballistics in process. Hopefully, the guns would provide further evidence. If the garbage truck which had emptied the dumpster Monday morning, had run over the casing, evidence would have been lost. She thought of the bundle removed from the trunk of Mr. Gupta’s car, festering in a garbage dump.
Jill reminded herself that it had only been slightly more than twenty four hours since the body was found. The car too was key. That Oldsmobile. If Mrs. Burns fired the gun, there would be gunpowder residue on the steering wheel.
Quickly rinsing off in the shower, she ran to the phone with a towel around her. Dialing the station, she asked for CSI. Don Short answered the phone.
“I just thought of something. Could you get a warrant to test a steering wheel for gunpowder residue?”
“Sure,” he answered. “Whose car and where?”
“It’s Tuesday morning, school is in session. Over at the high school, Midtown,” she said. “Faith Cooper’s car.”
Chapter 8
After the meeting with Allison Blumenthal Sunday afternoon, Faith Cooper left the coffee shop, more despondent than she had ever felt, even worse then after finding the receipt for the ring Ken bought. To Faith, everything she observed in Allison justified why Ken would be attracted to her. Cute, curvaceous, and bubbly, Allison was the exact opposite of Faith, who was thin, plain, and rarely laughed out loud. Immediately comfortable with Faith, Allison let her guard down and confided her longing for true love, and that she knew she wasn’t going to find it with Ken.
When it was time for the women to part ways that afternoon, Faith was already smitten with Allison, feeling as though she could have been a close friend, like a younger sister, if Ken hadn’t decided to use her. Anger over his selfishness amplified the forgiveness she had toward Allison, and the cameras missed the goodbye hug the women gave each other, genuine at that moment. The reality was, however, that they would never be friends as long as Ken was in the picture. Faith didn’t feel evolved enough to pull a relationship off with the mistress. The void not having a close female friend felt cavernous.
Depressed and lonely, she got into her car and pulled away from the shop, lingering at the exit just long enough for traffic to clear. When she was on the road, her eye caught something that would change the course of her life; a familiar, lanky gait walking to Allison’s car.
The street was lined with overgrown shrubbery, and she immediately pulled over to the curb, heart pounding a staccato beat. In her classroom the previous week, Chris Burns admitted he’d followed Allison. Was that the case now? Had he followed them and was going to risk a meeting?
Faith got out of the car and ran up onto the sidewalk, sneaking along the shrubbery to the beginning of the donut shop parking lot. There he was, Chris Burns, leaning in Allison’s open car window, laughing and talking loud enough that Faith could hear their voices, familiar, friendly, flirtatious. It was clear they knew each other. Anger simmering, having switched its direction from Ken, to Chris, and now to Allison, Faith’s sense of betrayal exploded.
Wasn’t it bad enough that Allison, Ken’s mistress, was now setting sight on Chris? Obvious, even from a distance, Allison played the coquette to Chris’s innocence for all she was worth, batting her eyelashes, smiling up at him, tossing her curls.
Watching, oblivious to cars driving by, Faith saw Chris open Allison’s door and hold out his hand for her, watched her get out of the car and then effortlessly move along side Chris while he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and walked her to the passenger said of his Mustang. The familiarity in their bodies could not be missed. Opening her door, he looked down at her as she slid in, and they both laughed over some comment Faith could not hear. There was no mistaking the lilt i
n his step as he walked around the front of the car, a smile from ear to ear on his face.
Conversation resuming when he got in and started the car, they had a lot to say to each other as he maneuvered it around the parking lot, past the drive thru window and out of Faith’s sight. They were going to park behind the donut shop! The thought enraged her, jealousy increasing exponentially. Unable to control her emotions, she began to cry, brokenheartedly. Everyone had betrayed her; Ken, that bastard, choosing the young Allison, Allison who pretended to care about Faith but was nothing more than a whore, and Chris, her student, who she’d put so much energy into helping and protecting.
Just as she’d determined she was going to confront them, an older model car pulled around Faith’s and she recognized Chris’s mother following her son behind the shop.
Faith lagged back, frightened, letting Mrs. Burns do whatever she’d come to do. From her vantage point, it looked like Mrs. Burns was watching and waiting and then after several minutes, she sped up and out of sight. Getting back into her car, Faith waited, first for Mrs. Burns to pass by, seething, and then Chris followed in his car, with no passengers.
Then, confusingly, her cell phone rang. Looking at the screen, the name Ermine Gupta popped up, no one she knew, but she answered it.
“Oh, my god! Thank god you answered!” Allison cried. “Can you come back and pick me up? I’m stranded at the coffee shop.”
“What happened?” Faith said softly, her heart thumping in her throat.
“I ran into a friend, and he just left with my purse and keys in his car! Can you take me home to get my spare?”
“Who was the friend?” Faith asked, driving slowly.
“He’s a wonderful young guy,” Allison answered. “You actually know him. He’s a student of yours. We’ve been seeing each other.”
“But you’re twenty-five,” Faith said, the tremor in her voice unmistakable. “My students are seventeen, eighteen tops. What would you have in common with someone so young?”
The Donut Shop Murder Page 9
