The Donut Shop Murder Read online

  “I graduated from there,” Allison said, stating a year seven years earlier.

  “Oh, my God, you’re only twenty-five?” Faith asked, heart sinking, even though she wasn’t that much older. “I knew you were young but hearing it, confirming it…”

  She thought of the trite underwear and nighties on the boat; appropriate for a young woman. Seething, it would take all her will-power not to kill Ken with her bare hands.

  Hearing a sob over the phone, Faith quickly spoke. “Of course, I’ll meet you,” she said. “I’m so sorry you were used by Ken. I’m angrier about that than the betrayal. Ken’s an ass.”

  The words were out of her mouth, unbidden, and she sputtered in shock. “I’ve never said that word out loud. I’ve never even thought it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Allison said, crying.

  They arranged to meet at New Delhi Donut at three the next afternoon. Allison was more worried about having to find a new job than a meeting with the wife. Breaking up with Ken would come first. Then, she planned on going into Marvin’s office Monday morning and telling him the truth, Ken had practically raped her in the cab when she was nearly unconscious from doing tequila shots that summer night and one thing led to the next.

  She didn’t want to lose her job. Legally, they couldn’t fire her; that much she knew.

  Hearing Ken’s car in the driveway, Faith told her she needed to hang up.

  “I thought he was going to see you tonight,” Faith said.

  “I told him not to come over when I got the mistaken text,” she said. “Let me read it to you. He’s apologetic.”

  Hearing Ken’s words spoken by Allison had a negative effect on Faith. “Allison, he’s back home. I’d better hang up now, but I’ll see you at three tomorrow.”

  Allison heard a knock at her own door, and said goodbye to Faith.

  Quickly ending the call, Faith waited for Ken to come into the kitchen to find her, but instead, she heard him running up the stairs, closing the door to his den.

  Chapter 5

  As sometimes happened, details began to come together in a wave for Jill and Albert’s case.

  The blood soaked earth behind New Delhi Donut was determined to be the crime scene, the place where the yet unnamed young woman had the back of her head blown off. Rapid DNA testing would have final results in three days, but in spite of much of the DNA being denuded due to the bleach, there were enough markers to state conclusively that it was her blood behind the donut shop.

  While Albert continued to view video tape, the donut shop owner, Mr. Gupta, sat in the interrogation room, angry that he had to close down his shop.

  “I’ll get you out of here as soon as possible,” Jill told him. “But you won’t open for business as long as CSI is there. And you sir, you have some splainin’ to do.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I swear to you.”

  Jill’s phone beeped. Come out here, Albert said.

  “Excuse me, please,” she said and left the room.

  Albert was in a small annex room off the bullpen where they’d taken the computers with the video surveillance from the donut shop.

  “Look at this,” he said, reversing the video and starting it up again. “This is the car belonging to the person the victim met.”

  A new model SUV pulled into the shop parking lot and went to space right at the front. They watched her get out and walk to the door, entering the shop.

  Immediately behind her after coming up Mack slowly, an older model Mustang pulled in and drove around to the left, the opposite side of the drive thru. No one got out of the car.

  “Watch this,” Albert said, his excitement palpable.

  The Mustang did a little U-turn maneuver and then backed into the spot so the driver’s side was facing out into the parking lot, but back behind the building that it wasn’t visible to the other cars in the lot unless they were specifically looking in that direction.

  “What’s going on? Can you zoom in?”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I want you to see this.”

  He fast forwarded and stopped it as a newer sedan pulled into the lot and parked in the front, between the SUV and the Mustang.

  “That’s her,” Albert said. “See the jacket? Her shoulder length curly hair?”

  They watched her walk into the donut shop. “I’m going to go back again a few frames,” he said.

  Pointing to the monitor, he wanted to focus on the Mustang.

  “Now watch what happens here. The sedan pulls in, and the Mustang window goes down!”

  “Zoom in, zoom in!” Jill pleaded.

  “It’s a young guy,” Albert said. “He can’t be more than twenty.”

  “So what?”

  “Just keep him in mind,” Albert said, moving the video forward slowly second by second.

  “I’d better go back to Mr. Gupta. Do you have an ID on the credit card yet?”

  “No, I’m still waiting for a call.”

  Jill got up and returned to the interrogation room. “Can I get you a cup of coffee, sir?” she asked.

  “Is it any good?” Mr. Gupta asked.

  “It’s as good as yours, believe it or not,” she said. “It’s from Greektown.”

  Her father mixed a special blend and ground his own beans, supplying the station with coffee. It was actually better than New Delhi’s coffee, but she was too polite to say so.

  “No thank you,” he said. “I’d better pass for now.”

  “Okay, let’s stop wasting time. You want to get back and open up for nighttime, right? You’ve lost all your dinnertime business already.

  “How’d a dead girl’s blood end up all over your parking lot?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It happened when I was busy in the store.”

  “Did you clean up the mess?” she asked.

  Hesitating, she saw that he was planning what lies to tell her. At that moment, her phone beeped again. “Saved by the bell, Mr. Gupta.”

  Looking at her phone, she took a deep breath. They’d located the credit card user.

  “A colleague will be coming in to talk to you,” she said, standing up.

  When he didn’t respond she left.

  “Do you want to take a ride?” Albert asked.

  “Who is it?” Jill asked, anxiety increasing exponentially.

  “Faith Cooper,” he said. “Birmingham.”

  “Let’s go! Do you want me to drive?”

  “Okay,” he said. “You drive, I’ll sleep.”

  They walked through the bull pen to the staircase leading down to the lobby. Their precinct building was old, and Jill and Albert didn’t notice how shabby it was; to the detectives, it was home.

  “I’m parked on the street right in front,” she said.

  “One of these days, you’re going to get towed,” he admonished.

  “Never,” she said, confident. “They love me.”

  Unlocking the door for Albert, she went around to the driver’s side. “When we get back, let’s pick up dinner from my dad’s place.”

  Canceling breakfast with her father at his grocery store in Greektown when she got called out early after the body was found had the added negative affect that he didn’t pack her lunch. Calling him to order dinner gave a boost to her day.

  “Pop,” she said. “Albert and I are going to stop by for take out after we run an errand.”

  He answered in Greek, and she knew that meant Gus’s Greek Grocery store was full of customers. “Tha se do sýntoma, I’ll see you soon, little lamb,” he said. “Antio. Goodbye.”

  “Okay, see you soon,” she said, hanging up.

  Albert keyed the address into GPS and Jill pulled out into traffic. The usual weekday hubbub swirled around them, people rushing to their cars to try to beat rush hour traffic, but it was already too late.

  “Are you coming to Greektown for Thanksgiving dinner?” she asked.

  �
�Of course,” he said. “We just assume that’s where we’ll be eating. Nana Wong is already planning to bring something loaded with Cool Whip.”

  Nana Wong was Albert’s grandmother, a Chinatown holdout who refused to move from the city.

  Entering the expressway, Jill floored the gas pedal, skirting four lanes of speeding traffic to get into the left lane; Albert holding on to his seat, looked at her from the corner of his eye.

  “What’s your hurry?” he asked.

  “I’m starving, that’s what my hurry is. I want to get this interview over with. I just hope she’s home. Watch; this will be the night her knitting group meets.”

  Following the GPS, she got off at a Birmingham exit and wound through new developments. “I’d never find this without the trusty voice of reason,” the name they had given their GPS. It was easier to holler at a machine than it was at each other for giving wrong directions.

  “This must be it, this is the development,” Albert said indicating an anthill of gray structures, half faux stone, half vinyl siding visible in the streetlights.

  “There’s the unit. Number four twenty-seven,” he said, referring to a slip of paper while the female voice of the GPS shouted out that they’d reached their destination.

  Snickering at the synchronized chorus, Jill wiped spit off the steering wheel with her sleeve. “They all look alike,” she said, pulling in the driveway behind a car. “No one’s leaving until we do.”

  Albert got out and waited for her, reading the information they had so far, that the occupant of this condominium paid for the coffee for a still unnamed murder victim the previous day. Hopefully, she’d be able to help them identify her companion.

  “After you,” he said.

  They walked up to the door together. An elaborate but fake maple leaf wreath adorned the door, surrounding a tarnished brass knocker. Jill reached up and hit it three times. A dog barked in a neighboring unit. They heard the tap of shoes on the other side of the door, a chain or slide lock in motion, and the turn of the knob.

  Albert did a quick assessment of their possible witness as Jill introduced them to her; a lovely woman with a flawless complexion in her late twenties or early thirties, with a luminous quality about her, dressed in Albert’s opinion, plain office clothing. Later, to his disbelief, Jill would tell him she was wearing an expensive designer, that her blouse alone was over three hundred dollars.

  “What can I do for you?” Faith Cooper asked, clearly anxious.

  “We saw you yesterday on video surveillance at New Delhi Donut with a young woman who was later found murdered.”

  Faith Cooper gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, and then she started to cry, stepping aside for them to enter. Gathering awkwardly in the small foyer, they waited for her to pull it together.

  “We’re hoping you can tell us her name,” Albert said.

  “Allison,” she said, hugging herself, distraught. “I have to try to remember her last name. It’s a famous name, a political name, although she’s not related. Not Kennedy or Johnson.

  “Blumenthal. Allison Blumenthal. I just met her yesterday,” Faith said.

  Albert sent a text to everyone concerned that they had a name for their victim.

  “Can we talk to you about her?” Jill asked, using her gentle voice.

  “Yes. I’ll tell you whatever I can,” she said, pointing to the back of the condo. “I guess we should sit.”

  Reaching for a tissue, Faith blew her nose and went into the small kitchen to throw the tissue away. “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “I would kill for a cup of tea.”

  Grimacing at the choice of words, they watched Faith Cooper move rigidly, almost robotically around the kitchen.

  “Let me make it for you, and you sit and talk to Detective Wong,” Jill said, concerned they might be witnessing a meltdown if they didn’t try to calm the woman down.

  Pulling out a chair at the kitchen table, Jill waited for her to sit. The longer they drew this out, the more difficult it would be to get reliable information from her.

  “Would you tell us how you came to meet her on Sunday?” Albert asked, Jill setting the tea pot on to boil, opening cabinets looking for tea bags.

  Reluctantly, Faith told the story of Allison calling her to meet.

  “Why did she want to meet you?” Albert said.

  Faith didn’t see any reason not to tell them about Ken and Allison having an affair. Chances were they would find out soon enough.

  “My husband had an affair with her. Was having. Is having. It’s still an issue. I think she’d planned on breaking it off with him, but Ken can be very persuasive.”

  “Did she tell you about the affair when she called you to set up the meeting?” Jill asked, setting a cup of tea down on the table.

  “She knew that I knew about it. Not her, specifically. The affair. I found out about it the weekend before last. They’d gone off together when he was supposedly going on a fishing trip. I snooped and found what I needed to know.”

  “What did you find?” Albert asked.

  Faith told them about the receipt for the three carat engagement ring. The broken fingers on their victim’s left hand resonated. They looked at Faith’s rings and saw that they were substantial, as well.

  “When you saw her on Sunday afternoon, was she wearing her ring?”

  “Oh, yes. She was so proud of it. I had the feeling that she didn’t have much in the way of material things growing up. Her clothes and car, her job meant a lot to her.”

  “Did she tell you what she did for a living?”

  “She is, was, my husband’s paralegal,” Faith said, her cyclic anger growing, and visible to the detectives.

  Taking notes helped to mask their distaste. No matter how often they heard a story like this, it was difficult not to react to a person’s dishonesty.

  “Is it a city firm?” Jill asked.

  “Mendoza Friedman,” Faith replied, repeating the name of a famous Detroit firm. “On Jefferson. My husband just made partner last summer.”

  “Can you tell us what you did after you left the coffee shop?” Jill asked.

  “I came back here, and then Ken and I went to my parent’s house. Ken made some repairs to a ramp he built for my father’s wheelchair. We stayed for dinner and came home together later that evening.”

  “Where is he now?” Albert asked.

  “I’m assuming he’s on his way home from work. If he is, he should be home any second. I don’t want to have to be the one to tell him!” she cried, frantic, but then awareness flashed across her face. “Unless he already knows.”

  Chapter 6

  Anxious to view the rest of videos, by getting a name for their victim, they felt they’d covered all they needed to from Faith Cooper, for the time being. After twenty minutes when Ken Cooper still hadn’t arrived home, they decided to return to the city, asking Faith to have her husband call them when he returned. Just to be safe, they’d ask a local officer to babysit outside of the condo in an unmarked car.

  “Anything we can do to help our Detroit brothers and sisters,” the Oakland sheriff said.

  “The husband must know something’s up,” Albert said, buckling his seatbelt. “His paralegal, slash paramour didn’t show up for work today the first clue.”

  “And if he was involved in her death, he’d know for sure why she wasn’t at work,” Jill said. “A three carat ring yanked off a finger with enough force to break a bone encompasses a lot of rage.”

  “That’s not computing for me,” Albert replied. “He’s a lawyer. Surely there are easier ways to get a ring returned, especially if your wife already knows all the details. That’s no reason to kill your mistress.”

  “You’re asking the wrong person. I’m going to swing by my dad’s and get our dinner and we can watch surveillance video while we eat.”

  “You’re changing the subject?” he asked, intrigued.

  The move from plott
ing detective to hungry daughter often meant her intuition was working overtime.

  “What do you have to say? Out with it, detective,” Albert said.

  “I’m not sure wifey is completely innocent,” she answered. “She’s hiding something, I just feel it. Maybe not about her husband directly. Mr. Gupta doesn’t have a motive in the world, poor man. I’m anxious to know what his involvement is, but I bet it’s nothing more than stupidity.”

  “That’s harsh, even from you,” Albert said, chuckling.

  “But just to be sure, I’m stopping by Mendoza Friedman to see if Mr. Cooper is working late.”

  They did so, and the doors were locked tight.

  Returning to the precinct with giant packages of food from Gus’s Greektown Grocery; fragrant lamb redolent of garlic, oven roasted potatoes, baked Greek-style green beans with tomato and dill, salad, bread and butter, and a box full of pastries to disperse among the detectives stuck at work long after dinner was over.

  Mr. Gupta was still waiting, a cup of coffee and a sandwich out of the vending machine in front of him, compliments of the Detroit Police Department. Another detective had questioned him with little results.

  “Search his car,” Jill suggested to Don Short. “If he did have anything to do with her murder, he had to move the body from point A to point B.”

  There was evidence in the trunk, a spattering of Allison Blumenthal’s DNA on the rear bumper, mixed with an unknown sample.

  “I just got a text from Sam Wasserman,” Jill said. “They’re going to do the post now.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to go?” he asked, grimacing, autopsies his least favorite part of the job. “You always pick up more than I do.”

  “For you, I’ll go,” she said, the same phrase she always used; who else was she doing it for, it was their case.

  “Bless you,” he said, relieved.

  Pushing away from the table where her dinner lay half eaten, video still purred.

  “Please talk to Mr. Gupta before we’re put on administrative leave for detaining an innocent man.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, moving closer to the monitor. “Wait one second, though. Look at this.”